Character of Renaissance Architecture/Chapter 13

by Charles Herbert Moore

CHAPTER XIII

ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND

I. Elizabethan Art

When the need for feudal strongholds had passed, and the conditions of life in the open country had become peaceful, a type of domestic architecture arose in England which assumed its most characteristic form in the early Elizabethan Age. The best features of this architecture were of native growth out of the humbler forms of mediæval domestic building, the feudal castle, and the latest phase of Perpendicular Gothic. These features are mainly the rectangular plan, with plain enclosing walls in long blocks broken by projecting bays, and with large mullioned windows, high-pitched roofs, and tall chimney-stacks. The better form of early Elizabethan dwelling on a large scale had the plain, external character of the traditional yeoman's house. It was planned with some regard for convenience, was admirably suited to the climate, and was expressive of that pleasant and dignified home life which is peculiar to England. It is picturesque and cheerful in aspect, but has little other architectural character than such as results from adaptation to needs, straightforward logic of construction, and generally good proportions. It embodies the essentially English idea, as expressed by Lord Bacon, that, "Houses are built to live in, and not to look on."^[1] And while this remark may seem to ignore architecture as such, i.e. the fine art of beautiful building, it expresses a fundamental principle; for to build a house to live in, shaped for the needs of civilized human life, is to secure the primary condition of good architectural effect. And no domestic architecture in Europe has had more genuine charm for the eye than that of England of the Elizabethan time in its integrity, as it may be seen, for instance, in the greater parts of Haddon Hall; St. Johns, Warwick; Hambleton Old Hall, Rutland; North Mymms, Hertfordshire, and others.^[2]

Fig. 127.—Burghley House.

But, unhappily, English life among the upper classes in the sixteenth century was not without sophistication. Many of the great houses were built, not for convenience and propriety, but to gratify a spirit of ostentation and pedantry. False notions of symmetry were allowed to control design at the expense of fitness, and classic details, even more grotesquely disfigured than in Italy and France, and combined with elements of nameless character, began to overlay the walls, and break the sky-lines. The formal regularity and awkward composition of Hardwick, and the ludicrous pseudo-classicism of Burghley House, with its chimneys (Fig. 127) in the form of Doric orders, are among the numerous instances of this. All that offends the eye in the English palatial architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is due to these sophistications, which largely subverted the native good sense and sound craftsmanship. "This was," says Cunningham, "a style of architecture strangely compounded, and neither in the weak wildness of its combinations, nor in the flimsy variety of its materials, was it made to endure. Plaster, terra-cotta, paint, tiles, wood, iron, and brick, even when united with all the skill of the most exquisite art, cannot long resist the rapid wear and tear of such a humid climate as ours. Those unsubstantial structures, with all their dazzling incrustations, are passed or passing from the earth: nothing is lasting but hard massive stone, impenetrable cement, and scientific combinations."^[3] It ought to be said, however, that whatever flimsiness of material entered into the composition of these buildings was confined to ornamental details, and chiefly to the interiors. The main body of the Elizabethan structure was of solid and well-executed masonry. Mr. Bloomfield points out that these houses were built by Englishmen and ornamented by foreigners.^[4] And it is certainly true that in plan and outline they have little foreign character. Most of the plans of the native architect, John Thorpe,^[5] appear, indeed, to show a French influence, but in the larger features of the elevation they are English. It is thus in the ornamental details chiefly, which seem to have been wrought in part by foreigners and in part by native craftsmen striving to conform to foreign ideas, that we find the strangest aberrations of design. A few examples will serve to show the character of this art.

The façade of the north side of the court of Kirby Hall, for instance, is divided into bays by colossal pilasters of hybrid style, which have not even a semblance of structural meaning, since they carry only ressauts of an entablature, the total height of which is less than the diameters of the pilasters. From each of these ressauts rises a slender pedestal, against a low attic wall, surmounted by finials resting upon the cornice (Fig. 128). The central bay, enclosing the entrance to the court, is wider than the others, and the pilasters here are panelled, and have arabesques in relief, while the others are fluted. The façade is in two stories, their division being marked by an entablature; the lower story has an open arcade, while the upper one has a rectangular window in each bay crowned with a pediment.^[6]

The general scheme has no English character, and it so nearly resembles that of the court of Charleval, in France, (cf. p. 212) as to suggest that its designer may have been influenced by the French composition. The effect of the scheme, as a whole, from the point of view of structure, is curious with its great pilasters of unusual projection, which have the function of supporting nothing but miniature pedestals and finials. In a general view the low attic wall has somewhat the effect of an entablature, though it is behind, and not over, the pilasters; but considered as an entablature its frieze is encumbered with the pediments of the windows which rise against it. The windows are, however, an alteration, and the original

Fig. 128.—North side of court, Kirby Hall.

scheme may be better judged of from the opposite, or south, side of the court. Here the attic has distinctly the appearance of an entablature of somewhat suitable proportions for the order; though, here too, it is behind the pilasters, and does not rest upon them. The façade on this side is in one story, with a tall mullioned and transomed window in each bay. With a proper entablature the scheme would not be a bad one. The wall being almost wholly eliminated by the great window voids, the order would have the true function of upholding the roof if a true entablature and the roof were where they ought to be. But not only is the attic wall, substituted for an entablature, in retreat of the pilasters, but the roof rises from behind the attic, so that this last becomes a parapet.

