ARCHITECTURE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND
II. _Jones and Wren_
It is only by extension of the term that the architecture of England
in the seventeenth century may be properly called Renaissance. But
if, in architecture, we understand by Renaissance a revival of the
use of classic details, such extension is justifiable, for in this
architecture the use of classic details is becoming established,
and the art of Jones and Wren stands in relation to the Elizabethan
architecture as the art of Vignola and Palladio does to that of the
early Renaissance in Italy, and that of Lescot and De l’Orme to the
early French Renaissance.
Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren were the only English architects
of great importance at this epoch. It was their genius that determined
the character of modern English architecture, and we may therefore
confine our attention to their works.
Of Jones, Horace Walpole thus speaks in his _Anecdotes of
Painting_:[157] “Inigo Jones, ... if a table of fame like that in
the _Tatler_ were to be framed for men of indisputable genius
in every country, would save England from the disgrace of not having
her representative among the arts.... Vitruvius drew up his grammar,
Palladio showed him the practice, Rome displayed a theatre worthy of
his emulation, and King Charles was ready to encourage, employ, and
reward his talents.” This famous architect began his artistic career
in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nothing is known of
his early education, but in youth he appears to have manifested an
inclination for drawing, and to have acquired some skill in landscape
painting.[158] He does not seem to have had any systematic training in
architecture, but in early life he travelled in Italy,[159] where he
studied the ancient monuments and read the works of Palladio and other
Italian authors. In a book entitled _Stonehenge Restored_,[160]
he says: “Being naturally inclined in my younger years to study the
arts of design, I passed into foreign parts to converse with the great
masters thereof in Italy, where I applied myself to search out the
ruins of those ancient buildings which, in despite of time itself, and
violence of barbarians, are yet remaining. Having satisfied myself
in these, and returning to my native country, I applied my mind more
particularly to the study of architecture.” For a quick-witted man with
architectural aptitudes no training could be better, except that of
growing up in an atmosphere of building activity, as the craftsmen of
the Middle Ages did.
In his first practice Jones appears to have worked in a mixed style.
The mongrel Elizabethan art was still in full vogue, and with this
style, says Cunningham, “Inigo compounded, and for some time persevered
in what the wits of the succeeding age nicknamed King James’s Gothic.”
The well-known porch of St. Mary’s church, Oxford, if it be by Jones,
may furnish an example of this earlier style. But he soon sought to
free himself from the vagaries of the Elizabethan craftsman, and strove
to introduce a rigorous use of Palladian forms. He had learned the
grammar of the orders as formulated by the architects of the later
Renaissance, and had apparently conceived a sincere belief that the
Palladian canons embodied all that was most excellent in architectural
design. He saw in the Elizabethan art only its manifold infractions
of the rules of order and proportion, and its grotesque distortions
of classic forms. To reëstablish these rules and restore these forms
appeared to him the way to regenerate English art.
First among his extant works that can be certainly identified is the
well-known Banqueting Hall built in 1619, for King James I, as a part
of the projected palace of Whitehall, for which he had prepared the
plans on a vast scale. The first remark prompted by this design is that
it is not at all English. Every form and feature of the native art
is eliminated. The Elizabethan house, however overlaid with foreign
elements, was English in its primary forms and expression. But here
Inigo Jones swept away everything English, and substituted a Palladian
scheme that is foreign to England in every particular. The low-pitched
roof, the plain rectangular outline, and the narrow undivided
window openings are as Italian as the orders with which the façade
is overlaid. But such was the state of taste among the influential
classes that these features were approved, and the design was applauded
with acclamation. “It spread,” says Cunningham, “the love of classic
architecture far and wide, and there was soon a growing demand for
works which recalled Athens to the learned, and presented something
new to the admiration of the vulgar.”[161] The learned had then small
knowledge of Athenian architecture, and even now many learned people
fail to consider that there was never in Athens anything at all like
Palladian design.
