Garden in 18 C

Castle Howard and the Emergence of the Modern Architectural Subject
Author(s): Neil Levine

Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Sep., 2003), pp.
326-351
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians
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Castle Howard and the Emergence
of the Modem Architectural Subject
NEIL LEVINE
Harvard University
To the memory of Gillian Levine began to be recognized, the landscape garden where many
of these ideas were thought to have first come together was
he English landscape garden of Athe
Stowe.2 eighteenth
palimpsest of successive interventions, Stowe was
begun by
century has long been considered Charles
the siteBridgeman
where and John Vanbrugh in the
the disintegration of what Emil
period fromKaufmann
1713 to 1730, redesigned and enlarged by
William Kent
referred to as the "Renaissance-Baroque and Jamesof
system" Gibbs in 1730-50, and altered and
classi-
enlarged once
cal architecture began and where certain again by
crucial Capability
ideas that Brown from 1750 to
can be called modern first appeared.l The two
1780 (Figure 1). Thecharacteris-
earliest stages reveal a certain degree
of looseness
tics most commonly referred to are in the laying out plan-
the naturalistic of paths and landscape ele-
ning based on an incipient picturesque aesthetic
ments, although andinventiveness
there is little the in the architec-
eclectic mixture of building styles
turechosen for
of the garden the or
pavilions garden
any significant innovation in
structures themselves. Evidencing a way
the newthe historical rela-
buildings, as aspects of the landscape, were
tivism, these structures included, meant
most tonotably,
be experienced
theandfirst
understood. This changed
with architecture.
experiments in the revival of Gothic the additions of Kent,
TheGibbs, and Brown. In the area
con-
trast between the apparent freedom and
of the casualness
gardens of
known as the the Fields, designed by
Elysian
picturesque approach and the geometric regularity
Kent in the and structures
1730s and including for- by Gibbs, a pic-
mal order that ruled the earlier Italian and French
torial grouping of buildings gardens
creates an architectural narra-
tive
was interpreted as an explicit sign ofof the
an allegorical
rejectionsort, of
enacted
theby the individual
classical tradition of representation
structures
and itsand choreographed
replacement by the
bylandscape. Reference
and association provide
something less formulaic and less prescriptive, more character
openandtomeaning.3
the variety and indeterminateness ofOn a piece of elevated
individual ground overlooking the so-
experience.
The transformations in the realm of architecture and land- called River Styx, a circular peripteral temple, based on the
scape design were seen as intimately related to the modern Roman Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, was dedicated to the
politics of liberalism, nascent ideas of nationalism, and a theme of Ancient Virtue. Its meaning was made legible by
new psychology of perception grounded in the theory of its proximity to a shabbily and purposely built ruin,
associationism. designed in a contemporary vernacular and dedicated to
Modern Virtue. The allegory of the political ideas of
Starting in the eighteenth century and up until at least
the late 1960s, when the priority of Castle Howard finally
Stowe's Whig owner, Lord Cobham, was completed by the
Figure 1 Stowe, Buckinghamshire, garden, begun by Charles Bridgeman and John Vanbrugh, 1713-30, and enlarged by William Kent and James
Gibbs, 1730-50. Plan published by Sarah Bridgeman, 1739, detail. From Jacques Rigaud, Stowe Gardens in Buckinghamshire (London, 1746)
view across the River Styx, from the Temple of Ancient haps, is the relation established between the landscaped
Virtue down to the distant Temple of British Worthies (Fig- groupings and actual pictorial representations of such types
ure 2). Shaped in the form of an exedra containing busts of of scenes by seventeenth-century painters like Claude Lor-
figures from British history whose influence it was thought rain and Nicolas Poussin (Figure 3). Kent's "sequence of
might help redefine the nation's future course, the British three-dimensional paintings," as Christopher Hussey
Worthies temple gives extension to the ancient idea of described them, asserts architecture's right to be considered
virtue as it captures and reflects the view from on high. On on equal terms with the other visual arts as an art capable of
the same side of the river as the British Worthies, across the imitating nature.4 But, like the paintings the scenes reflect,
Elysian Fields, the neo-Gothic Temple of Liberty, designed the sequential views offered up at Stowe remain curiously
by Gibbs, provides a point of reference and perspective onto static experiences, framed set-pieces of a transparent
England's illustrious medieval past. iconography implying a passive, neutral observer. At Castle
Considered in terms of representation, the interven- Howard, by contrast, where the major work on the gardens
tions at Stowe by Kent and Gibbs are interesting in a num- was nearly completed before Kent and Gibbs even began
ber of respects. The use of a relatively wide-ranging theirs at Stowe, a widely dispersed grouping of three seem-
historical vocabulary to provide an appropriate associational ingly unrelated structures-a temple, a mausoleum, and a
inflection to each structure is an unusually early occurrence pyramid-establishes distant focal points in the expansive
of this kind of eclecticism. Even more revolutionary, per- landscape to create a spatial nexus in which the beholder
CASTLE HOWARD 327
Downes, whose monographs on Vanbrugh and Nicholas
Hawksmoor, the two architects who worked with Carlisle,
otherwise focused mainly on issues of authorship and design
development of the individual parts.7 "At one moment seen
and at the next hidden by another hill," he wrote, the gar-
den structures "give the traveller that feeling of being
silently observed which is stronger and deeper than the con-
ventional sense of the genius loci of many an eighteenth-cen-
tury garden peopled with classical statues and
summer-houses."8
Although the 1982 Granada television production of

Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) featured
Castle Howard as the setting and made it one of the best
known country houses in England, once again the extended
landscape garden and buildings got short shrift, almost as if
their presence would have confused and overcomplicated
the picture of upper-class British life being presented.9 Nev-
ertheless, the symbolic stature given to Castle Howard as
the locus of aristocratic British culture and the very image
of the grand English country house defined the way its land-
scape garden would be seen over the following two decades.
Published in 1990, Charles Saumarez Smith's book The
Building of Castle Howard was the first, and remains the
authoritative, history. 0 Particularly concerned with issues
Figure 2 William Kent, Temple of British Worthies seen from the of motivation and agency, the author takes a lead from
Temple of Ancient Virtue, Stowe, both early 1730s Hussey in finding the patron to have played a major cre-
ative role and the building's broader meaning to lie in
Carlisle's evolving social and political ambitions, which are
must assume a new subjective stance and thus a much more convincingly explained in terms of contemporary British
personal and active role in the determination of meaning history. But despite remarking on how "the surrounding
(see Figures 21, 25). The consequence of a much more pro- landscape has been manipulated into a strange, hyperreal
found reworking of the elements and methods of classical environment" to the extent "that it is not evident what the
representation than Stowe, the combined landscape treat- spectator is supposed to be viewing, nor what message is
ment and outbuildings at Castle Howard offers important being conveyed," Saumarez Smith stops short of any coher-
insights into the changes architecture underwent in the ent explanation of the architecture "from the outside and
early eighteenth century that have yet to be fully articulated. within the long perspective of history," as he puts it, main-
The first publication to present a coherent overview of taining that the protracted process of design was subject to
the complex and to give it the originary place it deserves in constant "accident and changes of mind and conflicts of
the evolution of the English landscape garden was Hussey's desire" and could therefore only reveal the "projected fan-
English Gardens and Landscapes, 1700-1750 (1967).5 With tasy" and "psychological" state of the individuals involved.11
new information on the patron, Lord Carlisle, that allowed No doubt in reaction to this, John Dixon Hunt, in his
the author to propose an important collaborative role for suggestively entitled "Castle Howard Revisited" of two
him in defining the architecture as essentially an expression years later, returned to Hussey as a way of constructing an
of personal and familial ambitions and concerns, Hussey interpretive strategy for understanding the landscape gar-
established the groundwork for future studies. But his den within a larger symbolic framework.12 Hunt focuses
analysis of the landscape structures themselves remained almost entirely on the garden and its outbuildings. Espe-
rather rudimentary, with the result that he ended up seeing cially interested in the different styles and types of struc-
the garden in quite conventional terms as "an elysium," "the tures composing the scene, ranging from the antique
ideal world envisaged in classical poetry."6 Some inkling of through the medieval to the Palladian, he uses the concept
its strangeness, however, emerged in the writings of Kerry of "cultural representation" to explain the associations they
328 JSAH / 62:3, SEPTEMBER 2003
Figure 3 Claude Lorrain,
Aeneas at Delos, 1672
evoke as signifying Carlisle's "sense of his place in the polit-nomic and agricultural production of the period, the dis-
ical, cultural, and physical world" and, by extension, an cussion of "the ornamental farmland with ornamental
eighteenth-century English aristocrat's "particular histori-buildings"16 of Castle Howard does little to explain the
cal conception of England and Englishness."13 The argu-landscape garden's peculiar and abiding architectural effect.
ment, however, does not attempt to distinguish the unique My article is pointedly written "from the outside and
representational methods employed at Castle Howard from
within the long perspective of history." It attempts to come
those, say, at Stowe, and thus becomes both extremely gen-
to terms with effect and experience rather than agency and
eral in its application and at the same time overly specific in
context. It is a close reading of the garden buildings of Cas-
its conclusions. tle Howard in response to the strange and evocative mood
The lack of any significant follow-up to the Saumarezthey establish in their landscape setting. To that end, I focus
Smith-Hunt positions becomes especially evident when one
on the three major structures in the extended landscape, but
only after describing what preceded them in time and still
looks at Sir John Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture in
Baroque England, 1690-1730, which resulted from a con-precedes them in space. Less interested than Hunt in what
ference held at Castle Howard in the summer of 1999 to is represented than in how and with what consequences rep-
celebrate the tercentenary of the building's inception.14resentation occurs, I am concerned with the kinds of infor-
Aside from Downes's introduction, none of the eleven arti-
mation the outbuildings disclose and how they affect the
cles is devoted to Castle Howard, and only a few make more
beholder as a participant in determining meaning. In lieu
than passing reference to it. The one that has the most to
of any predetermined, conventional iconographic program,
say on the topic is "Estate Management and Landscape
the three outbuildings will be shown to form a coherent and
Design," in which Tom Williamson subjects the complex to
meaningful order in terms of type, geometry, scale, histor-
a forceful socioeconomic analysis that describes the exten-
ical reference, and function that is radically different from
sive landscape "improvements" as separating the "aesthetic"
the order of the house itself and thereby questions the very
from the "productive" and thereby creating a setting ofsystem of classical representation on which the latter was
"ostentatious luxury" befitting the needs of its owner's "aris-based. Paradoxically, the undeniably pictorial character of
tocratic taste."15 While helping to situate the undertaking
the architecture will help draw out aspects of its signal
more fully and more securely in the context of English eco-importance in the prehistory of modernism.
CASTLE HOWARD 329
Figure 4 John Vanbrugh and
Nicholas Hawksmoor, Castle
Howard, Yorkshire, begun
1699, aerial perspective,
ca.1715. From Colen Campbell,
Vitruvius Britannicus, vol. 3
(London, 1725)
First Phase of Construction: The House and Its

