CHRISTOPHER WREN

Profound changes in the whole cultural situation and, in particular, their artistic tastes in architecture, have been focused in creativity and the personality of Christopher Wren, who by their importance in the era correctly put on a par with the most remarkable English XVII Century - Shakespeare, Newton and Milton . Notably, however, that despite the versatility of talents, Ren is far from well-known type of a universal man of the Renaissance.

Christopher Wren was born on October 20, 1632. His life is free from rebel pursuit of the preceding generation, and is often filled to the brim with very bold but confident and planned development achieved in the sciences, and then the architecture. Visual arts, literature and the humanities in general, it seems, do not enthralled. The son of the abbot of the abbey of Windsor and the nephew of the bishop, and thus representative of the privileged social strata, with its well-established way of life and influential connections, Christopher received an excellent education for that time and devoted himself early scientific interests, finding, like many of his generation, an indifference to politics.

Rehn was a member of the circle of advanced university figures. As a mathematician, was, according to Newton, one of the three most prominent geometers of his time. Rehn was a professor of astronomy at Oxford. He invented many, including construction machinery, and subsequently became a founding member and first president created in 1660, the Royal Society (British Academy of Sciences). However, Rehn went down in history primarily as the most outstanding architect of his country. Although he was repeatedly elected to Parliament (1685-1702), known to only one of his speech - in relation to taxation for the construction of the hospital in Chelsea. Later he was elevated to a knighthood and the title of baronet.

Wren turned to architecture relatively late, at the thirty-third year of life, and then after repeated insistence of influential customers. This in itself indicative of a new attitude to architecture, is perceived by the time the activity that requires deep and diverse knowledge and a broad outlook.

Wren′s first building was a so-called Sheldonian Theater in Oxford, built in the means of Bishop Sheldon for awarding academic degrees and other formal academic ceremonies. Echoing the concept of Marcellus Theater in Rome, Ren blocked his flat, tied to the ceiling trusses (the span, 21 meter, struck his contemporaries), whose paintings depicted the open sky and tents of the ancient prototype. In this, as in the next building, the chapel of Pembroke College, Cambridge (1663-1665), violations of certain strict canons of classicism point, probably not so much inexperience at Rena, as many authors as the tendency of the Baroque masters to freedom, which was later going for it is characteristic.

Photo — «Christopher Wren»

However, the turning point in the life of Wren, contributing to its appeal to the architecture, have been staying in France (1665-1666) and the Great Fire of London (1666).

In France, Rehn met with Hardouin Mansart and Bernini, who came to Paris at the invitation of the king, and the example of the first Parisian squares and ensembles, as well as the construction of the Louvre could appreciate the enormous public importance and scope of architecture. We read in his later notes: "Architecture has its political appointments, public buildings are the adornment of the country, she says the nation, draws people and commerce, forcing people to love their homeland, what is the passion - the source of all the great acts in the country:" Parisian Impressions undoubtedly had an impact on all the architectural work of Wren, which is radically different from the architecture of the first half of the century the breadth and diversity of ideas, freedom to use the language of architecture of antiquity and the Renaissance, and most importantly, the urban development approach. In a letter to Rehn called Paris "a school of architecture, today, perhaps the best in Europe. "

The fire, which destroyed nearly half of London was barely paused when Rehn presented the king his plan for restructuring the central part of the capital. Rena′s offer has not been implemented, but he was immediately included in the Commission on Restitution of the city of London, made up of representatives of the royal and municipal authorities. The master plan, developed so rapidly Rehn, on figure vaguely resembling the layout of the gardens of the Versailles Le Nôtre, in fact, much closer to the layout of Rome, begun by Pope Sixtus V at the end of the XVI century, but most probably unknown even to Renu images.

We see the same lines, calculated on the distant prospect of the street, like rays converge to the grand representative squares and public buildings, commemorating the most important parts of the city, which is treated as a unified spatial composition.

Rehn was actively involved in the drafting of a number of decrees of the commission, instructing the construction only of brick, regulating the height of buildings, thick walls, etc. , and also provided funds for the restoration of the city and its most important buildings through the introduction of special taxes. One only of churches destroyed by fire, there were eighty-five, and although many of the parishes were united by the Commission, Rena, still had more than fifty new design, of which at least thirty-five were built under his direct supervision. The architecture of these churches - the fruit of remarkable combination of creative imagination, inventiveness and curiosity of the trained scientific mind, prone to streamline the working of the material, almost cataloging a variety of compositional possibilities and testing them in kind.