The façade of the Banqueting Hall (Plate X) is in two stories on a
low basement, and has a rusticated wall of smooth-faced masonry,
with an engaged order in each story, and a parapet with a balustrade
over the main cornice. The central part of this façade has its wall
slightly advanced, and in each story the orders, Ionic and Corinthian
respectively, have engaged columns against the projecting middle part,
and pilasters on either side, a pair of them being set together at
each end. These pilasters taper and have strong entasis, so that parts
of those on the angles overreach the end walls. The entablatures are
carried by the walls, and thus have to be broken into ressauts to
cover the columns and pilasters. The structural function of all these
superimposed columns and pilasters is therefore only that of carrying
the ressauts of the parapet. The rectangular windows, of severely
classic design, have pediments, alternately curved and angular, in the
lower story, and flat cornices only in the story above, while a frieze
below the main entablature is adorned in Roman fashion with masks and
festoons.
[Illustration:
Plate X
BANQUETING HALL, WHITEHALL
London]
It is surprising that such a mechanical reproduction of a foreign
style should ever have called forth high praise from Englishmen.
The design exhibits no invention, no creative adaptation of foreign
elements to new conditions, and therefore no reason for the use of
such elements. The low-pitched roof (wholly invisible from any near
point of view) is unsuited to the English climate, and the parapet
and balustrade are equally inappropriate. Yet of this design Walpole
remarks[162] that “it stands as a model of the most pure and beautiful
taste.” And an earlier expression of the feeling which prevailed among
the dilettanti of the time is found in the text which accompanies
Kent’s well-known book of Jones’s designs[163] as follows: “If the
reputation of this great man doth not rise in proportion to his merits
in his own country, ’tis certain, in Italy, which was his school, and
other Parts of Europe, he was in great esteem; in which places, as well
as in England, his own works are his monument and best Panegyrick;
which, together with those of Palladio, remain equal Proofs of the
Superiority of those two great Masters to all others.”
The whole scheme for the palace of Whitehall is fully illustrated
by Kent.[164] The plan is a vast rectangle measuring 874 by 1151
feet, and comprising seven courts, of which the central one toward
the park encloses a circular gallery. The long blocks are broken by
rectangular pavilions, one on the axis of each of the four sides, one
at each angle, and others at intervals between. It is thus French in
character, rather than Italian, and suggests a derivation from De
l’Orme’s plan of the Tuileries. It is not worth while to examine the
architectural character of the elevation fully in detail; but, in
addition to the Banqueting Hall already noticed, it may be well to
examine several other parts which further illustrate the art of Inigo
Jones. The axial pavilions are flanked with rectangular towers in
three stages, each stage adorned with an order, and surmounted with an
octagonal cupola. On the Westminster front the basement has a Doric
order with a modification of De l’Orme’s column, in which the larger
stones are square. This basement (Fig. 133) has a mezzanine marked by
an entablature which is cut in the middle by the keystones of a flat
arch over a window beneath. The great entablature in this case is
borne by the columns, and the order has thus a structural character
(though it has no structural reason for being) which the orders of
the Banqueting Hall do not have. The only other feature of Whitehall
that need be mentioned is the façade of the circular court enclosed by
the king’s apartments. This is a _bizarre_ design in two stages,
with a so-called Persian order below and an order of caryatids above.
The bearing members of these orders stand out beyond the entablatures,
and thus support nothing but ressauts, while a balustrade with statues
crowns the whole.
[Illustration: FIG. 133.--Basement of a part of
Whitehall.]
[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Front of old St. Paul’s by
Inigo Jones.]
