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Italianate architecture

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Cliveden: Barry's Italianate [1], Neo-Renaissance mansion with "confident allusions to the wealth of Italian merchant princes"[2]

In the course of the history of Classical architecture, an Italianate style of architecture was a distinct nineteenth-century phase, in which Italian sixteenth-century models and architectural vocabulary, which had served as inspiration for both Palladianism and Neoclassicism, were now synthesized with picturesque aesthetics, to create an architecture that, though it was also characterized as "Neo-Renaissance", was essentially of its own time. "The backward look transforms its object," Siegfried Giedion wrote of historicist architectural styles;[3] "every spectator at every period— at every moment, indeed— inevitably transforms the past according to his own nature."

The Italianate style was first developed in Britain about 1802 by John Nash, with the construction of Cronkhill in Shropshire. This small country house is generally accepted to be the first Italianate villa in England, from which is derived the Italianate architecture of the late Regency and early Victorian eras [4].

The Italianate style was further developed and popularised by the architect Sir Charles Barry in the 1830s [5]. Barry's Italianate style drew heavily for its motifs on the buildings of the Italian Renaissance, this concept, sometimes at odds with Nash's semi-rustic Italianate villas, produced what came to be accepted as the Italianate style. The style was not confined to England and was employed in varying forms, long after its decline in popularity in Britain, throughout northern Europe and the British Empire. From the late 1840s it achieved huge popularity in the United States, where it was promoted by the architect Alexander Jackson Davis

Italianate style in England

The Neo-Renaissance: Osborne House completed 1851. A large Palladian house given further "Italian treatment" by the addition of a belvedere tower.
Villa Emo by Palladio,1559. The great Italian villas were often a starting point for the buildings of the 19th century Italianate style

A late intimation of Nash's development of the Italianate style was his 1805 design of Sandridge Park at Stoke Gabriel in Devon. Commissioned by the dowager Lady Ashburton as a country retreat, this small country house clearly shows the transition between the picturesque of William Gilpin and Nash's yet to be fully evolved Italianism. While this house can still be described as Regency, its informal asymmetrical plan together with its loggias and balconies of both stone and wrought iron; tower and low pitched roof clearly are very similar to the fully Italianate design of Cronkhill [6], the house generally considered to be the first example of the Italianate style in Britain.

Later examples of the Italianate style in England tend to take the form of Palladian style building often enhanced by a belvedere tower complete with renaissance type ballustrading at the roof level. This is generally a more stylistic interpretation of what architects and patrons imagined to be the case in Italy, and utilises more obviously the Italian Renaissance motifs than those earlier examples of the Italianate style by Nash.

Sir Charles Barry, most notable for his works on the Tudor and Gothic styles at the Houses of Parliament in London, was a great promoter of the style. Unlike Nash he found his inspiration in Italy itself. Barry drew heavily on the designs of the original Renaissance villas of Rome, the Lazio and the Veneto or as he put it: "...the charming character of the irregular villas of Italy"[7]. His most defining work in this style was the large Neo-Renaissance mansion Cliveden (illistrated above). Although it has been claimed that one third of early Victorian country houses in England used classical styles, mostly Italianate [8], by 1855 the style was falling from favour and Cliveden came to be regarded as a "declining essay in a declining fashion""[9].

Thomas Cubitt, a London building contactor, incorporated simple classical lines of the Italianate style as defined by Sir Charles Barry into many of his London terraces [10]. Cubitt designed Osbourne House under the direction of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and it is Cubitt's reworking of his two dimensional street architecture into this free standing mansion [11] which was to be the inspiration for countless Italianate villas throughout the British Empire,

Following the completion of Osbourne House in 1851, the style became a popular choice of design for the small mansions built by the new and wealthy industrialists of the era. These were mostly built in cities surrounded by large but not extensive gardens, often laid out in a terrace Tuscan style as well. On occasions very similar, if not identical, designs to these Italianate villas would be topped by mansard roofs, and then termed chateauesque. However, "after a modest spate of Italianate villas, and French chateaux""[12] by 1855 the most favoured style of an English country house was Gothic, Tudor, or Elizabethan.

Italianate style in the United States

Blandwood Mansion, North Carolina
Italianate Architectural Style
Italianate Architectural Style
File:OldeTown.jpg
The Davidson House, Georgia

The Italianate style was introduced in the United States by Alexander Jackson Davis in the 1840s as an alternative to Gothic or Greek Revival styles. Blandwood, the Governor's mansion in North Carolina, completed in 1846, claims to be the oldest example of Italianate architecture in the United States [13]. An early example of Italianate architecture, it is closer in ethos to the Italianate works of Nash than the more Renaissance inspired designs of Barry.

Italianate was reinterpreted again and became an indigenous style. It is distinctive by its pronounced exaggeration of many Italian Renaissance characteristics: emphatic eaves supported by corbels, low-pitched roofs barely discernible from the ground, or even flat roofs with a wide projection. A tower is often incorporated hinting at the Italian belvedere or even campanile tower.

