Jacobean architecture

“ Speaking strictly, England borrowed little in the region of the arts from other nations, and developed still less that was original. What is called Jacobean architecture marks indeed an interesting stage in the transition from the Gothic style. But, compared with Italian, French, Spanish, German and Flemish work of a like period, it is both timid and dry. Arts, letters and the drama. Sculpture was represented in London for a brief space by Torrigiani; painting by Holbein and Antonio More ”

“ Those suggestions were of a most decadent type, so that even the author deemed it advisable to publish a letter from a canon of the Church, stating that there was nothing in his architectural designs which was contrary to religion. It is to publications of this kind that Jacobean architecture owes the perversion of its forms and the introduction of strap work and pierced crestings, which appear for the first time at Wollaton (1580) ; at Bramshill, Hampshire (1607–1612) , and in Holland House, Kensington (1624) , it receives its fullest development. ”

“ Really, it is a very simple thing, the Anglo-Saxon home idea; for the life of me, I do not see why we have so little of it. The Jacobean manor-house historically developed to date is an admirable medium of expression, and in the illustration in Plate XCIV we may discover one other example of good American Renaissance. If you think the Tuxedo house looks too English to be called that, place it, it you please, beside Blickling Hall in Norfolkshire, a genuine Jacobean prototype, several fine illustrations of which will be found in the Architectural Record for October, 1901. ”

“ It will be seen that the designers had not yet thrown off the trammels of architecture which dominated much of the Renaissance woodwork. The garlands are not the garlands of Grinling Gibbons, and although falling within the Jacobean period, it lacks the charm which belong to typical Jacobean pieces.
At Knole, in the possession of Lord Sackville, there are some fine specimens of early Jacobean furniture, illustrations of which are included in this volume. The chair used by King James I. when sitting to the painter Mytens is of peculiar interest. ”

“ Many of them have an architectural character, and, needless to say, the architecture is always classic in style. There is one, however, which represents a scene near London; the wings are composed of old houses, the backcloth is a distant view of London itself with old St Paul’s as the principal feature. [33] It is interesting to see that the houses in the foreground are Jacobean in treatment, yet Jacobean with a larger infusion of classic detail than houses [78] of the period actually exhibited. The artist’s hand instinctively sought a classic expression.
Fig. 43.—Masque by Inigo Jones. ”

“ Whatever else we may or may not have, we have here the Elizabethan and Jacobean ideas of what houses were or ought to be, what accommodation they should contain, and how it should be disposed. In this respect the collection is particularly valuable, because we get everything at first hand; we see some designs in course of development, and others as they were finished, and entirely free from the manifold alterations which houses themselves have necessarily undergone in the course of three centuries. ”

“ The corbels and shafts which support the roof are Norman, but the brackets are Perpendicular, erected by Wolsey, who intended to build a stone vault. The present fine timber roof belongs to his time, or a little later. The stalls and seats are modern. The screen is Jacobean, above which is the organ, a fine instrument enclosed in a Jacobean case. The pulpit belongs to the same period and is very interesting, especially its grotesque carving. The central tower has fine and lofty arches, and its appearance has been improved by the removal of the ceiling which formerly existed here. ”

“ FRANCO-AMERICAN ROOF, TYPICAL EXAMPLE.
“Jacobin architecture was, at least, symmetrical.{115}”
purpose and method is always repugnant. Hence, if we eliminate the matter of fashion, I cannot see wherein newly invented architecture has any material advantage over that less recently invented except that, in some ways, we have in the former a much simpler design. The Jacobin house is over-decorated; but we must give it odds as in a handicap to make up for the progress in matters of taste the nation is supposed to have made in thirty-five years. ”

“ Clever as were the architects of the Jacobin houses—and I consider some of them to have been very clever—clever as are the inventors of our newest type of building expression, there are no inherent qualities in the work of either school of design that will serve historical succession. Invented architecture has no more atmosphere than exists upon the surface of the moon. It may divert popular fancy for a time. ”

“ The architect is not bound to exhibit structure; nor are we to complain of him for concealing it, any more than we should regret that the outer surface of the human frame conceal much of its anatomy; nevertheless, that building will generally be the noblest, which to an intelligent eye discovers the great secrets of its structure, as an animal form does, although from a careless observer they may be concealed. In the vaulting of a Gothic roof it is no deceit to throw the strength into the ribs of it, and make the intermediate vault a mere shell. ”

“ The general impression of a Jacobean hall is elegance,—an elegance not merely derived from the dignified styles of the furniture contained in it; but from the rich tapestries and hangings, the warm panels, the comparatively low and beautifully ornamented ceiling, the stately mantel-piece, the cosy bay window and the bright wood fire crackling upon the great andirons.
Perhaps the first thing that attracts one’s attention is the lavish use of the panel. The doors are panelled, as well as the ceilings and wainscots,—a fashion very popular in the days of Elizabeth. ”

“ On approaching a building of this type, we must abandon our conceptions of organic architecture: only the Greek and northern Gothic styles deserve that epithet. We must not seek for severe discipline and architectonic design. Instead of one presiding, all-determining idea, we must be prepared to welcome a wealth of separate beauties, wrought out by men of independent genius, whereby each part is made a masterpiece, and many diverse elements become a whole of picturesque rather than architectural impressiveness. ”