century. In the 1680s, Carlisle's grandfather rebuilt the
Immediate Surrounds
ruinous structure; but in 1693, eight years after the first earl's
The landscape and garden buildings of Castle Howard were
death, it was destroyed by fire. In 1692, Charles Howard suc-
created between about 1705 and the mid-1730s for Charles ceeded as the third earl and, six years later, made plans to lease
Howard, the third earl of Carlisle, by the architects Vanbrugh the land from his grandmother in order to establish his resi-
and Hawksmoor working in collaboration with the owner.17 dence there. Either later that year or in early 1699, he hired
The house itself was begun a few years earlier and gives little the architect William Talman and then the landscape designer
indication either in its planning or design of the kind of envi- George London to draw up plans.
ronment it would end up being part of. Even in the aerial per- Before looking at what they proposed, it is worth pay-
spective prepared around 1715 and published as late as 1725 ing some attention to the existing conditions, for they
(in the third volume of Colen Campbell's Vitruvius Britanni- would play a significant role in later design decisions affect-
cus), Castle Howard appears to be a fairly typical, though by ing not just the house but the entire site. The original Hen-
no means uninteresting, late Baroque palace modulated by a derskelfe Castle, as shown on the 1694 map, was located on
good dose of Palladio (Figure 4). 8 It is important to keep this the saddle of a ridge just to the west of the large wooded
discontinuity between house and garden in mind in order to hill called Ray (sometimes spelled Wray) Wood. The vil-
fully appreciate the unexpected and unprecedented character lage of Henderskelfe was strung out along the road running
of the later additions to the estate. east-west just south of the castle and the hill. The castle's
Design of the house began in 1699, and construction entrance fagade faced west, meaning that views to the rear
started either late that year or early the following one.'9 But were blocked by the hill. The Talman-London design repli-
Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor were not the first architects to be cated the east-west orientation of the castle but obliterated
hired by Carlisle, nor was their building the first to be built on nearly everything else, driving Baroque allees through the
the site. A little over fifteen miles northeast of the city of York, grounds into Ray Wood and establishing large etoiles to
at the edge of the Howardian Hills, the site had been the loca- punctuate the formal order (Figure 6).2" Gone was any sense
tion of the medieval castle and town of Henderskelfe, both of of the rise and fall of the land, the picturesque path of the
which can be seen on a map of 1694 (Figure 5). The castle original village lane, and the wild naturalness of the wooded
had come into the possession of Lord William Howard, the hill to the east. The proposed formal garden to the north,
founder of the family dynasty and the third earl of Carlisle's composed of canals crossing at right angles, terminated on
great-great-great grandfather, toward the end of the sixteenth the east and west in exedra-shaped water theaters.
Figure 5 Henderskelfe Castle and
village (later site of Castle
Howard), estate map, 1694
Figure 6 George London, Castle

Howard, preliminary project,
probably 1699, site plan showing
house design by William Talman
? :
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CASTLE HOWARD 331
Figure 7 Castle
Howard, estate map by
Ralph Fowler, 1727
Carlisle was not pleased with either Talman's or Lon- and statues to bring out the naturalness of the situation
don's effort, and turned to Vanbrugh, a fellow Whig and probably occurred between 1705 and 1710, at the very time
member of the Kit-Cat Club, to see if he could do better. the highly formalized plan of the house itself was being
Vanbrugh had been a soldier and more recently had made given material shape and before any such picturesque ideas
quite a reputation for himself as a playwright, producing were instituted at Stowe, Chiswick, Rousham, or Alexander
The Relapse in 1696 and The Provok'd Wife the following Pope's villa at Twickenham.23
year. According to Jonathan Swift, "Van's Genius without The Vanbrugh-Hawksmoor plan for the house is com-
Thought or Lecture" then "turnd to Architecture."21 Per- posed of a central quadrangular block, raised above the
haps on the advice of Carlisle, who took an enormous inter- north entrance court and containing en suite a double-
est in the project and played an important role in its design, height domed hall and a large saloon. The latter, which
Vanbrugh reoriented the house on a north-south axis. In opens onto the formal garden to the south, stretches east
addition, he shifted the visual focus of the plan to the south, and west into wings, each approximately one hundred and
opening up vistas in that direction and, most significant, twenty-five feet long. They contain the main state apart-
leaving Ray Wood as a kind of natural wilderness along the ments, with Lord Carlisle's occupying the suite on the
east flank of the house (Figure 7). At some point in this east.24 The dome over the hall is raised on a tall drum that
process, probably early in 1700, Vanbrugh engaged the allows it to be read from afar and as part of both the
highly skilled and professionally trained Hawksmoor to col- entrance and garden facade compositions. The entrance
laborate with him on the project. (Hawksmoor had worked court is framed by lower wings connected to it by quadrants,
with Christopher Wren for nearly twenty years and been as in Palladio's plan for the Villa Trissino at Meledo, which
given responsibility for construction at St. Paul's Cathedral.) would have been known to Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor
It is unclear precisely whose decision it was to treat Ray through the Quattro libri dell'architettura. Flanking the
Wood in such a quasi-naturalistic way, or when that deci- wings, and masked by them, are a kitchen court to the west
sion was actually made, although it is thought that Carlisle and a stable court to the east, each terminating in a block
himself was instrumental in the plan and that he may have dominated by four towers. Of the two, only the kitchen
been independently advised by Stephen Switzer, who court was built according to the Vanbrugh-Hawksmoor
extolled the Wood's "intricate mazes" in Ichnographia Rus- plan, but with its position shifted from the west to the east
tica, saying "'Tis There that Nature is truly imitated, if not side of the entrance court.25
excell'd."22 The laying out of winding paths, the construc- The facades of the lower quadrant wings (only the left,
tion of a system of waterworks, and the placement of seats or east, one of which is by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor) are
Figure 8 Castle Howard, entrance court, east wing
Figure 9 Castle Howard, entrance court, north fagade
Figure 10 Castle Howard, entrance hall
simply rusticated (Figure 8). The importance of the

main block is indicated by the colossal order of
coupled Doric pilasters supporting an entablature
and balustrade beneath the dome (Figure 9).26 The
richer Composite order of the central hall (Figure
10), which leads to the enfilade of rooms in the gar-
den wing, is complemented by the Corinthian
order that decorates the south facade and supports
the pedimented temple front that looks out over
the formal parterre to the enclosed "Wilderness"
of evergreens, or "wood within the walls," as it
was called, that carried over the symmetrical
arrangement of the house into the landscape (Fig-
ure 11). The formal garden seen in the drawing
published by Campbell was laid out in the early
1720s, but was removed by the end of the century
Figure 11 Castle Howard, south (garden) fagade
and restored only in a minimal kind of way in the
following one.
CASTLE HOWARD 333
The house was finished, as far as it would be in Carlisle's
lifetime, by 1712, and he began occupying it the following
year. Soon after that, he focused all his attention on the gar-
den and outbuildings, leaving the west wing and stables to be
completed by his heirs. This extension of the architecture into
the landscape was not a minor effort. In fact, about as much
money would be spent on this work as on the house itself-
and it would be the landscape created by the garden struc-
tures, rather than the house, that would reflect Carlisle's
ultimate decision to retire from the city to a life of rural pur-
suits. During the years the house was under construction,
Carlisle's life had changed considerably. By the time he was
able to move into it, even greater changes were about to occur,
all of which affected the function he ascribed to his country
estate. When he first began contemplating building on the
site outside York, he was barely thirty years old and about to
embark on a career in politics. His success and rise to promi-
nence were rapid. After working enthusiastically for the
Whigs in the parliamentary elections in 1700-1, he was made
a member of William III's Privy Council in the summer of
1701 and appointed first Lord of the Treasury, the most
important political post in England, that December. But when
the king died in March of the following year and the Tories
came back into power under Queen Anne, Carlisle was dis- Figure 12 Vanbrugh, Obelisk, Castle Howard, 1714
missed and entered a period of protracted political exile,
spending much of his time in Yorkshire overseeing the con-
struction of his country residence. and in London, despite his preoccupation with the work at
In The Building of Castle Howard, Saumarez Smith Castle Howard. When Queen Anne died in 1714, he was
argues quite compellingly that Carlisle's main reason for appointed one of the Lords Justice in the absence of the new
building the house was a mixture of political and social king and soon reappointed to the post of first Lord of the
ambition.2 Although the Howard family had significant Treasury by George I. But he remained in that position for
roots going back to the Middle Ages, Carlisle came from a only a few months, deciding of his own accord to leave pol-
relatively undistinguished branch whose history in relation itics for good. During the years he was forced to remain out
to the ownership of Henderskelfe was further compromised of the government, he had apparently grown too distant
by a long-disputed matrinlineal inheritance. In addition, from the life of political intrigue not to be disillusioned by
Carlisle's title was relatively recent, having been bestowed what he experienced when he returned to the fray. Also, his
on his grandfather in 1661, only eight years before he him- own life and ambitions had changed much in the interven-
self was born. The desire to legitimate and give status to his ing decade. He had separated from his wife and had come
family coincided with his burgeoning political career. The to realize that his son and three daughters, none of whom
building of a showy country house was the perfect, and were yet married, needed his support and guidance. His
completely appropriate, rhetorical means of aggrandizing health had begun to deteriorate and would only worsen as
his family's prestige while displaying his own growing per- time went on. Life in the country, in a place he had created
sonal power and leadership role. The idea worked very well. for his family and where he could lay a strong foundation
Soon after the first plans were completed, a model was for its future, now seemed to Carlisle, at the age of forty-
shown to the king at Hampton Court in June 1700, follow- five, a reason for permanent retirement.
ing which Carlisle almost immediately received his first A poem of praise written by his second daughter, Lady
political appointment, as one of the Gentlemen of His Anne Irwin, in 1732, celebrates the creation of Castle
Majesty's Bedchamber. Howard as the uniquely defining accomplishment of her
After his dismissal from the government in 1702, father's life and explains its significance in terms of his ulti-
Carlisle kept in touch with political activities at the court mate decision to retire to it:
Y 1
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Figure 13 Castle Howard, map of the estate and surrounding area, O

