JACOBEAN STYLE. During the reign of James I. (1603–25), 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.
FIG. 185.—BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL.
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 (1572–1652) 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. 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. 186.—PLAN OF ST. PAUL’S, LONDON.
ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL. The greatest of Jones’s successors was Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1723), principally known as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, 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). 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 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.