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Book Review
Branko Mitrovi and Stephen R. Wassell (eds.)
Andrea Palladio: The Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese
New York: Acanthus Press, 2007.
Reviewed by Kim Williams
Via Cavour, 810123 Turin (Torino) ITALY
I cannot claim to be the most objective reviewer of Andrea Palladio: The Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese, edited by Branko Mitrovi and Stephen R. Wassell, with contributions by Tim Ross and Melanie Bourke. I have known both of the editors for a good while and have spoken to them at length about the Villa Cornaro and Andrea Palladio, and even participated (in a very minor way, and principally by bringing along someone who did the dirty work) in the survey campaign. Some of my most pleasant hours have been spent with Sally and Carl Gable in their villa in Piombino Dese. On the other hand, what I lack in objectivity, the book amply makes up for in objectivity of its own, just one of the many respects in which this is not just another book about Palladio.
While most books set forth a theory, and use data to support it (in the case of architecture, measurements), this particular book on the Villa Cornaro does, of course, set forth theories, but these are not supported by selected data, but rather what is furnished is an abundance of data. One very great contribution that this book will make to Palladio scholarship is in providing a body of information that future Palladio scholars can turn to in elaborating and verifying their own theories, without being forced to agree with those set forth by Mitrovi and Wassell. This is objectivity indeed, and more, generosity.
The essays
Mitrovis essay, Designing the Villa Cornaro, begins with an overview of the current status of scholarship on Palladios design theory, and then proceeds to contrast Mitrovis own theory with previous ones. Mitrovi explains his principle of the condition of concordance of heights, which he calls the CCH rule, through which the interrelatedness of Palladios volumes is made clear. The information gleaned from the survey of the Villa Cornaro has allowed him to construct an in-depth proof of a hypothesis regarding Palladios design process applied to a specific example that he had presented with broader strokes in his earlier publication,...