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The Architecture of the Wall: Astylism in the architecture of Lord Burlington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

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Extract

The third Earl of Burlington is generally recognized as the moving power behind the flourishing of neo-palladian architecture in Britain during the first half of the eighteenth century, but his own architecture has been said to be marred by a peculiar stiffness and academicism. This accusation, however frequent, is rarely qualified with any precision; the alleged academicism has been generally explained in terms of Burlington’s strict dependence upon a very limited number of sources, namely Palladio and Inigo Jones, whose authority, according to some scholars, was always sought by the Earl. Such a treatment does not do justice to Burlington, who was in fact a highly original architect using the classical language of architecture in a way which can only be described as innovative. The striking and often jarring quality of his architecture is achieved by producing large surfaces of bare, smooth, astylar wall interrupted only by neatly cut out fenestration and by juxtaposing pure volumes, untrammelled by decoration, so as to achieve a typical staccato quality — first noted by Rudolph Wittkower; and, finally, by avoiding any chiaroscural and textural treatment of the façade. The final product is an architecture which it will be suggested is of a logical clarity unparalleled until the surge of neo-classicism, much later on in the century. Rather than dry ‘academicism’, it will be argued that this new type of architecture represents a clear and deliberate development of Burlington’s aesthetics into a coherent architectural system which consciously selected, and rejected, common Renaissance practices.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 33 , 1990 , pp. 83 - 101
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1990

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References

Notes

1 See in particular Harris, J., The Palladians (London, 1981)Google Scholar; idem. ‘The Building Works of Lord Viscount Bruce’, in White, R. ed., Lord Burlington and his circle. Papers given at a Georgian Group Symposium on 22 May 1982 (London, 1982), pp. 25–51 Google Scholar; see also Wittkower, R., Palladio and Palladianism (New York, 1974), pp. 115–32.Google Scholar

2 See n. 1, and P. Kingsbury, ‘Lord Burlington’s architectural theory and practice’, in R. White ed., Lord Burlington and his circle, pp. 2–24.

3 Cf. Wittkower (1974), op. cit.

4 The seminal studies on Alberti’s ideas on the use of columns are by Wittkower, R., Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (London, 1973), pp. 32–56 Google Scholar, and Damish, H., ‘The Column and the wall’, Architectural Design, 49 (1979), pp. 18–25.Google Scholar

5 Traditionally the English aristocracy had been allowed to practise in the field of literature, but any other art form was strictly forbidden because of its mechanical and practical nature. Given that Burlington appreciated literature but was not of a literary disposition himself, his choice was very restricted. Architecture was the only art that he could practise without being rejected by his peers in England. Its mathematical component made architecture part of philosophy, and therefore not a practical art; furthermore the tradition of the gentleman architect who, in the absence of professional architects, conceived designs for masons and builders to implement was well established in England as socially acceptable. Architecture was also the art form in which, according to Shaftesbury, the nation needed most to advance; Shaftesbury also believed that noble architecture reflected the morality and freedom of the society that produced it. This notion was not peculiar to Shaftesbury alone, but it was quickly taken up by Addison, Berkeley and many others, thus making Burlington’s architectural experiments an almost inevitable event.

6 Robert Bruce to the Earl of Burlington, letter dated 29 July 1719 (Chatsworth 144.0).

7 Sir Andrew Fountaine to the Earl of Burlington, letter dated Richmond 31 August 1719 (Chatsworth 153.0).

8 William Kent to Burrell Massingberd, letter dated Paris 15 November 1719 (Lincoln Diocesan Archives, 2MM, B19A), ‘I met him [Burlington] at Genova & he would make me promise to stay for him here [i.e. in Paris], he was going towards Vicenza & Venice…’.

9 Royal Academy of Music, Minutes of Meetings of the Court of Directors (PRO, London, LC72/3 part 1, f. 72), 30 November 1719, Burlington was one of the directors present.

