“THE ARCHITECT OF ADVENTURE”
In trying to estimate with any precision what is Wren’s position
in the history of British Architecture, the immediate and obvious
comparison is with Inigo Jones. I refer to Wren in my Preface as our
architect of greatest achievement, because I hesitate to use the
simpler words--our greatest architect. In my own mind the latter is a
true description, but the enthusiasts for Inigo Jones would dispute
it. None, however, can cavil at the statement that Wren achieved more
than any other English architect, whatever nice distinctions may be
drawn as to the relative greatness of his art and that of Inigo Jones.
The two men are not strictly comparable, and represent in their work
and outlook two different currents in the history of architecture.
Inigo Jones was essentially academic and, in his relationship to the
traditional methods of building which he found, the forerunner of the
modern professional architect. He had trained himself by much foreign
travel and by close study of the facts of building before he embarked
on his career. Wren, on the other hand, was essentially an amateur, if
the word be understood in its most favourable sense and not in the
least contemptuously. Inigo Jones was not an inventor. He took the
Palladio tradition as his model and adhered to it with faithfulness.
Wren does not seem to have had any particular hero amongst the great
Italian architects. He kept throughout his career a free mind, open
to the suggestions of his own inventiveness, ready to accept existing
conditions, rather than academic rules, as the guides to his treatment
of a problem, and eager to try new structural ideas.
It must plainly be said that Wren suffered frequent lapses of taste,
and it does no service to his great memory to gloss over these faults.
As a result of them it happened that practically no work of Wren,
however noble in its conception, however magnificent its solution of
difficult problems, can be freed from criticism in detail. He did not
produce the complete unity against which no criticism can lie. Of Inigo
Jones at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden (as it was before it was rebuilt),
and again at the Banqueting Hall, of Robert Adam in the hall at Syon,
and of Sir Charles Barry at the Reform Club, it can be said that they
made no mistakes. Each achievement is complete and perfect in its kind.
But it is impossible to say that even of St. Paul’s Cathedral: there
are elements in its design which are weak and confused. Even in the
steeple of St. Mary-le-Bow, which is very nearly perfect, the diameter
of the cylinder enclosed by the ring of columns is hardly right.
This sort of criticism is even more true of the majority of the City
churches. The cause for this lack of perfection is not difficult to
find. Wren was an amateur, not only by the cast of his mind, but by
the circumstances of his entry into architecture: he was imperfectly
trained for his work.
[Illustration: S^T MARY-LE-BOW]
If he had followed the example of Inigo Jones and studied the Italian
Renaissance on the spot, not only in respect of design, but also of the
facts of building, he would have avoided many pitfalls. Great as is the
part which the knowledge of mathematics and geometry plays in his art,
nothing did and nothing could take the place of the practical knowledge
of the art of building which Jones possessed and Wren lacked, at least
until his later years.
It is possible, for example, that the present trouble at St. Paul’s
Cathedral would have been avoided if Wren, whose whole admiration
was for the Roman manner of building, had gone to Rome to see what,
in fact, Roman building was. He would then have learnt that Roman
builders did not carry immense weights on piers which consisted, as at
St. Paul’s, of a core of rubble cased in by finely jointed ashlar. He
would have found that it was advisable to build them either of ashlar
throughout, or, if he had decided on a rubble core with an ashlar
casing, to interrupt the rubble core at reasonable intervals by courses
of hard tiles or bricks. These would have prevented the perpendicular
settlement of the rubble that has now disturbed the relation between
the rubble and the ashlar casing. The professional Inigo Jones would
not have made that mistake. The amateur Wren did. And there is little
excuse for this fault. In his Report on St. Paul’s, written before the
Fire, Wren is very contemptuous of his Gothic predecessor: “The work
was both ill design’d and ill built from the Beginning: ill design’d,
because the Architect gave not Butment enough to counterpoise and
resist the weight of the Roof from spreading the Walls; for the Eye
alone will discover to any man that those Pillars, as vast as they are,
even eleven Foot diameter, are bent outwards at least six inches from
their first position. This bending of the Pillars was facilitated by
their _ill Building, for they are only cased without, and that with
small stones, not one greater than a Man’s Burden; but within it is
nothing but a Core of small Rubbish-stone, and much mortar_, which
easily crushes and yields to the weight.” When the time came for Wren
to build the piers that carry his dome, he fell into exactly the same
blunder.
He was similarly defeated sometimes by problems of design for lack
of knowledge of the history of his art, and by too great a reliance
on his own invention. In trying at St. Paul’s to marry the idea of a
great central dome to the Gothic cruciform plan with a determination
to preserve the long vista down the aisles, he involved himself in
difficulties in the support of the dome which he could not safely
overcome without clumsy elements of design, to be discussed later.
[Illustration: PLATE XVI
WREN MEDAL AT WADHAM COLLEGE.
Cast and chased about 1783 by G. D. Gaale.]
Yet, in spite of all his technical ignorance, he succeeded because
of the essential greatness of his mind. In succeeding, he carried
architecture forward, not by a normal development, but by leaps and
bounds, so far indeed, that there was found no one to follow him in
that line of development. Hawksmoor was an exceedingly capable
architect who had benefited, so far as his capacity would allow, by
thirty-two years of close association with the master; but, as Sir
Reginald Blomfield has said, he was always trying to interpret Vanbrugh
in terms of Wren. While he was under the influence of Wren he designed
like Wren, when he came under the influence of Vanbrugh he designed
like Vanbrugh.
Of Wren’s own outlook on his art we fortunately possess illuminating
notes, not only in his printed Tracts, but in a MS. bound up with the
heirloom _Parentalia_. It was printed by Miss Phillimore, and forms
the text of Professor Lethaby’s enchanting essay on “The Architecture
of Adventure,”[E] from which I have borrowed the heading of this
chapter--an acknowledgment, trivial though it be, of the debt I owe to
its author.