Fig. 129.—Gable of Kirby Hall.

At the centre of this façade of one story is a porch of two stories with a tall attic and a gable of ogee outline flanked by finials. This porch has an order of fluted Ionic pilasters in the ground story, an order of Corinthian columns above, and a small order of Corinthian columns in the attic. The pilasters and columns of the first and second stories respectively, are in pairs on each side of an opening, and the entablature in each of these stories has a ressaut over each pair. The pilasters of the ground story are raised on a panelled podium, while the columns of the upper story, and of the attic, are carried on consoles. The attic has no openings, and the columns of the small order here are equally spaced, with narrow intercolumniations, and an entablature block over each column in place of a continuous entablature. The ground story opening has a plain, round arch, while that of the upper story, which is arched also, is framed with a stilted order, and crowned with a broken pediment of curved outline. The scheme is a variation of Lescot's Louvre pavilions, and thus appears to show further that its designer had either studied in France, or had borrowed ideas from the plates of Du Cerceau's book.

The southwest angle, with its curved bays, in two stories and attic, is more English in character. No neo-classic elements occur here, except the entablature bands which crown the stories. The gables (Fig. 129) of fantastic outline with strap-work scrolls, are, I suppose, of Flemish, or Dutch, origin; but they became common features of the more showy Elizabethan architecture.

Longford Castle,^[7] another design by John Thorpe, is triangular on plan with a round tower at each angle. Though the building has been more or less altered in some of its details, the main features tally with Thorpe's elevation, preserved in the Soane collection, and reproduced by Gotch (vol. 1, p. 20). French influence is marked here in the general disposition of the principal façade, and in some of the more conspicuous details. This façade, in the relation of the central block to the angle towers, bears a striking resemblance to the east front of Chambord. The towers have nearly the same form and proportions, but the central block is longer in Longford than in Chambord. The architectural scheme of this block, though not a reproduction of that of Chambord, has enough similarity to provoke comparison. Both are divided into three stories, and both have open arcades framed with orders. But in Longford the arcades are confined to the centre of the block, and to the first two stories, while in Chambord, above the ground story, they are differently disposed, and occur in all three stories. The long block of Longford has two projecting pavilions which are connected by the arcades, while the front of Chambord is all in one plane; but in a general front view the effect is not greatly different. In the orders of his pavilions Thorpe has employed De l'Orme's pilaster of the Tuileries, and in the attics which he has set at intervals over his main cornice, other features, as the hermæ supporting the pediments of the Tuileries, are reproduced in modified form.^[8]

The caprice of design shown in the Elizabethan neo-classic ornamentation assumes an astonishing variety of forms, of which it may be well to give a few further examples. A window in the entrance front of Lower Walterstone Hall has a lintel in the form of an architrave supported on short sections of pilasters carried on brackets, while over this a pediment is inserted in the wall with an interval between it and the lintel, the whole forming the semblance of an entablature beneath the pediment, with its frieze in the wall plane (Fig. 130). In the porch of Cranborne Manor-House an entablature over an arcade is broken into ressauts resting on corbels in the shape of lions' heads projecting from the arch spandrels (Fig. 131), and over this entablature is a blind attic adorned with strap-work. The angles of the façade in which this porch occurs are furnished with buttresses in three stages with deep offsets, like those of Gothic art. The outer face of each stage is ornamented with a pair of pilasters on tall pedestals, with an entablature in ressauts, and over the topmost pair are two obelisks as finials. The pilasters are each broken in the middle by a larger block of stone after the manner of De l'Orme's columns.
Fig. 130. — Window of Walterstone Hall.

The gatehouse at Tixall^[9] has a plain front of three stories with a projecting bay over the portal, and angle towers. The window openings are all of the broad mullioned Elizabethan type, and the façade as a whole would be admirable if it had nothing more.
Fig. 131. — Cranborne Manor-House. But the Renaissance ideas led the designer to crown each story with an entablature, and to set a pair of classic columns on either side of the central bay, and in each tower angle. To cover these useless columns the entablature has to be broken into deep ressauts, and the three superimposed pairs carry nothing but a pedestal block above the main cornice, the several pedestal blocks being connected by a balustrade. The gatehouse of Stanway^[10] has a portal with a four-centred arch framed with a shallow Doric order, having a pilaster with a free-standing column in front of it on either side. The entablature has a double ressaut over each of these compound members, and a curved pediment over the entablature is likewise broken into ressauts. A rectangular tablet with an escutcheon, surmounted by a smaller pediment, breaks through the middle of the larger pediment, and acroteria are set on its sides, while a keystone in the arch carries a shallow ressaut in the entablature. The front of Westwood Park^[11] is for the most part free from foreign elements, but it has a porch in the form of a Roman triumphal arch with three openings, and a Corinthian order of almost correct ancient proportions.

