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Isaac de Caus: surveyor, grotto and garden designer

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14601170902818462

1943-2186

Dianne Duggan,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements My thanks go to Geoffrey Fisher, Paula Henderson, Paige Johnson, Luke Morgan, Adam White, and His Grace the Duke of Bedford along with Ann Mitchell and Chris Gravett (who kindly brought Celia Fiennes's description to my attention) at Woburn Abbey. Notes 1. The south front of Wilton House is discussed below, and the garden and grotto elsewhere in this issue. 2. Malcolm Airs, The Tudor and Jacobean Country House (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), pp. 31–35. 3. Luke Morgan, Nature as Model: Salomon de Caus and Early Seventeenth Century Landscape Design (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. 33–36, 58–59. 4. Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), pp. 138–139. Paula Henderson, The Tudor House and Garden (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), looks at grottoes in England up to and including this period: see the grottoes index, p. 282 (and particularly pp. 164–167). 5. An unidentified ‘Frenchman’ stayed at Skipton Castle for a month in July and August, 1626, and in 1638 the London agent for the Cliffords was reimbursed for an £11 debt that he had paid to a ‘Monsr: de Caur:’ in 1637. Given the financial problems of the Cliffords, this debt could well have been owed for years; Bolton MSS (Chatsworth), Bk 177, 1638, ‘Payment of Debts’, fol. 58; Richard Spence, Skipton Castle and its Builders (Skipton: Smith Settle, 2002), pp. 98–102. Spence mistakenly transcribes the name as ‘de Cause’. 6. Howard Colvin, 2006, Personal communication, writes that the ‘attribution of the grotto and the Desormais Room to Isaac de Caus seems very likely to be correct’. 7. De Caus would also have been involved with the grotto at Somerset House, 1630–1633; Howard Colvin (ed.) The History of the King's Works (London: HMSO, 1982), iv, 2, p. 269. 8. Francis Russell, in 1619, took control of the entire Bedford estates. Bedford House, in Covent Garden, was leased back to the 3rd Earl and his Countess, Lucy (neé Harington), for life, although they spent little time there. Francis succeeded to the earldom in 1627; Dianne Duggan, ‘The Architectural Patronage of the 4th Earl of Bedford, 1587–1641’, unpublished PhD thesis, 2002, University of London. 9. National Archives, S. P. 16 44/51. This undated petition is listed in Cal.S. P. Dom., 1625–26, p. 525 as ‘[1626?]’. 10. Alnwick, MSS Syon Y III 2 and 3a: (this document) Alnwick 2, B1, E2; see Dianne Duggan, ‘London the Ring, Covent Garden the Jewell of that Ring’: New Light on Covent Garden', Architectural History, 43, 2000, pp. 140–161, and n. 13 below. 11. Woburn Abbey Archives (WAA), MS 4E, 18, a 1628 account endorsed by Bedford ‘this bill the stoen mason’, and inscribed by Edward Carter. 12. The large classical garden depicted in Wenceslaus Hollar's c. 1658–60 ‘West Central View of London’, was not the 3rd Countess of Bedford's work. Dianne Duggan, ‘The fourth side of Covent Garden Piazza New light on the history and significance of Bedford House’, The British Art Journal, III/3, 2002, pp. 53–65. 13. The documents are Alnwick 2 B1, E2 (Draft Royal Warrant for a licence); Alnwick 2, B3, E3, ‘The contents of the surveyors plott’, this document endorsed ‘Convent garden’ in Inigo Jones's own handwriting; Alnwick 2, B3, E5, ‘An agreement betweene the Earl of Bedford and Endiminion Porter Esqur’; Alnwick 3a, B3 (Articles … betwixt … Bedford and … George Hulbert); and E/BER/CG/E8/1/1, London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) (Petition to the House of Commons, 1657). 14. JLC, ‘The earliest view of Covent Garden’, Country Life, cxlix, 3857, 13 May 1971, p. 1182; Strong, Renaissance Garden, p. 146, shows a close‐up view of a small section of the garden. 15. Stephen Porter (ed.), ‘Poplar, Blackwall and The Isle of Dogs’, Survey of London (London: Athlone Press, 1994), xliii, pp. 107–108, xliv, Pl. 13a. 16. ‘Earliest view’, n. 14, and WAA, 5E, ‘John Lacy's map of Covent Garden, 1673’; Wm. Morgan's ‘Map of London & c.’, c. 1681, Maps British Library; ‘Crowle's Map’, c. 1690, Extra illustrated Pennant, Vol. 6, British Museum . Hollar's view shows two further smaller parterres to the east. 17. British Library, Harley MS 7593, fol. 104, Sketch plan by Col. Thomas Colepeper, October 1705. 18. Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 307, quoting John Aubrey; Roy Strong, The Artist and the Garden (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), 2000, p. 112. 