Fig. 21.—The Italyan grate over the Watter. A newe Italyan wyndowe, the gallerye at Arrundell house. The newe Italyan gate at Arrundell house in the garden there, 1618.
From the Smithson Collection.
The hankering after Italian detail which had affected English designers in an increasing degree for many years finds expression in the Smithson drawings, among which are several “Italyan” windows and doors, an “Italyan” gate (Fig. [21]), and one or two “pergulars.”
The Thorpe and Smithson drawings are closely allied both in architectural style and in methods of draughtsmanship, although the latter collection is obviously later in feeling. There is a vast difference in both respects between them and the drawings prepared by Inigo Jones and John Webb, which will presently be described. There are comparatively few details in the Thorpe and Smithson collections, especially in the former. The designers concerned themselves primarily with the mass of the building rather than with its particular features. The plans in all the collections, both early and late, are drawn with much care and many of them with singular neatness. But the elevations and perspective views are not of equal excellence. The latter are generally drawn by Thorpe as bird’s-eye views. They are in the nature of diagrams. There are, it is true, hardly any perspectives among the architectural drawings of Jones and Webb, but in the one notable instance—the view of a front for Whitehall Palace, at the British Museum—the spectator is supposed to be standing on the ground and not floating in the air (Fig. [19]). In Jones’s designs for the scenery of masques there are many interesting architectural compositions, and these are perforce drawn to satisfy the eye of a spectator on the floor of the theatre. They show great skill in perspective drawing. The difference between the two methods is best indicated by describing the earlier as archaic and the later as modern. Indeed with the advent of Inigo Jones we enter upon a new phase in architectural design; we are leaving the ancient ways and turning into the modern.
III
INIGO JONES
The accession of Charles I. to the throne in 1625 marks a convenient date in the development of architectural design to consider briefly its condition and tendencies. The king and his court still exercised an enormous influence over the life and habits of the people in directions other than political. In mediæval times the king was the centre of public affairs, the pivot upon which the State turned. His own will, even his whims and fancies, counted for much. But for the last three-quarters of a century this influence had been gradually lessening, and the king’s personal power had been curtailed. It was in opposing this tendency, in endeavouring to reassert his personal ascendancy, in re-establishing his prerogatives, that Charles came into conflict with his subjects and ultimately succumbed. But bearing this state of things in mind, it will be more readily understood that the influence of the king in relation to architecture, for instance, would be very considerable; vastly more so than the influence of any individual in the present day. Charles was a man of culture, and without crediting him with an intimate knowledge of architectural design, we may well believe that he would foster the growth of a refined and scholarly version of the style at which English designers had been aiming for many years. That is to say, since the tendency was to adopt Italian ideas he would like to see them adopted thoroughly and with full knowledge. The man to do this for him was there in the person of Inigo Jones, who had already been employed by his father, and who was the only man in England possessing really competent knowledge of Italian detail. Here then was another powerful influence at work tending to divert English design from the old traditional channels.
No doubt had Charles been blessed with leisure to gratify his refined tastes, and to devote himself to the encouragement of the arts, had he been in possession of funds commensurate with his artistic ambitions, the Italianising of English architecture would have been more rapid than it actually was. But his time was occupied with sterner matters, and the huge palace at Whitehall which he is said to have contemplated (and his father before him, according to many writers), but of which the true history will be presently outlined, never went further than to be committed to paper. What he did do, however, was to foster the seed which had been sown by his father, and which bore fruit later in the century.
The love of Charles for the fine arts was shared by many of his court. Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, caused not only the marbles which still bear his name, but many other fine relics of antiquity, to be brought to England. Inigo Jones was frequently employed by the nobility to purchase pictures and other treasures, and to see them suitably displayed in the houses they were to adorn. John Webb made it one of his claims to consideration that he had been commissioned by the “great nobility and eminent gentry” to acquire for them medals, statues, and other works of art.
Meanwhile, in the country generally, and outside the circle influenced by Inigo Jones, the old habits still prevailed, and many houses were built, including such important buildings as Aston Hall, in Warwickshire, already mentioned, in which the old arrangements of plan were retained, and all the old devices for obtaining architectural effect were used—mullioned windows, steep or curved gables, large and lofty chimney-stacks, turrets and bay-windows, with a strong infusion of Italian detail in the form of cornices and pilasters; just such devices indeed as had been employed by John Smithson and his contemporaries.
When this is borne in mind, when it is remembered what Smithson stands for, and that he lived until 1634; that Aston Hall, where Jacobean methods were still paramount, was not completed until 1635; it will be easier to grasp the significance of Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House at Whitehall (Fig. [22]), designed in 1619 and finished in 1622, in which there is no trace of traditional English design, which in fact approaches nearer to Italian models than any building of the seventeenth century. No wonder, considering the goal at which all designers were more or less aiming, that it was quoted as a masterpiece, as the finest flower of modern architecture in England. This position it held all through the century, and indeed still holds in the opinion of many competent judges. At the time it was built it was unique, and for thirty years afterwards travellers might have searched England in vain for anything so thoroughly Italian in treatment, unless they happened to see the Queen’s House at Greenwich, or one or two other buildings by the same architect, such as Sherborne, in Gloucestershire, between Northleach and Burford, which was described in 1634 as a “stately, rich, compacted Building all of Free-stone, flat, and couer’d with Lead, with Strong Battlements about, not much unlike to that goodly, and magnificent Building the Banquetting House at Whitehall.”[6]