With all his zeal for reform by a stricter conformity to classic
models, the designs of Inigo Jones were never truly classical, and they
often exhibit ludicrous aberrations. He had no true conception of the
principles of classic art, as no architects of the Renaissance ever
had. The Palladian architecture, which he mainly strove to follow, was
itself, as we have seen, far from true to classic design. Some of these
aberrations are strikingly shown in the west front which he built to
the nave of old St. Paul’s cathedral. In attempting to apply classic
details to such a building he was obliged to depart widely from
classic principles. His scheme, as shown in Kent’s print (Fig. 134)
is as incongruous a mixture as was ever produced by the Elizabethan
craftsmen. This front, in its main outline, has to follow the form of
the Mediæval structure, with its high nave and low aisles. To this
mediæval form the architect has affixed a variety of features derived
from Roman, Renaissance, and even Egyptian sources. He has crowned the
wall with a pseudo-classic cornice surmounted by a steep gable, he has
set obelisks on Roman pedestals over the buttresses, affixed reversed
consoles to the clerestory walls, and built a Corinthian portico with a
balustrade upon its entablature, and completed the scheme with flanking
towers crowned with lanterns. It is a thoroughly barbarous composition,
which even Walpole complains of as follows: “In the restoration of
that cathedral he made two capital faults. He first renewed the sides
with very bad Gothic, and then added a Roman portico, magnificent and
beautiful indeed, but which has no affinity with the ancient parts that
remained, and made his own Gothic appear ten times heavier.”[165]
The art of Inigo Jones has been thoughtlessly lauded in more recent
times. “His special strength,” says Mr. Bloomfield, his latest
panegyrist, “lay in his thorough mastery of proportion, his contempt
for mere prettiness, and the rare distinction of his style. His own
theory of architecture was that, in his own words, ‘it should be solid,
proportional according to the rules, masculine and unaffected.’[166]
Was Inigo Jones a master of proportion? Does he not in this declaration
betray a fundamental misconception of the true meaning of proportion?
Is any genuine work of art “proportional according to the rules,”
_i.e._ the mechanical formulas of Vitruvius or Palladio on which
he professed to base his practice? And did Jones ever carry out in
practice his avowed theory that architecture should be unaffected? Can
an art be unaffected which is so frankly copied from a foreign style?
I have characterized the spirit of much of the architecture of the
Renaissance as theatrical; that of Inigo Jones is preëminently so,
and it is significant that he was extensively employed, in his early
career, in designing architectural backgrounds for the stage.
The artistic career of Sir Christopher Wren, the most justly
famous architect of the belated English Renaissance, began
after the Civil War. Inigo Jones had prepared the way for him,
and a body of aristocratic dilettanti, ardently devoted to the
neo-classic propaganda, had arisen. The artistic notions of these
people are instructively set forth in the following passage from
_Parentalia_:[167] “Towards the end of King James I’s Reign, and
in the Beginning of his Son’s, Taste in Architecture made a bold step
from Italy to England at once, and scarce staid a moment to visit
France by the way. From the most profound Ignorance in Architecture,
the most consummate Night of Knowledge, Inigo Jones started up, a
Prodigy of Art, and vied even with his Master Palladio himself. From
so glorious an Out-set, there was not any Excellency that we might not
have hoped to obtain; Britain had a reasonable Prospect to rival Italy,
and foil every Nation in Europe beside. But in the midst of these
sanguine Expectations, the fatal Civil War commenced, and all the Arts
and Sciences were immediately laid aside.”
Before turning his attention to architecture Wren had been a
distinguished scholar at Oxford, where he was appointed Professor of
Astronomy in the year 1657. It was not until mature manhood that he
began the practice of architecture, and thus, like so many others who
have achieved distinction in this art, he never had a special and
systematic preliminary training for it. His father, Dr. Christopher
Wren, Dean of Windsor, is said to have been skilled in all branches of
mathematics and in architecture,[168] and this, together with his own
native aptitudes, appears to have made it easy for him, by observation
and practice, to acquire the necessary preparation for such work as he
was to do. His opportunities for study of the architectural monuments
of the Continent were small. He never visited Italy, but he spent some
months in Paris, and while there wrote, in a letter to a friend, as
follows: “I have busied myself surveying the most esteem’d Fabricks
of Paris, and the Country round; the Louvre for a while was my daily
Object, where no less than a thousand Hands are constantly employ’d
in the Works; some in laying mighty foundations, some in raising the
stories, columns, entablements, &c., with vast stones, by great and
useful Engines; others in Carving, Inlaying of Marbles, Plastering,
Painting, Gilding, &c., which altogether make a school of Architecture,
the best probably, at this Day in Europe.” The Italian architect
Bernini was working on the Louvre at the time, and in the same letter
Wren writes: “Mons. Abbé Charles introduc’d me to the acquaintance of
Bernini, who shew’d me his Designs of the Louvre, and of the King’s
Statue.... Bernini’s Design of the Louvre I would have given my skin
for, but the reserv’d Italian gave me but a few Minutes View; it was
five little Designs on paper, for which he hath receiv’d as many
thousand Pistoles; I had only time to copy it in my Fancy and Memory.
