page_title: Venetian window
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Venetian window / Overview
caption_attribution_description: Claydon House
context_page_description: A Venetian window is a large tripartite window which is a key element in Palladian architecture. Although he did not invent it, it features largely in the work of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio and is almost a trademark of his early career. The true Palladian window is an elaborated version.
context_section_description: The Venetian window consists of an arched central arched light symmetrically flanked by two shorter sidelights. Each sidelight is flanked by two columns or pilasters and topped by a small entablature. The entablatures serve as imposts supporting the semicircular arch that tops the central light. In the library at Venice, Sansovino varied the design by substituting columns for the two inner pilasters. To describe its origin as being either Palladian or Venetian is not accurate; the motif was first used by Donato Bramante and later mentioned by Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) in his seven-volume architectural book Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospetiva expounding the ideals of Vitruvius and Roman architecture, this arched window is flanked by two lower rectangular openings, a motif that first appeared in the triumphal arches of ancient Rome.
  Palladio used the motif extensively, most notably in the arcades of the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza. It is also a feature of his entrance to Villa Forni Cerato. It is perhaps this extensive use of the motif in the Veneto that has given the window its alternative name of the Venetian window; it is also known as a Serlian window. Whatever the name or the origin, this form of window has probably become one of the most enduring features of Palladio's work seen in the later architectural styles evolved from Palladianism. According to James Lees-Milne, its first appearance in Britain was in the remodeled wings of Burlington House, London, where the immediate source was actually in Inigo Jones's designs for Whitehall Palace rather than drawn from Palladio himself.
caption: Claydon House (begun 1757), here the Venetian window in the central bay is surrounded by a unifying blind arch
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