10 The annotations concern San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; the palazzi Chiericati, Porto and Thiene, Vicenza; the villa Capra, Vicenza; and the villa Foscari, Mira di Brenta.

11 Cf. Kingsbury (1982) cited in n. 2.

12 The Accademia dell’ Arcadia had been established in 1690 by fourteen Italian literati who had originally formed a group around Queen Christina of Sweden. They took their name from the central province of the Peloponnesus, craggy, inhospitable and thinly populated, which had been idealized by poets since late antiquity as the land of the Golden Age and of a lost innocence. Prospective members had to fulfil three basic requirements: they had to be twenty-four years old, be well born and well bred, and be recognized as an ‘erudito’ in at least one principal art or science. Women were admitted if they were writers by profession. Although the Accademia’s activities tend to be studied only in a literary context, its scope was much wider and this was reflected in the composition of its membership. Alongside writers and intellectuals one could find composers, like Arcangelo Corelli, architects like Filippo Juvarra, and a score of more or less famous painters such as Carlo Maratti, Giuseppe Ghezzi, Giovanni Odazzi, Giovanni Morandi and Francesco Trevisani. Foreigners could also join, and in these years we find the names of Henry Newton (1708) the British envoy to Florence, John Talman (1711) and Daniel Lock (1712), to mentionjust a few. The Roman ‘colony’ was soon followed by ‘colonies’ in other Italian regions as well as abroad. By 1712 membership in Rome had grown to include 130 ‘shepherds’ and ‘shepherdesses’ who met in a garden amphitheatre in the grounds of Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli on the Aventine. Despite the lack of an explicit and articulated aesthetic, the Arcadian movement became a force for change across the whole spectrum of the arts. The members of the academy proposed ‘buon gusto’ as the basis of any art form. ‘Buon gusto’, however, had degenerated in the hands of mannerist and baroque artists, and it could only be re-established by means of a decisive return to classical models, a reliance on reason as opposed to fantasy, and an awareness that the purpose of art is not only to surprise and delight. For the Arcadians art had a fundamentally didactic and moral goal; the choice of imagery and style should enhance these aims. By 1714 the Arcadia was split into two groups: one, led by Crescimbeni, relied on the authority of Boccaccio and Petrarch, the other, following the suggestions of Gravina, advocated a much more stringent form of classicism, closely adhering to Greek and Roman models. The theoretical controversy raging amongst the literary members of the academy forced painters, as well as architects, to address the question of their classical models. The academy embraced such different artists that inevitably no single style emerged in exclusive response to the issues debated, but a period of experimentation began, which contained the seeds of neo-classicism. The one thing, however, that all the Arcadian painters shared was the conviction that Raphael was the greatest and purest model to follow.

13 Raphael was the first to realize that the system of rules handed down in Vitruvius’s treatise was far more restrictive than the surviving evidence of architectural practice of the ancients. This critical rethinking of Vitruvius was pursued by Peruzzi after Raphael’s untimely death; cf. R. Quednau, ‘Aemulatio Veterum. Lo studio e la recensione dell’antichità in Peruzzi e Raffaello’, in M. Fagiolo and M. L. Madonna eds, Baldassare Peruzzi. Pittura, Scena e Architettura nel ‘500 (Rome, 1987). pp. 399–432.

14 Classicist ideas were diffused in France by Nicolas Poussin, and by theorists like Du Fresnoy and Félibien.

15 As far as I know there is no study of Raphael’s fortunes in England in the eighteenth century but some interesting insights can be gained from a consideration of Alexander Pope’s position on the subject; Brownell, cf. M., Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, in particular chapters 1 and 2, and Spence, J., Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men Collected from Conversation, ed. Osborn, J., 2 vols (Oxford, 1966), passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Vasari listed the Villa Madama, the several houses in the Borgo (singling out Palazzo Branconio dell’Aquila), the palace in the Via Sangallo in Florence for the bishop of Troyes, as well as Agostino Chigi’s chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo; Vasari, cf. G., Le Vite dei più eccellenti Pittori, Scultori et Architetti ed. Milanesi, G., 8 vols (Florence, 1878-85), iv, p. 368.Google Scholar

