Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/467

 May 31, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 445 the old crumbling cathedral disappeared for a worthy although thoroughly different successor—viz., the great masterpicce of Sir Christopher Wren. But for the views of Hollar, we modern Goths would never have been able to appreciate the correct state of old S. Paul’s; from those views, with all their stiff- ness, crude perspective and faulty chiar’oscwro, we may still eliminate subtle beauties and niceties of form and design, which may be of great assistance to us in our modern compositions. To go back to Inigo Jones, whom we said must have been a rare “good hater” of everything Gothic. Of his frontispiece to S. Paul’s, a leading foreign critic has written as follows:—‘tIf the mixture of two kinds of buildings be discordant, above all, that of the Gothic taste united with the regular syste- matic ordinances of the Grecian, and put into oppo- sition with the systematic irregularity of the former, could not fail to wound the spirit and offend the vision.” It was not until after the death of James, and during the reign of his successor, Charles L., that Inigo Jones was enabled to realise even that small executed portion of his great Whitehall scheme, the designs for which had been made, as we have seen, under the patronage of the former monarch. He was continued in his office, and en- couraged both by the new King and his Queen. We will not here attempt a description of the great scheme for the Whitehall Palace, the designs for which have become so well known by the published drawings. Palladio and his own early Venetian studies were doubtless fresh in the memory of our architect when he produced the designs and details for so great a masterpiece, also the Palace Pitti, at Florence, by Ammanati, the Chateau de Caprarola, near Rome, by Vignola, and the picturesque Villa Pia, at Rome, by Pirro Ligorio, all new and beautiful at the time of Inigo Jones’s visits to Italy. We do not mention these architects and their picturesque designs by way of disparagement, for imitate though he might, Inigo Jones was always original, and here lies, we conceive, the secret of his power, and of the power of all great architects, both ancient and modern. He imbibed every line of his copy, but loved it far too much to become servile; he copied to revere and admire, not to appro- priate by intention, and here lies all the diffe- rence between smali and great natures. When we see cornices, or windows, or capitals taken wholesale from books, and placed in modern buildings, here and elsewhere, we smile at the poverty of the compliment thus unwittingly paid to the original designer, but our architect copied in quite another fashion: other men’s thoughts, on passing through the medium of his refined and vigorous in- tellect, became, by the subtle chemistry of taste, transmuted into forms both new and beautiful. As well as many other buildings of repute, Inigo Jones conceived the original idea of Greenwich Hospital, which was carried out by Webb, his pupil. It was designed first as a palace, either for King Charles or the Queen Mother. William III. caused considerable additions to be made to it, in the shape of a replica or pendant, and appropriated the whole to its present uses. We will not stop to criticise this or any other of Inigo’s productions too narrowly. We may only say of Greenwich Hospital in passing, that although boldand vigorous in conception, it ap- pears rather crude and hard in detail, and, after the choice fragment of the Banqueting Hall, it is not required to perpetuate the fame of the architect. Kent made a collection of the designs of Inigo Jones in 1727 and 1744, as Ware and Leoni have since done. From these collections, however, it is not easy to discover which were executed works and which merely ideal conceptions, but they all evince talents of a very highorder of mind, and when we consider thatit is exactly 220 years since Jones died, we are surprised to see how very suitable to the wants and acceptable to the taste of the present day his productions remain. If we compare the well-known front of the Travellers’ Club-house, by the late Sir Charles Barry, with the front of the Banqueting Hall, these facts will be better understood, for if we take away the portico and bay window from the former building, and the lower tier of columns from the latter, the two fronts become almost identical. Inigo Jones lived through part of the eyil days of the English Reyo- lution, by which he suffered severely as a Royalist and for his religious faith. Taking another look at that charming front in Whitehall, appealing to our sense of beauty and proportion as it ever does, are we not reminded once again that true genius lives not’for an age, but for all time? In addition to the buildings we have named, Inigo Jones designed old Surgeons’ Hall, the plan of Lincolns’ Inn-fields, Coleshill, in