Wren’s paper is no more than a fragment, but it is a noble fragment and
begins thus:
“Whatever a man’s sentiments are upon mature deliberation, it will
still be necessary for him in a conspicuous Work to preserve his
Undertaking from general censure, and so for him to accommodate his
Designs to the gust of the Age he lives in, tho’ it appears to him
less rational. I have found no little difficulty to bring Persons, of
otherwise a good genius, to think anything in Architecture would be
better than what they had heard commended by others, and what they
had view’d themselves. Many good Gothick forms of Cathedrals were to
be seen in our Country, and many had been seen abroad, which they
liked the better for being not much different from ours in England:
this humour with many is not yet eradicated, and, therefore, I judge
it not improper to endeavour to reform the Generality to a truer
taste in Architecture by giving a larger Idea of the whole Art,
beginning with the reasons and progress of it, from the most remote
Antiquity; and that in short touching chiefly on some things which
have not been remarked by others. The Project of Building is as
natural to Mankind as to Birds; and was practised before the Flood.”
And then Wren goes off into musings on the construction of the Ark,
the Tower of Babel, the Pyramids, and the Sepulchre of Porsenna as
described by Pliny, finishing with this luminous phrase:
“I have been the longer in this Description, because the Fabrick was
in the Age of Pythagoras and his School, _when the World began to be
fond of Geometry and Arithmetick_.”
This was the core of Wren’s claim as an architect, the reliance upon
scientific rather than traditional elements in design. He develops the
idea in his first Tract printed in _Parentalia_:
“Beauty is a Harmony of Objects, begetting Pleasure by the Eye.
There are two Causes of Beauty--natural and customary. Natural is
from Geometry, consisting in Uniformity (that is equality) and
Proportion. Customary Beauty is begotten by the Use of our Senses
to those Objects which are usually pleasing to us for other Causes,
as Familiarity or particular Inclination breeds a Love to Things
not in themselves lovely. Here lies the great Occasion of Errors,
here is tried the Architects Judgment, but always the true Test is
natural or geometrical Beauty. Geometrical Figures are naturally more
beautiful than other irregular; in this all consent as to a Law of
Nature. Of geometrical Figures, the Square and the Circle are most
beautiful; next the Parallelogram and the Oval. Straight Lines are
more beautiful than Curve.... There are only two beautiful Positions
of strait Lines, perpendicular and horizontal; this is from Nature
and consequently Necessity, no other than upright being firm.”
Wren’s acute judgment noted the great part played by such factors
as historical association, one of the “other causes,” in the public
appreciation of architecture.
Earlier in the Tract he makes obeisance to the three principles which
had been laid down by earlier writers, but with a characteristic rider:
“Beauty, Firmness and Convenience are the Principles: the two first
depend upon geometrical Reasons of Opticks and Staticks; the third
only makes the Variety.”
Scholarly though Wren was in his art, he took nothing for granted, but
examined the common-places with a desire to establish reasons for them
or reject them:
“Modern authors who have treated of Architecture seem generally
to have little more in view, but to set down the Proportions of
Columns, Architraves and Cornices in the several Orders, as they
are distinguished into Dorick, Ionick, Corinthian, and Composite,
and in these Proportions finding them in the ancient Fabricks of
the Greeks and Romans (though more arbitrarily used than they care
to acknowledge) they have reduced them into Rules, too strict and
pedantick, and so as not to be transgressed, without the Crime of
Barbarity, though in their own Nature they are but the Modes and
Fashions of those ages wherein they were used.”
There is a very modern ring about the following moralising:
“Although Architecture contains many excellent Parts, besides the
ranging of Pillars, yet Curiosity may lead us to consider whence
this Affectation arose originally, so as to judge nothing beautiful
but what was adorned with Columns, even where there was no real use
of them.... It will be to the purpose, therefore, to examine whence
proceeded this Affectation of a Mode which hath continued now at
least 3,000 years, and the rather, because it may lead us to the
Grounds of Architecture and by what Steps this Humour of Colonades
came into Practice in all Ages.”
But for all his contempt of the pedantry of rules of proportion, which
the greatest architects of antiquity did not observe unless it suited
them, he saw in the Orders themselves something eternal:
“Architecture aims at Eternity; and therefore _the only thing
uncapable of Modes and Fashions in its Principals_, the Orders. The
Orders are not only Roman and Greek, but Phœnician, Hebrew, and
Assyrian, being founded upon the Experience of all Ages, promoted
by the vast Treasures of all the great Monarchs, and skill of the
greatest Artists and Geometricians, every one emulating each other.”
Wren rises to his greatest height in the opening of his first Tract,
and shows that if his life had fallen out otherwise, he might have left
a reputation as a writer:
“Architecture has its political Use; Public Buildings being the
Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and
Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion
is the Original of all great Actions in a Commonwealth. The Emulation
of the Cities of Greece was the true Cause of their Greatness. The
obstinate Valour of the Jews, occasioned by the Love of their Temple,
was a Cement that held together that People, for many Ages, through
infinite Changes.”
I have quoted at what may seem to be inordinate length, but Wren is
justified alike by the content of his thought and the aptness of his
phrase, and I am concerned rather to reveal the man than my idea of him.
In all Wren’s writings he shows an acute perception of the fact that
architecture has had an immensely long evolution. He had, of course,
no suspicion as to how far back its origins were to be sought, but
clearly he was approaching the idea that forms, once constructive,
pass into decoration and become part of the language of architecture.