I shall be able by Discourse, and Crayon, to give you a tolerable
Account of it.”[169]
He appears to have made the most of his time while in France, but he
naturally confined his attention to the modern works of that country,
which alone were then thought worthy of notice. The great châteaux
of Fontainebleau, St. Germain, Chantilly, and many others, he speaks
of in the same letter as having “surveyed that I might not lose the
impressions of them.”
Wren’s first architectural work appears to have been the Sheldonian
Theatre in Oxford, which is thus referred to in _Parentalia_:
“This Theatre, a work of admirable Contrivance and Magnificence, was
the first publick Performance of the Surveyor,[170] in Architecture;
which, however, had been executed in a greater and better style, with
a view to the ancient Roman Grandeur discernable in the Theatre of
Marcellus at Rome, but that he was obliged to put a Stop to the bolder
strokes of his Pencil, and confine the Expense within the Limits of a
private Purse.”[171] But his great opportunity occurred after the fire
of London, when he was commissioned to prepare plans for the rebuilding
of the city, including the cathedral of St. Paul and all the city
churches. Before the great fire he had been ordered to submit designs
for the restoration of the old cathedral of St. Paul, the grand old
Norman structure, with additions in the early English style, which,
notwithstanding the repairs and additions of Inigo Jones, was still
thought to be in a dangerous condition. Wren made a careful survey,
and worked out a plan, elevation, and section of the old structure,
and expressed surprise at what he considered the negligence of the old
builders. “They valued not exactness: some Inter-columns were one inch
and a half too large, others as much, or more, too little. Nor were
they true in their levels.”[172] He thought that the whole fabric was
alarmingly insecure, except the portico built by Jones, which, he said,
“being an entire and excellent piece, gave great reputation to the work
in the first repairs.”[173]
He prepared plans for a thorough restoration, but these were not
approved, and he set off for France. Then came the great fire and put
an end to all thought of repairs on his part, though the commissioners
appear still to have clung to the idea of restoration until they were
satisfied, by fruitless effort to utilize what remained of the old
work, that such a course was impracticable.[174]
An entirely new structure was now decided on, and Wren was directed
to “contrive a Fabrick of moderate Bulk, but of good Proportions;
a convenient Quire, with a Vestibule and Porticoes, and a Dome
conspicuous above the Houses. A long Body with aisles was thought
impertinent, our Religion not using Processions.”[175]
It is difficult from the statements in _Parentalia_ clearly to
identify Wren’s different drawings which have been preserved, and to
reconcile either the statements or the drawings with what is said by
more recent writers, who do not always agree among themselves. The
drawings embody widely different schemes which were the results of so
many attempts to meet the wishes of the king and court on the one hand,
and those of the citizens on the other. Of these there are two sets
which may be considered as the principal ones.
The first of these has a novel plan based on that of the Greek cross,
but having the reëntrant external angles filled out to segmental curves
struck from the corners of a square enclosing the whole. A great dome
on a circular drum supported by eight piers rises over the crossing, a
small dome on pendentives covers each of the spaces between the great
circle and the curved enclosing walls; while the northern, southern,
and western arms of the cross have each a square groined vault. The
form of the vaulting over the eastern arm is not indicated on the plan,
but the choir enclosure is shown in the form of a circle cut out on the
east to open into the sanctuary, and on the west to communicate with
the nave. The dome (Fig. 135) is in two shells of masonry, the inner
one being hemispherical with a circular opening in its crown, and the
outer one a pointed oval supporting a lantern. The drum is thick, and
although the vault springs from very near the top, a strong continuous
abutment in the form of a solid ring of masonry, with concave outline,
is built up against it. The dome is kept solid up to the haunch of the
inner shell, so that this inner shell is abundantly secured, while the
outline of the outer shell, from the point where it clears the solid
mass below, has a form that would exert a minimum of thrust, though it
would hardly be secure without a binding chain. It is noticeable that
the inner face of the drum is not vertical, but inclined inward in the
form of a truncated cone, which considerably strengthens it against any
tendency to yield to the force of thrust in the dome.