provisional edition, 1952, detail
Through various Paths to Happiness you've

later work try'd,
in and on the landsc
But ever follow'd a falacious sonal
Guide,
and reflective program th
Till from the Court and City new,
you withdrew,
more subjective terms.
A Life of rural Pleasure to pursue.
Soon you resign'd what others most desire;
Second Phase of Construction: The Extended
Nor cou'd Ambition your cool Temper fire:
Garden
The Statesman's Schemes you leftandto
Outbuildings
those who durst be gre
And found joys unmolestedThe
in this
initial safe
step in Retreat.28
the creation of the larger context for the
house was the erection of an obelisk in 1714, marking the
The poem devotes just one stanza
final approach toto the athouse
the house, butthe
the point where sixtee
access
road from Its
to the garden and outbuildings. the south turns east toward Ray
descriptions makeWood (Figures
it ev
12, returned
dent that, in 1715, once he 13). Dedicated to to
the duke
hisofestate
Marlborough
forin com-
goo
Carlisle had different purposes
memoration offrom those
his war victories, that
it was initial
still quite conven-
inspired the constructiontional in form
of the as well as
house atplacement,
the turnalthough
ofitsth
century. Though no less grandiloquent in many
one-hundred-foot height suggested somethingways,
of the scopet
CASTLE HOWARD 335
Figure 15 Hawksmoor, Carrmire Gate and bastions, Castle
Howard, ca. 1730
Figure 14 Castle Howard, view from the turnoff from the county road
of things to come. In fact, Carlisle later added the follow- the county road for more than a mile, in a perfectly strai
ing inscription to it by way of announcing the more per- line about five hundred yards to the west of the house
sonal intentions his estate had come to embody: gesture that, according to Williamson, "expressed powe
and control naked and unashamed-over the surround-
IF TO PERFECTION THESE PLANTATIONS RISE ing landscape" and thus served immediately to define the
IF THEY AGREEABLY MY HEIRS SURPRISE domain as a world unto itself.29 From the turnoff, one can
THIS FAITHFUL PILLAR WILL THEIR AGE DECLARE faintly see in the distance (on a sunny day, that is) what looks
AS LONG AS TIME THESE CHARACTERS SHALL SPARE for all intents and purposes like a vision of a medieval town
HERE THEN WITH KIND REMEMBRANCE READ HIS NAME stretching out along the ridge of the mounting terraces of
WHO FOR POSTERITY PERFORM'D THE SAME hills (Figure 14). At the point where the avenue dips just
before crossing a stream, it is compressed within a strange-
CHARLES THE III EARL OF CARLISLE looking arched portal, called the Carrmire Gate, marking
OF THE FAMILY OF THE HOWARDS and protecting, as it were, the point of entry into the
ERECTED A CASTLE WHERE THE OLD CASTLE OF domain (Figure 15).
HENDERSKELFE STOOD, AND CALL'D IT CASTLE-HOWARDDesigned by Hawksmoor around 1730, the Carrmire
HE LIKEWISE MADE THE PLANTATIONS IN THIS PARK Gate was built of small, rough-cut blocks of rubble stone
AND ALL THE OUT-WORKS, MONUMENTS AND OTHER that give the appearance of having perhaps once been faced
PLANTATIONS BELONGING TO THE SAID SEAT with a more elegant surfacing material that has since disap-
peared. The implication of change over time is reinforced
by the
By 1731, when the above inscription was added, all disparity
the between the classical design of the arch
itselfof
major elements in the overall design of the landscape and the medieval-looking walls into which the arch
Cas-
would
tle Howard were in place or under construction. Theseem to have been inserted at a later date. The rather
devel-
forbidding
opment of the grounds had reached well beyond the areaair
ofgiven to the arch by the diagonally set pyra-
Ray Wood and the formal parterre and "woodmids protecting
within the its flanks (an idea that may have its source
in Wren's
walls" that lay just south of the house. The best way reconstruction of the Etruscan Tomb of King
to appre-
ciate the changes in character, scale, and meaning Porsenna) was carried further into space by crenellated cur-
that resulted
tain
from these extensions is to tour the grounds as they walls have
would terminating in turreted bastions furnished with
Latin designs
appeared at the time, rather than analyze the individual cross-shaped machicolations.30 These are among the
in chronological order, as is often done. earliest such mock-Gothic structures to be built in the eigh-
The main avenue of approach, as it was laid teenth century. Although it has been suggested that some
out around
1709 and finally completed in the 1730s, runs country
north from
estates were still being fortified at the time, the
Figure 16 Vanbrugh, Pyramid Gate, Figure 17 Vanbrugh, east bastions of the Pyramid Gate (with the Pyramid in the distance),
Castle Howard, 1719 (additions to the left Castle Howard, early 1720s
and right by Thomas Robinson, 1756)
walls at Castle Howard were clearly symbolic.31 The idea Gate. Rather than appearing to have been subject to a later
was to give credence to the "castle" part of the name Cas- intervention, the mock fortifications look as if they had been
tle Howard and to cause the visitor, from a distance, to built, as in fact they were, as an addition to a preexisting
structure.
begin to think about the age and extent of the place. Was it,
as Strawberry Hill's creator Horace Walpole wondered after As it stretches into the distance on the right, th
a visit in 1772, "a palace, a town, [or even] a fortified city"?32 tain wall also directs the eye toward a third pyramida
As the avenue continues north toward the Obelisk, this one a freestanding pyramid located to the sout
which disappears from view over the following stretch of the same ridge as the Pyramid Gate (see Figure 13
road, still more signs along the way provide further traces rhyming of the three pyramidal forms makes the
of imagined earlier inhabitation. From the Carrmire Gate, begin to work in new ways as it implies the need to
one can see the next point of arrival, located on the high the landscape setting as a whole. The visitor also no
ridge in the distance. The second gate, known as the Pyra- izes that not only is there more than just a house t
mid Gate (marked Guest House in Figure 13), was designed the end of the road, but that the journey will not alw
by Vanbrugh in 1719 (Figure 16). The solid, solemn, cubi- low the straight path of approach the main avenue
cal block forming the body of the structure is built of ash- seemed to promise. Indeed, little of what is to be
lar in a quasi-utilitarian, quasi-militaristic mode that Castle Howard is approached head-on or even, as
ultimately derives from late Roman architecture as it might case of the freestanding Pyramid, by a manmade
have existed in the far reaches of the empire, perhaps even what amounts to a fairly radical departure from st
as far north as here in Yorkshire.33 Above the round-arched classical practice of the period, the entrance to the
portal, and supported by a deep corbel table of smaller neither aligned with the access road nor given muc
round arches containing the family coat of arms and an definition. Instead, it is reached in a rather roundab
inscription to Carlisle, is the distinctive form that gives the that only serves to reinforce the primacy the landsc
gate its name. The reference to Egypt resonates across ting took on after work on the house was aborted.
space as the arch itself frames, and throws into perspective, turn at the Obelisk, which lines up with the top, or
the pyramid-topped Obelisk seen through it in the distance. ern edge, of the entrance court, focuses attention on
The mixture and elision of historical horizons is elaborated of Ray Wood, which terminates the view. The ent
by the mock defensive walls that stretch out from the gate court, set at a right angle to the cross-axis, only g
in both directions (Figure 17). Added in the early 1720s and appears, and then almost inadvertently, as the hous
composed of stone retrieved from the ruins of the former to nestle at the edge of the wooded hill.
Henderskelfe Castle, these multibastioned, medievalizing The preservation of Ray Wood in a relatively na
curtain walls reverse the impression given by the Carrmire istic state was, as we recall, a crucial element in the
CASTLE HOWARD 337
Figure 18 Vanbrugh (with Hawksmoor),
Temple (later Temple of the Four Winds),
Castle Howard, 1723-39
conception of Castle Howard, going back nearly to the very Vanbrugh specifically rejected any "Gothick" or rustic-
beginning of the building process. Although the symmetri-looking design for the site, an idea that was advanced by
cal and hierarchical design of the house may seem to have Hawksmoor in early 1724 in response to a request by
little to do with the treatment of the wooded area, the force-Carlisle for a more economical solution. Hawksmoor called
ful presence of the hill cheek by jowl with the house pro-his project a "Turret" (Figure 19).37 Its curious, four-tow-
vides a constant reminder of the natural as well as cultural ered design, to be built of rubble stone, clearly related to
history of the site, what later writers would refer to as thethe bastioned walls that surrounded Ray Wood-and that
genius loci, or genius of the place. This role grew expo- were then being added to the Pyramid Gate-although the
nentially in the years after 1715, when Carlisle and his only part of this design that could truly be called Gothic
architects shifted their attention from the house to the was the rather crude juxtaposition of the vertical towers to
the circular substructure. Vanbrugh assured Carlisle that
grounds of the estate. Ray Wood served as the catalyst for
what was demanded was "an Italian Building in that Place,"
the first of the three major outbuildings begun in the 1720s,
and eventually became a locus of their intersection.35 meaning a classical design of a modern sort. He said it
The southern edge of Ray Wood preserved the line "Shou'd
of be Square, not round" and even expressed concern
the path that previously joined the village of Henderskelfe
over how the building should be referred to. "I have some
to the neighboring town of Malton (see Figures 5, doubts
7). about the Name of Belvedere, which is generally
given to some high Tower," he wrote to Carlisle. "Such a
When, probably sometime in 1723, Carlisle thought to con-
struct a building at the southeast corner of Ray Woodthing
to will certainly be right to have some time and in Some
serve as a summer house and belvedere, it was decidedPlace....
to But this Building I fancy wou'd more naturally
make the approach to it follow the original village lane
take the Name of Temple which the Situation likewise is
rather than a more axial route leading out directly from the
very proper for."38
house. The result is a curving path bordered by statuary, The model for Vanbrugh's Temple was Palladio's Villa
called the Terrace Walk, that gently rises to the structure
Rotonda, a most appropriate choice given the program, the
that was designed by Vanbrugh to overlook the valley
setting, and the desire for views in all four directions (Fig-
beyond. Conceived and built in 1723-39, the Temple is ure
a 20). Originally built for someone like Carlisle, who had
recently retired from public life, the Villa Rotonda was
biaxially symmetrical classical structure composed of pris-
unique among Palladio's villas in having no agricultural
matic geometric units (Figure 18). Now known as the Tem-
ple of the Four Winds, it was almost always referred to in
function and being simply a place for pleasurable activities,
like the entertainment of friends and the enjoyment of
the eighteenth century simply by its typological referent,
although sometimes a functional attribute was added to
nature.39 It is often thought of as the first Renaissance build-
make it the Belvedere Temple.36 ing to have explicitly appropriated the forms of ancient tem-
L
..t
'r;'
5::.:::::,
I:
::
*I
.:: ;i.
: r::: : ::
I%:
:?
;
""
Figure 19 Hawksmoor, "Turret" project for the Temple,

