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.”[145] 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.[146]
[Illustration: 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.”[147] 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.[148] 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,[149] 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.[150]
[Illustration: FIG. 128.--North side of court, Kirby
Hall.]
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 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.
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 129.--Gable of Kirby Hall.]
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,[151] 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.[152]
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 130.--Window of Walterstone Hall.]
[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Cranborne Manor-House.]
The gatehouse at Tixall[153] 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. 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[154] 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[155] 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,[156] 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 strap-work 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).
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.
[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Portal of Wollaton Hall.]
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.