“ It is, however, justifiable only on the principle, universally accepted by the architects of the Renaissance, that structural members may be used for ornamental purposes without any structural meaning or expression in harmony with the character of the building to which they are applied. But this is a principle which finds no support in any thoroughly noble system of architecture—Greek, Byzantine, or Gothic. Structural members may be used properly enough with a primarily ornamental purpose when they have a character in keeping with the real structural system in which they are used. ”

“ Looking upward to its lofty summit,—where angels might alight, lapsing downward from heaven, and gaze curiously at the bustle of men below,—I could not but feel that there is a moral charm in this faithful minuteness of Gothic architecture, filling up its outline with a million of beauties that perhaps may never be studied out by a single spectator. It is the very process of nature, and no doubt produces an effect that we know not of. Classic architecture is nothing but an outline, and affords no little points, no interstices where human feelings may cling and overgrow it like ivy. ”

“ Columns and pilasters, answering to nothing in the real structural scheme of a building, are disposed with no thought save for agreeable lines and rhythmical spacings. Thus they soon came to be used in many novel ways. They were set in pairs, stretched through several stories, embraced by pediments, and varied in countless fanciful ways. In this way the architecture of the Renaissance even more than that of imperial Rome, became a mere surface architecture differing fundamentally from all of the great architectural systems of ancient times, and of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Why should the Greek and Roman ovolo, cavetto, and square, be the only combination that we know of in our common mouldings? How much richer were the architects of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, who drew with “free hands,” and gave us such exquisite effects of light and shade! We are firmly persuaded, that an architect, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of his profession, and endowed, at the same time, with the hand and the eye of a skilful artist, may cause a most happy and useful reformation of our national architecture. ”

“ But while in England the new style was winning its way, in Italy it was passing the zenith of its vigour. The continued study of ancient monuments enabled architects to reduce the old methods of design to a system which could be acquired with ease, and architectural design became less a matter of invention than a capacity for adapting new buildings to old rules. ”

“ For a pediment, however, such form would be truly monstrous; and yet even the equilateral triangle, or even one of still loftier pitch, may, under some circumstances, become a pleasing architectural form, as we may perceive from pyramids and Gothic gables. How, then, is this seeming inconsistency or contradiction to be explained? It explains itself, if we merely reflect, as we ought to do, that in architecture, forms and proportions are beautiful not positively but only relatively. ”

“ The roof is hipped, or would be a perfectly hipped roof were it not truncated at the top and finished with a balustrade and a belfry with a small pointed spire. The exterior is so devoid of all architectural amenity that one can scarcely speak of the structure as having any architecture at all. The walls are clapboarded and the cornice is of the simplest contour. The interior is plain and, owing to modernisation, has been made unattractive and prosaic. For our purpose this building is valuable as marking the four-square type of meeting house so often met with. ”

“ Thus we see that the adoption of the arched system of construction, unbiassed by any pre-existing laws of art, but aided only by the very rational desire to utilise the materials most abundantly provided by nature, led to two of the most important characteristics common to Romanesque and Gothic architecture, viz., the sub-ordinated arch and the clustered column, with the whole system of decoration derived from them; than which no two features can be pointed out which have been more richly fruitful of architectural forms the most original and beautiful. ”

“ But if anyone wanted a book about building, he could only find such as dealt with classic architecture. Hence in a short time the operations which had hitherto been thought of as building, began to be thought of as Architecture, and the only architecture that was formulated was classic architecture. The idea of that art became inseparably connected in the minds of men with classic expressions of it. Thus it came about that in the course of half a century people of culture regarded all Gothic buildings—even the noblest—as barbarous, and not worthy the name of Architecture. ”

“ In any case, and whoever designed it, the detail of the work is of interest as showing the departure from Jacobean ideals. The staircase, it is true, retains the solid newels, the massive handrail, and the stout balusters hitherto in vogue (Fig. 73) ; but the ornament has changed, and the balusters are almost as stout as if intended to be of stone. The panels on the wall are larger in size and in scale than those of Jacobean design, and they are marshalled with more pomp. The ceiling has no affinity with the busy and intricate ceilings of the departing style. ”

“ He who once drove architecture towards the mechanistic, the precise, and the volumetric, now provides the exemplar of a new mode so plastic as almost to be naturalistic in the way of Gaudí’s blocks of flats of fifty years earlier. The walls and roof are rough, indeed almost brutal, in finish, and so massive and solid that the interior of the church at certain times of the day seems positively ill-lit by the tiny deep-sunk windows that irregularly penetrate the side walls. ”

“ No buildings on earth are more interesting than the cathedrals of Europe, and especially of England, since each one stands the built-up chronicle of national architecture, on which, from crypt to spire, are recorded in significant language, the wonders of inventive genius and constructive-skill.
In tracing the hand of Providence in monumental art, it is important to observe that all original invention in architecture comes from Greece through Rome, and that the coloring thereof is also derived from the East. ”

“ Thus it attains a certain grace, analogous to that which in living creatures consists in the ease and suitableness of every movement and position to its end. Accordingly we see in the good antique style of architecture every part, whether pillar, column, arch, entablature, or door, window, stair, or balcony, attain its end in the directest and simplest manner, at the same time displaying it openly and naively; just as organised nature also does in its works. ”

“ When the system was once developed in buildings of three or more aisles, it was natural to employ a simpler form of it in the construction of buildings of simpler plan. But it is unlikely that architecture like that of the Sainte Chapelle would ever have come into being had buildings of so simple plan only been required. It was the need of vast stone-roofed churches, such as could not be constructed without aisles, that stimulated the genius of the Gothic builders, and led to the remarkable results that fill us to-day with wonder and admiration. ”