Andrea Palladio has not always been what we think of as the architectural genius of the Italian Renaissance, the admirer of classicism and the authoritative voice of the structural innovations that created Palladianism.
Certainly, his mentor was none other than Giangiorgio Trissino, an illustrious figure at the time, the one who first discovered him and introduced him to commissions for the Serenissima.
But even Palladio had to struggle to establish himself and one of the most striking examples is the presentation of his project for the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza.
On that occasion, the project evaluation process was long and painful: Palladio was thirty-eight years old and still relatively unknown. He had to face pillars of the architecture of the time such as Giulio Romano and Jacopo Sansovino and several times his project was questioned, but after three years of further re-evaluations he finally won the commission. An enormous satisfaction for Trissino.
The grandiose work, the innovations and the ability of Andrea Palladio to adapt an existing building to the dictates of the new uses, of the time and the desires of the client while remaining faithful to himself, made him officially from that moment the Architect of Vicenza, the favorite, the greatest, the one who thought up the Basilica Palladiana.