Berkshire, Cobham Hall, Kent, Castle Ashley, Stoke Park, Shaftesbury House, and many other buildings in and out of the metropolis. The Civil Wars embittered his last days, as he could not brook the treatment of the Round- heads, who regarded art as idolatry. It has been said that he was often seen, when past seventy years of age, in the neighbourhood of Whitehall and S. Paul’s, gazing sorrowfully at his unfinished works. He had now nothing left to live for; Cromwell’s Protectorate was no protectorate of art, so in 1652 the old man went quietly to his rest. The following verse, applied originally to Jacques Germain Soufflot, the architect of the Church of §. Genevieve, Paris, will apply to Inigo Jones :— Pour maitre dans son art, il n’eut que la nature: Tl aima qu’au talent on joignit la droiture ; Plus @’un rival jaloux, qui fut son ennemi, S'il eit connu sou cour ett été son ami. Upon the death of Inigo Jones, Wren became the leading English architect, not, however, imme- diately. Inigo Jones died in 1652, at which time Wren would be about twenty years of age. Whiat- ever doubt may exist respecting the education and early years of Inigo Jones, it is quite certain that Wren was tenderly nurtured and carefully edu- cated. His father was an English clergyman of Danish origin, and rector of East Knoyle, Wilt- shire, where Christopher Wren was born. From all accounts he was a most intelligent, if not precocious child. In his fifteenth year Sir Charles Scarborough, an eminent lecturer on anatomy, en- gaged Wren as his demonstrating assistant. When twenty-two years of age, Evelyn writes of him in his Diary, July 11th, 1654, “I visited that miracle of a youth, Mr. Christopher Wren,” and elsewhere he calls him “that rare and early prodigy of uni- versal science.” When he was twenty-six years of age he solved Pascal’s Challenge Problem to the Scientific men of England; and, it is said, pro- posed onein return that was never answered. He afterwards assisted Willis in his dissections for a treatise on the brain, for which he made the draw- ings. In his anniversary address to the Royal Society, in 1664, the comprehensive and profound character of his attainments was clearly manifested and his future greatness foreshadowed. But with all his talents and prestige and ability he was con- spicuously modest and retiring. Steele, in his sketch of Wren, under the name of Nestor,” in the Tatler, says, ‘his personal modesty overthrew all his public actions.” ‘The modest man built the city, and the modest man’s skill was unknown.” We have now brought Wren’s biographical sketch down to the year 1664. Being then a man of high scientific repute, he was placed upon a royal com- mission with Evelyn to consider the *‘ upholding and repairing” of S. Paul’s, that had fallen into a dilapidated condition during the civil wars. Charles IL., on his restoration, was anxious that the metro- politan cathedral should be restored to its original grandeur, and Wren proceeded in his capacity of Royal Commissioner to draw up a careful and ex- haustive report or memoir on the subject, illustrated with a number of explanatory drawings and designs, which were laid before the King. ‘This memoir is much too long to give here, but it will amply repay perusal, and is especially interesting to us at this period, when the question of churches for the people is so frequently discussed, both by architects and by the press. Wren evidently places the Protestant worship in the paramount position, architectural adornments being drawn in to assist its dignity, but never to fetter its freedom. A large auditorium, with as few impediments as possible, seems to have been Wren’s beaw ideal of a Christian Protestant place of worship. We may rejoice, however, that he had not the opportunity of erecting a great Classic Rotunda, as he suggested, in the centre of the same old Gothie cathedral to which, as we have seen, Jones had already been allowed to append his noble but incongruous Classical portice and frontispiece; nevertheless, out of this original idea of a Rotunda eventually arose that glorious dome which now dominates so proudly over our great metropolis, and which is seen by the Londoner from so many points of vantage lifting its head on high; as a royal landmark from Battersea-rise, from Hampstead-hill, or from the slopes of Greenwich, that soaring periphery of splendour arrests the vision and enchants the mind. By universal consent §$. Paul's Cathedral has assumed the second place in the architecture of Europe, S. Peter’s at Rome holding {the foremost, as no doubt, from its gigantic proportions and splendid decorations, it is entitled to do; but had Wren been allowed to carry out his first plan for re- building S. Paul’s, I doubt much whether it would have had arival in the world. We are, however, anticipating. The king, wishing to restore old S. Paul’s, as we have said, and around which clustered so many historical associations, Wren