5 Church of Santa Maria Nova

In 1578 the Vicentine noble Lodovico Trento earmarked a sizeable sum of money for the reconstruction of a small church attached to the convent of the Augustinian nuns of Santa Maria Nova in Borgo Porta Nuova, west of the city. By 1590, twelve years later, the church had been completed and was decorated with canvases by prominent artists such as Maffei, the Maganza, Andrea Vicentino, and Carpioni.
It seems very probable that the building resulted from a project Palladio had drawn up around 1578 and was then realised (after his death in 1580) under the supervision of the capomastro Domenico Groppino, whose name emerges from the documents.
The church has a single nave, in the form of an ancient temple cella, entirely bounded by engaged Corinthian columns on plinths: quite close in appearance to the Roman temple at Nîmes which Palladio had drawn in the Quattro Libri.
The power and creative freedom of both the interior and facade can hardly be linked to a name other than Andrea Palladio.

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