Sunday 10th - One of the most beautiful buildings in the country by one of my most admired architects - Sir John Vanbrugh, died March 26, 1726, London, an architect who brought the English Baroque style to its culmination in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. He was also one of the dramatists of the Restoration comedy of manners. Vanbrugh designed Castle Howard in Yorkshire, for Lord Carlisle. His first design was far simpler than the richly articulated palace that resulted. Probably he was untrained, but aptly at hand was Nicholas Hawksmoor [my personal favourite English Architect], the accomplished clerk of the architect Sir Christopher Wren. Hawksmoor played the assistant to Vanbrugh but was in effect the partner. These two men brought to its peak English Baroque—an architecture concerned with the rhythmic effect of diversified masses, using Classical architectural elements to that end. The Vanbrugh-Hawksmoor Baroque manner is often called “heavy,” but the heaviness is in the service of the dramatic. The style they evolved was a joint creation: Hawksmoor had already begun to develop it in the 1690s and acted as draftsman, administrator, and architectural detailer, while Vanbrugh is credited with the buildings’ general plan and heroic scale.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Aug 2014 19:53:18 +0000
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