Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter XI. Of the diminution of walls, and of their several parts
IT ought to be observed, that walls should diminish in proportion as they rise; therefore those which appear above ground must be but half as thick as the walls in the foundation; those of the second story half a brick thinner than the walls of the first; and in this manner to the top of the building; but with discretion, that the upper part be not too thin.
The middle of the upper walls ought to fall directly upon the middle of the lower, which will give the whole wall a pyramidal form. But when you are willing to make the superficies or face of the upper walls to fall directly upon the lower, it must be done towards the inside of the building; because that the floors, beams or rafters, vaults, and other supports of the fabrick, will keep them from falling or giving way.
The discharged part, or set-off, which is on the outside, may be covered with a fascia and a cornice; which, surrounding all the building, will be both an ornament, and a kind of bond to the whole. And because the angles partake of the two sides, in order to keep them upright, and united together, they ought to be made very strong and solid with long hard stones, holding them as it were with arms.
The windows, and other openings, ought be as far distant from the angles as possible; or at least so much space must be left between the aperture and the angles as the width of the opening or void.
Having thus treated of plain walls, we shall next consider their ornaments; among which none are more considerable than columns, when they are properly placed, and in a just proportion to the whole edifice.
Public-domain text (London, published by Isaac Ware, 1738). Read from the Internet Archive’s scan (gri_33125011569684) of the copy in the Getty Research Institute, by way of Wikimedia Commons, where it is marked public domain. That scan’s text layer had lost the ends of the lines on every left-hand page, so the pages were read again from the scan’s images, the two readings compared word by word, and the text cleaned: the long s (ſ) is printed s and the ct and st ligatures as plain letters, words broken at the ends of lines are joined, and running heads, page numbers, signatures and catchwords are removed. Ware’s spelling, capitals and punctuation are otherwise kept (shew, publick, antient, compleat). Chapter titles and words the OCR misread were corrected against the page images. Some misreadings will remain, most of them in the italic prefaces and the Latin of Book III. Ware’s dedication, the list of subscribers, his table of terms, the errata and the bookseller’s advertisement are not reproduced. Nor are the 212 engraved plates, their inscriptions, or the keys to the letters on them that Ware prints in the text: where Palladio writes “as in the design” the figure is in the printed book.