Michel Baridon : Classical imagination and Enlightenment Palladianism. The fall of absolutism in Britain removed the religious references of political thought and encouraged a new image of classical Rome. What was admired was no longer the unifying empire but the colonizing city and its balance between monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. This image of Rome was already present during the Renaissance with Macchiavelli, and Palladio seemed to be the architect who gave it its purest expression. Thus Palladianism was the style of the new politics, that of the Masonic ideal. Its low lines and staccato effects made it blend into the countryside and its modernity was affirmed by its rejection of the spectacular thrust of baroque geometry. It spread the forms and sensibility which are to be found in Fielding, Pope and Montesquieu, the main representatives of literary Palladianism.