1724, perspective and plan
Figure 20 Andrea Palladio, Villa Rotonda, Vicenza,

1560s, plan and section/elevation. From Palladio,
I quattro libri dell'architettura (Venice, 1570)
pies for modern domestic purposes. Like its Palladian

hadpro-
Hawksmoor design two other structures between 1726,
thecubic
totype, the twenty-six-foot square block of Vanbrugh's year Vanbrugh died, and 1729. Both were dedicated to
structure is topped by a dome and embellished on all four
preserving some aspect of the Carlisle family history and
faces with Ionic porticos, the ones on the east andlineage.
west The first of the two appears on the hill beyond the
being amplified by paired statues of sibyls. Where
serpentine river that flows from the lake that was put in
Hawksmoor's incurving niches and turreted anglesbelow
wouldRay Wood around the same time the Temple was
begun (Figure 21). The Mausoleum, as it was called, was
have created a protective shelter from the outside world,
the porticos in the Vanbrugh design Carlisle chose open
builtthe
in part to replace the church of the former village of
Henderskelfe
airy and well-lit room of the building to distant views of the and thus sometimes was referred to in the
surrounding landscape and the Arcadian world of pastoral

correspondence between Hawksmoor and Carlisle as "the
imagery defined by his estate "improvements."40 Church" or ",yr Chappel"- but its main purpose was to
Views from the Temple to the north and northeast still the remains of Carlisle and his progeny.41 The pro-
contain
ject was
today provide the visitor with images of animals grazing and discussed as early as 1722, when Vanbrugh was con-
farmers working the fields, but those to the south and on the subject, but the three-year design process did
sulted
southeast reveal a scene of a more monumentally
notcon-
begin until 1726. The building took more than fifteen
structed order. From the broad terrace surrounding the
years to construct and was completed in 1745 (Figure 22).
summer house, one can survey the landscape where Carlisle
Although the idea that the structure should be circular
CASTLE HOWARD 339
Figure 21 Temple, Castle Howard,
with a view of the Mausoleum
ering the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Tomb of King

Porsenna, he decided on the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, out-
side Rome. In order to appropriate the closed exterior of the
pagan memorial to the religious faith of a Christian church,
Hawksmoor surrounded the blank drum of his model with a
continuous open arcade, following the example of Early

Christian churches (Figure 23). By the spring of 1729, it was
decided to replace the arcade with a colonnade, and for this
Hawksmoor turned to Palladio's engraving of the Tempietto
in Rome, the martyrial church by Bramante dedicated to St.
Peter and thought to be so pure a representation of antique
architecture that Palladio himself considered it authentic in
everything but date (Figure 24).43

The round cella walls and drum of the Mausoleum rise
Figure 22 Hawksmoor, Mausoleum, Castle Howard, 1722-45
up through an exceedingly tall Doric colonnade into a dome
(bastioned walls around the base and stairway by Daniel Garrett,
supported on a clerestory, the crown of the dome reaching
1738-45)
a height of ninety feet from the already elevated position of
the site. The circular superstructure forming the chapel
proper is set on a high base containing a crypt large enough
to accommodate seventy coffins. The base originally rose
appears to have governed Hawksmoor's thinking from the
directly out of the ground, with the steps leading to the
very beginning, its specific form emerged only after much
discussion with the client and his eldest son, Viscount Mor-
upper chapel concealed within its solid mass. (The elaborate
stairway, copied from Lord Burlington's villa at Chiswick,
peth. Carlisle had originally thought the building should take
and the bastioned wall surrounding the whole were added
the "form of a Greek Temple," but Hawksmoor demurred,
after Hawksmoor's death by Burlington's protege Daniel
claiming that "the Gentiles, Jews, or any other polite people
Garrett, under the influence of Carlisle's son-in-law
had either Magnificent piles for Sepulture, but never buryed
Thomas Robinson.) The tall, closely spaced columns of the
near their temples, or built their tombs in the form of any
Mausoleum give the structure a guarded and forbidding
temple dedicated to divine honours." Rather than imitating
a temple, he strongly advised choosing from among theappearance, while the cylindrical shape and dome provide a
known examples of "Greek or Latin" tombs.42 After consid-dour and powerful silhouette.44 Deriving from the Tomb of
_.
Figure 23 Mausoleum, Castle Howard, preliminary project, 1728
Figure 24 Donato Bramante, San Pietro in Montorio (Tempietto), Rome, ca. 1502,
elevation/section. From Palladio, I quattro libri
Caecilia Metella by way of Bramante's Tempietto, the Mau- TO THY LONG LABOURS, TO THY CARE
soleum resonates with the ecclesiastical meanings associ- THY SONS DECEAS'D, THY PRESENT HEIR
ated from the Early Christian period on with the arcaded or THEIR GREAT POSSESSIONS OWE:
colonnaded central-plan space of the martyrium. SPIRIT DIVINE WHAT THANKS ARE DUE
From the vantage point of the Mausoleum, one can see THIS WILL THY MEMORY RENEW
on the horizon the third in the triad of major monuments IT'S ALL I CAN BESTOW
in the southeastern quadrant of Castle Howard's extended

landscape (Figure 25). This is the Pyramid, built in 1728 Under the beehive-shaped dome of the interior is a rough-
and dedicated to the memory of William Howard, the Eliz- hewn pedestal base supporting a strange capital seemingly
abethan founder of the Carlisle line and the one who was
pieced together from elements of quite different origin.
responsible for acquiring Henderskelfe (Figure 26). The
The lower part contains a ring of degraded vegetal motifs;
cenotaph is twenty-eight feet high and absolutely blank,the upper portion has four consoles attached to a stubby
except for a small dedicatory marble plaque, set in the low
column supporting a ring, on which is set, well above eye
square base on the side facing the house, and a tiny door on
height, the crudely carved bust of the ancestral figure (Fig-
ure 27). As Lord Howard looks out across the gloom with
the rear, barely visible at first, that opens into the vaulted
space of the interior. The very personally felt inscription ona kind of wide-eyed, late Roman otherworldliness, the vis-
the plaque reads as follows: itor is put in mind of another time.45
TO THEE O VENERABLE SHADE
WHO LONG HAST IN OBLIVION LAID Temple, Mausoleum, and Pyramid: Geometric,
THIS PILE I HERE ERECT Historical, and Typological Correlations
A TRIBUTE SMALL FOR WHAT THOU'ST DONE From the Mausoleum, the Pyramid appears unapproach-
DEIGN TO ACCEPT THIS MEAN RETURN, able, sinking into the ground as it directs the eye to the sky
PARDON THE LONG NEGLECT. (see Figure 25). There is no obvious path to it. Indeed, nei-
CASTLE HOWARD 341
Figure 25 Hawksmoor, Pyramid, Castle Howard, 1728, view from the Mausoleum
Figure 26 Pyramid, Castle Howard
of the Temple and Mausoleum.47 The significance of these