19. Colvin, Essays, p. 154, n. 4. The design on a small façade at Wilton, painted by Knyff in 1700, evokes the parterre de broderie in the Palais de Nancy garden; Strong, The Artist, pp. 116, 136–37, 191. 20. For Callot's engraving, see Strong, The Artist, p. 117; and Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones The Theatre of the Stuart Court (London and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), Cat. no. 252, concerning Jones's sketch. 21. At Bedford House the banqueting houses were on a Greek cross plan, around 20 feet wide, with pedimented transepts and domed roofs; F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), Survey of London (London: Athlone Press, 1970) (hereafter Survey), xxxvi, Plate 46; and ‘Earliest view’, see n. 14 above. 22. A carpenter's bill for Bedford House from August 1657, refers to ‘timber and board to mend the palizado gates next the taris wall going into the wilderness’; LMA, E/BER/CG/E/7/12/1. From two of the later plans the wilderness seems to have been replaced with a knot garden, or maze. 23. Henderson, Tudor House, p. 139, quoting M. Jermin, A Commentary, upon the Whole Booke of Ecclesiastes (London, printed by Ric. Hodgkinsonne for John Clark, 1639), p. 207; Jermin wrote of ‘the … wildernesse which often is adjoyned to great gardens belonging to great houses, and by a multitude of thick bushes and trees affecting an ostentation of solitarinesse in the midst of worldly pleasures’. For the genre statue see WAA, MS 4E, 18, an account endorsed by Bedford ‘this bill the stoen mason’, from 1628. 24. Alnwick 2, B3, E3, for both plans. 25. Duggan, ‘London the Ring’, p. 147. 26. Comparison with documents signed by Isaac de Caus, found in a second cache of documents at Alnwick Castle, have confirmed that the writing on the ground plan is de Caus's. 27. Duggan, ‘London the Ring’, pp. 154–155, Appendix. 28. Morgan, Nature, pp. 67–69; Sheppard, Survey, p. 225, mentions a well in the wilderness, as well as a cistern near the Evidence House, which was close to the fountain. 29. Soon de Caus also housed the Wilton Garden grotto under the staircase and wide terrace at the far end of the parterre. 30. There is also a three‐arched feature — reminiscent of the Woburn grotto façade, and previously thought to be the Bedford House grotto — depicted on the western wall in the ‘Earliest view’. 31. Using Lacy's 1673 scaled map of Covent Garden, the terrace walk (into the apse) can be measured as being approximately 30 feet wide. This, with an estimated width of eight to ten feet for the garden staircase, corresponds well with the 40 feet length of Colepeper's grotto. 32. Victoria and Albert Museum, Prints and Drawings Room, 3436 400. Strong is convinced that 400 (and 401–402), are seventeenth century, and by Isaac de Caus; Roy Strong, 2000, Personal communication. Grottoes and other garden features around this time were polychromatic; Morgan, Nature, p. 78. 33. The two ‘missing’ niches, probably the same as the two towards the far end, may have been omitted because of their sameness, and to obviate any further necessary foreshortening in the drawing. 34. Strong, Renaissance Garden, pp. 140–147. Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 306, states that ‘there is good reason to attribute to Isaac de Caus two grottoes constructed by the Earl of Bedford.’ 35. See Henderson, Tudor House, pp. 112, 123, 124, 200, for parterres de broderie. 36. Isaac used twenty‐six plates of thirty‐four in Salomon De Caus's Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes published in Paris in 1615 and 1624 (see n. 37), loosely adapting them in his ‘own’ execution for his Nouvelle invention de lever l'eau (London: Joseph Moxon, 1644); Roy Strong, The Renaissance Garden in England (London: Thames & Hudson, 1998), pp. 138, 165; Timothy Mowl and Brian Earnshaw, Architecture Without Kings (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 44–45. 37. For wyverns and satyrs, see the illustrations for Problesme II, and XV, Livre Second, in Salomon de Caus's Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes (Paris: Chez Hierosme Droüart, 1624). See also the illustrations accompanying Problesme VI, Livre Second, and Problesme XXV, Livre Second. One of Salomon's parterre designs for the Hortus Palatinus, no. 14, of ‘A Sa Majeste de Bohesme Electeur Pa — Latin, DVCDE Bavieres & c.’, from the rear section of Les Raisons des Forces Mouvantes (Paris: Chez Charles Sevestre, 1624), was likely the inspiration for the grotto ceiling. 