Andrea Palladio · The First Book
Chapter XIX. Of Pedestals
I HAVE hitherto said as much as I thought necessary with respect to plain walls, and their ornaments; and have particularly touched upon the several pedestals that may be applied to each order.
But tho the antients may seem to have had no regard to form a pedestal larger for one order than another; yet this member is a very great addition both in point of ornament and beauty when it is made with judgment, and in due proportion to the other parts,
In order that the architect may have a perfect knowledge of pedestals, and be able to use them upon all occasions; it 3s to be observed, that the antients made them sometimes square, equal in height and width, as in the arch of Leoni at Verona. These I have given to the Dorick order, because it requires solidity.
They sometimes made them by taking the measure from the opening, as in the arch of Titus at Santa Maria Nova in Rome, and that of Trajan over the port of won, where the height of the pedestal is half the void of the arch, ~ Which kind of pedestal I have placed in the Ionick order,.
They sometimes took the dimension from the height of the column, as may be seen in an arch that was erected in honour of Augustus Caesar, at Susa, a city situated ar the foot of the mountains that part France and Italy; in the arch of Pola, a ay 1a Dalmatia and in the amphitheatre at Rome, in the Ionick and Corinthian orders; in which edifices the pedestal is one fourth of the height of the columns, as I have observed in the Corinthian order. In the arch of Call Vecchio at Verona, which is exceeding beautiful, the pedestal is a third part of the height of the column, as T have placed it in the Composite order. These are the most beautiful forms of pedestals, and such as have a fine proportion to the other parts.
"When Vitruvius, in his sixth book, speaking of theatres, makes mention of the 1thepoggio, it is to be observed, that the poggio is the fume as the pedestal, which is a third of the length of the column, placed as an ornament to the scene,
But pedestals that exceed a third part of the columns may be seen in the arch of Containe at Rome, where the pedestals are two fifths of the height of the columns. And it was obferv’d in almost all the antient pedestals to form the base twice as thick as the cimacia as shall be seen in my book of” arches.
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.