This is the final and, as I believe, the effective reply to the
puritan theorist, who cries aloud for the discarding of traditional
features in art. Sir Joshua Reynolds warned his students that the
business of a painter is to paint a fine picture, and that he is
not to be cheated of his materials by specious arguments. Wren was
clear-sighted enough to see that the Orders have a definite beauty
value: his only trouble was that he was not fully equipped to bend
them wholly to his will. The western front of St. Paul’s may be taken
as an instance. As a Whole it is a magnificent composition, and a
source of inspiration to everyone with any feeling for architecture,
but can it be pretended that the segmental vault of the upper portico
does not belie the entablature and pediment in front of it? Wren could
cut away architrave and frieze inside for the benefit of his great
arches, and refer his critics to the Temple of Peace (now the Basilica
of Maxentius) at Rome for his authority, but he lacked the insight or
the courage to deal with the external problem in the same fashion. The
fact is that the great architect of any age is both leader and led, and
cannot wholly escape the limitations of his time. But there are valid
compensations. His work could not be justly representative of the age,
one of the significant values of architecture, if he could entirely
dissociate himself from his age. When it is remembered that Sir
William Chambers can actually say in his _Civil Architecture_ (1759)
that every time he passes St. Paul’s he regrets that the pilasters
have no entasis--probably few know it--we can form an idea of the
limitations of thought that Wren would have to encounter. Vitruvius,[F]
with all his imperfections, was still enthroned, and few, if any, had
yet divined the real relation of that retired military engineer to
the arts of Greece and Rome. Wren had the true spirit of Bacon, and,
with further travel, might have seen further through the idols of his
market-place.
He seems to have realised the trouble in which he had involved himself
in the arches of the octagon that supports his mighty dome. Every
architectural student since his day has sat and speculated as to what
the solution might have or should have been. Wren left a sufficiently
feeble suggestion of curtains and seated apostles, occupying the
tribunes (three in each presumably), as a means of veiling the defect.
But the difficulty goes deeper than that: the octagon is peculiarly
troublesome to handle in terms of the Orders, as a number of failures
exist to show.
Wren’s work was always improving. The last, and westernmost, bay of
St. Paul’s inside shows more breadth and grandeur, but the carving
of the spandrels is so strange that one wonders if it can really be
original. This brings us to a characteristic of Wren which probably
accounts for some of his lapses of taste. It seems likely that he was
not hard-hearted enough with the people who worked under him, that he
was too generous, too ready to accept things on his assistants’ and
craftsmen’s assurance that they were the best that could be produced.
He may thus have been led into an occasional acquiescence, both in
design and construction, in things which he must have well known were
not really right. Confronted with every sort of difficulty, and none
too well backed, he must have been desperately anxious to avoid delays.
His very ingenuity, moreover, would lead him to make the most of what
was available. Unfortunately in works of _eternity_--architecture aims
at eternity--such compromises meet with a stern Nemesis.
In the two centuries that have elapsed since his death Wren has been
admired and followed from very different points of view. It has been
justly said that he has been in fashion and out of fashion and is now
above fashion. Any doubt as to the reality and massive quality of his
genius can easily be dissipated by a consideration of what imitators
have done. No domed church on the lines of St. Paul’s has achieved
equal beauty and grandeur, nor have any of the innumerable steeples,
based on his inventions, been of the same rank. In domestic buildings,
his special character remains pre-eminent and informs the best work of
to-day--a certain graciousness that in others degenerated often into
heaviness. There is a vast gap between Wren at Hampton Court and Talman
at Chatsworth.
Thus it is that in this Bicentenary Year there is the same feeling
that caused Sir John Vanbrugh to refuse the succession to his office
“out of tenderness for Sir Christopher Wren,” and that led the
_Spectator_ to publish a noble tribute repudiating the ingratitude of
his dismissal. The lovers of architecture everywhere will feel that
in honouring Wren they have honoured the Art to which a man of such
amazing gifts and nobility of character was content to devote the
flower of his life.
Sir Christopher Wren was the very fulfilment of Wotton’s
prophecy--“Architecture can want no commendation, where there are Noble
Men or Noble mindes.”
APPENDIX I
A NOTE IN AMPLIFICATION OF THE REFERENCE IN CHAPTER IV. TO PASCAL’S
PROBLEM
Mathematicians who wished to answer Pascal’s challenge were given
until October 1, 1658, for a solution, and an umpire, M. de Cavarci,
was nominated, and the prizes were 40 doubloons or pistoles and for
the second, 20. In a letter of October 10 Pascal says he has received
both attempts at solutions of the problems set and also a number of
discussions of matters connected with the cycloid which did not pretend
to be solutions of his problem:
“Mais entre tous les écrits qu’on a recues de cette sorte, il n’y
a rien de plus beau que ce qui a été envoyé par M. Wren; car outre
la belle manière qu’il donne de mesurer le plan de la roulette
(=cycloid), il a donné la comparaison de la ligne courbe même et ses
parties, avec la ligne droit: sa proposition est que la ligne de la
roulette est quadruple de son axe, dont il a envoyé l’énonciation sans
démonstration. Et comme il est le premier qui l’a produite, c’est sans
doute a lui que l’honneur de la première invention en appartient.”
Summing up his history of the cycloid, he concluded that the first to
remark that curve in nature was P. Mersenne, that M. de Roberval first
worked out some of its properties, “que le premier qui en a mesuré la
ligne courbe a été M. Wren.”
The story is then taken up by a letter of Cavarci (dated December
10, 1658), the umpire, to Pascal (now masquerading under a new
pseudonym--A. Dettonville = an anagram of Louis de Montalte), in
which he recites the nature of the problems set--_i.e._, to find the
dimensions and centres of gravity of the solids generated by the
revolution of the cycloid. He goes on to say that there were sent
solutions of the more easy problems--“savoir: le centre de gravité de
la ligne courbe et la dimension des solides, lequelle M. Wren nous
envoya dans ses lettres du 12 Octobre”--but concludes that of the
challenge problem no solutions had been sent.
