Palladio was apprenticed to a stonecutter in Padua when he was 13 years old. He broke this contract, agreed to by his father, after only 18 months and fled to the nearby town of Vicenza. In Vicenza he became an assistant in the leading workshop of stonecutters and masons where he learned the rudiments of architectural design (PalladioÆs Life, 2003).

His life was transformed in 1537, when he was 30 years old. At that time he was engaged by Gian Giorgio Trissino, one of the period's leading scholars, to assist in executing new additions which Trissino had designed for his own villa at Cricoli just outside Vicenza (PalladioÆs Life, 2003; Raeburn, 1988). The association affected Andrea in at least three ways:

First, Trissino immediately assumed the role of And

In essence, therefore, the villas represent Palladio's response to the unique needs of his contemporary world. In the villas Palladio re-worked what he perceived to be timeless and universal principles newly re-discovered from the past. Zs As it happens, the needs of his time have remained needs of the modern world. As a result, Palladio's architectural insights and solutions remain vital and relevant; the next section of this report will consider PalladioÆs influence on modern architecture. This influence remains strong some 400-plus years after PalladioÆs life and work and is likely to continue influencing architects in the future.

Cole and Gealt (1989) have asserted that many of these same elements are visible throughout Thomas JeffersonÆs plan for Monticello and in many buildings constructed in seventeenth and eighteenth century England. What subsequent generations of architects and builders draw from Palladio was the seriousness and dignity of early Roman architecture and its reinterpretation in the works of Palladio.