deviations only slowly makes itself felt as one becomes
aware of another kind of order they establish. The land-
scape of the southeastern quadrant of the estate is in fact
triangulated by the three monuments, setting up a series of
internal relationships that separates their world from the
formal logic of the house and its immediate surrounds (see
Figures 21, 25).
It is as if the conventional ground of representation has
literally shifted beneath one's feet, leaving the visitor to stabi-
lize the floating pieces in his or her own mind. The distances
between the three structures are inordinately vast-and there
are no visible clues on the ground to indicate how one con-
nects to the other two. Nor can any sense of their interrela-
tionship be gained from the vantage point of the house or,
indeed, from any static location, as would normally be the case
ther Vanbrugh nor Hawksmoor ever drew a plan of the in the typical English garden such as the one at Stowe, where
extended landscape garden of Castle Howard as far as we house, garden, and garden structures are linked by a system of
know, nor was any ever published at the time.46 The absence paths that increasingly came to define a prescribed visual and
of a planned approach to the Pyramid-or from the Tem- sometimes even narrative circuit (see Figure 1).48 The order of
ple to the Mausoleum-is less disturbing, however, than its the landscape at Castle Howard is at first too natural-seeming
apparent lack of orientation to the formal order of the house to appear like order, especially in contrast to the carefully
and its south parterre (Figure 28; see Figure 13). The Pyra- wrought architectural figures in it. And the precisely differen-
mid is neither axially aligned with the house nor oriented tiated character of those figures seems to contradict the appar-
toward it, a dislocation that would not have been as notice- ently unregulated nature of the landscape. A mood is
able at ground level when the "wood within the walls" still created-as in the setting for a story that is about to unfold-
existed. The Pyramid is shifted well to the east of the and it is the visitor who is asked to give voice to the action.49
house's main north-south axis and rotated in the direction The life in the landscape is sensed through the perspicuous dif-
ferentiation of the three figural representations, and this at the
level of shape, of source, of type, and of temporal dimension.
One is immediately struck by the obvious distinction
of square, circle, and triangle-or cube, sphere, and pyra-
mid. Indeed, Vanbrugh asserted to Carlisle that the Temple
had to be "Square, not round," and rationalized the econ-
omy of using a flat ceiling hiding the dome "because it will
shape the Room just to a Cube."50 Hawksmoor, for his part,
specifically rejected Carlisle's desire for a "Greek Temple"
for the Mausoleum because he felt the building should be
circular rather than rectangular. The Temple, the Mau-
soleum, and the Pyramid each declares its independence
from the other two through its geometry, while relating to
the others in the expression of geometry's three primary
forms. This is in no way an exercise in abstraction, how-
ever, for the three geometric forms all have their source in
particular historical traditions, which also relate to building
type-and therefore to use or function.5'
The three distinct historical periods of Egyptian,
ancient classical, and Renaissance architecture (or what con-
temporaries would have thought of as Egyptian, Greek, and
Roman or Italian architecture) are invoked by the three
buildings. The cubic Temple, with its four porticos and cen-
tral dome, represents, at a diminished scale, the Roman
Renaissance Villa Rotonda by Palladio. The Mausoleum
refers to ancient Roman and Greek prototypes through its
Figure 27 Pyramid, Castle Howard, interior with the bust of Lord circular shape and Doric order, the intermediary of Bra-
William Howard
Figure 28 Pyramid,
Castle Howard, view
from the parterre on the
south side of the house
CASTLE HOWARD 343
mante only serving to assure its ancient pedigree.52 The ual elements themselves. The changes in scale from model
Pyramid, though sometimes found in the classical world, as to representation are in large part responsible for turning
in the tomb of Cestius in Rome, is always read as instanti- what could have been merely a rhetorical display into the
ating an Egyptian type.53 personal and historical drama the landscape presents. The
The three historical horizons outlined by the structures Pyramid, which by all rights should have been the largest of
at Castle Howard serve to support and to characterize the the three structures, is the smallest and most retiring. The
differential expression of use through type. The three types Mausoleum, which, according to the Bramantean version,
are the domestic, the ecclesiastic, and the sepulchral. The should have been the smallest, is the largest-and by an
Temple was designed as a summer house with place for exceedingly apparent amount. The house/Temple is thus
books, wine, spirits, and other such domestic accoutrements relatively correct in scale, being midway in size between the
provided for in niches, cabinets, and built-in furniture. The other two; but on an absolute scale, which is to say, in rela-
identification with the Villa Rotonda as the ideal Renaissance tion to the size of its model-the Villa Rotonda-it is
version of the type gives bold emphasis to the building's touchingly diminutive, one might even say fragile as life
domestic mien, especially in contrast to the other two struc- itself.
tures. The Mausoleum was intended to serve an ecclesiastic These distortions in scale could be interpreted on
function and was referred to by Hawksmoor, as noted above, purely functional or material grounds as coinciding with
as "the Church" or "Chappel." The form of the Early Chris-the intended use or purpose of each of the structures.56
tian martyrium gave historical validity to the associationWhile such a reading ultimately serves to reinforce the
between church and tomb, and the direct reference to Bra-expressive charge that results, it also points to the ques-
mante's Tempietto justified the formal composition of super- tions of intention and coherency. The poem about the
structure as chapel, substructure as crypt. This left a purely house and its garden written by Carlisle's daughter in 1732
sepulchral definition for the Pyramid, which assumed the clearly substantiates the reading of the monuments' dis-
Egyptian tomb type without equivocation. crete and collective meanings given above. In it, Lady Irwin
In their representations as a cubic Renaissance house, describes how "Buildings ... Of Grecian, Roman, and Egypt-
a cylindrical antique-style church, and a pyramidal Egypt- ian Form"-specifically referring to the Mausoleum, the
ian tomb, the three garden buildings describe and situate Temple, and the Pyramid-speak to the visitor of "the
themselves within three different temporal dimensions, and immortal Vert'ous dead," the "future Prospects" of
thus begin to portray in singularly vivid terms the story Carlisle's "noble Progeny," and of "the Harmony of Soul
embedded in their landscape setting. It is a story that is per- this Place inspires" in "the present Hour." And in her asser-
sonal in meaning and improvisational in realization. It is thetion that "Carlisle ... so early form'd this great Design,"
story, as both Saumarez Smith and Hunt have explained, ofthe author suggests if not a theory of premeditation, then
Carlisle's relationship to his country retreat, its history, itsat least a predisposition on the patron's part toward a cer-
present welfare, and its future prospects.54 The Temple, tain end.57
with its open, domestic outlook, is, in effect, all about the Any advocacy of such a strong position on the issues of
present. It speaks of communion with nature, the contem-intention and coherency has been questioned by Saumarez
plative life, and pleasure in socializing; the four porticos Smith and Hunt, who maintain that the development of the
infer the natural cycle of the day and year. The Pyramid is estate as a whole was a processual one, with changes con-
a monument to the past, dying into the ground and gather-stantly occurring and affecting the succeeding stage in the
ing in its secret enclosure a portrait bust of the figure whogarden's design.58 But it should be remembered, and con-
gave impetus to Carlisle's venture. Finally, the Mausoleum, stantly kept in mind, that the key structures in question-
with its tall, domed cella breaking through the surroundingthe Temple, the Mausoleum, and the Pyramid-were all
colonnade, is a statement about the future, a place where discussed and designed, sometimes simultaneously and in
Carlisle's children and their children would be reminded of reference to one another, in a very short period of time-
the importance of carrying on the work he began.55 approximately five to six years at most.59 And given the pre-
There is one final aspect of the coordination of the cision with which Vanbrugh defended his idea for an
triad of monuments that is necessary to dwell on for it is "Italian" design for the Temple-whose cubical form he
what assures the intensity, the coherence, and the subjec- considered one of its most noteworthy features-over
tivity of their combined expression. This is the question ofHawksmoor's turreted, rustic version, and Hawksmoor's
scale, not of the enterprise as a whole, on which I have disagreement with Carlisle over what would be an appro-
already commented, but of the relative scale of the individ-priate form for the Mausoleum-in which Hawksmoor
maintained that a "Greek Temple" (indicating a rectangu- entrance block, which is articulated by imposing pairs of
lar structure) would not be as suitable as a Roman tomb colossal Doric pilasters separated by niches containing stat-
(indicating a circular one)-it is clear that the two architects ues (see Figure 9). The relatively small and graceful Ionic
and their client were convinced, if not from the outset, then columns forming an aedicule around the door create a tran-
certainly through the improvisational process of design sition zone between the solemn and imposing exterior and
itself, that each building should be distinguished from the the grandiloquent domed hall to which it gives entry and
other two based on typological, geometric, and functional which, in turn, leads out through the saloon and the richly
differences encoding specific sets of historical references relieved Corinthian order of the south facade's pedimented
and meanings.60 temple front to the formal garden (see Figures 10, 11).63
Conjoining aspects of the Ionic and the Corinthian, the
noble and generous Composite order supporting the cof-
Conclusion: A New Order of Difference
fered dome of the entrance hall represents the high point of
Design by discrimination was one of the basic tenets of the
clas-sequence at its central, culminating moment.
The garden buildings of Castle Howard, by contrast,
sical imitation theory, going back to Aristotle's distinctions
between the modes of tragedy, comedy, satire, and thetake
like.us beyond the strict limits of the classical system of
Each was thought to have its own appropriate form hierarchical
and distinction in order to express certain kinds of
ideas, more discursive and more subjective in nature, that
manner relative to the "class" of objects imitated. In Renais-
sance and Baroque architectural theory, the distinctions
