WREN MEDAL AT WADHAM COLLEGE.
Cast and chased about 1783 by G. D. Gaale.
Yet, in spite of all his technical ignorance, he succeeded because of the essential greatness of his mind. In succeeding, he carried architecture forward, not by a normal development, but by leaps and bounds, so far indeed, that there was found no one to follow him in that line of development. Hawksmoor was an exceedingly capable architect who had benefited, so far as his capacity would allow, by thirty-two years of close association with the master; but, as Sir Reginald Blomfield has said, he was always trying to interpret Vanbrugh in terms of Wren. While he was under the influence of Wren he designed like Wren, when he came under the influence of Vanbrugh he designed like Vanbrugh.
Of Wren’s own outlook on his art we fortunately possess illuminating notes, not only in his printed Tracts, but in a MS. bound up with the heirloom Parentalia. It was printed by Miss Phillimore, and forms the text of Professor Lethaby’s enchanting essay on “The Architecture of Adventure,”[E] from which I have borrowed the heading of this chapter—an acknowledgment, trivial though it be, of the debt I owe to its author.
Wren’s paper is no more than a fragment, but it is a noble fragment and begins thus:
“Whatever a man’s sentiments are upon mature deliberation, it will still be necessary for him in a conspicuous Work to preserve his Undertaking from general censure, and so for him to accommodate his Designs to the gust of the Age he lives in, tho’ it appears to him less rational. I have found no little difficulty to bring Persons, of otherwise a good genius, to think anything in Architecture would be better than what they had heard commended by others, and what they had view’d themselves. Many good Gothick forms of Cathedrals were to be seen in our Country, and many had been seen abroad, which they liked the better for being not much different from ours in England: this humour with many is not yet eradicated, and, therefore, I judge it not improper to endeavour to reform the Generality to a truer taste in Architecture by giving a larger Idea of the whole Art, beginning with the reasons and progress of it, from the most remote Antiquity; and that in short touching chiefly on some things which have not been remarked by others. The Project of Building is as natural to Mankind as to Birds; and was practised before the Flood.”
And then Wren goes off into musings on the construction of the Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Pyramids, and the Sepulchre of Porsenna as described by Pliny, finishing with this luminous phrase:
“I have been the longer in this Description, because the Fabrick was in the Age of Pythagoras and his School, when the World began to be fond of Geometry and Arithmetick.”
This was the core of Wren’s claim as an architect, the reliance upon scientific rather than traditional elements in design. He develops the idea in his first Tract printed in Parentalia:
“Beauty is a Harmony of Objects, begetting Pleasure by the Eye. There are two Causes of Beauty—natural and customary. Natural is from Geometry, consisting in Uniformity (that is equality) and Proportion. Customary Beauty is begotten by the Use of our Senses to those Objects which are usually pleasing to us for other Causes, as Familiarity or particular Inclination breeds a Love to Things not in themselves lovely. Here lies the great Occasion of Errors, here is tried the Architects Judgment, but always the true Test is natural or geometrical Beauty. Geometrical Figures are naturally more beautiful than other irregular; in this all consent as to a Law of Nature. Of geometrical Figures, the Square and the Circle are most beautiful; next the Parallelogram and the Oval. Straight Lines are more beautiful than Curve.... There are only two beautiful Positions of strait Lines, perpendicular and horizontal; this is from Nature and consequently Necessity, no other than upright being firm.”