Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington

Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, PC ( born April 25, 1694 Yorkshire, † December 15, 1753 ) was a British nobleman and architect.

Boyle was the only son of Charles Boyle, 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork. He was also interested in music and was George Frideric Handel live in his house Burlington House, which honored him for three operas.

Boyle was one of the main initiators of the English Palladian style. He inherited at the age of ten years his title and thus extensive estates in Yorkshire and Ireland. In three Grand Tours in 1714, 1719 and 1726, he toured the continent of Europe and especially Italy, where he came in contact with the Italian architecture. The architecture of Roman antiquity hardly interested him, rather, the interpretations by Scamozzi and especially Andrea Palladio.

His first project was in 1719 its own house in Piccadilly, Burlington House, in the first James Gibbs worked, the Boyle dismissed after his return from the continent. Boyle himself was now working with the Scottish architect Colen Campbell and the interior designer William Kent on remodeling the house. The courtyard of Burlington House is considered the first implementation of the new Palladian style in the United Kingdom.

Especially the cooperation with William Kent turned out to be permanent: Together they designed 1726-29 Chiswick House, a small villa, the octagonal shape of Palladio's Villa Rotonda near Vicenza (built in 1550) picks up. Bedrooms or a kitchen are available in Chiswick House not only purpose was to include Burlington Architecture Library and Collection. The garden, which was attributable primarily to William Kent and Charles Bridgeman, is considered the earliest example of the picturesque reshaping an ancient landscape and thus the forerunner of the English landscape garden.

In the early 1730s, the Palladian had prevailed as the predominant style for country houses and public buildings.