Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/466

 444 THE BUILDING NEWS. May 3], 1872. 2 ——————————— to them. The return eastern wall of the north aisle remains. Two altars stood at this end of the nave. Of the chancel two bays on the south with Pointed arches, remain. The three nave arches still existing exhibit mould- ings of the billet, chevron, and battlement ornament, under an indented string-course, over which once rose the clerestory. A number of rooms bearing various names, and two ‘“Sickmen’s chambers,” adjoined the Cloister, which reminds us of the correspond- ing one at Gloucester. The ‘clausura lapidea” was Litlington’s work. On the north side of the Chapel, on the ground which is now being rapidly covered with the new Receiver’s House, there are some fireplaces remaining, and, detached, the jamb of a window of the time of Henry VL., with an oblique orifice of earlier date adjoining, which I venture to assume are relics of the Prior's Chapel. The inyentory of furniture is complete, and many points of arrangement in the minster itself are cleared up ; for instance, the Chapel of S. Faith is fixed to the Revestry, and S. Blaize’s altar is mentioned as distinct from it. Islip’s Chapel was really a double chapel dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, and as at S. Alban’s a matin altar stood under the «Lantern Place :” an altar of ‘‘ Our Lady,” and a ‘‘ Leaning Cross”? were common also to both of these grand churches. At Waltham some documents have enabled me to prove that the Lady Chapel was at the east end of the church, the nave a parish church, and its lateral adjunct the Chapel of Lady Roos, built over a charnel. The plan of the conyentual buildings I have also been enabled to deduce from an inventory. Mackenziz E. C. Watcorr. 58, Belgrave-road, S.W. —_—_@——_<—_ THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ITALIAN STYLE UNDER INIGO AND SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN.* HE first of the two names to which I desire to - direct your attention is that of Inigo Jones, to whom we owe the introduction of Italian archi- tecture into England. Hewasbornin1)72. It has been said by one of his biographers that he derived his Christian name, Inigo, from some Spanish mer- chants settled in London at the time of his birth, and who had dealings with his father, who carried on the trade of a tailor within the sound of Bow bells. Some have said that Inigo was apprenticed to a joiner, while others affirm that he was carefully educated for professional pursuits. All are agreed, however, that in early life he manifested a decided talent for the fine arts, and produced some very good landscape paintings, which are still preserved. To these high talents were united a character for great honesty and general intelligence, which gained him the confidence and patronage of several leading men of the time, among whom are mentioned the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke. By the latter he was sent to Italy to study landscape painting about the close of the sixteenth century, where he profited greatly by the study of the master-pieces of that country, the cradle as it then was of the revival of the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. He proceeded to Venice, where the works of Palladio inspired him with a love for the study of architec- ture. Nor can we wonder at this, when we picture to ourselves the city of Venice, as it then appeared, rising from the blue waters of the Adriatic, glowing with marble palaces, churches, and other stately buildings. When Inigo visited Venice, Palladio’s name was paramount in architecture through Italy, if not throughout Europe; though he himself had been laid quietly in the grave some twenty years before, his works lived, and were becoming each day better known and more admired. Architects from all lands made pilgrimages to the shores of the Brenta and the Adriatic to inspect the master- pieces of his genius, a genius which appears the more astounding when we recollect that he had for his immediate predecessors such men as Brunelleschi, Leon Battista, Alberta, Bramante, Balthazar Peruzzi, San Micheli and San Gallo, all of whom had stamped an individuality upon the architecture of their county; but Palladio preferred to go back for his inspiration to the criginal fountains of antiquity, ANGLO- JONES by H. H. VALE, Esq, F.ILB.A. rather than to follow the fashion of the day and pander to the growing thirst for novelty and elaboration that culminated half a century later, under the fanciful but meretricious pencil of Francois Borromini. The wealth and taste of the Venetian nobles and mer- chant princes found an exponent in the palaces erected by Palladio with so profuse a hand in and around the Fair City of the Waters. Under his hand a bare and uninteresting