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RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS

<< RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE:THE TRANSITION, CHURCHES
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL >>
CHAPTER XXIII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE
NETHERLANDS.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Fergusson, Palustre. Also, Belcher and Macartney,
Later Renaissance Architecture in England. Billings, Baronial and Ecclesiastical
Antiquities of Scotland. Blomfield, A Short History of Renaissance Architecture in
England. Britton, Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain. Ewerbeck, Die Renaissance
in Belgien und Holland. Galland, Geschichte der Hollandischen Baukunst im Zeitalter
der Renaissance. Gotch and Brown, Architecture of the Renaissance in England. Loftie,
Inigo Jones and Wren. Nash, Mansions of England. Papworth, Renaissance and Italian
Styles of Architecture in Great Britain. Richardson, Architectural Remains of the Reigns
of Elizabeth and James I. Schayes, Histoire de l'architecture en Belgique.
THE TRANSITION. The architectural activity of the sixteenth century in England
was chiefly devoted to the erection of vast country mansions for the nobility and
wealthy bourgeoisie. In these seignorial residences a degenerate form of the Gothic,
known as the Tudor style, was employed during the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry
VIII., and they still retained much of the feudal aspect of the Middle Ages. This style,
with its broad, square windows and ample halls, was well suited to domestic
architecture, as well as to collegiate buildings, of which a considerable number were
erected at this time. Among the more important palaces and manor-houses of this
period are the earlier parts of Hampton Court, Haddon and Hengreave Halls, and the
now ruined castles of Raglan and Wolterton.
ELIZABETHAN STYLE. Under Elizabeth (1558­1603) the progress of classic
culture and the employment of Dutch and Italian artists led to a gradual introduction
of Renaissance forms, which, as in France, were at first mingled with others of
Gothic origin. Among the foreign artists in England were the versatile Holbein,
Trevigi and Torregiano from Italy, and Theodore Have, Bernard Jansen, and Gerard
Chrismas from Holland. The pointed arch disappeared, and the orders began to be
used as subordinate features in the decoration of doors, windows, chimneys, and
mantels. Open-work balustrades replaced externally the heavy Tudor battlements,
and a peculiar style of carving in flat relief-patterns, resembling appliqué designs cut
out with the jigsaw and attached by nails or rivets, was applied with little judgment
to all possible features. Ceilings were commonly finished in plaster, with elaborate
interlacing patterns in low relief; and this, with the increasing use of interior
woodwork, gave to the mansions of this time a more homelike but less monumental
aspect internally. English architects, like Smithson and Thorpe, now began to win the
patronage at first monopolized by foreigners. In Wollaton Hall (1580), by Smithson,
the orders were used for the main composition with mullioned windows, much after
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the fashion of Longleat House, completed a year earlier by his master, John of
Padua. During the following period, however (1590­1610), there was a reaction
toward the Tudor practice, and the orders were again relegated to subordinate uses.
Of their more monumental employment, the Gate of Honor of Caius College,
Cambridge, is one of the earliest examples. Hardwicke and Charlton Halls, and
Burghley, Hatfield, and Holland Houses (Fig. 184), are noteworthy monuments of
the style.
FIG. 184.--BURGHLEY HOUSE.
JACOBEAN STYLE. During the reign of James I. (1603­25), details of classic origin
came into more general use, but caricatured almost beyond recognition. The orders,
though much employed, were treated without correctness or grace, and the ornament
was unmeaning and heavy. It is not worth while to dwell further upon this style,
which produced no important public buildings, and soon gave way to a more rigid
classicism.
CLASSIC PERIOD. If the classic style was late in its appearance in England, its final
sway was complete and long-lasting. It was Inigo Jones (1572­1652) who first
introduced the correct and monumental style of the Italian masters of classic design.
For Palladio, indeed, he seems to have entertained a sort of veneration, and the villa
which he designed at Chiswick was a reduced copy of Palladio's Villa Capra, near
Vicenza. This and other works of his show a failure to appreciate the unsuitability of
Italian conceptions to the climate and tastes of Great Britain; his efforts to popularize
Palladian architecture, without the resources which Palladio controlled in the way of
decorative sculpture and painting, were consequently not always happy in their
results. His greatest work was the design for a new Palace at Whitehall, London. Of
this colossal scheme, which, if completed, would have ranked as the grandest palace
of the time, only the Banqueting Hall (now used as a museum) was ever built (Fig.