could only be represented by means of reference; and, once
differentiation through reference replaced distinction by
among the orders gave expression to distinctions in charac-
ter of a hierarchical sort. The spectrum ranged from theas the basis of representation, a much wider and more
rank
grave, sturdy Doric-usually characterized as male-
clearly defined range of historical types came to form the
through the delicate, sometimes playful, sometimes
subject matter of the mimetic operation.64 A comparison
matronly Ionic-characterized as female-to the noble with
and a more traditional garden pavilion of the period, such
as Richard Mique's Belvedere at the Petit Trianon at Ver-
grandiloquent Corinthian-also female in origin (the later
Composite being essentially an enrichment ofsailles,
the makes this quite clear (Figure 29). Mique's design is
Corinthian).61 By virtue of this universality, the ordersessentially
were a scaled-down, lighthearted version of the main
house, while the contiguous grotto acts as a conventional
thought to contain all significant variations of expression.
Good taste and training would enable the architect
foilto
of rusticity to highlight the Belvedere's sophistication.
choose and combine elements to ensure a proper and deco-
Only with the addition of painting or sculpture would such
rous representation, that is to say, one in accord with the
a standard architectural form be able to approach the kind
status of the subject. By the same token, an undecorated,
of specificity of expression and meaning present in the out-
astylar design would be suitable for more utilitarian,
buildings
less of Castle Howard.
representationally significant purposes.62 A key to the referential definition of Castle Howard is
Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor were well aware of, ifitsnot
incorporation of the pictorial as an instrumental, not just
equally well versed in, this classical system of expression.
incremental, factor in architectural representation. By this
I do not mean the "picturesque" simply as an aesthetic cat-
(The former, it should be recalled, had started out as a play-
egory,
wright.) The gradated effects of hierarchical distinction can but rather as an operational one. Castle Howard is in
be seen quite clearly in the progressive elaboration of the
fact more picturelike in its production of effects than it is in
spectacle of the house itself. It starts with the supporting
many of those effects themselves. Opinions differ on how to
characters around the edges of the scene and proceeds
assess the influence the Virgilian, Arcadian worlds painted
by Claude and Poussin might have had on Vanbrugh,
through the main space of the building along its proces-
sional axis (see Figure 4). The kitchen court to the east of
Hawksmoor, or Carlisle; but there is little question that a
the entrance court (originally mirrored by a stable court to
significant relationship exists (see Figures 3, 20). Vanbrugh,
whom Joshua Reynolds praised as "an Architect who com-
the west) is built of rubble stone only very sparingly relieved
by ashlar trim. Its nearly unadorned, medieval-lookingposed
tow- like a Painter," expressed admiration, as he put it, for
the "Objects that the best of Landskip Painters can
ers are masked from view by the east wing of the forecourt,
invent."65 And in her poem about Castle Howard, Lady
which housed private family living quarters behind a sturdy
and elegant though simple, rusticated facade (see Figure 8). made the parallel between its architecture and narra-
Irwin
This astylar unit turns the corner by means of a curved
tive landscape painting a major theme. Describing the land-
scape and the architecture through continuous
arcade to rise into the double-height facade of the main
CASTLE HOWARD 345
Figure 29 Richard Mique, Belvedere, with
the grotto to the left, Petit Trianon, Chateau
of Versailles, France, 1778-79
mythological reference, in which poetic, pictorial, and Looking at Castle Howard and Claude's painting
architectural metaphors constantly overlap, she wrote: Aeneas at Delos in this light, one might well ask whether
there is a critical difference between the painted temple of
Virgil presum'd to paint th' Elysian Fields, the ancient oracle and the stone one built for the third earl
To him my Lays, but not my Subject yields. of Carlisle. From the point of view of representation as
Had Mantuas Bard been bless'd with such a Theme, such, I would submit that there is none. And, in this regard,
He ne'r had form'd a Visionary Dream. the issue is hardly whether the architecture imitates the
All that Luxurious Fancy can invent, painting or offers a world "parallel" to it, as Hussey has
What Poets feign, what Painters represent; aptly characterized the relationship between the two
Not in Imagination here we trace, media.67 It is simply that the conventional shapes of the
Realities adorn this happy Place.66 built buildings stand in virtually the same relationship to
nature as the shapes of the painted buildings and figures do
In this modern replay of the traditional paragone, archi-to the world of reality. Both depend, in more or less equal
measure, on the mediation of historical models in the
tecture not only incorporates the representational explicit-
process of representation that Ernst Gombrich has charac-
ness of painting and poetry; it achieves a superiority through
terized as the "finding, making, and matching" of art imi-
the very materiality and "reality" that might otherwise have
worked to its detriment. Clearly, what was being questionedtating art.68 Architectural representation thereby achieves
was the assumption, implicit in the classical distinction in the landscape garden of Castle Howard a kind of parity
between natura naturata and natura naturans, that architec-
and identity with pictorial representation that it never so
clearly had before. The overlapping of the two modes is
ture, although one of the "arts of imitation," has a less literal,
brought into vivid focus in the painting of the house by
less direct, more generalized relationship to the natural world
than does painting, sculpture, or poetry-in other words, that
Hendrik de Cort, commissioned by the fifth earl of Carlisle,
architecture is not simply restricted to the imitation of thein which an idyllic scene of pastoral life is imagined as tak-
ing place in the actual environment of the Yorkshire estate
principles of harmony, order, or symmetry that underlie and
(Figure 30).69
govern the natural world, but that it can indeed represent,
and with even more vividness than painting or sculpture can, But the challenge of the pictorial was not as easily won
the objects of that world. as Lady Irwin thought. While opening up the possibilities
Figure 30 Hendrik de Cort, Castle Howard: Mausoleum and House, 1800
for architectural representation beyond the general and uni- ties of painting or sculpture and involving, as they ulti-
versal categories of hierarchical distinction provided by the mately would, a strictly architectural conception of experi-
classical orders, the construction of images through a pic- ential space.
torial form of mimesis necessarily sacrificed something of Considered as a whole constructed in two distinct
the "realities" of architecture, as Carlisle's daughter called stages-the house coming first and the landscape garden
them, to the "fancy" of painting. And the evidence this now second-Castle Howard provides striking evidence of the
gave of an unavoidable confrontation between the demands fundamental shift that occurred in the eighteenth century
of appearance and those of reality-of the desires of the from a conventional, rhetorically based mode of represen-
imagination and the needs of material conditions-set into tation, characteristic of architecture since the Early Renais-
motion a dialectic that still engages and, in many ways, sance, to one driven by the more explicit, individuated, and
defines modern architecture. At the same time, in picturing descriptive possibilities inherent in a pictorialized mode of
the past, present, and future of Carlisle's personal history in composition. Exchanging the exclusive and closed system
three typologically differentiated structures whose only of representation of the classical orders that gave hierarchi-
links to one another were to be supplied by the movement cal distinction to the various parts of the house for the more
of the observer in real time and space, Vanbrugh and open, more varied, more evocative, but also more elusive
Hawksmoor also suggested in the outbuildings of Castle set of references embodied in the different types of garden
Howard, a generation before G. E. Lessing's Laocoon (1766) outbuildings, Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor recalibrated the
first articulated the modern idea of "truth to medium," how subject-object mechanism in architectural expression to suit
the representations of architecture might find their own the demands of an unconventional narrative of the self. The
special means for development independent of the modali- passive registration of characterological distinctions by the
CASTLE HOWARD 347
discerning eye of an ideal, neutral observer was replaced by lows: "Landscape design can be said to have originated at Stowe and Cas-
an active engagement of the imaginative faculties of the tle Howard simultaneously, in the second decade of the 18th century.
Indeed landscape in the sense of scenic values was appreciated earlier at
beholder in interpreting and analyzing the specific mean-
Castle Howard and shaped subsequent developments more consistently.
ings of the structures in their actual landscape setting. No
But the progress of garden design from the point we have reached can be
longer the object but now the very subject of the architec- traced more certainly and consecutively if we give precedence to Stowe,
tural drama of the landscape garden, the participant at Cas- where not only each stage in the transition, but also the antecedents have
tle Howard controls and determines the sequence and pace left their mark, or can be deduced. Moreover it is there that the develop-
ment of specifically pictorial garden design, as distinct from broadly scenic
at which the different buildings are encountered and ulti-
landscape-making, can be watched step by step, although a parallel stride
mately attributes meanings to them in a process where see-
was taken at Castle Howard a little sooner" (89).
ing itself necessarily becomes a creative act. The modern 3. For a discussion of the early English landscape garden, and Stowe in par-
architectural subject thus emerges in a double sense: as the ticular, as a narrative experience unfolding over time and encouraging a new
reflexive expression of the building and as the beholder as an freedom of association on the part of the spectator, see John Dixon Hunt,
active agent in its determination. The Figure in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening during the Eigh-
teenth Century (Baltimore and London, 1976), esp. 58-104.
4. Hussey, English Gardens, 101. Cf. Ronald Paulson, Emblem and Expression:
Meaning in English Art of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1975).
5. Hussey, English Gardens, 114-31; but see n. 2.
Notes 6. Ibid., 115.
This article has its roots in a visit to Castle Howard in the summer of 1966
7. Kerry Downes, Hawksmoor (1959; 2d ed., London, 1979); Kerry Downes,
and a paper in a graduate seminar with Kerry Downes at Yale University Vanbrugh
