210 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AD ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[July , 



admirable probationary gold medal study for the more advanced students 

 of our Koyal Academy."* 



Willi similar feelings, the accomplished Sir Henry Wotton, who imbibed 

 a pure taste in all the arts by his residence, as James's ambassador, at 

 Venice, joins with Bacon in admitting that architecture is worthy the 

 attention of an elevated mind, and confesses it to be an art that requires 

 no commendation, where there are noble men and noble minds. He says 

 that he is but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stufl' (spursu colli^efi; 

 he yet presents his countrymen with the soundest theoretical doctrines, 

 and the purest ideas of taste in this noble art, which Jones carried so 

 beautifully into practice. In Wotton's preface, he fears it may be said 

 that he handled an art no way suitable to his employments or his fortune, 

 and so may stand charged with intrusion and with impertinency. To the 

 lirst, he answered, " That though, by the ever-acknowledged goodness of 

 his most dear and gracious sovereign, he had borne abroad some part of 

 his civil service; yet, when he came home, and was again resolved into his 

 own simplicity, he found it fitter for his pen to deal with these plain com- 

 pilements and tractable materials, than with the labyrinths of courts and 

 states ; and less presumption in him, who had long contemplated a famous 

 republic (Venice), to write, then, of archilectnre, than it was ancienily for 

 Hippodamus,t the Milesian, to write of republics, who was himself but 

 an architect." To the second, he confesses that his fortune is very unable 

 to exemplify and actuate his speculations in this art, which yet made him 

 rather, from this very disability, take encouragement to hope that his 

 present labours would find the more favour with others, since it was under- 

 taken for no n}an's sake less than for his own. 



Our great architect, Inigo Jones, who stands second to no modern artist 

 in Europe, was, like his illustrious cotemporary, Milton, not only an Eng- 

 lishman, but a Londoner, being born in the neighbourhood of our metropo- 

 litan cathedral, to which he had attached the splendid portico that had 

 drawn forth the just eulogium of the tasteful Burlington. He was 

 apprenticed to a carpenter and joiner, who were in those days more of 

 operative artists and carvers than those of the present time. During his 

 apprenticeship, his innate love for drawing and design had sufficient em- 

 ployment ; and he obtained, also, a greater knowledge of architectural 

 construction than he could, had he been in the study of one of the painter- 

 architects of the day. He distinguished himself in early life by a general 

 love for the arts of design, and has been much commended for his skill in 

 landscape-painting ; and Dr. Chalmers asserts, in his " Biographical Dic- 

 tionary," that there is still a specimen by him in the latter art at Chiswick- 

 house. 



He was destined for higher purposes than or a carpenter's foreman, or 

 a builder's clerk of the works, his talents having attracted the notice of 

 Thomas Howard, the celebrated Earl of Arundel, whose name is immor- 

 talized by his inestimable collection of antique sculpture, called after him 

 the Arundelian marbles,— and also of William, Earl of Pembroke, who 

 took him under his patronage, and sent him to France, Italy, and the 

 politer parts of Europe, with a handsome allowance. 



After exhausting the classical beauties of ancient Rome, he proceeded 

 through other cities to Venice, then in the zenith of wealth and splendour, 

 whence he was invited, as before-mentioned, to Denmark, by Christian IV., 

 who appointed him his architect. He accompained the King of Denmark 

 in his visit to James I., the husband of his sister, the Princess Anne of 

 Denmark. On his arrival in his native country, he was appointed archi- 

 tect to the queen, and shortly afterviards to Prince Henry, at whose 

 lamented death, in 1G12, he re-visited the classical shores of Italy. He 

 gave such satisfaction to his illustrious patrons, that on his departure from 

 London, the king gave him the reversion of the office of surveyor-general 

 of his works. 



On his second return to this country, he entered upon his office, and 

 executed the splendid public works already mentioned as being marked by 

 a greater purity of taste than his former productions. Upon the death of 

 King James, he was continued in his honourable post by Charles I., and 

 was associated In his honourable and tasteful employments with Rubens, 

 Vandyke, Chapman, Sir William Davenant, Daniel and Ben Jonson. He 

 designed and executed buildings, for Rube ns, the prince of painters, to 

 decorate with his gorgeous pencd ; and scenes, decorations, dresses, and 

 machinery for the most illustrious poets of his time. At the death 

 of Charles I., Inigo Jones adhered to the party of his royal master. He 

 was persecuted and fleeced, as a matter of course, and stigmatised as a 

 malignant. He died in grief, poveriy, and obscurity, July 21, 1052, and 

 was buried in the chancel of St. Bennet's Church, Paul's-wharf, London. 



* " Elmes's Life of Wrm," Part I., 

 t Aris'.ol. Pollt. lib. U. cap. C. 



p. xxli. 4ta. ltS23. 



