The year 1546 represents a milestone in the history of Vicenza: following the death of Giulio Romano, the young architect Andrea Palladio was appointed as the new supervisor of the construction of the monumental Palazzo Thiene. In the same year, after a five-decade-long debate, the Citizen Council approved Palladio's project for the loggias of the Palazzo della Ragione, the city hall. Within a city thoroughly divided by two political parties, this choice was a result of the tireless efforts of persuasion undertaken by the humanist Giangiorgio Trissino, Palladio's mentor. According to the French monk Jacques-François Lefranc, 1546 was also the birthdate of a new social organization, first established in Vicenza and then spread worldwide: Freemasonry. Building from Lefranc's theory, Michael Trevor Coughlin's book From Mythos to Logos traces parallel developments among very different arenas—Palladio's architectural theory, the spread of a specific symbolism within the arts, and the involvement of Vicentine aristocracy in the dissemination of Lutheranism and the creation of Platonic academies—and speculates upon possible lines of influence between them.

The analysis of such a delicate topic necessarily must confront the lack of primary information, due to the political and religious censorship during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and the consequent necessity to veil heretical meanings and ideas under a cloak of mystery. By approaching the topic from different directions, Coughlin manages to reconstruct the cultural context around Palladio's appointments in a very convincing way. Trissino's choice to bestow upon the young Andrea di Pietro della Gondola the pseudonym Palladio, after one of the key characters of his L'Italia liberata dai Goti, reflects his broader program to reform the city. Palladio, exactly as the angel in Trissino's poem, is the only person able to establish a new social order above any political divisions, and architecture is the only possible tool. In this sense, reshaping Vicenza as a “new Rome” represents an attempt to restore social cohesion through the reinterpretation of ancient ideals of social unity. As architecture must imitate “the architecture of the Universe” (Palladio, IV, 3), the wise men aim at “raising a Temple to virtue in their hearts with the same degree of perfection as that of Solomon's Temple” (4), sharing the same idea of perfection for social improvement.

After a very extensive introduction, the book is organized into five chapters. The first focuses on the allegorical representation of Prudence within the decoration of the Palazzo Thiene and its relationship with the question of free will, the central issue of the Reformation theologies. The second chapter approaches the questions of time and prudence, analyzing Palladio's Villa Barbaro as a result of Daniele Barbaro's interest in gnomonics and astronomy, and his possible involvement in heretical activities.

The third and fourth chapters focus on symbolism in both Palladio's Villa Rotonda and Titian's Allegory of Prudence, while the fifth investigates the importance of Neoplatonic thought to the origin of Freemasonry. More specifically, Coughlin is able to identify some embryonic tendencies and elements already evident in the early sixteenth century, in the design and decoration of Palazzo Te in Mantua and in Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

Unfortunately, despite the quantity of information collected on the cultural context, when it comes to the architectural questions, Coughlin's interpretation is less precise, if not misleading. This is particularly evident in the case of Villa Barbaro, where Coughlin's speculations on its design do not consider the practical issues of architecture (such as ignoring the role of the preexisting structures in the orientation of the building), and the schematization of hypothetical references to astronomy and gnomonics ultimately proves to be exegetical rather than empirical. Also, the dissertation on the allegorical meaning of the frontispiece of Palladio's Four Books—known to scholars to be totally independent from the contents of the book, reflecting, instead, the publisher's motto and emblem—works against Coughlin's otherwise compelling research.

With that said, Coughlin's book is valuable for its courageous attempt to investigate an extremely complex topic, providing a really interesting and clear analysis of the context. This book is intended for a broad academic audience in the fields of philosophy, history of art and architecture, literature, and religion, and it represents a valuable example of a meeting point among different disciplines.