Stuart Architecture (1603-1714)
Under the
Stuart kings British architecture took a pick-and-mix approach to
Continental
influences. Fashions from France, Italy and the Netherlands could be
blended in a single building, or Dutch
gables on one house could stare
across like lifted eyebrows at the Palladian
parapet of a neighbour.
In the Jacobean period (James I: 1603-25) the depressed Tudor arch gave way to the round-head arch that had first reappeared in Elizabethan grand houses, though most windows and doors were now square-headed. Decorative gables influenced by those in Amsterdam began to appear in London and spread wider in the Caroline period (Charles I: 1649-1660). An online tour of Apethorpe Hall displays these features and ornate Jacobean interiors.
As
Surveyor of the Royal Works from 1615-1642, Inigo Jones
introduced Palladian classicism to a limited circle, but it did not
really become popular in Britain until the following century. Britain
was so slow to wholeheartedly embrace the Italian Renaissance that by
the time Jones emulated Andrea Palladio,
Italian architects had passed from pure Classicism through the more
theatrical Mannerism towards Baroque.
These later Italian styles filtered into British architecture more
quickly, with the result that Palladianism
in general follows Baroque
in Britain.
In the late 17th century and early 18th century overhanging doorhoods became popular, some shell-shaped (see above right).
Sources
- Airs, Malcolm, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House: A building history (1995). Covers England only.
- Magalotti, Count L., Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England during the Reign of King Charles the Second 1669 (1821). The illustrations.
- Morrice, R.,The Buildings of Britain: Stuart and Baroque (1982).
- Platt, C., The Great Rebuildings of Tudor and Stuart England: A Revolution in Architectural Taste (1994).