Motifs drawn from the Italianate style were incorporated into the commercial builders' vocabulary, and appear in Victorian architecture dating from the mid to late 1800s.

This architectural style became more popular than Greek Revival by the late 1860s. Its popularity was due to its being suitable for many different building materials and budgets, as well as the development of cast-iron and press-metal technology making the production of decorative elements like the brackets and cornices more efficient. However, the style was superseded in popularity in the late 1870s by the Queen Anne style and Colonial Revival style.

The Breakers designed by Richard Morris Hunt completed 1895

The Breakers (illustrated left), located on Ochre Point Avenue, Newport, Rhode Island, is a 70-room mansion designed by the architect Richard Morris Hunt for Cornelius Vanderbilt II. Constructed between 1893 and 1895, it is the epitome of the Italianate style in the United States. While to all outward appearances it is a complete Renaissance palazzo, its construction with steel trusses and no wooden parts made use of the most modern building techniques the late 19th century had to offer. The tall chimneys, juxtaposing wings plus the exaggeratedly large corbels supporting the pitched and visible roof are all indicative signs of the American interpretation of the Italianate style. "The Breakers" and its style of architecture has been described rather disparagingly by architectural commentators as "Europe's obsession with the historical styles parallelled in the American idea of a Renaissance palazzo adapted to a private house" [14]. However, by the time of its completion "The Breakers" was more an expression of its owners personal taste, cultivation, and wealth than a popular architectural style.

Italianate style in Australia

Government House, Melbourne completed in 1876.
The Railway station of Albury, New South Wales, Australia was built in the Italianate Architectural Style in 1881

The Italianate style proved to be immensely popular in Australia as a domestic style. The architect William Wardell designed Government House in Melbourne — now the official residence of the Governor of Victoria — as an example of his "newly discovered love for Italianate, Palladian and Venetian architecture" [15]. Cream-colored, with many Palladian features; except for its machiolated signorial tower that Wardell crowned with a belvedere— it would not be out of place among the unified streets and squares in Thomas Cubitt's Belgravia, London.

The hipped roof is concealed by a balustraded parapet. The principal block is flanked by two lower asymmetrical secondary wings that contribute picturesque massing, best appreciated from an angled view. The larger of these being divided from the principal block by the belvedere tower. The smaller, the ballroom block, is entered through a columned porte-cochere designed as a single storey prostyle portico.

The Italianate style of architecture continued to be built in outposts of the British Empire long after it had ceased to be in fashion in Britain itself. The Railway station of Albury, New South Wales, Australia completed in 1881 is an example of this further evolution of the style.

Interior decoration

Government House, Melbourne. The Hall decorated in 19th century Italianate style

In interior decoration there were direct parallels to "Italianate" architecture with free recombinations of decorative features drawn from Italian 16th-century architecture and objects, which were applied to purely 19th-century forms. Wardrobes and dressers could be dressed in Italianate detailing as well as row houses. The spur to such commercial designs can be found in the "free Renaissance" style that was espoused by Charles Eastlake. In 1868 he published Hints on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery and other Details which was very influential in Britain and later in the United States, where the book was published in 1872. Today "Italianate" furnishings are often called "Eastlake" by North American collectors and dealers, but contemporary terms for such broadly classicizing designs ranged imaginatively, and included "Neo-Grec".

Elements of the style

Key visual components of this style include [16]:

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Historic Houses In Buckinghamshire
  2. ^ Direct quote from: Walton, John. Late Georgian and Victorian Britain Page 50. George Philip Ltd. 1989. ISBN 0-540-01185-1
  3. ^ Siegfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture 1941 etc.
  4. ^ John Nash Biography
  5. ^ Turner, Michael. Osbourne House Page 28. English Heritage. Osbourne House. ISBN 1-85074-249-9
  6. ^ Photograph of Cronkhill The house is still more a picturesque cottage than great Italian Villa or Palazzo
  7. ^ Girouard, Mark. Life in the English Country House' Page 272'. Yale University
  8. ^ Walton, John. Late Georgian and Victorian Britain Page 58. George Philip Ltd. 1989. ISBN 0-540-01185-1
  9. ^ Direct quote from: Walton, John. Late Georgian and Victorian Britain Page 58. George Philip Ltd. 1989. ISBN 0-540-01185-1
  10. ^ Turner, Michael. Osbourne House Page 28. English Heritage. Osbourne House. ISBN 1-85074-249-9
  11. ^ Turner, Michael. Osbourne House Page 28. English Heritage. Osbourne House. ISBN 1-85074-249-9
  12. ^ Girouard, Mark. Life in the English Country House' Page 272'. Yale University
  13. ^ Blandwood Mansion, America's Earliest Tuscan Villa
  14. ^ Cropplestone, Trewin (1963). World Architecture Page 323. Hamlyn.
  15. ^ Historic Buildings in Berry
  16. ^ Italianate Architectural Elements
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