The Renaissance

techniques of perspective and optical illu-
sions. Mannerism was meant not to con-
vey a religious scene or classical myth, but
to simply display the skill of the painter. It
ended innovation in the Renaissance era
and ushered in the new period of Baroque
painting that would dominate European
art for two centuries.

SEEALSO: Bellini, Gentile; Bellini, Gio-
vanni; Bellini, Jacopo; Botticelli, Sandro;
Caravaggio, Michelangelo da; Fra An-
gelico; Giorgione; Grünewald, Matthias;
Leonardo da Vinci; Masaccio; Michelan-
gelo Buonarroti; Raphael; Titian

Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da ......

(1525–1594)

Italian composer born in the town of Pal-
estrina, east of Rome. He began his musi-
cal career as a choirboy and organist, and
in 1551 was appointed by Pope Julius II as
director of the Julian Chapel at Saint
Peter’sinRome.Hisreputationasacom-
poser grew with Masses that he wrote for
performance in Rome, where Dutch and
French composers had once dominated the
scene. He became musical director of the
Roman Church of Santa Maria Maggiore
from 1561 until 1566, and then served as a
court musician for the d’Este family at
their palace in Tivoli, in the hills north of
Rome. He returned to Saint Peter’s in
1571, and remained in the service of the
popes for the rest of his life. Palestrina was
commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII to re-
turn church music to the traditional style
of plainchant, in which different voices
sung melodies in unison. But he found
himself poorly suited to this antique form
of music and instead became one of the
most skilled composers of polyphonic
(multi part) music of the Renaissance. He
wrote exclusively vocal music: Masses,
motets, hymns, madrigals, and other sa-

cred music that exhibited a complete mas-

tery of the difficult craft of counterpoint

(the balanced setting of two or more lines

of music under very strict rules of

harmony). He provided a model for Ital-

ian composers of sacred music for a cen-

tury after his death and was also an im-

portant influence on the works of Johann

Sebastian Bach. Palestrina remains a widely

studied model for students of composition

into the twenty-first century.

SEEALSO: Byrd, William; Dowland, John;

music

Palladio, Andrea ..............................

(1508–1580)

Italian architect and writer who adopted

classical motifs and style in his public and

private buildings. Born in Padua as An-

drea di Pietro della Gondola, he served as

an apprentice to a stonecutter. He worked

as a stone carver in Vicenza, where he was

further trained by the scholar Giangiorgio

Trissino, who gave him the nickname of

“Palladio” after the Greek goddess Pallas

Athena. Palladio began designing private

homes in Vicenza and, in 1541 traveled to

Rome, where he began studying the monu-

ments of ancient Rome. When he returned

to Vicenza, he began incorporating designs

of Roman temples, baths, and monuments

into the facades of buildings he designed.

In 1546 the city of Vicenza commis-

sioned Palladio to renovate the Palazzo

della Ragione, the city’s law court. He sur-

rounded the building with loggias, or

walking passages covered by an arcade.

With this work Palladio’s reputation spread

among the wealthy merchants and aristo-

crats of the Veneto region, which was pros-

pering through trade within Venice’s far-

flung Mediterranean empire. In honor of

its architect, the project, which was not

completed until the early seventeenth cen-

Palladio, Andrea