HENRY WOTTON, The Elements of Architecture, London: John Bill, 1624 edited by CHARLES DAVIS with an anthology of critical commentary PART ONE FONTES 68 [8.10.2012] Zitierfähige URL: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/volltexte/2012/1870/ urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-artdok-18707 1 First page of the Elements of Architecture, 1624 (following the preface; fol. A 1 recto) 2 C O N T E N T S PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR 3 INTRODUCTION 4 A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY OF COMMENTARY TO WOTTON’S ELEMENTS 9 THE FULL TEXT OF THE ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE 24 GLOSSARY OF UNUSUAL WORDS IN THE ELEMENTS 81 A DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK 86 THE PRINTER 87 EDITIONS 88 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR THE ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE 90 SIR HENRY WOTTON (1568-1639): A SUMMARY BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 92 THE WRITINGS OF HENRY WOTTON 94 BIOGRAPHICAL APPENDIX 96 A NOTE ON BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES SIDNEY LEE, „HENRY WOTTON“, FROM: DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY A NOTE CONCERNING HENRY WOTTON, THE ELEMENTS OF ARCHITECTURE, PART TWO 106 3 Portrait of Henry Wotton National Portrait Gallery, London 4 INTRODUCTION It has often been said that Henry Wotton’s Elements of Architecture was the first significant British contribution to architectural theory, the first book devoted to this topic written in English and published in England. Nevertheless it was preceded by treatises on measuring (Diggs, 1556 ff.; Bedwell, 1614; Gedde, 1615), by translations of Lomazzo, Blum, and Serlio (1598, 1601, 1611), by two works by Andrew Boorde devoted, in whole or in part, to how a man should build his house (1542, 1550), and, most significantly, by John Shute’s First and Chief Grounds of Architecture (1563), which was undoubtedly the first English book specifically about architecture. Urban concepts had been expounded in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), and Wotton was followed almost immediately with a essay “On Building”, in the 1625 edition of the Essays of Sir Francis Bacon, where Bacon appeared in the unfamiliar rôle of an architectural critic espousing a proto-functionalist position, not without similaritaries to Wotton (FONTES 16; cf. 18). These works anticipated similar ones by Balthazar Gerbier of 1662 and 1663 (FONTES 7 and 8). The format of Shute’s slender folio volume and its illustrations testify to an intention to join the Italian tradition of architectural treatises. Shute’s treatment of the five classical orders, illustrated after Serlio with variations of his own, follows a general essay on architecture. While Shute’s work derives to a considerable extent from Vitruvius and Serlio, he writes that he is including his observations and measurements of ancient buildings made in Italy. In the dedication of his book Shute claims he was sent to Italy in 1550 by John Dudley, the first Duke of Northumberland, “to confer with the doings of skilled masters in architecture, and also to view such ancient monuments of architecture as are still extant.” For each order he set down a central diagram of the parts and the measurements, flanked on one side by a detailed depiction of a pedestal, column and entablature, and on the other side by an order with an appropriate caryatid or atlas replacing the column shaft. Not a general theory of architecture, Shute’s book is simply a handbook of the forms and nomenclature of the five classical column orders, comparable to numerous North European Säulenbücher. In contrast, when, six decades later, Henry Wotton came to write his Elements of Architecture, apparently in 1624, he had spent many, many years in residence in Italy, and he possessed an intimate familiarity with the Italian tradition of writing on architecture. In 1570 there was printed at London the first English translation of Euclid’s Elements, made by Henry Billingsley and bearing the title The Elements of Geometrie of the most auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara (sic). The translation was preceded by a nearly fifty- page ‘mathematical’ preface by the famed mathematician, astronomer, navigator, and occultist, John Dee, who brought together the worlds of science and magic: “a very fruitful preface, specifying the chief mathematical sciences, what they are, and whereunto commodius,” among them ‘Geographie’, ‘Chorographie’, ‘Perspective’, ‘Astronomie’, and ‘Musike’, the less familiar ‘Hydrographie’,‘Anthropographie’, ‘Helicosophie’, ‘Meandrie’, and ‘Zographie’, and, near the end, the science of ‘Architecture’, amply treated in nearly four pages (fol. d iij-d iiij). Following Vitruvius and Alberti, Dee treats architecture as an intellectual profession and stresses the divide between the architect and the builder. Wotton’s choice of title almost certainly reflects the title given to Euclid’s work, and he follows Vitruvius and Dee in viewing architecture as a science “garnished with many doctrines and diverse instructions.” At this juncture, it might also be noted that near the end of the Elements of Architecture, Wotton observes, “Now as almost all those, which have delivered the Elements of Logicke, doe usually conclude, with a Chapter touching Methode”, and in the same year of Wotton’s book, 1624, there was published in London The Elements of Logick, a translation of a work by Peter Du Moulin (Elementa logica) by Nathaniel De Lawne. 