set to work to devise the best method of meeting the king’s views. To this end, in 1665, he visited France, in order to become better acquainted with the art of architecture and the various approved manners of building. He resided some months in Paris, where he cultivated the acquaintance of the best artists of the day and the most celebrated men of letters; doubtless by these means he sought in some measure to make up for the absence of early artistic training. It may be interesting here to sketch some of the Parisian buildings in progress at the time of Wren’s visit under the architects most in vogue, whose lives and works are so fully described by Quatremére de Quincey, among others Jules Mansart, who dis- tinguished himself as the designer of the dome of the Church of the Invalides. He would at the time of Wren’s visits be a very young man ; hesprang from arace distinguished in the arts, and Versailles and the dome of the Invalides proved that he was not unworthy of his illustrious ancestry. Francois Blondel, the architect of the Arc de Triomphe, de la Porte 8. Denis, Paris, would be forty-seven years of age at the time of Wren’s visit; he had not studied architecture or any of the fine arts in his youth; having been brought up a soldier in the army of Louis le Grand, he profited by what he saw of archi- tecture and engineering in his various campaigns, and became fired with the ambition to excel in the practice of those arts. In the very year that Wren visited Paris, Blondel’s talents become known to the King, who soon after appointed him to design all the public buildings in Paris. Another architect ther much in vogue was Le Mercier, who died five years afterwards, and whose name mainly rests for its reputation upon the Church de la Sorbonne, which he produced under the patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu. The foundation stone of this church was laid in 1629, so we may fairly suppose that Wren saw its graceful dome and cupola completed at the period of his visit in 1665. Claude Perrault was also in his glory then: the celebrated translator of Vitruvius, and architect of the colonnade of the Louvre, upon which no fewer than one thousand hands were employed, according to Wren, at the time of his visit, and where he spent a portion of each day, examining the materials and methods of construction, ' If we compare this design of Perrault’s with the facade of S. Paul’s as executed, a striking resem- blance will be observed. The architect, Le Veau, and the painter Le Brun, formed, under the minister Colbert, a council on public buildings about the time of Wren’s visit. It was also in the same year that the celebrated Italian architect, Bernini, who de- signed the colonnade of S. Peter's, was induced, by the entreaties of Louis XIV., to visit Paris and give his advice respecting the rebuilding of the Louvre. The King sent Bernini his portrait, enriched with diamonds, together with a pressing letter of invitation; and he also wrote to Pope Innocent X., to permit Bernini to leave Rome for a season, his great works and his fame having made him the inalienable property of Rome. The life of Bernini would alone fill a volume. We have only referred to him and the other great men whom Wren would most probably meet during his visit to Paris, to show under what strangely advantageous circum- stances that visit was made. As well as the build- ings we have named, upon the types of which S. Paul’s may have been modelled, Wren would see, recently completed by De Brosse, the Palais de Luxembourg, with its central dome and coupled pilasters; these and other public buildings then in course of erection, or recently completed, would doubtless have no small influence in moulding Wren’s innate taste, which, as we have seen, had not re- ceived any systematic training in the arts; but whatever he saw in Paris, we have the satisfaction to know he was enabled soon afterwards to rival and eclipse in his great masterpiece S. Paul’s. We are not aware that Wren prolonged his journey to Rome, but while he was in Paris he made an exten- sive collection of views of celebrated buildings, and we may suppose that the frontispiece of S. Peter's, at Rome, by Charles Maderne, who died in 1629, would not beunknown to him. We have mentioned this because, in Wren’s first design for 8. Paul’s, there seems to be & general similarity of treatment to this design by Maderne, especially in the single tier of pilasters and the tall parapet above the main cornice, and the rows of statues to break the level sky-line, with the roof kept out of sight. Of course it must remain a question of taste whether this treat— ment in Wren’s first design, or that of the one finally adopted for S. Paul’s, was the most suitable; cer— tainly, as regards the dome of the final design, itis as. much superior to the original one as the executed ground plan is inferior to Sir Christopher Wren’s original scheme for the same,