island became a shrine of art and a dream of the imagina- tion for ever. Those who visit Venice now, inits de- cay and desolation, can form but a meagre notion of what it was at the time of our architect's visit, flashing back the sunshine from its gilded spires, and, by its colour, and the beauty of its architecture, presenting a thousand pictures, which such a mind as that of Inigo Jones could so well appreciate and enjoy. Of Palladio it has been said, and said with justice, that ‘“‘ None of his predecessors, in imitating the antique, had so happily steered the middle course between exactness and pedantry, and given us severity without rudeness, liberty without license, and so well succeeded in popularising the ancient architecture of Greece and Rome,” and drawing it in to serve the wants and desires of his own age and country. This does not apply to Italy alone, for it was from the works of Palladio that both Jones and Wren, both Gibbs and Chambers, drew so largely in their English buildings during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Not alone in Italy and in England, but soon throughout Europe, the taste of Palladio became predominant. We can well under- stand how much our architect profited by his visit to Venice, then glowing, as we have said, with the gorgeous and beautiful works recently completed by that master-hand, a master who had also enriched the literature of his profession by a treatise on archi- tecture which proved his erudition to be equal to his artistic powers and antiquarian researches. This splendid book went through three editions, and was translated into all the languages of civilisation. Inigo Jones would doubtless also visit Rome, and see the grand frontispiece of S. Peter’s, proceeding under Charles Maderne, and the many noble works then in progress by Dominique Fontana, much em- ployed in the Imperial City, and the architect of the Palace of S. John Lateran, but in none of these works at Rome, or Venice, can we now trace any- thing which has been directly copied by Inigo Jones in his own productions. During his stay in Italy, Inigo Jones attracted the attention of King Christian 1V. of Den- mark, by his great abilities, who thereupon became his patron, and invited him to his coantry, and on the occasion of Christian paying a visit to his brother-in-law, James I. of England, in 1606, Inigo Jones accompanied him, where he was induced to remain, having received the appointment of architect to the Queen, and subsequently to Henry, Prince of Wales. He was engaged in London until the death of Prince Henry, in 1612, when he decided again to visit Venice. At this period a new architectural star of that Republic was undoubtedly rising in the person of Vincenzo Scamozzi, who was employed to complete the un- finished works about the ducal palace, commenced by Sansovino, and also some of the master-pieces of Palladio. Scamozzi had a brilliant intellect, which became developed at an early age. At seventeen he pro- duced beautiful designs for the Counts Godi. He constructed a splendid country mansion for another Venetian noble when quite a young man. The Church of Our Saviour, just finished under another architect, was found to be insufficiently lighted. Scamozzi was called in to remedy the defect, which he accomplished in a most skilful manner by the introduction of a lantern ‘and three cupolas upon the roof, without at all interfering with the majestic proportions of the interior. Scamozzi, like Palladio, was a thorough archwologist. He went to Rome and made most careful studies of the Baths of Dio- cletian, and of the Flavian Amphitheatre, for the restoration of which he prepared a complete set of drawings; and he stated that in the two years he was occupied in measuring the works of antiquity among the ruins of the Imperial City, he learnt more than in ten years devoted to other studies. Scamozzi designed the proscenium of the Olympic Theatre at Vicenza, left unfinished by Palladio, but which his son and successor, Sylla, was unable to complete for lack of special knowledge, and Scamozzi owes his ability to perfurm this difficult task entirely to his studies of the great Roman remains above referred to. The fault of Scamozzi seems to have been that of undertaking work in different localities, which he was unable to direct in person, hence his designs, beautiful and graceful in themselves, were S. Mark’s thereseems to have been achange and falling off in the details as the work proceeded towards com- pletion, mainly for want of due vigilance and super- vision. He was an indefatigable writer on the history and science of architecture, versed in the ancient as well as the modern languages, and well fitted for the task of translating Vitruvius, which he successfully accomplished. Inigo Jones, in studying the buildings and