"Palladio is a subject now widely taught in liberal arts curricula, as well as in professional schools. Architects, too-- both in training and in practice-- have found Lewis's display of the successive steps in Palladio's design process to be a visual and historical narrative that can illuminate and even inspire their own conceptual evolutions. But, above all, students and scholars of Renaissance art and architectural history will most appreciate the author's wealth of contextual detail, the vibrant sketches of Palladio's negotiations with mentors and collaborators, as well as new material on the lives of his patrons, with revised identifications and datings of their projects (including the first comprehensive chronology for Palladio's drawings). This book has also pioneered in bringing together the documentary and visual evidence for Palladio as the primary designer of elaborately painted and decorated interiors, a revelation that should fundamentally affect our understanding of Palladian architecture."--Bookseller's site.