Vincenzo Scamozzi

Scamozzi has the awkward distinction of finishing other people's buildings and being remembered for it. Born in Vicenza in 1548, he was a generation behind Palladio and inherited his unfinished work, completing the Teatro Olimpico after Palladio's death in 1580 — including the famous forced-perspective street sets behind the stage, which are Scamozzi's invention rather than Palladio's.

He also completed Villa La Rotonda, and the dome as built is lower than the higher profile Palladio had drawn, a change usually attributed to him. In Venice he designed the Procuratie Nuove on the south side of Piazza San Marco, continuing Sansovino's library along the square.

His own contribution was theoretical. L'Idea della Architettura Universale, published in 1615, was one of the last great architectural treatises of the Renaissance and was read across northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands. Where Palladio's Quattro Libri was a book of buildings, Scamozzi's was a system, and it carried Italian classicism north in a form architects could reason from.

He died in 1616. His reputation has always been measured against Palladio's, which is both unfair and unavoidable.