207. Room in a House in Whitehall Gardens, London, showing Flat Treatment of Ceiling (late 18th cent.).
Concurrently with the massive treatment just described, the eighteenth century saw a reversion to the old idea of treating the ceiling as one large flat surface and covering it with ornament in low relief. A specimen of this type is seen in the house in Whitehall Gardens (Fig. 207). The relief is very low, and the ornament is of the discursive rococo type, wanting in an easily intelligible motif. In equally low relief were the ceilings designed by the brothers Adam, but their forms were intelligible, and the modelling was full of delicacy and refinement. A characteristic example of their work is that from a house in Mansfield Street, London (Fig. 208). In a great number of houses, especially the ordinary unimportant house, the ceilings throughout the eighteenth century were quite plain. The rooms depended for their interest upon the panelling, the chimney-piece, and the well-moulded cornice, which not infrequently was carried along the ceiling beams, introduced in order to lessen the depth of the floor joists by shortening their bearings to 7 or 8 ft.
An entirely different kind of ceiling, which had a vogue of some fifty years, must not be overlooked. It belongs perhaps less to the domain of architecture than to that of painting, namely the painted ceilings associated with the names of Verrio and Laguerre. Verrio was brought over to England by Charles II., and he died in 1707. Laguerre, whom he employed, and who carried on the style after Verrio’s death, lived till 1721. With him the interest ceased, although Sir James Thornhill went on painting ceilings for another dozen years. It is only in great houses or public buildings that this phase of decoration is to be found. The ceiling was regarded as a vast canvas, and certainly no previous painter had enjoyed so wide a field for the display of his conceptions. As a rule both Verrio and Laguerre succeeded in avoiding the weighting of their ceilings with too ponderous matter. Their favourite subjects were gods and goddesses seated upon clouds, and some very clever drawing and painting they produced. Their work cannot well be compared with that of masters working under the ordinary conditions of a movable canvas, controllable light, and a vertical position for manual execution. Were their masterpieces more easily studied than by looking upwards at a ceiling, they would probably be held in higher esteem. Some idea of the effect of this method of decoration may be gathered from Fig. 209, which gives part of a ceiling in Boughton House, attributed to Verrio. The dark cornice on the left is actually the soffit of the modelled plasterwork; everything else, including the shallow balustrade, is painted on the flat ceiling.
208. A Drawing-room in Mansfield Street, London.
R. & J. Adam, Architect.
209. Painted Ceiling from Boughton House, Northamptonshire (attributed to Verrio, cir. 1700).
Staircases seem to have been an exception to that general tendency to increase the scale of detail which is apparent in work of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One of the characteristics of Jacobean staircases is the massiveness of their component parts, the newels, the balusters, the handrail, the string; even the steps themselves were sometimes made of solid blocks of wood. The newels were carried up well above the handrail, and fashioned into finials, sometimes heavily moulded, sometimes made into a pedestal for a figure—a heraldic animal, a boy playing an instrument, a warrior or what not. The “string” which supported the ends of the steps was always stout and solid. Much of this early treatment was carried on till the end of the seventeenth century, as may be seen by referring to the illustration from a house in Love Lane (Fig. 210) traditionally associated with Wren. Here all the parts are as massive as of old, although the turned portions of the balusters are inclined to be thin. The most significant change is to be found in the newels, which are not carried up into a finial, but are furnished with a cap by mitring the mouldings of the handrail round them. Once this fashion was established, it held the field until newels were dispensed with in the later part of the eighteenth century, and the handrail wound in one continuous length from the bottom to the top of the staircase.