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185). It is an effective composition in two stories, rusticated throughout and adorned
with columns and pilasters, and contains a fine vaulted hall in three aisles. The plan
of the palace, which was to have measured 1,152 × 720 feet, was excellent, largely
conceived and carefully studied in its details, but it was wholly beyond the resources
of the kingdom. The garden-front of Somerset House (1632; demolished) had the
same qualities of simplicity and dignity, recalling the works of Sammichele. Wilton
House, Coleshill, the Villa at Chiswick, and St. Paul's, Covent Garden, are the best
known of his works, showing him to have been a designer of ability, but hardly of
the consummate genius which his admirers attribute to him.
FIG. 185.--BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL.
FIG. 186.--PLAN OF ST. PAUL'S, LONDON.
ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. The greatest of Jones's successors was Sir Christopher
Wren (1632­1723), principally known as the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral,
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London, built to replace the earlier Gothic cathedral destroyed in the great fire of
1666. It was begun in 1675, and its designer had the rare good fortune to witness
its completion in 1710. The plan, as finally adopted, retained the general
proportions of an English Gothic church, measuring 480 feet in length, with
transepts 250 feet long, and a grand rotunda 108 feet in diameter at the crossing
(Fig. 186). The style was strictly Italian, treated with sobriety and dignity, if
somewhat lacking in variety and inspiration. Externally two stories of the Corinthian
order appear, the upper story being merely a screen to hide the clearstory and its
buttresses. This is an architectural deception, not atoned for by any special beauty of
detail. The dominant feature of the design is the dome over the central area. It
consists of an inner shell, reaching a height of 216 feet, above which rises the
exterior dome of wood, surmounted by a stone lantern, the summit of which is 360
feet from the pavement (Fig. 187).
FIG. 187.--EXTERIOR OF ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.
This exterior dome, springing from a high drum surrounded by a magnificent
peristyle, gives to the otherwise commonplace exterior of the cathedral a signal
majesty of effect. Next to the dome the most successful part of the design is the west
front, with its two-storied porch and flanking bell-turrets. Internally the excessive
relative length, especially that of the choir, detracts from the effect of the dome, and
the poverty of detail gives the whole a somewhat bare aspect. It is intended to relieve
this ultimately by a systematic use of mosaic decoration, especially in the dome. The
central area itself, in spite of the awkward treatment of the four smaller arches of the
eight which support the dome, is a noble design, occupying the whole width of the
three aisles, like the Octagon at Ely, and producing a striking effect of amplitude and
grandeur. The dome above it is constructively interesting from the employment of a
cone of brick masonry to support the stone lantern which rises above the exterior
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wooden shell. The lower part of the cone forms the drum of the inner dome, its
contraction upward being intended to produce a perspective illusion of increased
height.
St. Paul's ranks among the five or six greatest domical buildings of Europe, and is the
most imposing modern edifice in England.
WREN'S OTHER WORKS. Wren was conspicuously successful in the designing of
parish churches in London. St. Stephen's, Walbrook, is the most admired of these,
with a dome resting on eight columns. Wren may be called the inventor of the
English Renaissance type of steeple, in which a conical or pyramidal spire is
harmoniously added to a belfry on a square tower with classic details. The steeple of
Bow Church, Cheapside, is the most successful example of the type. In secular
architecture Wren's most important works were the plan for rebuilding London after
the Great Fire; the new courtyard of Hampton Court, a quiet and dignified
composition in brick and stone; the pavilions and colonnade of Greenwich Hospital;
the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, and the Trinity College Library at Cambridge.
Without profound originality, these works testify to the sound good taste and
intelligence of their designer.
FIG. 188.--PLAN OF BLENHEIM.
THE 18TH CENTURY. The Anglo-Italian style as used by Jones and Wren continued
in use through the eighteenth century, during the first half of which a number of
important country-seats and some churches were erected. Van Brugh (1666­1726),
Hawksmoor (1666­1736), and Gibbs (1683­1751) were then the leading architects.
Van Brugh was especially skilful in his dispositions of plan and mass, and produced
in the designs of Blenheim and Castle Howard effects of grandeur and variety of
perspective hardly equalled by any of his contemporaries in France or Italy.
Blenheim, with its monumental plan and the sweeping curves of its front (Fig. 188),
has an unusually palatial aspect, though the striving for picturesqueness is carried
too far. Castle Howard is simpler, depending largely for effect on a somewhat
inappropriate dome. To Hawksmoor, his pupil, are due St. Mary's, Woolnoth
(1715), at London, in which by a bold rustication of the whole exterior and by
windows set in large recessed arches he was enabled to dispense wholly with the
orders; St. George's, Bloomsbury; the new quadrangle of All Souls at Oxford, and
some minor works. The two most noted designs of James Gibbs are St. Martin's-in-
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the-Fields, at London (1726), and the Radcliffe Library, at Oxford (1747). In the
former the use of a Corinthian portico--a practically uncalled-for but decorative
appendage--and of a steeple mounted on the roof, with no visible lines of support
from the ground, are open to criticism. But the excellence of the proportions, and the
dignity and appropriateness of the composition, both internally and externally, go far
to redeem these defects (Fig. 189). The Radcliffe Library is a circular domical hall
surrounded by a lower circuit of alcoves and rooms, the whole treated with
straightforward simplicity and excellent proportions. Colin Campbell, Flitcroft, Kent
and Wood, contemporaries of Gibbs, may be dismissed with passing mention.