books of such men as those we have referred to, and probably enjoying the society of many other artists of note, who then made Venice their capital, became thoroughly prepared for the great under- takings with which he was occupied on being called home about the year 1618 to fill the appointment of Surveyor-General, which had just become vacant. You will doubtless remember the duties and emolu- ments of the Surveyor to his Majesty’s Works at the period now under notice—viz., to keep the royal residences in repair, at a daily wage of 8s. 4d., with £46 a year for house rent, and a suit of livery once a year. I suppose a kind of beef-eaters’ gold and lace historical costume, which possibly he was not compelled to wear, excepting on state occasions, and at the splendid pageants of which he was the designer. James I., who had given him his appointment, loved masks and shows, but being poor, wanted them run up cheaply, and the fertility of Inigo’s invention made him a useful and ready man for that kind of work. But the King also encouraged Inigo to plan out great and sumptuous works of archi- tecture that, unfortunately for the architect’s fame, the King’s purse could not compass, and the nation’s would not; however, as architects, we cannot blame the enthusiasm which encouraged Jones in the pro- duction of his splendid designs for a majestic palace at Whitehall, for these drawings remain to show us more than any of his executed works the grandeur and boldness of his genius. We should have men- tioned that Jones, when appointed Surveyor-General, displayed both tact and magnanimity, for the Privy Council haying discovered that the former Surveyor- General had left them encumbered with a heavy burden of debt, sought the advice of Inigo as to the best means of getting it liquidated. He, with a public spirit that does honour to his memory, imme- diately offered his own services gratis, and went further than that, for he persuaded his coadjutators to remit their emoluments also for a season, by which means the debt was soon entirely wiped out. Re- verting again to the magnificent designs for the palace at Whitehall, we are not aware how these were received by the nation, but certainly, judging from the fact of so small a fragment having been carried into execution, we may fairly conclude that the idea was too great either for the taste or purse of the age, or both. In some recent investigations respecting the autograph drawings of renowned architects, certain facts have been educed proving the scarcity of such remains in the great museums and among the archives of learning abroad. We may presume that when the designers saw their parchment visions moulded into the realities of marble, stone or brick, they cared little for the first draughts in miniature, that to us moderns, now that many of their buildings have been swept away or perished, would possess more than ordinary interest and value. Then of those gorgeous pageants upon the production of which the genius of architects, painters, and seulp- tors was so freely lavished, we possess scarcely one scintilla of graphic evidence, for the magnificent decorations of the old imperial cities were swept away when the excitements which gave rise to them were over, and the talents of the designer became only an item, though certainly a beautiful one, in the memory of the actual spectators. What a choice repertoire for coronation days, royal marriages, and public thanksgivings would an album of Raphael's, Michael Angelo’s, or Bernini's sketches prove, but, alas! they are now beyond reach; sack and pillage have trampled them in the dust, or fire reduced them to ashes long ago. Inigo Jones does not appear to have been equally gifted as an archeologist as he was as an architect and painter, for the treatise which he pre- pared in 1620 upon the remains of Stonehenge, at the King’s instigation, has not been endorsed either by contemporaneous or subsequent authors. Jones seems to have been a man of his day entirely, and no lovér of old Gothic forms, and no archeologist. It is our private opinion that he thoroughly detested everything belonging to the English Pointed styles, otherwise he would never have placed that certainly sumptuous, but most incongruous frontispiece of his in the place of the splendid west end of old S. Paul’s, which cathedral was, from all accounts, a marvellous piece of middle-age work, and in its design and the vastness of its dimensions, in our opinion, far too good to become food for powder, as it did shortly afterwards, during the surveyorship of often mutilated and caricatured in execution under | Sir Christopher Wren. It was the old story: ideas of unskilful hands. Even in the buildings opposite | expediency arose, abetted by the voice of fashion, and
 * Paper read before the Liverpool Architectural Society