the (London, 1977); and Kerry Downes, SirJohn Vanbrugh: A Biog-
following fall that allowed me to formulate my thoughts on the subject raphy
for (London and New York, 1987).
the first time. I am grateful to Kerry Downes for exposing me to the8.full
Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 109.
9. Throughout the series, the house is approached from the north rather
context of Vanbrugh's and Hawksmoor's architecture and for encouraging
me, at a time when there was little written on the topic, to proceed with
than from the south, thus precluding views of the landscape garden and its
major buildings and structures. Only the Temple is used as a setting in the
my interest in Castle Howard. I am also grateful to Christopher Ridgway,
drama, and that for only two short though consequential scenes.
curator of Castle Howard, for facilitating a second, two-day visit in the fall
10. Charles Saumarez Smith, The Building of Castle Howard (London, 1990;
of 1994, just prior to my presentation of the material as the first of the Slade
new ed., London, 1997).
Lectures that I gave at Cambridge University that term, and for his gen-
erosity in providing documentary and photographic materials to me.11.
ForIbid., xvii-iii, 193.
their aid in securing illustrations, I also thank Alison Brisby, assistant to12.
theJohn Dixon Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of
Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1992), 18-46 (ch.
curator, Castle Howard; Susan Pugh, National Monuments Record, Swin-
10, "Castle Howard Revisited").
don; Pete Clark, Joe Coagy, Stephen Hayles, Becca Hickman, and Tony
13. Ibid., 20, 46.
Vaughan, Ordnance Survey, Southampton; Camilla Costello, Country Life;
and Claudia Ponton, Art Resource. Both Zeynep (elik and the anonymous
14. Christopher Ridgway and Robert Williams, eds., SirJohn Vanbrugh and
Landscape Architecture in Baroque England, 1690-1730 (Thrupp, Stroud,
reader have my warm appreciation for their astute and sensitive editorial
Gloucestershire, 2000).
help. But my deepest gratitude goes to my deceased wife, Gillian Levine,
15. Tom Williamson, "Estate Management and Landscape Design," in ibid.,
with whom I walked the grounds of Castle Howard over the course of three
22, 25,28.
memorable days and with whom I discussed what we saw and surmised
innumerable times. 16. Ibid., 27.
17. Other relevant works on Castle Howard not already cited include:
1. A primary source for this thesis is Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: H[enry] A[vray] Tipping, "The Outworks of Castle Howard," Country Life
Studies in a Point of View (London and New York, 1927). In a number of 112, 6-13 Aug. 1927, 200-8; H[enry] Avray Tipping and Christopher
essays on the subject of the eighteenth-century English garden published in Hussey, English Homes, Period IV, vol. 2, Sir John Vanbrugh and His School,
the 1940s, mainly in the Architectural Review, Nikolaus Pevsner provided 1699-1736 (London, 1928); Laurence Whistler, "The Evolution of Castle
essential documentation for the argument. "The Genesis of the Pic- Howard," Country Life 113, 30Jan. 1953, 276-79;James Lees-Milne, Eng-
turesque" (1944), "Uvedale Price" (1944), "Humphrey Repton" (1948), "A lish Country House: Baroque, 1685-1715 (Feltham, 1970; Woodbridge, Suf-
Note on Sharawaggi" (1949), and "Richard Payne Knight" (1949) were folk, 1986); Wolfgang Kaiser, Castle Howard, ein englischer Landsitz desfriihen
republished in his Studies in Art, Architecture and Design, vol. 1, From Man- 18. Jahrhunderts. Studien zu Architektur und Landschaftspark (Freiburg im
nerism to Romanticism (London, 1968), 78-155. For his use of the term Breisgau, 1984); and Venetia Murray, Castle Howard: The Life and Times of
"Renaissance-Baroque system" to characterize European classicism between a Stately Home (London and New York, 1994). For the architects, see also
around 1450 and 1750, see Emil Kaufmann, Architecture in the Age of Rea- Bonamy Dobree and Geoffrey Webb, The Complete Works of SirJohn Van-
son: Baroque and Post-Baroque in England, Italy, and France (Cambridge, brugh, 4 vols. (London, 1927-28), vol. 4, The Letters, ed. G. Webb (1928);
Mass., 1955), 75-88 and passim. and Laurence Whistler, The Imagination of Vanbrugh and His Fellow Artists
2. The main credit for suggesting a reappraisal of the matter of priority is (London, 1954).
due to Christopher Hussey's important study English Gardens and Land- 18. Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 32, and Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque,
scapes, 1700-1750 (London, 1967). Although the chapter on Stowe precedes 24, both describe the plan as Palladian. The unusual use of a dome on a
the one on Castle Howard, its first paragraph reads (and equivocates) as fol- domestic building also points to Palladio.
19. Downes, "Vanbrugh over Fifty Years," in Ridgway and Williams, Van- 35. A number of other, less significant garden structures were buil
brugh and Landscape Architecture, 4-7. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 60, brugh and Hawksmoor as well as by others after their deaths. Th
claims that construction began only in 1701. the so-called Temple of Venus at the northeast edge of R
20. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 42, states that the drawing in Figure 6 (Hawksmoor, 1731-3 5); the Pyramid and Four Faces monument
is by George London and illustrates the footprint of Talman's design for Wood (Hawksmoor, probably 1730s); and the Bridge over the
the house. Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, 33, merely says that "the river (Daniel Garrett, early 1740s).
design (if not the drawing) is probably by William Talman," making no 36. In correspondence with Carlisle, Vanbrugh referred to it as "
mention of any input from London. There is a second garden plan by Lon- ple with the four Porticos." Vanbrugh to Carlisle, 18 Feb. 1724,
don including the footprint of Vanbrugh's design for the house. See Letters, 157 (see n. 17). Hawksmoor invariably referred to it as s
Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 28-31. Temple," although he did call it the "Temple of Belvidera" in Ha
21. "History of Vanbrug's House" (1706), in Harold Williams, ed., The to Carlisle, 26 Oct. 1729, in Webb, "Letters and Drawings," 12
Poems of onathan Swift, 2d ed., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1958), 1: 86. poem of 1732, Lady Irwin refers to it as both the "Temple
22. Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia Rustica, or, The Nobleman, Gentleman, and "Belvidere." In the account of his visit to the site, John Tracy At
Gardener's Recreation, 3 vols. (1718; repr., New York, 1982), 1: 87. Boreale, 1732, MS, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, C
23. Hussey, English Gardens, 123-25 (see n. 2), was the first to point out the describes it as "a temple of the Ionic order." And in the account o
importance of Ray Wood, but both Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 124-30, in 1772, Walpole calls it "the Temple"; "Walpole's Journ
and Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, 36-37, caution against interpreting its Hawksmoor was responsible for completing the building after V
design in overly naturalistic terms and instead emphasize its conventional use death. I am grateful to Christopher Ridgway for supplying me w
of mythological, ornamental, and other traditional devices and artifices. of the Atkyns text.
24. The plan published in Vitruvius Britannicus refers to the apartments in 37. Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 7 Jan. 1724, in Downes, Hawksmoor (
the east and west wings as "the two principall Apartments." In a letter to (see n. 7). Hawksmoor later used the same term to describe his d
Carlisle of 1706, Hawksmoor called the east wing "the App of State"; and, the octagonal rustic Temple of Venus (see n. 34). Webb, "Letters
according to Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 90, the bedroom in that wing ings," 129, 131.
was referred to as the "second state bedchamber" in the probate inventory 38. Vanbrugh to Carlisle, 11 Feb. and 11 Apr. 1724, in Webb, Let
of the fourth earl of Carlisle. However, Saumarez Smith describes the suite 160. Hawksmoor also did an Italianate design for a "Belvidera"
in the east wing as "Lord Carlisle's private apartments" (61). probably conceived of as an alternative to his "Turret" project. D
25. The Villa Trissino connection is pointed out in Hunt, Gardens and the on the inscription panel on the building itself, it is a square, dom
Picturesque, 30 (see n. 12). The west wing was redesigned and completed by ture with a Serlian window articulating the front entrance and r
the fourth earl of Carlisle's brother-in-law, Thomas Robinson, in 1753-59. facades. In his letter to Carlisle of 7 Jan. 1724, Hawksmoor says t
The garden facade was lengthened to accommodate the change in design. was based on Vignola.
A completely separate stable building was constructed to the west of the 39. James S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Ho
house by John Carr in 1781. don, 1990), 106. About the Villa Rotonda, Ackerman remarked,
26. The order in a preliminary scheme was Corinthian rather than Doric, then, a villa at all, in the sense that the others are, but a belvedere"
which would have matched that of the garden facade. man, Palladio (Baltimore, 1966), 70. Vanbrugh was quite advan
27. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, esp. 1-32. use of the Palladian model in such an explicit manner. Although
28. Anne, Viscountess Irwin, Castle Howard (1732), in Downes, Vanbrugh ally associates neo-Palladianism in England with the circle of Lord
(1977), 264. The poem was used in the literature on Castle Howard for the ton, the latter's villa at Chiswick was designed in 1725, at least a
first time by Hussey in English Gardens. half after the Castle Howard Temple, and built in 1727-29. O
29. Williamson, "Estate Management," 23 (see n. 15). Campbell's villa at Mereworth for John Fane was earlier, ha
30. A few years before the Carrmire Gate, Hawksmoor had proposed Pors- designed in 1722.
enna's tomb as a possible model for the Mausoleum. Hawksmoor to 40. Williamson, "Estate Management," 28 (see n. 15), notes
Carlisle, 3 Sept. 1726, in Geoffrey Webb, "The Letters and Drawings of "enclosed, improved farmland" of "this working landscape ... was
Nicholas Hawksmoor Relating to the Building of the Mausoleum at Cas- from the Temple ... as a picture at one remove from the habitatio
tle Howard," Walpole Society 19 (1931), 117. tility," with no attempt "to emphasize the practical involvemen
31. Robert Williams, "Fortified Gardens," in Ridgway and Williams, Vanbrugh landowner in agrarian production."
and Landscape Architecture, 49-60 (see n. 14). Among the examples Williams 41. Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 16 Feb. 1731, 4 Dec. 1732, 2 June
cites is Vanbrugh's own design for Seaton Delaval, built in 1719-26. Jan. and 3 July 1735, in Webb, "Letters and Drawings," 125, 140
32. Horace Walpole to George Selwyn, 12 Aug. 1772, in Hussey, English At least as often, if not more, however, Hawksmoor used the term
Gardens, 114. A detailed description of his visit is contained in "Horace Wal- to describe the building's combined religious and memorial func
pole'sJournals of Visits to Country Seats, &c." Walpole Society 16 (1927-28), his will, drawn up before the building was designed, Carlisle spe
72-73. "this Burial place should be built in ye form of a little chapple."
Smith, Castle Howard, 169 (see n. 10).