38. Did these figures represent a meaningful theme? Perhaps, but Morgan points out, Nature, p. 30, that ‘few gardens of (the) period possessed anything resembling a program or narrative’. 39. John Harris and A. A. Tait, Catalogue of the Drawings by Inigo Jones, John Webb and Isaac De Caus at Worcester College Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 51, pls. 104, and 94–96; Mowl and Earnshaw, Architecture, pl. 17. 40. Henderson, Tudor House, p. 168, pl. 192. 41. Salomon de Caus, op. cit., illustrations accompanying Problesmes XXII, XXVIII, XXIIIV; or Morgan, Nature, figs 10, 17. 42. A plumber's bill from 1657 mentions ‘mendinge the Cisterne and pipes belonging to the Gratoe & Pallace walk’; Bedford and Luton Archives and Record Service (BLARS), Russell Papers, Box 356, House Repairs. A comprehensive water supply, partially underground, would have been adapted from the days when Woburn was a Cistercian Abbey. 43. J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath (eds), The Works of Francis Bacon (London, Longman,1858), vi, p. 484. 44. BLARS, Russell Papers, Box 356, House Repairs. 45. A. White, 2001, Personal communication. 46. Ibid. The fireplace surround in the adjacent ‘Green Parlour’ at Woburn, which sports chimera masks, is also attributed to Stone. 47. I have nominated Nicholas Stone as the architect of the rebuilt Woburn; See Dianne Duggan, ‘Woburn Abbey: The first episode of a great country house’, Architectural History, 46, 2003, pp. 57–80. It seems fair to suggest that Stone was probably influenced by Salomon de Caus's grotto architecture for the exterior, as was Isaac with the interior. 48. For an example of Isaac's work, see Paige Johnson, ‘Proof of the heavenly iris: The fountain of three rainbows at Wilton House, Wiltshire’, Garden History, xxxv/1, 2007, pp. 51–67 (pp. 51, 60–61). 49. Alnwick MSS Syon III 3a, B3, endorsed ‘To my servant Robert Scawen at Bedford House’. 50. Duggan, ‘Woburn Abbey’, pp. 57–80. Several features in the garden may point to both Francis Bacon's and Henry Wotton's influence on Bedford, who read both men's works; WAA, 4E, Historic Manuscripts Commission Commonplace Books, 11/I/326, 11/III/2688, 2789. For example, although talking about larger areas, Bacon ‘considered the tripartite garden ideal’; Henderson, Tudor House, p. 109. 51. Celia Fiennes, in 1697, wrote of a garden similar to Moore's, with ‘three large gardens [with] walks … one above another with stone steps’. This is surely the north garden with ‘severall gravell walks one above another, and on the flatts are fish ponds the whole length of the walke; above that in the next flat is 2 fish ponds, here are dwarfe trees … [In] the square [next to the house] … is all sorts of pots of flowers and curious greens’; Christopher Morris, ed., The Journeys of Celia Fiennes (London: Cresset Press, 1947), pp. 119–120. 52. For this effect, see Henderson, Tudor House, p. 145. 53. ‘Fountaines’ (a great beauty), a ‘Natural wildnesse’, and a ‘fine Banquetting House’, were all Bacon's recommendations; John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis (eds), The Genius of the Place The English Landscape Garden 1620–1820 (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988), pp. 54–55. 54. Bacon recommended a ‘Greene in the Entrance [with] a faire Alley in the midst …’, although he was talking about a larger garden area; Dixon Hunt, Genius, pp. 52–53. 55. Henderson, Tudor House, p. 111 56. Ibid., p. 111. 57. Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary (2008), pp. 586–587, 590–591. 58. John Harris and Gordon Higgott, Inigo Jones Complete Architectural Drawings (New York: The Drawing Center, 1989), p. 18; Colvin, Biographical Dictionary (1997), p. 298. 59. Alnwick, 3a, B2, ‘Wth Mr Taylor: a conference’. 60. Duggan, Architectural Patronage, pp. 155–157. Carter worked for Bedford again in 1638, see W. A. A. 4E, 28/26/1. He also signed the accounts, 1633–41, at St Paul's Cathedral on behalf of Jones; Sheppard, Survey, p. 101. 61. Alnwick 3a, B1, for both documents. The very bold signatures of both men give an impression of their sense of ‘self‐importance’, and perhaps, even, a little rivalry? 62. Alnwick 3a, B3 (Articles … betwixt … Bedford and … George Hulbert). 63. Sheppard, Survey, pp. 71 and 78. For Jones's close involvement with de Caus, see Colvin, Biographical Dictionary (2008), pp. 306–307. 64. Alnwick 2, B3, E5, ‘An agreement betweene the Earl of Bedford and Endiminion Porter Esqur’. 65. Alnwick 3a, B2. The probable date is sometime in 1632, when preparation for the Piazza and the portico houses was under way, and the work on the church was just beginning; Sheppard, Survey, p. 98. 66. Alnwick, 3a, B2, ‘Wth Mr Taylor: a conference’. 