Pascal replied to this letter with a series of letters setting out a
general method for dealing with such problems and the actual solutions
of the problems he had proposed.
The real quarrel as to whether the problems had been solved or not was
with Wallis and not with Wren. Wallis appears to have sent a solution
and followed it up by various letters offering corrections. However,
he was adjudged wrong in principle (see Récit de l’Examen pour les
prix sur la Roulette). The prizes were not awarded. Wallis afterwards
(1659) published a “Tractatus de Cycloide,” in which are included four
propositions on the cycloid which Wren had given to Wallis.
Turning now to Wren’s counter problem. It is not directly connected
with the cycloid, but with one of the properties of the ellipse, and
it had previously been suggested by Kepler. It appears to have been
confused with Pascal’s cycloid problems because Pascal showed in his
general method that various cycloid problems could be referred to the
ellipse. Pascal has a chapter, “L’égalité entre les lignes courbes de
toutes sortes de Roulettes et les lignes elliptiques,” in the course of
which he remarks, “Cette admirable égalité de la courbe de la roulette
simple à une droite [=straight line] que M. Wren a trouvée, n’était,
pour aussi dire, q’une égalité par accident, qui vient de ce qu’en ce
cas l’ellipse se trouvé réduite à une droite.” Wren’s challenge seems
to have remained unnoticed.
APPENDIX II
AN ATTEMPT AT A WREN CHRONOLOGY
_The dates of Wren’s work have been set down so wildly that I prefer
the omission of some buildings to the repetition of blunders. Even so I
have no doubt repeated many old mistakes and made some fresh ones. An
accurate chronology of Wren would be of great comfort to the student.
I have checked only forty-seven of Miss Milman’s dates, but found
forty-five of them wrong, by from one to twenty-five years._
_The City churches are given under the year during which the first
payment to the builders was made: the dates in brackets mark the
last of such payments, which may well have been some years after the
buildings were completed. Wren seems to have settled final accounts in
batches._
L. W.
1632. Birth of Sir Christopher Wren, October 20.
1642. Entered Westminster School.
1647. Invention of weather-clock.
1649. Entered Wadham College.
1651. B.A.
1653. M.A. and Fellow of All Souls.
1654. Meets John Evelyn at Oxford.
1657. Appointed Gresham Professor of Astronomy.
1658. Attempt to solve Pascal’s problem.
1660. Royal Society founded in Wren’s room at Gresham College.
1661. Appointed Savilian Professor of Astronomy.
D.C.L., Oxford and Cambridge.
Appointed Assistant to Sir John Denham, Surveyor-General.
1662. Offer of Tangier surveyorship refused.
Appointed to survey old St. Paul’s.
1663. Doorway, Ely Cathedral.
Pembroke Chapel, Cambridge, begun.
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
1665. Trinity College, Oxford: new court.
Visit to Paris (July).
1666. Return from Paris (March).
Report on old St. Paul’s (May), and First Design for dome over
crossing.
The Great Fire (September).
Prepared new Plan of London.
Appointed Surveyor-General and Principal Architect for repairing
St. Paul’s, the City churches, and other public buildings.
1668. Emmanuel Chapel, Cambridge (1677).
Repairs to Salisbury Cathedral Spire.
1669. First Marriage: to Faith Coghill, December 7.
Appointed Surveyor-General of the King’s Works.
1670. St. Olave’s, Jewry (1679).
St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East (1671).
St. Michael’s Wood Street (1687).
St. Mary Aldermanbury (1686).
St. Mary-at-Hill (1676).
St. Christopher’s (1675).
St. Vedast Fosters (1673).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
St. Mary Woolnoth (1677): the pre-Hawksmoor church.
St. Mildred Poultry (1679).
St. Benet Fink (1681).
St. Mary-le-Bow (1680).
St. Lawrence Jewry (1686).
St. Bride’s (1684).
St. Dionis Backchurch (1686).
St. Michael’s Cornhill (1677).
St. Edmund the King (1679).
St. Sepulchre’s (1677).
“Rejected Design” for St. Paul’s.
Temple Bar.
1671. St. Nicholas Cole Abbey (1681).
St. George Botolph (1679).
St. Mary-le-Bow Steeple (1683).
St. Magnus (1687).
The Monument.
Wren meets Grinling Gibbons.
1672. St. Stephen’s Walbrook (1687).
Wren knighted (or possibly 1674).
1673. St. Paul’s: “Model Design” approved by King (afterwards
rejected).
Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
1674. St. Bartholomew Exchange (1686).
St. Stephen’s Coleman Street (1681);
St. James Garlickhithe (1687).
Honywood Library, Lincoln Cathedral.
1675. St. Paul’s: “Warrant Design” approved by King and first stone
laid.
Birth of son Christopher. Death of first wife.
Greenwich Observatory.
1676. St. Anne and St. Agnes (1687).
St. Michael’s Queenhithe (1687).
St. Michael Bassishaw (1682).
1677. Christ Church (1691).
St. Peter’s Cornhill (1687).
St. Benet Paul’s Wharf (1685).
St. Martin’s Ludgate (1687).
All Hallows the Great (1687).
St. Swithin’s (1687).
All Hallows Bread Street (1687).
Second marriage: to Jane Fitzwilliam, February 24.
Birth of daughter Jane, November.
1678. St. Antholin’s (1691).
Design of Charles I.’s tomb.
1679. Kilmainham Hospital, Dublin.
Birth of son William.
1680. St. Austin’s (1687).
Death of second wife, October.
St. Clement Danes.
1681. St. Mildred Bread Street (1687).
St. Benet’s Gracechurch (1687).
