What makes Sir Christopher Wren’s buildings so distinctive? Over his lengthy architectural career from the mid-1660s to his death in 1723, Wren produced a remarkable array of pioneering buildings in both classical and Gothic idioms, from churches and royal palaces to colleges and hospitals. Of these, the mighty St Paul’s Cathedral—that monumental statement of cool-headed Anglicanism—undoubtedly looms largest. But how do we account for the immense inventiveness of these structures in a country whose experience of classicism had, hitherto, been confined to the sober, strictly Vitruvian works of Inigo Jones in the first half of the seventeenth century?
For the last fifty years, scholars have attributed Wren’s prodigious architectural creativity to his knowledge of ancient and modern Rome, as mediated through Renaissance treatises and the Baroque buildings of Colbert’s Paris (which Wren saw between July 1665 and March 1666 during his only trip abroad). As such, the influence of works by architects such as Donato Bramante, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Louis Le Vau, and François Mansart on the young Wren is now well documented. But these sources do not completely explain his vast vocabulary of forms and plans. For the inspiration behind some of his most original designs—such as the innovative steeples, domes, and lanterns of the City churches he rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666—we must look farther afield.
In this new, lavishly illustrated volume, Christopher Wren: In Search of Eastern Antiquity, Vaughan Hart does just that. This welcome addition to the