A remarkable illustration of the architectural taste of this time is afforded by the well-known Gate of Honour at Caius College, Cambridge. A triumphal arch scheme with an Ionic order, a Tudor arch, no openings in the lateral bays, and no attic, is surmounted with a Greek temple front of an engaged Corinthian order raised on tall pedestals connected by an engaged balustrade. This embraces in width only the central bay of the substructure, and solid abutments of concave outline are carried up over the side bays. A plain attic over the pediment of the temple forms the base for a square pyramid intersected by a tall hexagon, surmounted with a hexagonal dome. No voids, except the central opening under the Tudor arch, break the solid mass, but the wall surfaces are ornamented with disks, niches, entablatures, and small pediments in relief; and the pedestals of the temple order are carried on corbels and ressauts in the lower entablature.

Of the many English houses built at the close of the sixteenth century, few are more tasteless and pretentious than Wollaton Hall,^[12] built by Sir Francis Willoughby "at great expense, it was said, for a foolish display of his wealth." An order of coupled pilasters, broken in the middle by salient blocks, adorn each story, while vacant niches in the upper stories break the narrow wall surfaces between the pilasters on either side of the large mullioned windows. The chimney-stacks are, as in Longford Castle, shaped in the semblance of pseudo-Doric columns, and the square angle pavilions have their cornices adorned with false pediments of capricious outline and strapwork ornamentation, flanked by obelisks on tall pedestals. One other feature of this remarkable design is perhaps worthy of notice, namely, the portal of the north front. This portal has a low arch, and is sheltered by a porch in the form of a massive free-standing Doric order, the shafts of which are broken in the middle by a salient drum, and the middle of the entablature is supported by a heavy console which forms, at the same time, a monstrous keystone to the arch (Fig. 132).

Fig. 132.—Portal of Wollaton Hall.

It is unnecessary further to multiply examples. While one great house of the period differs from another in unimportant ways, those in which ornaments are extensively applied are without exception disfigured by them. The Elizabethan architectural ornamentation is at once pretentious and grotesquely ugly. It was only in so far as they held to a straightforward provision for domestic needs, and avoided architectural pretensions, that the English people of the Elizabethan Age produced really good domestic architecture.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century many Flemish and Dutch ornamental workers had come into England, and had brought in the tasteless forms of design that had been current with them. The ungrammatical and inelegant misuse of the orders, and the meaningless barocco scrollwork, with which the Elizabethan houses were overloaded, may be largely due to them. But these modes of design were readily assimilated by the native English workmen, and approved by the aristocratic English taste. The architect, in the more modern sense, did not yet exist. The design and execution of these buildings were in the hands of the master builders. No complete drawings were prepared in advance. Only the general scheme in rough sketches of plans and elevations was furnished, and these were freely modified, and the details developed, as the work proceeded under the direction of the master mason. It was a survival of the mediæval system, and no better system could be devised so long as the workmen were suitably trained to their craft, worked together on traditional lines, and were governed by a common understanding, common aims, and a strong feeling of artistic fellowship. But the Elizabethan workmen were not thus associated and governed. The older traditions of design had been largely lost, and the builders were attempting to use architectural forms which they did not understand. The aberrations that resulted from the efforts of these craftsmen to use the classic orders were ludicrous, as we have abundantly seen. The orders were entirely foreign to the genius and to the requirements of the English people, and were altogether out of place in English house building. Their departure from their own proper traditions and architectural habits at length weakened the building craftsmen, so that they finally lost their occupation with the rise of the modern professional architect, who first appeared in England in the person of Inigo Jones, whose work we may consider in the next chapter.

1. Essay on Building.
2. These houses are figured by Mr. Gotch in his Architecture of the Renaissance in England, plates 7, 12, 20, and 66.
3. The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, London, 1831, vol. 4, p. 85.
4. A History of Renaissance Architecture in England, by Reginald Bloomfield, M.A., London, 1897, vol. I, p. 3.
5. Almost nothing is known of John Thorpe beyond what may be gathered from his numerous drawings preserved in the Soane Museum. He was working during the latter part of the sixteenth century, and appears to have been the original designer of some of the larger houses of that time, the plans of which are contained in the Soane collection.
6. These windows are said by Gotch, op. cit., vol. I, p. 34, to have been inserted by Inigo Jones. An attic over the central bay is said to be also by him.
7. Gotch, plate 33.
8. Du Cerceau's book was published in 1576, and Longford's was begun in 1580. It is not unlikely, therefore, that Thorpe had studied the designs of Chambord and the Tuileries in the prints of this book.
9. Gotch, plate 92.
10. Gotch, plate 82.
11. Ibid., Plate 86.
12. Ibid., Plate 143.