St. Mary Abchurch (1687).
St. Matthew’s Friday Street (1687).
Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford.
Sworn in as President of the Royal Society, January 12.
1682. St. Alban’s Wood Street (1687).
Chelsea Hospital begun.
Latin School, Christ’s Hospital.
1683. St. James Piccadilly.
St. Mary Magdalen Old Fish Street (1687).
St. Clement’s Eastcheap (1687).
Palace at Winchester begun but not completed.
1684. St. Margaret Pattens (1689).
St. Michael’s Crooked Lane (1694).
Appointed Controller of Works, Windsor Castle.
Middle Temple Gateway.
Repairs to Chichester Cathedral Spire.
1685. St. Andrew’s Wardrobe (1695).
1686. St. Margaret’s Lothbury (1693).
St. Mary Somerset (1694).
All Hallows Lombard Street (1694).
St. Michael’s Royal (1694).
1688. Town Hall, Windsor.
1689. M.P. for Windsor.
1690. Hampton Court begun.
1690. Kensington Palace.
1691. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1693. Library, Queen’s College, Oxford.
1694. Chapel, Trinity College, Oxford.
1695. Greenwich Hospital begun.
Morden College, Blackheath.
1697. St. Paul’s: Choir opened for service, December 2.
1698. Marlborough House, London.
North Transept front, Westminster Abbey.
1700. M.P. for Weymouth.
1703. Death of daughter Jane.
1704. Orangery, Kensington Palace.
1710. St. Paul’s: top-stone of Lantern laid.
1711. St. Paul’s: nominal completion.
1717. St. Paul’s: Wren’s complaint to Commissioners against the
Balustrade.
1718. Dismissed from Surveyorship.
1723. Death of Wren, February 25.
APPENDIX III
A NOTE ON SOME PORTRAITS OF WREN
The following brief particulars of several portraits of Wren, some of
which are reproduced in the preceding pages, may lead to more precise
information being disinterred:
(_a_) _Wren as a Man of Forty_ (Plate II.).--When I saw this, it
was in the possession of the late Mrs. Catherine Pigott. It is now,
I believe, in the possession of the Bishop of Southwell, to whom
it passed on Mrs. Pigott’s death. It is unsigned, and there is no
record as to its authorship. It shows Wren as a young man, and I
had thought it represented him while in the twenties. Mr. Richard
W. Goulding, F.S.A., dates the cravat about 1675, which would make
Wren forty-three. The modelling of the face is not unlike that of the
Pearce bust, which tends to confirm the age as about forty.
(_b_) _The Wadham College Portrait_ (Plate XIII.).--This is in
itself a poor piece of painting, and has a vague history. It is an
1825 copy by John Smith, of Oxford, deriving ultimately, it is said,
from a Kneller portrait at Lambeth Palace, which, I am informed,
has disappeared. It seems rather to be based on the Sheldonian
portrait, which was attributed by Dallaway to Thornhill, “painted in
conjunction with Verrio and Kneller.” I give the unlikely story of
its authorship as it is told, adding only that as the plan in Wren’s
hand shows the St. Paul’s of the Warrant Design or later, it must be
after 1675, and therefore Wren is depicted as a man of forty-three or
more, probably a good deal more, for he is markedly older than in the
last mentioned.
(_c_) _Bust by Edward Pearce at the Ashmolean_ (Plate V.).--This
beautiful work has been dated 1673, by a letter written by
Christopher, the architect’s son, and quoted by Mr. Lionel Cust. It
may well be Wren as a man of forty-one, and the younger Christopher’s
date can be accepted, but he was very casual in his chronologies.
(_d_) _The Royal Society Portrait._--The legend on the frame says
this picture is by Michael Wright, but Mr. Collins Baker attributes
it, on the ground of style, to Riley and Closterman in collaboration.
He claims that it is the basis of the Kirkall engraving (see next
note). If so, Kirkall turned the face the other way. The view of St.
Paul’s shows a transitional design between the Warrant Design with
its nightmare steeple and the dome as built. The clock towers are
almost exactly like the intermediate design preserved at All Souls. I
suggest it shows a man of seventy.
(_e_) _The Kirkall Engraving after Closterman_ (Plate XV.).--This
rare portrait was given to me by Mrs. Pigott shortly before her
death, and apart from its having been, as she told me, an heirloom
in the Wren family, it has an interest as showing Elisha Kirkall’s
“chiaroscuro” style of engraving interpreting Closterman’s portrait.
(_f_) _The St. Paul’s Deanery Portrait_ (Plate XIV.).--This is a
copy of the best known portrait of all, the Kneller at the National
Portrait Gallery, and an inferior copy, for it reveals a man of far
less distinction, both in character and feature, than the National
portrait. The latter is attributed to the year 1711, and is therefore
of Wren when he was nearly eighty.
(_g_) _The Welbeck Portrait_ (Plate IV.).--The picture is a small
whole length on panel. The architect wears a red dressing-gown
with white lining, white stockings, and red shoes; his right hand
is placed on his hip, and in his left hand he holds a drawing of
the elevation of the façade of St. Paul’s. On the left side of the
picture there is a lurid sky indicative of the burning of the City;
in the right-hand top corner is a bust of Charles II., flanked
by an amorino weighing the insignia of royalty (crown, sceptre,
etc.), against four shields of arms (England, France, Scotland, and
Ireland), and round the waist of the amorino is a scroll lettered
“Justum est.”
This picture was acquired by the fifth Duke of Portland in 1861.
It was then attributed to H. Gascar, who is stated to have been in
England _circa_ 1674-80, and who might consequently have painted Sir
Christopher soon after he made his design for the new Cathedral. The
West Front is shown in the picture with the single Order, an early
stage of the design. The architect looks very young for a man of
about forty-two years of age, but in the case of painted portraits it
is often difficult to reconcile the actual age of a sitter with his
_apparent_ age.