[Illustration: FIG. 135.--Section of Wren’s rejected
scheme for St. Paul’s.]
The scheme was clearly based on the model of St. Peter’s in Rome,
to which frequent reference is made in _Parentalia_ as having
been in the mind of the architect as he developed his idea. The dome
partakes of the character of Bramante’s design on the one hand, and
of that of Michael Angelo, as finally constructed, on the other. The
likeness to Bramante’s scheme (Fig. 23, p. 48) is in the form of the
inner shell, and its adjustment to the supporting drum. The likeness
as to adjustment is not, indeed, very close; for Wren has raised the
springing so that it is almost at the top of the drum, but he has
fortified it with a continuous abutment which, though of different
outline, has substantially the same structural effect. The likeness
to St. Peter’s is further shown in the encircling order of the inner
face of the drum, which occurs in both Bramante’s scheme and in that
of Michael Angelo. There can be little doubt that Wren had studied
Bramante’s design in Serlio’s book, and had appreciated its structural
merits. But he wished, in emulation of Michael Angelo, to make his
dome externally more imposing, and he therefore raised its springing
level as we see, and adopted from Michael Angelo’s scheme the idea of
a double dome. The external outline from the top of the drum to the
haunch of the vault is too nearly the same as the corresponding part of
Michael Angelo’s design to be considered as an accidental coincidence.
The structural difference between the two is indeed great, since the
concave portion in Wren’s design is a continuous ring, while in that
of Michael Angelo it is an isolated and insignificant abutment. Wren’s
scheme is thus superior in point of constructive merit, since it
provides continuous resistance to continuous thrust. It will be seen
that the two shells of Wren’s projected dome correspond to the inner
and outer shells of Michael Angelo’s model (Fig. 26, p. 54), and thus
in reproducing the main idea of this model Wren merely omitted the
middle shell. He thus gave a wider divergence to the two vaults as they
rise than occurs in the actual dome of St. Peter’s. He also omitted the
well which in St. Peter’s connects the two shells at the crown.
A single order of pilasters adorns both the interior and the exterior
of the church itself, the one on the outside being raised on a high
basement and crowned with a plain attic; and a portico in the form of a
temple front, with its order raised on high pedestals, gives emphasis
to the west façade.
This design appears to have been rejected, to Wren’s great chagrin, as
we learn from the following passage in _Parentalia_: “The surveyor
in private conversation, always seem’d to set a higher value on this
design, than any he had made before or since; as what was labour’d with
more study and success; and, (had he not been over-rul’d by those,
whom it was his duty to obey), what he would have put in execution
with more Cheerfulness, and Satisfaction to himself.... But the
Chapter, and some others of the Clergy thought the Model not enough of
a Cathedral-fashion; to instance particularly, in that, the Quire was
design’d circular, &c.... The Surveyor then turn’d his Thoughts to a
Cathedral-form, (as they call’d it) but so rectified, as to reconcile,
as near as possible, the Gothick to a better Manner of Architecture;
with a Cupola, and above that, instead of a Lantern, a lofty Spire, and
large Porticoes.”
I think that had the first design been accepted Wren would not have
carried it out without material modifications. For he was too good an
engineer not to have seen that the form and adjustment of the dome were
seriously defective from a structural point of view. However this may
be, the dome which he actually built is, as we shall see, fundamentally
different in character (though it is not very different in either
internal or external shape), and it is different in a way that no
outside influences could have compelled.
The most noticeable feature of the second design is that part which
rises over the crossing, and consists of a vast frustum of a dome
supporting a tall buttressed drum, which in turn is surmounted by
a smaller dome of oval outline, from the crown of which rises a
telescopic spire of six stages with a strongly marked cornice to each.
It was in this design that he is said to have sought to “reconcile the
Gothic to a better Manner.” What he meant by this I do not know. Wren
can hardly have supposed that he was effecting such a reconciliation
by this remarkable combination of dome and spire. But in the actual
cathedral of St. Paul we shall find some features that may, in part,
explain his meaning.