FIG. 189.--ST. MARTIN'S-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON.
Sir William Chambers (1726­96) was the greatest of the later 18th-century
architects. His fame rests chiefly on his Treatise on Civil Architecture, and the
extension and remodelling of Somerset House, in which he retained the general
ordonnance of Inigo Jones's design, adapting it to a frontage of some 600 feet. Robert
Adams, the designer of Keddlestone Hall, Robert Taylor (1714­88), the architect of
the Bank of England, and George Dance, who designed the Mansion House and
Newgate Prison, at London--the latter a vigorous and appropriate composition
without the orders--close the list of noted architects of the eighteenth century. It was
a period singularly wanting in artistic creativeness and spontaneity; its productions
were nearly all dull and respectable, or at best dignified, but without charm.
BELGIUM. As in all other countries where the late Gothic style had been highly
developed, Belgium was slow to accept the principles of the Renaissance in art. Long
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after the dawn of the sixteenth century the Flemish architects continued to employ
their highly florid Gothic alike for churches and town-halls, with which they chiefly
had to do. The earliest Renaissance buildings date from 1530­40, among them being
the Hôtel du Saumon, at Malines, at Bruges the Ancien Greffe, by Jean Wallot, and at
Liège the Archbishop's Palace, by Borset. The last named, in the singular and
capricious form of the arches and baluster-like columns of its court, reveals the taste
of the age for what was outré and odd; a taste partly due, no doubt, to Spanish
influences, as Belgium was in reality from 1506 to 1712 a Spanish province, and
there was more or less interchange of artists between the two countries. The Hôtel
de Ville, at Antwerp, by Cornelius de Vriendt or Floris (1518­75), erected in 1565,
is the most important monument of the Renaissance in Belgium. Its façade, 305 feet
long and 102 feet high, in four stories, is an impressive creation in spite of its
somewhat monotonous fenestration and the inartistic repetition in the third story of
the composition and proportions of the second. The basement story forms an open
arcade, and an open colonnade or loggia runs along under the roof, thus imparting to
the composition a considerable play of light and shade, enhanced by the picturesque
central pavilion which rises to a height of six stories in diminishing stages. The style
is almost Palladian in its severity, but in general the Flemish architects disdained the
restrictions of classic canons, preferring a more florid and fanciful effect than could
be obtained by mere combinations of Roman columns, arches, and entablatures. De
Vriendt's other works were mostly designs for altars, tabernacles and the like; among
them the rood screen in Tournay Cathedral. His influence may be traced in the Hôtel
de Ville at Flushing (1594).
FIG. 190.--RENAISSANCE HOUSES, BRUSSELS.
The ecclesiastical architecture of the Flemish Renaissance is almost as destitute of
important monuments as is the secular. Ste. Anne, at Bruges, fairly illustrates the
type, which is characterized in general by heaviness of detail and a cold and bare
aspect internally. The Renaissance in Belgium is best exemplified, after all, by minor
works and ordinary dwellings, many of which have considerable artistic grace,
though they are quaint rather than monumental (Fig. 190). Stepped gables, high
dormers, and volutes flanking each diminishing stage of the design, give a certain
piquancy to the street architecture of the period.
HOLLAND. Except in the domain of realistic painting, the Dutch have never
manifested pre-eminent artistic endowments, and the Renaissance produced in
Holland few monuments of consequence. It began there, as in many other places,
with minor works in the churches, due largely to Flemish or Italian artists. About the
middle of the 16th century two native architects, Sebastian van Noye and William
van Noort, first popularized the use of carved pilasters and of gables or steep
pediments adorned with carved scallop-shells, in remote imitation of the style of
Francis I. The principal monuments of the age were town-halls, and, after the war of
independence in which the yoke of Spain was finally broken (1566­79), local
administrative buildings--mints, exchanges and the like. The Town Hall of The
Hague (1565), with its stepped gable or great dormer, its consoles, statues, and
octagonal turrets, may be said to have inaugurated the style generally followed after
the war. Owing to the lack of stone, brick was almost universally employed, and
stone imported by sea was only used in edifices of exceptional cost and importance.
