Fig. 80.—Quadrangle of the Castle of Schalaburg. (Late 16th Century.)
CHAPTER XIII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL.
ENGLAND.—CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
IN England, as in France and Germany, the introduction of the Italian Renaissance was not accomplished without a period of transition. The architecture of this period is known as Elizabethan, though it lasted long after Elizabeth’s reign. Sometimes it is called Tudor; but it is more convenient and not unusual to limit the term Tudor to the latest phase of English Gothic.
Probably the earliest introduction into any English building of a feature derived from the newly-revived classic sources is in the tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey. The grille inclosing this is of good, though late Gothic design; but when the tomb itself came to be set up, for which a contract was made with Torregiano in 1512, it was Italian in its details. The earliest examples of Renaissance features actually built into a structure, so far as we are aware, is in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Layer Marney House in Essex, which it is certain was erected prior to 1525. It is however long—surprisingly long—after this period before we come upon the traces of a general use of Renaissance details. In fact, up to the accession of Elizabeth (1558) they appear to have been little employed. It is however said that early in her reign the treatises on Renaissance architecture of Philibert de l’Orme and Lomazzo were translated from Italian into English, and in 1563 John Shute published a book on Italian architecture.