It is noticeable that the west façade of this design is a close copy,
with modifications of proportions and minor details, of the façade
by Inigo Jones (Fig. 134, p. 231), which the fire had weakened or
destroyed, and which Wren had much admired. This design was approved,
and the king’s warrant for its execution was issued May 1st, 1675. But
it is said that “the king was pleased to allow him the liberty in the
prosecution of his work, to make some variations, rather ornamental
than essential, as from time to time he should see proper.”[176] The
actual building shows how largely Wren availed himself of this liberty.
[Illustration:
Plate XI
DOME OF ST. PAUL’S
London]
The cathedral of St. Paul as it now stands was never embodied in any
set of drawings. Starting with a few rough sketches the scheme was
developed as the work proceeded, the master being always present to
direct the work. Wren was at the start what would now be called an
amateur, but by degrees he learned his art in the best possible way,
not in the office or drawing-room, but on the scaffold in close contact
with the works. It was thus that Brunelleschi had worked on the dome of
Florence, and Michael Angelo on St. Peter’s.
The plan of the existing St. Paul’s has no beauty comparable to that of
St. Peter’s (Fig. 31, p. 67). It has a long nave with a short transept
near the middle, a semicircular apse, and two western towers. Both
nave and transept have side aisles, and in the angles formed by the
towers, which project beyond the aisles in the manner that is common
in the mediæval churches of England, are a consistory court and a
morning chapel, while in the angles of the crossing three vestries and
a stair-turret are set. Thus the Greek cross plan which Wren appears
to have first intended, “a long body with aisles” having been “thought
impertinent, our religion not using processions,” was widely departed
from in conformity with the popular feeling that the first plan
“deviated too much from the old Gothick form of Cathedral Churches,
which they (the people) had been used to see and admire in this
country.”
In the elevation a great dome, in outline not very unlike the one first
intended, rises over the crossing; the nave and aisles are vaulted
with small domes on pendentives of peculiar form, and the piers of the
interior are faced with a great Corinthian order of pilasters. That
Wren worked with constant reference to St. Peter’s as the main source
of his inspiration, is clearly enough manifested in the general scheme,
though there are many points of difference between the two monuments,
apart from the great difference of scale. Other sources of influence
are, however, also apparent.
The most interesting feature of St. Paul’s cathedral is, of course,
the great dome (Plate XI), which is one of the most remarkable of the
series of modern domes that began with the dome of Brunelleschi. In
general external form it recalls Bramante’s diminutive circular temple
of San Pietro in Montorio, and it is not unlikely that Wren derived
the idea from the woodcut of that design in Serlio’s book, or in that
of Palladio. Wren has, of course, altered and amplified the scheme in
adaptation to his vast scale and lofty proportions, but the general
composition of the two is substantially the same, though the internal
structure is entirely different. The leading features of the exterior,
the encircling order crowned with the balustrade, and the dome rising
over it surmounted by the lantern, are those of Bramante’s design.
[Illustration: FIG. 136.--Section of the dome of St.
Paul’s.]
The structural system of this dome (Fig. 136) is peculiar. From eight
piers arches and pendentives are turned, forming the circular bed
from which the drum rises to a great height, and from a level far
below the top of this drum a dome of masonry, of slightly oval form is
sprung. The drum is double, and the inner wall, which carries the dome,
inclines inward, as in the rejected design, up to the springing level,
and above this it rises vertically against the haunch of the dome. From
the haunch a hollow cone of masonry is carried up far above the crown
of the dome, where it is cut off and covered with a small segmental
dome surmounted by a tall lantern of stone. The system is devised
with a view to stability. The cone shape of the inner drum gives it
resistance to the dome thrusts, and these thrusts are further fortified
by a solid filling of masonry between the smaller cone above and the
vault reaching more than halfway from the springing to the crown.
The outer drum is a solid wall up to a level but little higher than
the apex of the timber roof of the nave, where it forms a stylobate
for the encircling Corinthian order. But the two drums are connected
by heavy abutments across the interval between them, one behind each
column of the encircling order, with a heavier buttress filling every
fourth intercolumniation (Plate XI). The inner drum rises in diminished
thickness above the entablature of the outer one in the form of an
attic with an order of pilasters and square openings between. From this
attic rises a false dome of timber, surrounding and concealing the
great cone which is the real support of the lantern.
