FUTURE EXHIBITIONS & DISPLAYS
Europe and the English Baroque: English Architecture 1660-1715
Model for Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662-1736, about 1694
1 May - 9 November 2009
Architecture, Room 128a
Free admission
Centred on the RIBA's recently acquired model of Nicholas Hawksmoor's baroque jewel Easton Neston (1694), this display will look at how continental buildings influenced architecture in Britain between the Restoration in 1660 and the publication in 1715 of the first volume of Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britannicus (often taken as the symbolic opening of the Palladian revival).
Design for the Temple of Concord, Sir Balthasar Gerbier (1592-1663), London, 1661 (click image for larger version)
The influence was mostly through the medium of books and engravings as few English architects travelled abroad (exceptions were Christopher Wren, Roger Pratt and William Winde, and, at the beginning of the period, Balthasar Gerbier); consequently there was surprisingly little knowledge of continental architecture gained at first hand, and some of the translations from engraved plate to English buildings could be very surprising.
The display will contain architectural drawings by such luminaries as Christopher Wren, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Talman and John Vanbrugh, taken partly from the RIBA's own collection and augmented by loans from a number of British institutions including All Souls, the Queen's College, Oxford, King's College, Cambridge, Sir John Soane's Museum and other institutional and private collections.
The display is curated by Roger White and
Charles Hind.
RIBA Library Drawings and Archives Collections