Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door : Pope and Palladianism

Abstract

The history of English Palladianism is well known. That history has always seen the English movement as part of a classical and neoclassical continuum stretching from Vitruvian Rome, by way of the Veneta to Jones and Burlington. Pope's villa at Twickenham, which pays ostensible tribute to the architectural language of Burlington's Chiswick Villa, has an important role in English Palladianism by moralising the inherited language of architecture. The symbolism of Twickenham was elaborated by the poet both in verse (itself founded on neoclassical formal and ideological precedents) and in his extensive correspondence (carefully rewritten for publication, again on classical models). English Palladianism in its inception and conception appears to possess a coherent historical, aesthetic and ideological programme, of which Pope is the heir, and also a potent force in cultural transmission.