This remarkable scheme embodies the last notable attempt to solve
the great dome problem with which the architects of the Renaissance
had struggled from the time of Brunelleschi. But the problem is
incapable of a satisfactory solution. It is impossible to make a large
unbuttressed dome stand securely except by the extraneous means of
binding chains. Wren has not attempted to do such a thing. He was too
good an engineer to follow in the footsteps of Brunelleschi and Michael
Angelo. His dome is well buttressed, but it is therefore necessarily
hidden from view. To raise another dome of masonry from the cornice
of the drum for external effect, and to crown such a dome with a
stone lantern fifty feet high, he saw to be impossible with safety.
A semblance of such a dome was, however, necessary to his scheme. He
had been charged to make a dome “conspicuous above the houses,” and he
therefore surrounded the cone, the true support of the lantern, with a
wooden counterfeit of a dome upon which he makes the beholder believe
that the lantern rests. The system is thus a monstrous architectural
deceit. We have criticised Michael Angelo for springing a great dome
from the top of a drum, but he cannot be reproached for deception.
His dome is a real dome of masonry, and does carry the lantern as it
appears to, though, as we have seen, insecurely, except for so long
as the binding chains can be made to save it from collapse. Wren would
not build a dome in this inherently weak manner. He preferred to design
his masonry construction on sound principles, which would not allow
an external dome, and to enclose this within the wooden counterfeit.
And it may here be remarked that most modern domes, modelled after St.
Peter’s and St. Paul’s, are wooden constructions and carry lanterns of
wood. They are thus entirely safe, but they have not the monumental
character of great architectural works.
In general external effect the dome of St. Paul’s has much merit, if it
does not justify the extravagant remark of Mr. Loftie that it is the
“noblest dome in Christendom.”[177]
[Illustration: FIG. 137.--Vaulting of St. Paul’s.]
[Illustration:
Plate XII
INTERIOR OF ST. PAUL’S
London]
The proportions of the interior of the church (Plate XII) are
admirable, and give a better effect of scale than the larger scheme of
St. Peter’s. But the details exhibit more of those aberrations that are
inherent in the architecture of the Renaissance. The vaulting of the
nave (Fig. 137) is in oblong compartments with their long axes running
transversely, and the small domes, which are low spherical segments
instead of hemispheres, therefore leave considerable intervals at
each end of each compartment, over which segments of barrel vaulting,
of a form generated by the elliptical lunettes of the clerestory, are
turned. The pendentives thus have a peculiar shape, and are segments
of a hemisphere cut by four vertical planes coinciding with the sides
of the vault compartment, by a horizontal plane at the base of the
dome, and by the interpenetrating barrel vaults. The compartments are
separated by transverse ribs, and these, together with the groins
formed by the meeting of the pendentives and the interpenetrating
lunette vaults, give a somewhat mediæval effect to the vaulting conoid.
In other words the lines of the groins and the lunette arches form a
combination not unlike that of Gothic vaulting. This may have been one
of the points in which Wren fancied that he could “reconcile the Gothic
to a better manner.”
In the great order Wren has departed from the scheme of St. Peter’s
in giving only one pilaster to each pier of the nave, though in the
larger piers under the great dome he has set them in pairs. Under
the archivolts of the great arcade and under the aisle vaulting the
smaller pilasters are coupled, while in St. Peter’s they are single.
With the details of these orders the architect took great liberties
in utter disregard of the canons of Vitruvius and the neo-classic
authorities. The crowns of the great arches reach high above the
capitals of the pilasters, so that a complete entablature cannot pass
over them. It would not, of course, do to allow the archivolts to cut
into an entablature, and Wren has therefore omitted the architrave
and frieze in the intervals of the order, and has included them only
in a ressaut over each pilaster, the cornice alone being carried over
the arch. To give the vaulting its admirable elevation without unduly
magnifying the great order, as Michael Angelo did in St. Peter’s, an
attic is interposed, but to spring a vault from an attic wall is an
architectural barbarism; though it is perhaps no greater one than to
spring it from an entablature, as the architects of the Renaissance
had done from Brunelleschi down. In the small order of the aisles the
entablature is simplified, and has only an architrave and cornice;
while a member, like a diminutive attic, in retreat of the cornice, is
interposed at the impost. It looks as if this had been done in order to
raise the springing of the arches so that no part of them would be cut
off from view by the salience of the cornice; and it was apparently in
part for the same reason that the attic was interposed in the nave.
