One of the most valuable sources for obtaining knowledge of the house-planning of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. is the collection of drawings in the Soane Museum, known as John Thorpe's. This collection has given rise to a certain amount of controversy, and will probably give rise to more, for there are so many objections to any theory which can be advanced as to its origin and use. This is not the place to enter upon the arguments for or against any particular view; but as it may be advisable to adopt some kind of working hypothesis, that which best fits the facts seems to be this—that the drawings were drawn in a large book (with the exception of some few which were stuck in), and that by far the greatest number, if not actually all, were drawn by John Thorpe.[30] There were two men of this name, father and son, and both may have had a hand in it. But whether this hypothesis be accepted or not, it is certain that all the drawings were made during the closing years of the sixteenth century or the opening years of the seventeenth, and that they represent either surveys of buildings then existing, or designs for new ones, or exercises in ingenuity of planning. Whatever else we may or may not have, we have here the Elizabethan and Jacobean ideas of what houses were or ought to be, what accommodation they should contain, and how it should be disposed. In this respect the collection is particularly valuable, because we get everything at first hand; we see some designs in course of development, and others as they were finished, and entirely free from the manifold alterations which houses themselves have necessarily undergone in the course of three centuries. We also get in the elevations, or "uprights" as they were then called, the designer's ideas of how the houses were to appear; but in this respect we do not fare so well as with the plans, since the number of elevations is far smaller.
[30]The arguments in support of this view are given in a paper by the author, published in the Architectural Review of February, 1899.
213.—The Château of Anssi-le-Franc, copied from Du Cerceau (page 75 of Thorpe's Book).
There are, further, a few drawings which may be regarded as studies—studies in perspective, in the five orders, and in the style of foreign architects. For there is no doubt that Thorpe studied books on architecture, both Italian, French, and Dutch, of which a considerable number had been published during the latter half of the sixteenth century. His exercise in the five orders is evidently drawn from an Italian publication, which, however, has not yet been identified. He has copied at least three designs from a French source, one of Androuet du Cerceau's books, "Les plus excellents bastiments de France," published in 1576-79. One of these designs is the Château of Anssi-le-Franc, of which he gives the plan on page 75, and part of the elevation on page 76. The plan is copied accurately except in one or two trifling particulars, and so also is the elevation (Figs. [213], [214]); but to the latter he has added three sketches of turrets, which do not appear in the original, and which are designed in the Dutch rather than the French style. On each side of the plan he has sketched in pencil the main lines of another plan founded on the original, but which looks as though it were meant to be adapted to English uses. Another plan which he copied from Du Cerceau (on pages 77, 78) is the Château de Madrit in the Bois de Boulogne. This is, with one little exception, line for line like the original, but, curiously enough, here again he has made notes in pencil indicating how he would have adapted it for English habits. The third instance is part of the plan and elevation of the "theatre" at Saint Germain (on pages 165, 166).
214.—The Château of Anssi-le-Franc copied from Du Cerceau, but with three Turrets added (page 76 of Thorpe's Book).
Thorpe was also a student of Dutch publications. On page 24 he has a design entitled "½ a front or a garden syde for a noble man" (Fig. [215]), of which the central portion is copied from Plate 20 of Jan Vredeman de Vries's "Architectura, ou Bastiment prins de Vitruve," published at Antwerp in 1577. He has departed from the original in one or two small particulars; for instance, he has four-light windows where Vries has two-light; he has mullions to his dormers where Vries has none; he has added the final flourishes and pinnacle on the top of the centre gable which Vries leaves plain, and his treatment of the windows over the middle arch is different from Vries's; but with these exceptions the original is followed faithfully as far as to the end of the arcade, to the left of which the design is Thorpe's own. Thorpe has written on the panel over the entrance "Structum ad impensum Dni Sara Ao Dni 1600." This is the only drawing of his which has been traced to Dutch sources, but nearly all his elevations, of which a few are illustrated in this chapter, show some hankering after Dutch forms in the gables. On page 60 of his book he has a few sketches, chiefly of strap-work gables, which look as though they had been either copied from a Dutch book or inspired by one.
215.—Elevation copied from De Vries. The Central Portion is copied; all to the left of the Arcade is added by Thorpe (page 24).