17 Cf. Wittkower (1974), pp. 95–112.

18 On the importance and impact of Palladio’s treatise see Barbieri, F., ‘Il Valore dei Quattro Libri’, Bollettino del CISA, xiv (1972), pp. 63–79 Google Scholar, and L. Magagnato, Introduzione, in Palladio, A., I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura ed. Magagnato, L. and Marini, P. (Milan, 1980), pp. xi–lxvi.Google Scholar

19 Book I, x, p. 70; all quotations have been translated by the author from the Orlandi-Portoghesi edition of Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria (1966). The Rykwert, Leach and Tavernor translation (Cambridge, Mass., 1988) reads ‘… a row of columns is nothing other than a wall that has been pierced in several places by openings’.

20 Book I, x, p. 70; notice how the English translations by both Wittkower and Damish do not properly convey the precision of the Latin: ‘Quin et columnam ipsam deffinisse cum iuvet, fortassis non inepte earn dicam firmam quandam et perpetuam muri partem excitatam ad perpendiculum ab solo imo usque ad summum tecti ferendi gratia’. Rykwert, Leach and Tavernor perpetrate the same mistake, they translate: ‘Indeed, when defining the column itself, it may not be wrong to describe it as a certain, solid and continuous section of wall, which has been raised perpendicularly from the ground, up high for the purpose of bearing the roof.

21 Book 7, xv, p. 642.

22 Palladio, Cf., I Quattro Libri dell’Architettura (Venice, 1570), 1, 13.Google Scholar

23 The frontispiece of the 1550 edition (the editio princeps of the Italian translation by Cosimo Bartoli) bears Burlington’s autograph in the top right corner and on the facing page a dedication in an unidentified hand. The dedication reads: ‘Al gran Lorenzo, nel sermon romano / e quindi nel toscano / a Cosmo, Medicei Lumi, fui dato: / poi che al Conte Riccardo, amico Fato, / al Palladio Britannico mi diede; / posso dir: Mi possiede / un terzo Eroe, pari in Idee sublimi, / ma molto piu Conoscitor de’ primi’. The 1565 edition is heavily underlined with the same brown ink normally used by Burlington. The following is a list of the frequency of these underlinings: Book 11, pp. 36, 37, 38, lines 4, 5, 13, 17; p. 41, lines 17 and 19; p. 44, lines 18, 19, 20, 22, 26, 28, 31, 36, 38, 43; p. 45, lines 8, 16, 18. Book III, p. 90, lines 18, 20, 38. Bookiv, p. 120, lines 12, 14, 16, 26, 29, 33; p. 121, lines 7 and 16. Book v, p. 143, lines 32, 34, 36; pp. 153–57. Book vi, p. 197, line 18. Book VII, pp. 214–16 and 221. Book VIII, p. 295, lines 27, 32, 38, p. 298. Book IX, p. 340, lines 21, 22, 29; p. 351, lines 32 and 36; p. 354, lines 16, 20, 24, 27, 31, 38, 39, 40; p. 355, lines 1, 8, 15, 27, 33, 40; p. 356, 357, 358. Bookx, p. 365, 367, 37°-75, 376, line 22; p. 382, lines 9, 11, 14.

24 Book 6, ii, p. 446.

25 Burns, H., Andrea Palladio 1508–1580. The portico and the farmyard (London, 1975), p. 226.Google Scholar

26 Geymueller, H. von, Die urspruenglichen Entwuerfe von Sand Peter (Berlin, 1875), p. 7 Google Scholar; Portoghesi, P., Architettura del Rinascimento a Roma (Milan, 1979), p. 353.Google Scholar

27 For a full discussion of the Tuscan order see Ackerman, J. S., ‘The Tuscan/Rustic Order. A Study in the Metaphorical Language of Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XLII (March 1983), pp. 15–34.Google Scholar