(_h_) _The Queen’s College Bust._--This posthumous portrait has been
attributed to Rysbrack; it is certainly worthy of him. Wren is shown
as a very old man.
(_k_) _The Medal at Wadham College_ (Plate XVI.).--As it is commonly
said that this medal was struck to celebrate the completion of St.
Paul’s, it is a little unkind to have to set down the fact that it
was cast and chased (not struck) by G. D. Gaale, a German, about the
year 1783, when he exhibited it in London, sixty years after Wren’s
death in 1723.
(_l_) _Art Union of London Medal._--A medal was issued in 1846:
obverse, with bust of Wren, signed H. Wilson, Sc.; reverse, St.
Paul’s, signed B. Wyon.
I hope the above notes may lead people better informed than myself to
bring out facts which will enable a full and correct catalogue of Wren
portraits to be prepared. Their publication in the Bicentenary issue of
_Architecture_ brought Mr. Richard W. Goulding to my aid in correcting
some mistakes I then made, and he has added the facts about the Welbeck
portrait.
A list of engravings after the Kneller portrait is given in Mr. F.
O’Donoghue’s “Catalogue of Engraved English Portraits in the British
Museum.”
INDEX
Abbey, Westminster, Wren and, 137, 138, 139
Aims of architecture, Wren on the, 153
All Hallows, Lombard Street, Church of, 81
Armoury and Mint at the Tower of London, 107
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 110
Association between architecture and military engineering, 13
Astronomy, Wren as a Professor of, 19, 36
Bacon, influence on Wren of, 30, 31
Barometer:
Torricelli’s work on the, 36
Wren’s work on the, 36
Belton House, 105
Benson, William, Surveyor-General, 74
Bernini:
Lay-out in front of St. Peter’s, Rome, 53, 108;
meeting with Wren, 48, 49;
referred to, 108
Bird, Robert, coppersmith, 120
Birth of Sir Christopher Wren, 1
Building materials, Wren’s views on, 93, 94
Busby, Dr., of Westminster School, 4, 10, 11
Cambridge:
Pembroke College Chapel, 109
Trinity College Library, 46, 47, 109, 110, 125
Campbell, Colin, work at Greenwich Hospital by, 103
Carlyle, Thomas, on the City churches, 97, 98;
on Chelsea Hospital, 97
Cathedrals:
Lincoln, Honywood Chapel at, 110
St. Paul’s, London. See St. Paul’s Cathedral
Salisbury, 137
Chapels:
Pembroke College, Cambridge, 46, 109
Trinity College, Oxford, 110
Wadham College, Oxford, 16, 17
Charles I., design for the tomb of, 107, 108;
pedestal for statue of, Charing Cross, 104
Chelsea Hospital, 97, 98, 99, 108, 125
Childhood of Wren, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Christ Church:
Newgate Street, 90
Oxford, College, 111
Christ’s Hospital, London, 107, 130
Chronology, an attempt at a Wren, 160
Church:
St. Andrew, Holborn, 87
St. Clement Danes, Strand, 78, 125
St. James, Piccadilly, 78, 90, 94, 95
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, 21, 22
Temple Church, 21
Churches, City:
Christ Church, Newgate Street, 90
St. Alban, Wood Street, =80=, 81
St. Andrew-in-the-Wardrobe, 90
St. Anne and St. Agnes, 81
St. Antholin, Watling Street, 90
St. Augustine, Watling Street, =55=, 86, 119, 126
St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, 86, 119
St. Benet Fink, 90
St. Bride, Fleet Street, =87=, 88, 90, =92=
St. Clement, Eastcheap, 81
St. Dunstan-in-the-East, 78, 81, =82=, 136
St. Lawrence Jewry, 86, 89
St. Magnus, London Bridge, 81, =85=
St. Margaret, Lothbury, 86
St. Margaret’s Pattens, Rood Lane, 84, 85, =86=
St. Martin, Ludgate, =56=, 85
St. Mary Abchurch, 90
St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 81
St. Mary Aldermary, 76, 136
St. Mary-at-Hill, 81
St. Mary-le-Bow Cheapside, 87, 88, 145, =146=
St. Mary Somerset, 78
St. Mary Woolnoth (by Hawksmoor), 79
St. Michael, Cornhill, 136
St. Michael Paternoster Royal, 81
St. Mildred, Bread Street, 86, 90, =91=, 120
St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, 80
St. Sepulchre, 78
St. Stephen, Coleman Street, 81
St. Stephen, Walbrook, 81, 88, 89, 119
St. Swithin, Cannon Street, 84, 90
St. Vedast, Foster Lane, =79=, 80
City Churches, referred to, 97, 98, 119, 120, 124, 126, 136, 145, 146,
160
Coghill, Faith, Wren’s first wife, 20, 21
College:
All Souls, Oxford, 11, 12
Christ Church, Oxford, 111
Emmanuel, Cambridge, 110
Morden, Blackheath, 108, 109
Pembroke, Cambridge, 46, 109
of Physicians, Warwick Lane, 107
Queen’s, Oxford, 110
Trinity, Cambridge, 46, 47, 109, 110, 125
Wadham, Oxford, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16
Cox, Mary, mother of Wren, 2
Custom House, London, 107
De l’Orme, Philibert, referred to, 50
Denham, Sir John, Surveyor-General, 43, 101
“Dome of London, The,” 59
Draughtsman, Wren as a, 129, 130
East Knoyle Rectory, Wilts, Wren’s birthplace, 1
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, chapel and cloister at, 110
Etching on glass, Wren’s experiments in, 40
Evelyn, John, 15, 24, 25, 43, 53, 60, 62, 98, 102, 112, 113, 114, 115,
137
Family life of Sir Christopher Wren, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
26, 27
Fitzwilliam, Jane, Wren’s second wife, 21, 22
Fitzwilliam of Lifford, Lord, father of Wren’s second wife, 21