Of these the Town Hall at Amsterdam holds the first place. Its façade is of about the
same dimensions as the one at Antwerp, but compares unfavorably with it in its
monotony and want of interest. The Leyden Town Hall, by the Fleming, Lieven de
Key (1597), the Bourse or Exchange and the Hanse House at Amsterdam, by Hendrik
de Keyser, are also worthy of mention, though many lesser buildings, built of brick
combined with enamelled terra-cotta and stone, possess quite as much artistic merit.
DENMARK. In Denmark the monuments of the Renaissance may almost be said to
be confined to the reign of Christian IV. (1588­1648), and do not include a single
church of any importance. The royal castles of the Rosenborg at Copenhagen (1610)
and the Fredericksborg (1580­1624), the latter by a Dutch architect, are interesting
and picturesque in mass, with their fanciful gables, mullioned windows and
numerous turrets, but can hardly lay claim to beauty of detail or purity of style. The
Exchange at Copenhagen, built of brick and stone in the same general style (1619­
40), is still less interesting both in mass and detail.
The only other important Scandinavian monument deserving of special mention in so
brief a sketch as this is the Royal Palace at Stockholm, Sweden (1698­1753), due
to a foreign architect, Nicodemus de Tessin. It is of imposing dimensions, and
although simple in external treatment, it merits praise for the excellent disposition of
its plan, its noble court, imposing entrances, and the general dignity and
appropriateness of its architecture.
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MONUMENTS (in addition to those mentioned in text). ENGLAND, TUDOR STYLE: Several
palaces by Henry VIII., no longer extant; Westwood, later rebuilt; Gosfield Hall;
Harlaxton.--ELIZABETHAN: Buckhurst, 1565; Kirby House, 1570, both by Thorpe; Caius
College, 1570­75, by Theodore Have; "The Schools," Oxford, by Thomas Holt, 1600;
Beaupré Castle, 1600.--JACOBEAN: Tombs of Mary of Scotland and of Elizabeth in
Westminster Abbey; Audsley Inn; Bolsover Castle, 1613; Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh,
1628.--CLASSIC  or  ANGLO-ITALIAN:  St.  John's  College,  Oxford;  Queen's  House,
Greenwich; Coleshill; all by Inigo Jones, 1620­51; Amesbury, by Webb; Combe Abbey;
Buckingham and Montague Houses; The Monument, London, 1670, by Wren; Temple
Bar, by the same; Winchester Palace, 1683; Chelsea College; Towers of Westminster
Abbey, 1696; St. Clement Dane's; St. James's, Westminster; St. Peter's, Cornhill, and
many others, all by Wren.--18TH CENTURY: Seaton Delaval and Grimsthorpe, by Van
Brugh; Wanstead House, by Colin Campbell; Treasury Buildings, by Kent.
The most important Renaissance buildings of BELGIUM and HOLLAND have been mentioned
in the text.
Table of Contents:
  1. PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE:EARLY BEGINNINGS
  2. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE:LAND AND PEOPLE, THE MIDDLE EMPIRE
  3. EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued:TEMPLES, CAPITALS
  4. CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE:ORNAMENT, MONUMENTS
  5. PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE:Jehovah
  6. GREEK ARCHITECTURE:GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS, THE DORIC
  7. GREEK ARCHITECTURE—Continued:ARCHAIC PERIOD, THE TRANSITION
  8. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE:LAND AND PEOPLE, GREEK INFLUENCE
  9. ROMAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued:IMPERIAL ARCHITECTURE
  10. EARLY CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE:INTRODUCTORY, RAVENNA
  11. BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE:DOMES, DECORATION, CARVED DETAILS
  12. SASSANIAN AND MOHAMMEDAN ARCHITECTURE:ARABIC ARCHITECTURE
  13. EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE:LOMBARD STYLE, FLORENCE
  14. EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE.—Continued:EARLY CHURCHES, GREAT BRITAIN
  15. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE:STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES, RIBBED VAULTING
  16. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE:STRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT
  17. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN:GENERAL CHARACTER
  18. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS, AND SPAIN
  19. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY:CLIMATE AND TRADITION, EARLY BUILDINGS.
  20. EARLY RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY:THE CLASSIC REVIVAL, PERIODS
  21. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY—Continued:BRAMANTE’S WORKS
  22. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE:THE TRANSITION, CHURCHES
  23. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS
  24. RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GERMANY, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL
  25. THE CLASSIC REVIVALS IN EUROPE:THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
  26. RECENT ARCHITECTURE IN EUROPE:MODERN CONDITIONS, FRANCE
  27. ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES:GENERAL REMARKS, DWELLINGS
  28. ORIENTAL ARCHITECTURE:INTRODUCTORY NOTE, CHINESE ARCHITECTURE
  29. APPENDIX.