28 The list of buildings with such characteristics is long, I shall limit myself to mentioning just a few: Raphael’s Palazzo Pandolfini, Florence (1516–17), his Palazzo Alberini, Rome (1518) continued by Giulio Romano; Sangallo’s Palazzo Baldassini, Rome (1514–22), the Palazzetto Leroy, Rome (1523) in collaboration with Peruzzi, Palazzo Farnese, Rome (1534–46); Sansovino’s Palazzo Nicolini Amici, Rome (1526–27); Ligorio’s Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome (1552); Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Maccarani, Rome (1522–23), his own house in Mantua (1538–46). For the Roman palaces see Frommel, C. F., Der romische Palastbau der Hochrenaissance, 3 vols (Tubingen, 1973)Google Scholar, and P. Portoghesi, Architettura del Rinascimento a Roma, in particular the richly illustrated taxonomical study pp.349-60.

29 Burlington owned an elevation of Palazzo Pandolfini (now RIBA Vis.38), which was part of a set of 115 drawings executed by Antonio Visentini and his workshop. The set represents a survey of Venetian and Central Italian ancient and modern architecture. The drawing of Palazzo Pandolfini, executed like the others in pen, sepia ink and grey wash (355 × 480 mm) is measured in English feet and bears an inscription in Visentini’s handwriting that correctly identifies the building as the work of Raphael (‘Archittettura [sic] di Raffaello Saneio d’Urbino & Palazzo dei Pandolfini. Firenze’). Interestingly enough in the Visentini survey Florentine architecture is illustrated only by those buildings which are more Roman in character, that is the already mentioned Palazzo Pandolfini, Palazzo Uguccioni (attributed by Visentini to Michelangelo following the seventeenth-century attribution first proposed by Bocchi, F., Cinelli, M. G., Le Bellezze della Città di Firenze (Florence, 1677), p. 86 Google Scholar, and now believed to have been executed in 1550–59 by Mariotto di Zanobi Folfi, following a design by Raphael; cf. R. Dalla Negra, Un Episodio Architettonico nella Firenze del Cinquecento: il Palazzo Uguccioni, in Raffaello e l’Architettura a Firenze nella prima metà del Cinquecento (Florence, 1984), pp. 157–74), and Palazzo Giacomini Larderel (also attributed to Michelangelo by Visentini, but actually built in 1558–80 from designs by Giovanni Antonio Dosio).

30 On Palladio’s ‘stripped style’ see Ackerman, J. S., Palladio (London, 1978), pp. 58–61 Google Scholar; the villas where this style is implemented are: the villa Godi, Lonedo Vicentino (1537), the villa Valmarana, Vigardolo (1541), the villa Forni-Cerato, Montecchio Precalcino (1541–42), the villa Caldogno, Caldogno (c. 1545, and of debated attribution), the villa Saraceno, Finale di Agugliaro (1545), and the villa Poiana, Poiana Maggiore (1548).

31 Palladio designed and built very few public buildings, they are: the Basilica, Vicenza (1546–48), the Loggia del Capitaniato, Vicenza (1565), the Town Palace, Brescia (1575), and the façade project for the Ducal Palace, Venice Qanuary-February 1578).

32 They include the Queen’s Chapel, St James’s Palace (1623–25), the design for a house with scrolled pedimented gable (ascribed to Sir Fulke Greville), Chatsworth [Chiswick 19], the designs for Lord Maltravers’s development in Lothbury, London, and the elevation for a seven-window house with an iron pergola (Worcester College, Oxford). Whilst the Fulke Greville design is still believed to belong to the middle of the 1616–19 period, the datings of the Maltravers design and of the seven-window house have been firmly placed around 1638. See Harris, J. and Higgott, G., Inigo Jones’s Complete Architectural Drawings (London, 1989), p. 88 and pp. 256–61.Google Scholar

33 Quoted in Colvin, H., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (London, 1978), p. 801.Google Scholar

34 There is no general study of John Talman, the most comprehensive information on him is provided by Colvin (1978), op. cit., pp. 800–02.