The brilliant galaxy of philosophy, poetry, and art, which illumined the 

 hemisphere of the Smarts, with Bacon, Ben Joosou, Davenant, Rubens, 

 and Jones as stars of the Orst magnitude, set, amidst the clouds and tem- 

 pests that convulsed the nation, from the first attack upon the monarchy 

 till the Restoration; when elegance again dawned upon the people in the 

 times of the second Charles, which will form the next epoch of this 

 sketch. 



Amidst the stars of lesser magnitude that beamed among the cotempo- 

 raries and immediate pred.cessors of Jones, were Girolamo da Treviso, 

 who, like Holbein, practised both painting and architecture — thelatter, as 

 an artist, and nut as a builder ; Richard Lea, an Englishman, somewhat 

 later; and another, named John Thynne, who built Somerset-house, iu the 

 Strand, in 1.'>G7, in a mixed style of Italian and Gothic architecture. 

 John Shute, an English painter and architect, who flourished in the reign 

 of Queen Elizabeth, was sent by the Duke of Norihumberland, his noble 

 patron, to study the art under the best masters in Italy. He published, in 

 15(i3, a folio volume of the principles of architecture, as developed in the 

 most celebrated monuments of antiquity. Milezia, in his lives of archi- 

 tects, mentions an Englishman, of the name of Stickles, who flourished 

 about 1596, as an excellent architect. Robert Adams, who practised ar- 

 chitecture and engineering, was superintendent of the royal buildings to 

 Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a description of the river Thames, and of the 

 best method of fortifying it against au enemy. In the same period, flou- 

 rished Theodore Havens, an architect, sculjjtor, and painter, who affected 

 grandeur on a small scale, and was rich in Italian conceits. He designed 

 Caius College, Cambridge, a fair specimen of the architecture of the age 

 — pedantic, eccentric, affected, and trifling. This college was founded by 

 Dr. Caius, physician to Queens Mary and Elizabeth ; and three of its 

 gates are of curious, if not of elegant, designs, being among the first con. 

 structed after the Italian manner in England. The first is inscribed, 

 " HuMiLiTAS," and, as the Gate of Humility, is of low proportions; the 

 second, which is loftier, and embellished with a portico and emblematical 

 figure, is dedicated to Virtue, and is inscribed "Virthtis. Io. Caits 

 PosuiT Sapienti*," and conducts to Caius Court and the public schools ; 

 and the third, which is inscribed " Honoris," and is called the Gate of 

 Honour, is of still larger dimensions, and decorated with the various 

 orders of Roman architecture, overlaid with ornaments, in the style of the 

 ecclesiastical monuments of the period. 



About the same time, Rodolph Simmons built Emanuel and Sidney 

 Sussex Colleges, Cambridge, aud rebuilt the greater part of Trinity Col- 

 lege, in the same University. 



Bernard Jansen, a painter-architect of the Flemish school, also flourished 

 in the reign of James ; he was a disciple of Dielerling, a celebrated ar- 

 chitect of the same country, who wrote much on his art. Jansen exe- 

 cuted, during his residence in England, the splendid mansion of Audley- 

 End, in Suffolk, and a great part of Northumberland-house, London ; but 

 the extraordinary and original facade was designed by Gerard Christ- 

 mas. 



Among the other architects of this period whose names have reached us, 

 are John Smithson, who died in 1618, and who, under the patronage of the 

 Duke of Newcastle, travelled into Italy to improve himself in his art, and 

 to acquire a knov*ledge of good design. The mansion-house at M elbeck, 

 and the castle at Bolsover, were of his execution. Stephen Harrison must 

 have been an architect of some reputation, as he was employed to design 

 and execute the triumplial arches and other architectural pageantries, 

 erected in Loudon, on the accession of James I. to the throne of Great 

 Britain. 



The political struggles that convulsed the reign of Charles I., which 

 began with such flattering prospects for the arts, and which was the epoch 

 of good taste in architecture, has been already noticed. The rulers of the 

 Commonwealth, instead of patronising arts and artists, not only discou- 

 raged the living, but destroyed the works of the dead. The destruction of 

 some of the most elegant productions of paiuting, sculpture, aud architec- 

 ture, bj the iconoclasts of the Commonwealth, will ever remain a stigma 

 on the administration of Cromwell: but the reign of Charles II. was 

 favourable to architecture, as much by the dreadful fire which consumed 

 the metropolis, as by the innate love of magnificence and art which distin- 

 guished the king and his court. 



(To be continued.) 



[In the first part of this sketch, in our last Number, page 168, col. 2, 

 line 11 from bottom, for " Tortegiaus," read " Torregiauo."] 