Photo — «Christopher Wren»

Rena Church represent a completely new chapter in the history of English architecture. They mark the flowering of English classicism in organic combination with traditional national characteristics of architecture, as opposed to the towering verticals low volume and sober practicality of planning.

Rehn, with exceptional clarity to realize requirements of Protestant worship, considering the church primarily as an audience for a preacher, not a place for the scenically spectacular of the Catholic liturgy, and clearly articulates these requirements in a special note.

Small, extremely varied according to plan, these churches are artfully vkomponovany master in the wrong and zatesnennye areas. Characteristic of classical facades combine them with the integrity of interior space. In this regard, particularly characteristic of the church of Saint Stephen Walbrook (1672-1687), with its spacious and flat dome, unifying the whole space. Often in the main space is wide open for the gallery choirs parishioners (St. Bride in Fleet Street, 1670-1684 years). With the undeniable similarities with the Protestant churches of Northern Europe interiors of churches Rena differ from the latter more smart and refined decoration.

Wren′s famous bell tower, part of the destroyed during the Second World War, a truly amazing variety of songs and at the same time are characterized by peculiar only one of them complicated and easier, more frequent up the rhythm. They, on the one hand, he manifested a deep impression, which is imposed on the national character of Gothic English architecture, and on the other - an original design, theme and variations (each of which has fully independent meaning) - the development, before we met only a number of Palladian villas and palaces. It is believed that if renovsky master plan for London was carried out, the steeples of these elegant bell towers, viewed through the straightening of the street, would play in the British capital almost a greater role than the obelisks in Baroque Rome, creating not only a guide for moving forward, but and backward visual communication, combining thus separate architectural staging a holistic urban development body.

The most monumental Rena was a huge Cathedral of St. Paul′s in London (1675-1711), which occupies the same dominant position in the Protestant religious architecture, the Roman Cathedral of St. Peter′s Catholic. Work Rena the cathedral have their origin with the proposal to erect high up and quite fantastic to sredokrestiem forms a dome over the old building. When a fire since it was found necessary to dismantle it, Rehn suggested two options for the project (1672 and 1673 years) - with a grand dome, crowning ravnokonechnogo plan in the form of a Greek cross, whose branches were connected curved, concave on the Baroque facades.

Photo — «Christopher Wren»

The last of the plans, in which the branches of an equilateral added to the eastern side of the apse and the west - blocked a small domed lobby, is preserved in a beautifully executed wooden model of such size that the viewer can enter into it, to imagine the nature of the interior.

At the request of the clergy Rehn has developed a third, the implementation of option. A huge amount of facilities extended length of 157 meters, with a plan in the form of a Latin cross, and by a strong chorus, goes back to the Gothic cathedrals.

Mathematical knowledge Rena useful to him in the difficult task of constructing the dome, solved it brilliantly, with calculation of a subtle and profound. The design based on eight pillars of the triple dome complex and unusual: inside the brick shell of hemispherical shape is a brick as a truncated cone, which bears the crown cathedral lantern and cross, and a third, wooden, covered with lead outer shell of the dome.

Striking appearance of the cathedral. Two flights of broad steps from the west to the sum of six pairs of Corinthian columns of the portico entrance, over which there are four pairs of columns with composite capitals, carrying a pediment with sculptures in the tympanum. More modest semicircular porticos placed on both ends of the transept. On both sides of the main facade erected slender towers (one for the bells, the other for hours), followed, over sredokrestiem Cathedral, stands this magnificent dome.

Surrounded by the columns of the drum of the dome seems especially powerful because every fourth interkolumny colonnades, called the Stone Gallery, laid the stone. Above the hemisphere of the dome of the second, so-called Golden Image Gallery bypass around the lamp with a cross. Overlooking the London Group of the dome and towers - undoubtedly the most successful part of the cathedral, the bulk of which was difficult to grasp entirely, because it remained hidden disorderly urbanization (badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War).