35 Talman had assembled an impressive collection the size of which can best be gauged from the following remarks made in 1724/25 by a member of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, quoted in Colvin (1978), p. 801:

‘… his Noble & Sumptuous Collection … is of the greatest Value & Beauty I ever beheld … This Treasure consists of about 200 volumes distinguished into Different Subjects the Chiefest of which are

1. Churches, Pallaces, Monuments & Publick Edifices with the Alterpieces & Processions in them.

2. Statues, Alto Releivo & Basso Releivo Sculpture.

3. Vases, Utensils.

4. The Exact Dimensions Weights Shape & Colour of all the most Valuable & pretious Jewels in the known World. Cameos and Intaglios.

5. The Crowns, Coronetts, Scepters &c. of all Sovereigns Princes & States

6. All the parts of the Habitts of the Emperors, Kings, Doges, Popes, Archbishops, Cardinals’.

36 Cf. Talman’s Letterbook, passim (MS Eng. Let. e.34, Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Letterbook is to be published in 1994 by Mr Hugh MacAndrew for the Walpole Society); for Kent’s references to Talman’s taste see Sicca, C. M., ‘On William Kent’s Roman Sources’, Architectural History, xxix (1986), pp. 134–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Talman approached Lord Harley (cf. Humphrey Wanley’s Journal, BL, Lansdowne 771, ff. 2–49).

38 Cf. Holkham, MSS 737 and 738, passim.

39 The few surviving dates suggest a hasty journey rather than a leisurely visit, and a well thought out, pre-determined choice of sights. In the absence of any documentary evidence proving a visit to Rome, such a visit is possible but remains conjectural. We know that Burlington must have been in Paris at the beginning of August since on 29 July Robert Bruce wrote to him in London. Given Fountaine’s letter of 31 August enquiring after his own health and that of his retinue, we must presume that by about the middle of August Burlington was chafeing at the unexpected and protracted delay. However, in the absence of any other evidence, we must presume that the delay was not further prolonged greatly. This implies that Burlington could have been in Italy by late August/early September. The next evidence of his movements is provided by Kent’s letter from Paris of 15 November, which indicates that the two met at Genoa in early to mid-October. This date can be deduced from the fact that by 15 November Kent had been in Paris for three weeks; given at least a week-long voyage, we know that he therefore left Genoa sometime in the middle of October. In his letter Kent complains of a long delay in Florence waiting for Sir William Wentworth, but he makes no mention of a long delay in Genoa; it is therefore difficult to conjecture Burlington meeting Kent in Genoa much before the middle of October. This leaves a period of four to eight weeks of Burlington’s voyage which is unaccounted for. Given that by 19 November he complains to Fountaine (Lord Burlington to Sir Andrew Fountaine, letter dated Turin 19 November, 1719; Narford Hall Library) of not having seen the Vicentine villas because of flooding, and that he bought a copy of Palladio’s treatise on 3 November, there can be no possibility of his having been in Vicenza or the Veneto before the middle or end of October. Burlington’s presence in Genoa in the first half of October, en route to the Veneto, is difficult to associate with any reason other than the end of a return boat journey from either Rome or Leghorn, since in the eighteenth century they preferred to travel up and down the west coast of Italy by boat. A return trip to Genoa would imply that Burlington had been to Rome during the five to eight weeks which are otherwise unaccounted for. Such a visit would have been perfectly consistent with one of the aims of his trip, that is, to hire composers and opera singers. Furthermore, from the evidence of his Vicentine visit, it appears that by this time in his career Burlington had become very sensitive to the problem of the correct working of column and wall, and it would have been most apposite for him to want to study Roman examples. For a complete transcription of the letter at Narford Hall see Clarke, J., ‘The Mysterious Mr Buck’, Apollo, cxxix (May 1989), pp. 317–22 Google Scholar. Although I do not agree with some of Mrs Clarke’s conclusions, her suggestions about Burlington’s 1719 trip to Italy are substantially close to mine.

