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European influence: the Royal Naval College clock towers in Greenwich, inspired by St Peter’s Basilica in Rome
English and Baroque are two words that have always had trouble getting along together, like German and humour. If the Baroque was about constructing all-singing, all-dancing, multimedia representations of a divinely ordained, usually Catholic universe (which, without wishing to oversimplify, it was), it was always going to fit oddly with English scepticism.
But, just as Germans can actually make jokes, so the English could do Baroque, in their own way, a fact honoured by an exhibition in the RIBA architecture galleries at the V&A.
Subtitled Architecture in England 1660-1715, it contrasts with the gaudy show now playing in the museum’s main exhibition space, which shows Baroque as camp interior design. The English footnote is thoughtful and largely monochrome, consisting of drawings, prints and models.
Its theme is Sir Christopher Wren’s remark that “our English artists are dull enough at inventions but when once a foreign pattern is set they imitate it so well that commonly they exceed the original”. With limited chances for travelling abroad, 17th-century British architects relied on prints to learn what was happening on the continent. And so, for example, the architect John Webb applied a version of the façade of Saint Peter’s onto his buildings for the Royal Naval College in Greenwich without having been to Rome.
The results are sometimes a little rude and naïve, and no drawing in the English exhibition matches a delicate Borromini pencil sketch in the big show. But this local reworking of foreign themes would also lead to some of the most inventive architecture this country has ever produced, in the later works of Hawksmoor and Sir John Vanbrugh.
You can see this version of Baroque emerge in the exhibition’s star exhibit, the wooden model of Hawksmoor’s house of Easton Neston, recently acquired by the RIBA. The inside is an utterly original series of large and small, and light and dark spaces, with which the exhibition more or less stops, leaving you hoping for more in the future.
Until 9 November. Information: 020 7942 2000, www.vam.ac.uk.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
The paying public expect something with a WOW factor when we pay to see a specific exhibition. A show of this type should centre around a monumentally famous work.
But this was not to be for the Baroque exhibition at the V&A , Large frescoes on a wall, that won’t do it. Large pieces of furniture, no, not that either, the scaled model of Louis XIV on his horse ? no chance.
And no, Pelle’s bust of Charles II, is not hitting anywhere near the mark.
I know, how about a Landmark work of Bernini’s ? you know him, Mr Baroque himself !, that rough ‘sketch’ model of Pope Alexander VII and some line drawings tucked away in the corner is not going to get it.
(I feel certain, that had he not been hanging for a buyer for those pieces, Bernini would have binned them)
I realise they probably thought it might be a bit cheeky to show artefacts people normally see for free (Triton, Thomas Baker), but surely for an exhibition of this stature, that sells tickets for the heartland of the Baroque world (Rome),
at a venerable institution like the V&A, are telling me they couldn’t have loaned something from the Villa Borghese? Or the Vatican ?, o.k then what about the Bacanal from the Met, they must owe them a favour ?
Of course they could have blown people away with Bernini’s ‘Apollo’, or the ‘Persephone’ !
That is what they should be striving to do with these showcase exhibitions, nurture young talent and fire their imagination by impressing the hell out of them. But no, no wow factor.
- Terry Roberts, Telford , England.