Downloaded from the late 1660′s, it would seem, to the limits of human capabilities in the architectural orders alone, London, Rehn, however, designed and built for King, municipalities, universities and private palaces and manor houses, hospitals, libraries, town halls and colleges . Of the many secular buildings Rena should, above all, to note one of his masterpieces, the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (begun in 1676) - Proficiency Certificate solutions outstanding compositional difficulties.

Its main facade, with bunk banker′s arcades and Baroque in character divisions of the (upper floor is much heavier than the bottom), is associated with older buildings so that the opening of the first tier has the same height as the picture on the sides, forming a traditional round, characteristic of the student "kluatrov" Cambridge and Oxford.

Photo — «Christopher Wren»

For this high-floor master dropped the ceremonial reading room on the second floor to the level of the lower arches, heels, closing their timbrels. It turned solemn and resonant, large-scale facade, singled out the library in general complex adjacent to its residential buildings of the college. Opposite the facade of the buildings has more flatness: highly raised (to accommodate bookcases) arched windows of the reading room are separated by simple blades, while the order applied only to emphasize the inputs.

According to a number of British architectural historians, the library of Trinity College, marks the end of the first phase of themselves in the work of Wren and his transition to more complex compositions. It should be noted, however, that the interiors of the master and subsequently maintain clarity and rigor, and its relation to the order system, formulated much later, and now strikes us today sober judgments.

Contemporary authors who wrote about architecture, - indicates Rehn - it seems that very little had in mind besides how to set the proportions of columns, architrave and cornices in several orders: and, while these proportions in the ancient buildings of the Greeks and Romans (though they used it more arbitrary than to admit), they sought to bring them to the rules are too strict and pedantic, is not without sin narushimym barbarism, even though by nature they are just tricks and fashion of those times when they were used. Curiosity might lead us to think, which originally did this tendency not to take a beautiful thing that was decorated with columns, even where in reality there is no need for them. "

The Military and Naval Hospital in Chelsea (begun in 1683) and at Greenwich (begun in 1696), as well as in Winchester Palace (begun in 1683, not over, destroyed by fire in 1896) Rehn, the first experiments with large masses of extended volumes . At Chelsea he uses a large order for the rare accents (inputs) and light a small colonnade for galleries in the yard. At Greenwich Hospital he had to abandon the typical classical songs delivered with the main axis of the dome volume, to open views of the Queens House Inigo Jones, who was in the depths of a large, open river kurdonera. Topped by baroque domes on the nature of the case Wren (right of them includes the construction of Webb) kurdoner flank of the river and connected with the Queens House horizontal line long colonnades.

In the royal palace of Hampton Court Renu also had to retreat from the original widely conceived ensemble. To Him belong here just park building, the dark facade decorated with white stone, and accented in the center of half-columns, but the so-called Local Court (Queen′s entrance), which survived the combination of palatial magnificence of intimacy that distinguishes the original idea.

Photo — «Christopher Wren»

His admirers say that Wren built "the most noble church - Cathedral of St. Paul," the most luxurious hospital in Britain "- Greenwich and the biggest palace" - the Duke of Marlborough in London (1709-1711).

Palace of the Duke of Marlborough - Palladian character - is extremely luxurious interior design. Proud tycoon wanted to say to outshine its luxury nearby St James′s Palace (plans restructuring Wren created in the first years of the XVIII century), belonging to "Cousin George" - King George I.

Castles built Ren little. The most famous of them Foley Court around Henley, Groombridge in Kent, started his Easton Neston and others. In some cases, he supposedly engaged in similar buildings in the very insufficient grounds.

In contrast to Inigo Jones, Rena throughout his long and fruitful activities succeeded in almost all their designs. Countless buildings Rena, collected together, could constitute a large, closely built-up city. Suffice it to say that they have built 4 of the palace, 35 different government offices, 8 schools, 55 churches and 40 other miscellaneous buildings.

The architect went on the road, predestined Jones, but, unlike the latter, steeped in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance classicism in Rena, survived the era of Puritanism, more clearly expressed common sense beginning.

Wren was buried in 1723 in the Cathedral of St. Paul, and the inscription on his gravestone ends with the words: ": if you seek a monument, look around. "