John Webb | |
---|---|
Born | 1611 |
Died | Butleigh Court, Butleigh, Somerset | 24 October 1672
Nationality | English |
Occupation | Architect |
Buildings | Wilton House |
John Webb (1611 – 24 October 1672) was an English architect and scholar, who collaborated on some works with Inigo Jones.
He was born in Little Britain, Smithfield, London, [1] and died in Butleigh in Somerset. He had a close association with fellow architect and theatre designer Inigo Jones, for whom he worked as an assistant from 1628. [2] In the 1640s and 1650s, Jones and Webb jointly designed Wilton House (near Salisbury, Wiltshire) with its distinctive Single and Double Cube rooms. [3] [4]
Webb's earliest known drawings were made for the Barber Surgeons' Hall in London in 1636–7, and in 1638 he designed a lodge for John Penruddock at Hale in Hampshire and stables for a Mr Featherstone, but it is unclear if these were built. [2]
At the beginning of the Civil War, Jones left London to attend the King at Oxford. He was later in Basing House and was captured at the end of the siege. Webb stayed in London, having been appointed Deputy Surveyor by Jones. He acted as a spy for Charles I, probably out of zeal rather than by appointment, and sent the plans of London's Lines of Communication (new fortifications) together with the number and location of the newly mounted guns.
In 1649 Webb made a number of drawings for Durham House, an unrealised project for a townhouse for the Earl of Pembroke on the Strand. In one drawing the emphasised keystones of the entrance and ground floor windows recall an early design by Jones for the Queen's House. [5]
Upon Jones' death in 1652, Webb inherited a substantial fortune as well as a library of drawings and designs, many of which dated back to Jones' influential travels to Italy. [4]
In 1654 Webb designed the first classical portico on an English country house, at The Vyne in Hampshire. [6] In the Corinthian style, this portico stamps this older house as Palladian, [7] 50 years before the birth of Lord Burlington.
In the early 1660s Charles II commissioned Webb to rebuild Greenwich Palace in a more contemporary Baroque style. [8] His plan was for three ranges around a courtyard, open on the north side towards the Thames. The buildings were to be aligned with Inigo Jones' Queen's House, which stands a little way further south from the river, just short of the current northern boundary of Greenwich Park. The old buildings were demolished, but only one block of Webb's design was built; constructed between 1664 and 1669, it was never occupied by the royal family, and was later incorporated into Christopher Wren's designs for Greenwich Hospital, where it forms the eastern part of the King Charles Block. [9] Webb also designed the enlargement of the Queen's House in 1662.
Further afield they also share a connection with Kingston Lacy, a stately home in Dorset where Webb supervised early works (c. 1660) on the building, following designs originally prepared by Jones. [10]
Webb also designed the rebuild of Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire between 1654 and 1668, [11] and made alterations to Northumberland House, a large London townhouse. He also designed Gunnersbury House in Ealing. [8] His buildings and architectural drawings differ from those of Inigo Jones particularly in the use of rustication, a contrast in texture which is less frequently seen in Jones' work. [12]
Webb's surviving drawings, more than 200 in number, are held by Worcester College, Oxford, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and Chatsworth House. Webb may have been working towards a publication on the classical orders. [2] An unbuilt design for a theatre attributed to Webb, discovered in the library of Worcester College, Oxford, was used as the basis for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse in London, opened in 2014.
Webb collaborated with Inigo Jones and Walter Charleton to produce a book about Stonehenge. Ten years later, he published his own Vindication of Stone-henge Restored.
Following the restoration, there was growing interest in China and its culture. Several books were published in the 1660s in England. In 1669, Webb brought out An historical essay endeavoring a probability that the language of the Empire of China is the primitive language , the first treatise on the Chinese language in any European language. Having never visited China or mastered the language, he based his essay on the travelogues of Jesuit missionaries. [13]
Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington and 4th Earl of Cork, was a British architect and noble often called the "Apollo of the Arts" and the "Architect Earl". The son of the 2nd Earl of Burlington and 3rd Earl of Cork, Burlington never took more than a passing interest in politics despite his position as a Privy Counsellor and a member of both the British House of Lords and the Irish House of Lords. His great interests in life were architecture and landscaping, and he is remembered for being a builder and a patron of architects, craftsmen and landscapers, Indeed, he is credited with bringing Palladian architecture to Britain and Ireland. His major projects include Burlington House, Westminster School, Chiswick House and Northwick Park.