The motive is commendable. The effect of vaulting rising directly
from a salient cornice Wren may justly have felt to be a bad one, but
to avoid it while using classic details necessitates these strange
inconsistencies.
[Illustration: FIG. 138.--Crossing pier and impost, St.
Paul’s.]
Among numerous other aberrations of this pseudo-classic scheme is the
treatment of the segmental archivolts of the small half domes that
open out of the oblique sides of the great octagon at the crossing.
The orders of the crossing piers have complete entablatures (Fig.
138), and the archivolts in question are in two parts answering to the
frieze and cornice of these entablatures, which they intersect in the
awkward manner shown in the figure. To have mitred the cornice of the
archivolt to that of the order would have left the pilaster beneath
with an incomplete entablature, and the architect preferred to run the
cornice through the archivolt in this unsightly way. Such were some
of the further makeshifts to which the designers of the Renaissance
had to resort in their efforts to apply the classic orders to uses for
which they were not adapted. But all such aberrations in the use of
classic elements are superficial and open. A more radical violation of
architectural veracity is found in the manner in which the buttress
system is concealed. The thrusts of the nave vaulting are met by a
series of flying buttresses carried over the aisle roof in Gothic
fashion (Fig. 139). But it would not do to have flying buttresses
appear in an ostensibly classic system, and Wren accordingly hid them
from sight by a screen wall made to look like an upper story in the
general view of the exterior. It is not until one mounts to the terrace
of the drum, and looking down finds the space between the clerestory
and outer wall open to the sky, that he discovers the buttresses
there, and realizes the deceitful character of the architectural
scheme. Perhaps this illustrates another point in which Wren “sought to
reconcile the Gothic to a better manner.” A similar treatment occurs
in that part of the nave of St. Peter’s which was built by Maderno.
Michael Angelo’s great external order had obliged him, as we saw (p.
68), to carry up the aisle wall to the height of the clerestory, but
he filled up the space over the aisle with his small embedded dome
(Fig. 32, p. 69). In Maderno’s part the dome is omitted, and the space
over the aisle vaulting is left open to the sky as in St. Paul’s. But
the buttresses of St. Peter’s are solid cross walls with no suggestion
of Gothic form. In the vaulting of the apse Wren has followed the
quasi-mediæval form adopted by Michael Angelo in the apse of St.
Peter’s, dividing it into three shallow cells on converging ribs rising
from the stumpy pilasters of the attic.
[Illustration: FIG. 139.--Half section of the nave of
St. Paul’s.]
Of the architectural treatment of the exterior as a whole little need
be said further than that it has no relation to the real form of the
building. The masking of the buttress system by the false wall, and
the application of orders without any structural use or expression
in harmony with the real structure, are entirely in keeping with the
spirit the Renaissance.
Wren’s other churches exhibit a medley of elements from spurious Gothic
to pseudo-classic in manifold irrational combinations, such as can
be found in the works of few other architects. These churches with
their vaultings of wood and plaster--whether in the form of domes on
pendentives, sprung from the entablatures of classic orders, as at St.
Stephen’s, Walbrook, or with Welsh vaulting on simulated cross ribs
of plaster, as at St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, or with barrel vaulting
on an attic, as at St. Peter’s, Cornhill,--it would be superfluous,
as well as tiresome, to examine in detail. Nor is it worth while to
analyze the spires of these churches. Spires made up of superimposed
stories with classic entablatures in telescopic adjustment, like St.
Bride’s, or temples of Vesta crowned with flying buttresses holding up
neo-classic tabernacles surmounted by obelisks, like St. Mary-le-Bow,
are hybrid compositions of utterly barbaric character, notwithstanding
the excellent portions for which they have been justly admired.