France, Wren’s travels in, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51
Gibbons, Grinling, 71, 104, 106, 107, 108, 114, 115
Gothic Architecture, Wren and, 138, 139
Greenwich Hospital, 83, 101, 102, 103, 125
Groombridge Place, Kent, 106
Hampton Court Palace, 99, 100, 101, 121, 156
Hawksmoor, Nicholas, 79, 103, 104, 110, 126, 149
Holder, Dr. William, a tutor and brother-in-law of Wren, 3, 20
Honywood Library and Cloister, Lincoln Cathedral, 110
Hooke, Robert, 4, 8
Hospital:
Chelsea, 97, 98, 99, 108, 125
Christ’s, London, 107, 130
Greenwich, 101, 102, 103, 125
Kilmainham, Dublin, 108
Houses by, or attributed to, Wren:
Belton, 105;
Groombridge Place, Kent, 106;
Hampton Court Palace, 99, 100, 101, 121, 156;
Kensington Palace, 105;
Marlborough
House, London, 106;
Pallant House, Chichester, 106;
Winchester Palace, 107;
Wren’s House, Chichester, 106
Inventions of Wren, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Jennings, Richard, master-carpenter, 71
Jones, Inigo, referred to, 13, 43, 51, 52, 53, 70, 101, 106, 144, 145,
146, 147
Kempster, Christopher, 119
Kensington Palace, 105
Kent, William, and Kensington Palace, 105
Kilmainham, Dublin, Royal Hospital at, 108
Knighting of Wren, 121
Lansdowne Chronology, MS. by Christopher Wren junior, 9
Letter of Wren to his son, 22, 23, 24
Library:
Honywood, Lincoln Cathedral, 110
Trinity College, Cambridge, 109, 110, 125
Love-letter from Wren to Faith Coghill, 20, 21
Marlborough House, London, 106
Mathematics, Wren’s study of, 4, 31
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Wren’s conjectural restoration of the,
132, 133, 134
Middleton, Constance, wife of Christopher Wren junior, 25
Mint, the, in the Tower of London, 107
Monument, the, London, 34, 104
Morden College, Blackheath, 108, 109
Morris, William, and the City churches, 97, 98
Museum, Ashmolean, Oxford, 110
“News from the Dead,” pamphlet by Wren, referred to, 16
Oughtred, Mr., Wren’s letter to, 7
Oxford:
Ashmolean Museum, 110
Christ Church College, 111
Incident at, 16
Queen’s College, 110
Sheldonian Theatre, 45, 46
Trinity College Chapel at, 110
Wren’s education at, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Palace:
Hampton Court, 99, 100, 101, 121, 156
Kensington, 105
Winchester, 107
Palladio’s influence on Wren, 52
Pallant House, Chichester, 106
Parentage and pedigree of Wren, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
_Parentalia_, the, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 13, 15, 22, 24, 26, 34, 41, 65, 109,
124, 125, 132, 149
Paris, Wren’s journey to, referred to, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51
Parliament, Wren as a member of, 120, 121
Pascal’s problem and Wren’s solution of it, 34, 35, 36, 158, 159
Pedestal of the Charles I. statue, Charing Cross, 104
Pembroke College Chapel, Cambridge, 46, 109
Pepys, Samuel, 14, 114, 130
Physicians, College of, Warwick Lane, 107
Pigott, Mrs. Corbett, 26
Plan for rebuilding London after the Great Fire, Wren’s, 53, 54, 55,
56, 57, 58
Portraits of Sir Christopher Wren, some, 164, 165, 166
Pulpits and pews, Wren’s views on, 95
Queen’s College, Oxford, 110
Ripley, Thomas, and Greenwich Hospital, 103
Royal Society, Wren and the, 12, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42
Ruskin, John, and Renaissance Architecture, 137
Ryland’s pedigree of the Wren family, 18
St. Alban, Wood Street, 81
St. Andrew, Holborn, 78
St. Andrew-in-the-Wardrobe, 90
St. Anne and St. Agnes, 81
St. Antholin, Watling Street, 90
St. Augustine, Watling Street, =55=, 86, 119, 126
St. Benet, Paul’s Wharf, 86, 119
St. Benet Fink, 90
St. Bride, Fleet Street, 87, =87=, 88, 90, =92=
St. Clement Danes, Strand, 78, 125
St. Clement, Eastcheap, 81
St. Dunstan-in-the-East, 78, 81, =82=, 136
St. James, Piccadilly, 78, 90, 94, 95
St. Lawrence Jewry, 86, 89
St. Magnus, London Bridge, 81, =85=
St. Margaret, Lothbury, 86
St. Margaret Pattens, Rood Lane, 84, 85, =86=
St. Martin, Ludgate, =56=, 85
St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, 21, 22
St. Mary Abchurch, 90
St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 81
St. Mary Aldermary, 78, 136
St. Mary-at-Hill, 81
St. Mary-le-Bow Cheapside, 87, 88, 145
St. Mary Somerset, 78
St. Mary Woolnoth, 79
St. Michael, Cornhill, 136
St. Michael Paternoster Royal, 81
St. Mildred, Bread Street, 86, 90, =91=, 120
St. Nicholas Cole Abbey, 80
St. Paul’s: Old, Wren’s plans for the restoration of, =56=, 59, 60,
61;
Cathedral, London, balustrade on the upper cornice of, 74;
cost of, 73;
dome of, =55=, =56=, 59, 71, 103;
first design for, 63;
mean treatment of Wren over, 73, 74;
opening of, 73;
“rejected” or “model” second design for, 63, =64=, 64, 65, =66=, 66;
South Staircase of, referred to, 34;
third or “warrant” design for, 67, =68=;
Wren’s achievement in, 76, 77;
reference to, 83, 116, 121, 122, 126, 143, 145, 147, 148, 154, 155,
156
St. Peter’s, Rome, 53
St. Sepulchre, 78
St. Stephen, Coleman Street, 81
St. Stephen, Walbrook, 81, 88, 89, 119
St. Swithin, Cannon Street, 84, 90
St. Vedast, Foster Lane, =79=, 80
Salisbury Cathedral, 137
Scarborough, Sir Charles, a tutor of Wren, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10
