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,