67. Alnwick 3a, B1; endorsed ‘Covent garden [in the 4th Earl's hand] Decoe [hand uncertain]’. 68. Alnwick 2, B3 E5. 69. Alnwick, 3a, B2, ‘Breviatt … Bedford’. (‘Cam Stellata … The Charge of the Information which Mr Attorney hathe delivered to the Earle of Bedforde’. [1634]); Dianne Duggan, ‘The prosecution of the Earl of Bedford’ London Topographical Record, xxix, 2006, pp. 1–21. 70. Giles Worsley suggests that the Wilton stable design was inspired by the Fifteenth House in Sebastiano Serlio's 7th Book of Architecture; Giles Worsley, Inigo Jones and the European Classicist Tradition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 90. 71. John Bold, Wilton House and English Palladianism: Some Wiltshire Houses (London: HMSO, 1988), pp. 78–82; Malcolm Airs, ‘Inigo Jones, Isaac de Caus and the stables at Holland House’, Georgian Group Journal, xiii, 2003, pp. 141–159. It is likely that, given the brick and stone construction of the Piazza houses, the Bedford House stables were of similar materials. 72. The Pembrokes also owned Ramsbury Manor at this time, and the surviving stable block bears quite a resemblance to the three discussed, raising questions about Isaac de Caus's possible involvement; Oliver Hill and John Cornforth, English Country Houses Caroline 1625–1685 (London: Country Life, 1966), p. 183, figure 303. Giles Worsley also suggests that de Caus is a prime candidate for the designer of the stables at Ramsbury, as well as those at Fonthill House built in the 1630s; Worsley also suggests that de Caus may have designed the stables at Tythrop for James Herbert, sixth son of the 4th Earl of Pembroke, but since Herbert did not purchase the house until 1649, and de Caus died in France in 1648, this is hardly likely; Giles Worsley, The British Stable (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 77–81. For de Caus's death, see Morgan, Nature, p. 212, n. 11. 73. Mowl and Earnshaw, Architecture, pp. 31–47; Colvin, Essays, pp. 136–157. 74. John Harris, Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, The King's Arcadia: Inigo Jones and the Stuart Court (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1973), p. 196. 75. Colvin, Essays, p. 138. 76. Colvin, Biographical Dictionary (2008), p. 307; the view of Stalbridge that Colvin refers to shows only a Jacobean mansion, although there are two classical porches; Rev. Alexander B. Grosart (ed.), The Lismore Papers (First Series) (London, privately printed), v, 1886, pp. 64–177; Irene Jones, The Stalbridge Inheritance, 1780–1854 (Dorchester: Larkwood Publishing, 1993), pp. 133–134. 77. Summerson, Architecture, p. 130. 78. John Harris and A. A. Tait, Catalogue of the Drawings of Inigo Jones, Isaac de Caus and John Webb at Worcester College (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 48, pl. 92. This drawing may, or may not, be an unsigned and unannotated drawing by Isaac de Caus. 79. Strong, Artist, p. 185; Worsley, Inigo Jones, p. 86. 80. Colvin, Essays, pp. 152–153. In any case, Jones used a similar aedicule on one of his other designs; Harris and Higgott, Inigo Jones, pp. 170, 191. 81. Harris and Higgott, Inigo Jones, p. 191. Other erroneous attributions to de Caus of Jones's important work still persist; see, for example, Christy Anderson, Inigo Jones and the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 204, where de Caus is named as the probable designer of ‘the houses at the west [sic] and north sides of the [Covent Garden Piazza]’. The terraces of Piazza houses were on the east and north sides. The west elevation of the Piazza included two houses, flanking and linked to St Paul's Church, and was of ‘such a careful composition’, that even if we did not now have firm evidence that Jones was the designer, there would be no doubt as to who was responsible; see Worsley, Inigo Jones, p. 80. 82. John Dixon Hunt, Garden and Grove The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination: 1600–1750 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1986), p. 142. 83. Aubrey ‘in 1685 “tumultuarily stitched up” his notes’ (on Wiltshire) that he had begun in 1659; Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee (eds), Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 716. 84. See Colvin, Essays, pp 143–146, 154 (Appendix, A note on Isaac de Caus' Wilton Garden). 85. Colvin, Essays, pp. 151–153. It should be noted that the contemporary meanings of ‘approbation’ included ‘authoritatively declaring good or true’. Worsley, Inigo Jones, p. 84; Harris and Higgott, Inigo Jones, pp. 72, 156, 226–227. 86. Johnson, ‘Proof of the heavenly iris’ (2007), pp. 51–67 (pp. 51, 60–61).