Shaw, Norman, and Hampton Court Palace, 100
Shepheard, Rev. William, a tutor of Wren, 3
Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, 45, 46
Soane Museum, Wren relics at, 121
Sir John, 99
Sons of Sir Christopher Wren, 25
Spires, City church, by Wren, 84
Strong, Edward, master-mason, 22, 23, 24, 69, 71, 73, 119, 120
Talman, William, architect, 101, 156
Temple Bar, 104, 105
Temple Church, 21
Thermometer designed by Wren, 8
Thornhill, Sir James, paintings in St. Paul’s by, 74
Tijou, Jean, metal-worker, 71, 101, 120, 121
Tomb, Wren’s design for a, 108
Tom Tower, the, Oxford, 111
Torricelli, his work on the barometer, 36
Tower of London, 107
Town-planning, Wren and, 53
Trinity College, Cambridge, Library of, 46, 47, 109, 110, 125
Trinity College, Oxford, Chapel at, 110
University degrees, Wren’s, 11, 12
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 103, 106, 110, 149, 157
Ward, Dr. Seth, 9
Webb, John, 43, 101, 106
Wilkins, John, Warden of Wadham, 9, 12, 13
Winchester Palace, 107
Wotton, Sir Henry, 139, 140, 141, 142, 157
Wren, Sir Christopher:
_Family and relations_:
Father, 1;
mother, 2;
sisters, 18;
grandfather, 1;
great-grandfather, 1;
sons, 21, 22, 23;
daughter, 13;
brother-in-law, 2;
uncle, 2, 18;
cousin, 18
_Education and Studies_:
Studies at home, 3;
at Westminster School, 4;
under Sir Charles Scarborough, 5;
Assistant at the Surgeon’s Hall, 7;
at Oxford, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17;
matriculation of, 11;
University degrees of, 11, 12;
Fellowship of All Souls, 16
_Personal_:
Critical mind, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142;
death, 122;
epitaph of, 75;
health of, 4, 10, 18;
heirlooms at Soane Museum, 121;
Kirkall engraved portrait, 26;
legible penmanship, 4;
letter to his son, Christopher, 22, 23, 24;
letter in Latin to his father, 5;
love-letter to Faith Coghill, 20;
marriage, first, to Faith Coghill, 21;
marriage, second, to Jane Fitzwilliam, 21;
patience of, 8;
poetic gift of, 16;
portraits of, 164, 165, 166;
retirement, 75;
social relaxations, 114, 115, 116;
theories of beauty, 150, 151;
will, 25, 26, 27
_Scientific Studies and Achievements_:
As an astronomer, 32, 33, 34, 37;
as a classical archæologist, 132, 133, 134;
as a student and scholar, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,
140, 141, 142, 143;
essays, 15;
experiments in etching on glass, 40;
experiments in natural science, 38, 39, 40, 41;
inventions of, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17;
part in the development of natural science, 28, 29;
place as a mathematician, 34, 35, 36;
scientific labors of 116, 117, 118;
solution of Pascal’s problem, 34, 35, 36, 158, 159;
transactions with the Royal Society, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42
_Professional and Public_:
“Architect of Adventure, The,” 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150,
151, 152, 153, 154, 157;
as a Member of Parliament, 120, 121;
as a professional man, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130,
131;
influence of Inigo Jones, 51, 52;
influence of Palladio, 52;
introduction to Bernini, 48;
knighting of, 121;
plan for rebuilding London, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58;
remuneration and fees, 124, 125;
Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Works, 43, 124, 125, 127, 128,
129;
travels in France, 41, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51
Wren, Dean Christopher (father), 1, 2, 3, 20, 142
Wren, Christopher (second son) 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 119, 125
Constance (daughter-in-law), 25
Cuthbert (great-grandfather), 1
Faith (mother), 2, 18
Francis (grandfather), 1
Gilbert (eldest son, died in infancy), 21
Jane (daughter), 13, 21, 22
Margaret (great-granddaughter), 26
Matthew, Bishop of Ely (uncle), 2, 18
Matthew (cousin), 18
Stephen (grandson), 26
William (great-great-grandfather), 1
William (third son), 22, 24, 25, 27
Wren chronology, an attempt at a, 160
Wren’s House, Chichester, 106
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER
FOOTNOTES:
[A] _English Leadwork: Its Art and History_, chapter vi.
[B] “The Complete Building Accounts of the City Churches (Parochial)
designed by Sir Christopher Wren,” _Archæologia_, vol. lxvi.
[C] _A History of Renaissance Architecture in England._
[D] I dealt with this subject in detail some years ago in the
_Architectural Review_.
[E] In _Form in Civilization_ (Oxford University Press), 1922, a volume
to be read by everyone, for it contains the ripe judgment on many
matters of a very stimulating critic of the part played by architecture
in thought and life.
[F] In Wren’s petty cash accounts is the entry: “For a booke on
Vitruvius for the use of ye office--£3.”
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
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Superscripted text is preceded by a caret character: S^T or w^{ch}.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
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Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
Emboldened page numbers in the Index indicate illustrations.