Page 13 - Demo

His interest in agricultural production was for instance very explicit in his travel notes. Jefferson focuses on the study of rice fields: he wanted to test the variety of Italian rice to compare with that produced in the southern US states. He also tried to understand if, how and at what price a whole range of products, plants and animals could be imported in America, possibly exchanging them with typically American products such as Virginia tobacco. One of Jefferson's greatest interests is the vineyards, in order to understand what could be imported in the Virginia climate (the history of wine production is also linked to the name of Filippo Mazzei); curiously today Virginia still produces Jefferson's wine.
Jefferson Monticello estate was influenced by Palladio’s La Rotonda (Villa Almerico Capra) Above: La Rotonda. Below: Monticello and the White House, on a Palladian-style design presented by him and eventually approved by the commission
We could think of a double face of Thomas Jefferson's Italy. On the one hand, a ‘Colour Italy’, the one of the vineyards and the country landscapes. On the other hand, an ‘Italy in black and white’, which is the one he does not see directly, but he gets to know through his many books, especially the translated tractates of Palladio. Jefferson was deeply inspired by Italian architecture, but he got to know it almost exclusively through two-dimensional images. The need to be inspired by the Italian master was however very important to him because in Virginia Jefferson had found an architectural style that he deemed totally unsatisfactory. He advocated a Declaration of Independence also of American architecture to create buildings whose interior would be modified and adapted to the specific needs of the young thriving American nation.