5 And, while Wotton’s treatise is perhaps not a general theory of architecture in its entirety, the author does propose an orderly, systematic, and comprehensive consideration of architecture and its precepts, and he considers the fundamental means and ends of building. Although Wotton’s more restricted topic is the house, he does not mention the ‘country house’ as such. He speaks instead abstractly of the Fabrique (Italian: Fabbrica), or building, and not of homes or houses that are lived in, although this idea lies behind many of his observations. Only at the beginning of Part II does the concept of the deep identification of habitation and inhabitant come to the fore as Wotton writes of: “Every man’s proper mansion house and home, being the theatre of his hospitality, the seat of self-fruition, the most comfortable part of his own life, the noblest of his son’s inheritance, a kind of private princedom; nay, to the possessor’s thereof, an epitomie of the whole world (...).” And, if Wotton’s treatise is derivative, it is cast in his own distinct form, language, and style, and it consistently maintains a distinct tone and independence of thought and expression which owe little or nothing to earlier architectural writing. His originality of expression and thought give Wotton an established position in the British tradition of architectural writing. And indeed his treatise extends beyond architecture considered merely as building to embrace both painting and sculpture, especially as regards the furnishings of the house – its ornaments –, as well as the grounds, which are also treated in unusual detail and at length. Under “Garden Ornaments”, Wotton treats not only of gardens, but also of fountains, groves of trees, and “Conservatories of rare Beasts, Birds, and Fishes”, and even of Crypteria, which were deep concaves in gardens “where the stars might be observed even at noon.” Many of Wotton’s themes in Part II had received only scarce consideration by most earlier writers. Wotton’s conception of the ornaments of architecture embraces the furnishings (Ausstattung) inside and outside the edifice in the broadest sense, from interior décor to landscaping infrastructure. Although the Elements of Architecture is much more than merely an anthology of what the author has read about architecture and the buildings he has seen in Italy, he comes close to describing it as that, when he announces, on the title page, the Elements as “collected by Henry Wotton Knight from the best Authors and Examples.” Among these “best Authors” Wotton assigns the first place to Vitruvius (“the Master”) and to Leon Battista Alberti (“the first learned Architect”), while mentioning a number of other authors, as, for example, Palladio, Rivius, de l’Orme, Barbaro, Vignola, and Baldi. It might be remarked that Wotton’s treatise also bears some resemblance to the treatise on architecture by Alvise Cornaro, not only in terms of the professional status of the author, not an architect, but a layman-expert on architecture, but also owing to its intended audience of laymen, its focus on the theme of domestic archiecture, its often practical bent, and its emphasis on function and usefulness. Both treatises rely, first of all, on Vitruvius and Alberti. While Cornaro’s treatise remained unpublished until the twentieth century, manuscripts existed in Padua and perhaps in Venice as well, and the well-travelled Wotton possibly knew it. Cornaro and Wotton cite some of the same buildings, among them the rarely mentioned Santa Giustina in Padua, and a few topics and unusual positions are similar. By the same token, there are also notable divergences. Albertian positions regarding proportions find no echo in Cornaro, while they constitute the basis of beauty in Wotton’s text; and Part II of Wotton’s treatise is devoted explicitly to an extensive treatment of the ornaments of architecture, which – with the exception of the classical orders – play only a minor rôle in earlier architectural texts. 6 In an example of the Elements now in the British Museum, Wotton wrote a dedication to Charles, Prince of Wales (C. 45, c. 6, holograph on fly-sheet: 1624, probably in April): MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS, I fear I shall much surprise your Highness with a pamphlet of this subject under my poor name, which I undertook since my return, for some diversion of my mind from my infirmity, which I was troubled with, a miserable stopping in my breast, and defluxion from my head. It was printed sheet by sheet, as fast as it was born, and it was born as soon as it was conceived; so as it must needs have the imperfections and deformities of an immature birth, besides the weakness of the parent.