Architecture: Gothic and RenaissanceSmith, T. Roger (Thomas Roger)
History
Architecture: Gothic and Renaissance
Smith, T. Roger (Thomas Roger)
Architecture -- History; Architecture, Gothic; Architecture, Renaissance; Church architecture
The three garden fronts of Blenheim are all fine, and there is a
magnificent entrance hall, but the most successful part of the
interior is the library, a long and lofty gallery, occupying the
entire flank of the house and treated with the most picturesque
variety both of plan and ornament.
Vanbrugh also built Castle Howard, Grimesthorpe, Wentworth, King's
Weston, as well as many other country mansions of more moderate size.
Campbell, Kent, and Gibbs are the best known names next in succession.
Of these Campbell is most famous as an author, but Gibbs (1674-1754)
is the architect of two prominent London churches--St. Martin's and
St. Mary le Strand, in which the general traditions of Wren's manner
are ably followed. He was the architect of the Radcliffe Library at
Oxford. Kent (1684-1748) was the architect of Holkham, the Treasury
Buildings, and the Horse Guards. He was associated with the Earl of
Burlington, who acquired a high reputation as an amateur architect,
which the design of Burlington House (now remodelled for the Royal
Academy), went far to justify. Probably the technical part of this and
other designs was supplied by Kent.
Sir William Chambers (1726-1796) was the architect of Somerset House,
a building of no small merit, notwithstanding that it is tame and very
bare of sculpture. This building is remarkable as one of the few in
London in which the Italian feature of an interior quadrangle is
attempted to be reproduced. Chambers wrote a treatise which has
become a general text-book of revived classical architecture for
English students. Contemporary with him were the brothers John and
Robert Adam, who built much, and began to introduce a severity of
treatment and a fineness of detail which correspond to some extent to
the French style of Louis XVI. The interior decorations in plaster by
these architects are of great elegance and often found in old houses
in London, as in Hanover Square, on the Adelphi Terrace, and
elsewhere. The list of the eighteenth century architects closes with
the names of Sir Robert Taylor and the two Dances, one of whom built
the Mansion House and the other Newgate; and Stuart, who built several
country mansions, but who is best known for the magnificent work on
the antiquities of Athens, which he and Revett published together in
1762, and which went far to create a revolution in public taste; for
before the close of the century there was a general cry for making
every building and every ornamental detail purely and solely Greek.
The architects above named, and others of less note were much employed
during the eighteenth century in the erection of large country houses
of Italian, usually Palladian design, many of them extremely
incongruous and unsatisfactory. Here and there a design better than
the average was obtained, but as a rule these stately but cold
buildings are very far inferior to the picturesque and home-like
manors and mansions built during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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