40 Nothing precise is known about this 1719 trip except that at some point he was in Venice, where he drew a sketch of the baptismal font in St Mark (the drawing, inscribed ‘I. Talman 1719’, is in the Cottonian Collection in Plymout City Art Gallery). Some conjectures may, however, be made about the time of Talman’s departure for Italy which must have taken place sometime after he made his will, dated 7 March 1719. It is also possible that his return to England occurred shortly before or after his father’s death, which occurred on 22 November 1719.

41 On Kent see Jourdain, M., William Kent (London, 1954)Google Scholar, and Sicca, C. M., William Kent: Architecture and Landscape, in Wilton-Ely, J. ed., A Tercentenary Tribute to William Kent (Hull, 1985), pp. 14–25 and 42–77.Google Scholar

42 Cf. Sicca (1986) op. cit.

43 Chats worth, Graham & Colliers Acc. Bk, f. 1.

44 Chatsworth, Graham & Colliers Acc. Bk, f. 36.

45 This belief was founded on Burlington’s statement, in his introduction to the Fabbriche Antiche of 1730, that the drawings had been found at Maser and that he had gone to Italy determined to trace and acquire these drawings.

46 Diario del Viaggio a Roma nel 1710, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice (MSS CI.XI, 140 6777), f. 188. Puppi was the first to study this document and question the traditional view in an unpublished lecture at the Centro A. Palladio, Vicenza, in September 1980, but he did not link Trevisan and Talman.

47 RIBA xiii/i, cf. Burns, Andrea Palladio… (1975), n. 489, p. 263, and A. Nesselrath, ‘Raffaello e lo studio dell’antico nel Rinascimento’, in Frommel, C. L., Ray, S. and Tafuri, M., Raffaello architetto (Milan, 1984), n.3.2.8, pp. 405–06.Google Scholar

48 RIBA xiv/ii, cf. Burns (1975) cit., p. 231, N. Pagliara, ‘La Roma antica di Fabio Calvo’, Psicon, III, ns. 8–9, (1976), pp. 85–86; Lewis, D., The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (Washington D.C., 1981), pp. 52–53 Google Scholar and Tafuri, M., ‘Progetto di Casa in Via Giulia, Roma, 1519–1520’, in Frommel, C. L., Ray, S. and Tafuri, M. Raffaello architetto, (1984), n.2.14.4, pp. 239–40.Google Scholar

49 RIBA viii/3-6r–v, Bafile, cf. M., ‘I Disegni di Villa Giulia nella Collezione Burlington-Devonshire’, Palladio, 11 (1953). pp. 54–64 Google Scholar; Moore, F. L., ‘A Contribution to the Study of the Villa Giulia’, Roemisches Jarbuch für Kunstgeschichte, XII ((1969), pp. 171–94 Google Scholar, and E. MacDougall, ‘L’Ingegnoso Artifizio. Sixteenth-Century Garden Fountains in Rome’, in Fons Sapientiae Renaissance Garden Fountains, ed. E. MacDougall (Washington, D.C., 1978), pp. 87–113.

50 Chatsworth LXix/40 (450 × 374mm), Wurm, cf. H., Baldassare Peruzzi. Architekturzekhnungen. Tafelband (Tubingen, 1984), p. 158 Google Scholar, and LXix/43 (247 x 402 mm); the medium of both drawings is pen and sepia ink.

51 Chatsworth xxxv/23, cf. Lewis The Drawings of Andrea Palladio (1981), n. 27, pp. 50–52. Lewis failed to identify the author of the inscription in Italian, which was written by Resta. This drawing must have belonged to the volume of architectural drawings mentioned by Talman in his letter to Aldrich and Topham, but apparently not acquired by Somers. My hypothesis is that the volume was bought by Talman for himself.

52 Cf. A catalogue of the Collection of Italian, Flemish and French Books of Prints of the Rt. Hon. Edward Earl of Oxford and Mortimer (London, 1745–46), p. 14.