Inigo Jones was an English architect who was the first significant architect in England in the early modern era and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable architect in England, Jones was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House which is the first building in England designed in a pure classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model for future developments in the West End. He made major contributions to stage design by his work as a theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.
Queen's House is a former royal residence in the London borough of Greenwich, which presently serves as a public art gallery. It was built between 1616 and 1635 on the grounds of the now demolished Greenwich Palace, a few miles downriver from the City of London. In its current setting, it forms a central focus of the Old Royal Naval College with a grand vista leading to the River Thames, a World Heritage Site called, Maritime Greenwich. The Queen's House architect, Inigo Jones, was commissioned by Queen Anne of Denmark in 1616 and again to finish the house in 1635 by Queen Henrietta Maria. The House was commissioned by both Anne and Henrietta as a retreat and place to display and enjoy the artworks they had accumulated and commissioned; this includes a ceiling of the Great Hall that features a work by Orazio Gentileschi titled Allegory of Peace and the Arts.
Wilton House is an English country house at Wilton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, which has been the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke for over 400 years. It was built on the site of the medieval Wilton Abbey. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII presented Wilton Abbey and its attached estates to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke. The house has literary associations. Shakespeare's theatre company performed there, and there was an important literary salon culture under its occupation by Mary Sidney, wife of the second Earl.
Isaac de Caus (1590–1648) was a French landscaper and architect. He arrived in England in 1612 to carry on the work that his brother Salomon de Caus had left behind. His first known work in England was a grotto that Caus designed in 1623 located in the basement of Inigo Jones's Banqueting House. He is noted for his work at Wilton House and Lincoln's Inn.
Andrea Palladio was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Venetian Republic. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily Vitruvius, is widely considered to be one of the most influential individuals in the history of architecture. While he designed churches and palaces, he was best known for country houses and villas. His teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, gained him wide recognition.
Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective and the principles of formal classical architecture from ancient Greek and Roman traditions. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Palladio's interpretation of this classical architecture developed into the style known as Palladianism.
Giacomo Leoni, also known as James Leoni, was an Italian architect, born in Venice. He was a devotee of the work of Florentine Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who had also been an inspiration for Andrea Palladio. Leoni thus served as a prominent exponent of Palladianism in English architecture, beginning in earnest around 1720. Also loosely referred to as Georgian, this style is rooted in Italian Renaissance architecture.
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The Vyne is a Grade I listed 16th-century country house in the parish of Sherborne St John, near Basingstoke, in Hampshire, England. The house was first built circa 1500–10 in the Tudor style by William Sandys, 1st Baron Sandys, Lord Chamberlain to King Henry VIII. In the 17th century it was transformed to resemble a classical mansion. Today, although much reduced in size, the house retains its Tudor chapel, with contemporary stained glass. The classical portico on the north front was added in 1654 to the design of John Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones, and is notable as the first portico in English domestic architecture.
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John and William Bastard were British surveyor-architects, and civic dignitaries of the town of Blandford Forum in Dorset. John and William generally worked together and are known as the "Bastard brothers". They were builders, furniture makers, ecclesiastical carvers and experts at plasterwork, but are most notable for their rebuilding work at Blandford Forum following a large fire of 1731, and for work in the neighbourhood that Colvin describes as "mostly designed in a vernacular baroque style of considerable merit though of no great sophistication.". Their work was chiefly inspired by the buildings of Wren, Archer and Gibbs. Thus the Bastards' architecture was retrospective and did not follow the ideals of the more austere Palladianism which by the 1730s was highly popular in England.
Nicholas Stone was an English sculptor and architect. In 1619 he was appointed master-mason to James I, and in 1626 to Charles I.
Chaloner Chute I of The Vyne, Sherborne St John, Hampshire, was an English lawyer, Member of Parliament and Speaker of the House of Commons during the Commonwealth.
Giles Arthington Worsley was an English architectural historian, author, editor, journalist and critic, specialising in British country houses.
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Nicolò Molin (1562-1608) was a Venetian noble and ambassador to England.