By the Eev. Canon J. R JacJcson, F.S.A. 



17 



name, for some reason or other, had found its way to Caius College : 

 for Dr. Ducarel, of the Society of Antiquaries, says in a letter to 

 ' Mr. Lethieullier, 1 750, October 24th " In Caius College I saw this 

 summer the picture of John of Padua, a famous architect who built 

 that college and [old] Somerset House, on the old front of which 

 next the Strand remain to this day some old Doric columns like 

 those at Caius." Here, as the late Dr. Guest of that college in- 

 formed me, Dr. Ducarel was mistaken : the portrait is that of 

 Theodore Have, an architect from Cleves, who worked at the building 

 of the college with Dr. Caius himself. 1 



Some, again, in a despairing effort to make out who John of 

 Padua was, have suggested that he was no other than the celebrated 

 English architect John Thorpe, who, after studying abroad at Padua, 

 on returning home may have adopted the name of the city instead of 

 his own. The late John Britton,in his "Dictionary of Architecture,"* 

 considers this notion strengthened "by the fact that plans of Somerset 

 House, in London, and Longleat > the most generally acknowledged 

 works of John of Padua, are among Thorpe's drawings in the Soane 

 Museum." Here Mr. Britton was certainly in error, as to Longleat. 

 [n the list of contents of Thorpe's volume of drawings, given by 

 Dallaway, 8 the name of Longleat does not appear : and I have myself 

 searched the volume very carefully, and was unable to find any plans 

 p portions of plans of Longleat in it. That John Thorpe was 

 John of Padua seems to be a mere idle guess which may be at once 

 dismissed. 



So again, the question recurs, " Who could he be ? " 



One, and perhaps the principal reason, why those who have tried 



'This portrait is thus described by Walpole ("Anecdotes of Painting," i., 

 '). 323, Dalla way's Edit., 1828) :— " An old picture (bad at first and now almost 

 ■ffaced by cleaning) of a man in a slashed doublet, dark curled hair and beard, 

 coking like a foreigner, and holding a pair of compasses, and by his side a 

 folyhedron, composed of twelve pentagons. This is undoubtedly Theodore Have 

 timself ." Be this as it may, it used to be called " John of Padua " : and all 

 i care about it is that the curious "polyhedron with twelve pentagons," painted 

 a the corner, may presently help me to account for that person's name being 

 'net with at all in connection with Caius College. 



2 Under the head of " Padua, John of." 

 8 " Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting/' vol. i., p. 330. 

 OL. XXIII.— -NO. LXVII. q 