33. Wings were added to both sides of the Pyramid Gate in 1756 to provide
42. Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 3 Sept. 1726, in Webb, "Letters a
space for lodging visitors to the estate. The architect was Thomas Robin-
son. ings," 117.
43. Saumarez
34. As Williams, "Fortified Gardens," 59, shows, the line of mockSmith,fortifi-
Castle Howard, 172, maintains that the idea for the
colonnade
cations, as can be seen in Figure 7, continued around to was Viscount
the north to tieMorpeth's,
in something one can certainly deduce
from ato
with the wall surrounding the "Wilderness" and from there literal
link reading of the correspondence. Hawksmoor refers to Bra-
up even-
mante's Tempietto
tually with the fortified wall enclosing Ray Wood. The latter, the firstin letters
suchto Carlisle of 6 May 1729 and 3 Oct. 1732. In
the latter, he also refers to Palladio as his source. Webb, "Letters and Draw-
wall to be constructed on the estate, was begun in 1706.
CASTLE HOWARD 349
ings," 121, 137. 55. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 159-60, points out that Vanbrugh had
44. Robert Williams, "Vanbrugh's India and His Mausolea for India," in written to Carlisle in July 1722, in reference to Blenheim, of the idea of a
Ridgway and Williams, Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture, 128 (see n. 14), monumental mausoleum as representing "a Show, and a Noble one, to
suggests that the decision to place a mausoleum such as this in an open land- many future Ages." This would have been at about the same time discus-
scape setting may possibly be related to Vanbrugh's experience living in sions apparently started regarding Carlisle's own burial place.
Surat in 1683-85. 56. Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 109-10 (see n. 7), lays great stress, by con-
45. Giles Worsley, "'After ye Antique': Vanbrugh, Hawksmoor and Kent,"
trast, on the "practical" value of the structures, seeing this as a significant
aspect of their uniqueness in garden design of the period.
in Ridgway and Williams, Vanbrugh and Landscape Architecture, 147, similarly
describes the Howard bust, noting that "had [it] been dug up in York 57.
andViscountess Irwin, Castle Howard, in Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 264-65.
declared to date from the time of Constantine, no one would have been
58. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 116-55, and Hunt, Gardens and the Pic-
surprised." turesque, passim.
46. In 1731, Hawksmoor suggested to Carlisle that if William Etty, the clerk 59. The idea for the Mausoleum went back to 1722 and thus may even have
of works at Castle Howard, were to send him "a rough scetch of the park," preceded the discussions of the Temple. It should be noted that Vanbrugh
he would "have it engraved." Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 4 Oct. 1731, in Webb, accompanied Carlisle to Stowe in the summer of 1725, where the latter
"Letters and Drawings," 127. Clearly, nothing was done about this, leaving would have seen, and no doubt discussed with the architect, his recently
the anachronistic aerial perspective of the house published in Vitruvius Bri- completed, and quite unprecedented, Pyramid. On that visit, see Vanbrugh
tannicus in 1725 as the only contemporary view of the landscape garden. to Jacob Tonson, 12 Aug. 1725, in Webb, Letters, 166-67.
47. The redrawing of Ralph Fowler's estate map of 1727 in Saumarez Smith, 60. It is interesting to note how, in this regard, when the model of King
Castle Howard, 118-19, incorrectly places the Pyramid to the west of the Porsenna's tomb was rejected for the Mausoleum, it was transferred by
house's north-south axis. Hawksmoor to the Carrmire Gate, and after the turret idea for the Temple
48. The only designed place from which one can see all three monuments
was rejected, it was revived for the octagonal tower known as the Temple of
in panorama is the Bridge, which was built after Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor
Venus; all of which suggests a kind of lexicon of historical types and forms
had died. There is no evidence to suggest, however, that affording suchand
a geometric equivalents that, when used singly and in juxtaposition with
one another, take on specific contextual meanings.
view was part of its purpose. A well-known example of an English garden
planned as a continuous narrative circuit is the one at Stourhead, designed
61. For recent discussions of the orders, see John Onians, Bearers of Mean-
by Henry Hoare and Henry Flitcroft and executed from the mid-1740s
ing: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance
through the 1770s. (Princeton, 1988); and Alina A. Payne, The Architectural Treatise in the Ital-
49. For a comparable reading of the narrative, even theatrical, aspects of
ian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture (Cam-
bridge, England, 1999).
the English landscape garden, see John Dixon Hunt, "Ut Pictura Poesis,
Ut Pictura Hortus, and the Picturesque," Word & Image 1 (Jan.-Mar. 1985),
62. In his well-known series of illustrations for stage sets in the second book
of his architectural treatise (1545), Sebastiano Serlio gave more literal
87-107; and Hunt, Figure in the Landscape (see n. 3). In both, he stresses,
expression to the theatrical model of Aristotle by showing how a rustic
correctly in my view, the new active involvement on the part of the beholder
in determining meaning. mode would be the appropriate setting for the immoral, low-life characters
50. Vanbrugh to Carlisle, 26 Mar. 1724, in Webb, Letters, 159. in a satire, an eclectic mixture of quasi-Gothic elements the proper one for
51. It should be noted that when Hawksmoor was called upon to add the so-
the middle-class citizens in a comedy, whereas a scene for a tragedy, with its
called Temple of Venus to the northeastern edge of Ray Wood after thenoble characters of the highest rank, demanded a consistently classical
framework. Sebastiano Serlio, Tutte lopere d'architettura etprospettiva (1619;
design of the Mausoleum was set, he chose an octagonal geometry for the
repr. Ridgewood, NJ., 1964), book 2, 45-48.
rustic structure as a way of differentiating it from the three main outbuild-
ings, and apparently never wavered in this decision. He also always referred 63. As noted above, the entrance faqade in Vanbrugh's initial scheme was
to it either simply by its geometric form (e.g., "the Octogon") or by that asalso Corinthian, leading one to believe that the distinction between the two
facades ultimately achieved by the difference in the orders was an entirely
a qualifier of its typological form (e.g., "our octogonall Turret," "ye octo-
calculated and deliberate one. In response to criticism, Hawksmoor later
gon Tower," "the Octogon turret"); Webb, "Letters and Drawings," 129,
defended the use of the different orders to Carlisle by saying, "the South
131, 153-55. Also, he invariably referred to it as a Turret or Tower, as he had
previously described his rustic design for the Temple. side, and the North front... cannot be seen together at the same Time, nor
52. In this regard, Hawksmoor was adamant, as with no other structure at any time upon the Diagonall (or angular view)"; Hawksmoor to Carlisle,
Castle Howard, in emphasizing (and reiterating) how the design of the
13 July 1734, in Downes, Hawksmoor, 254 (see n. 7). Downes, Vanbrugh,
Mausoleum was "Authentic and what is According to the practice of ye
37-38, also points out the gradation in status of the different facades.
antients" (Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 10 Nov. 1727), how it "will answer all the
64. The nascent historicism in Vanbrugh's and Hawksmoor's thinking dur-
Beautys of ye Antique" (Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 6 May 1729), and how iting the 1720s and '30s coincides precisely with the publication of Johann
Fischer von Erlach's Entwurff einer historischen Architektur, which first
was made "in ye Imitation of ye Antique" (Hawksmoor to Carlisle, 20 July
1734); Webb, "Letters and Drawings," 118, 124, 148. appeared in 1721, followed by new editions in 1725, 1730, and 1737.
53. In his 1724 description of Stowe, for instance, where Vanbrugh had65. Joshua Reynolds, Discourses, ed. Pat Rogers (1797; New York and Lon-
recently built a pyramid, Lord Perceval described the inordinately acutedon, 1992), 298 (13th disc., 1786); and John Vanbrugh, "Reasons Offer'd for
Preserving Some Part of the Old Manor," 11 June 1709, in Christopher
structure as "a copy in miniature of the most famous one in Egypt"; Hussey,
Ridgway, "Rethinking the Picturesque," in Ridgway and Williams, Van-
English Gardens, 96 (see n. 2). Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque, 44-45 (see
n. 12), however, speaks of the Pyramid at Castle Howard as "a strikingly
brugh and Landscape Architecture, 191 (see n. 14). Vanbrugh's "Reasons" were
Roman form" and characterizes it as "antique." sent as a memorandum to the Duchess of Marlborough in defense of his
54. Saumarez Smith, Castle Howard, 1-32 and passim; and Hunt, Gardensidea of retaining the old manor in Woodstock Park, where Blenheim Palace
and the Picturesque, 44-46. was being constructed.
66. In Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), 264. issues as they relate eighteenth-century picturesque theory to certain twen-
67. Hussey, English Gardens, 115 (see n. 1), wrote: "The aim was to embody, tieth-century practices.
in the actual substance of architecture and scenery, the poetic reality itself,
not to reproduce at third hand painters' interpretations of it. The forms
employed might be shared with painters ... but these extracts show the aim Illustration Credits
to have been to recreate the imagined scenery and atmosphere of the Figures 2, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 21, 25-28. Photographs by the author
'Golden Age': a conception to be regarded as parallel to the composition of Figure 3. National Gallery, London
an epic poem or to the landscape paintings of Claude, rather than imitative Figures 5, 7, 19, 23, 30. Castle Howard Collection. With kind permission
of either." This Hussey contrasted with William Kent's approach, which he of the Hon. Simon Howard
described as intentionally imitating the work of painters. Figure 6. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
68. Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Figures 9, 10, 12, 22. English Heritage.NMR?Country Life
Representation, 2d ed., rev. (New York, 1961), 93-115. Figure 16. English Heritage.NMR. With kind permission of the Hon.
69. Yve-Alain Bois, "A Picturesque Stroll around Clara-Clara," October 29 Simon Howard
(summer 1984), 32-62, presents a compelling analysis of some of these Figure 29. Copyright ? Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, N.Y.
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Castle Howard and the Emergence of the Modern Architectural Subject

Author(s): Neil Levine

Society of Architectural Historians, University of California Press are collaborating with

CASTLE HOWARD 327

Although the 1982 Granada television production of

328 JSAH / 62:3, SEPTEMBER 2003

CASTLE HOWARD 329

First Phase of Construction: The House and Its

330 JSAH / 62:3, SEPTEMBER 2003

Figure 6 George London, Castle

CASTLE HOWARD 331

332 JSAH / 62:3, SEPTEMBER 2003

Figure 9 Castle Howard, entrance court, north fagade

Figure 10 Castle Howard, entrance hall

simply rusticated (Figure 8). The importance of the

CASTLE HOWARD 333

334 JSAH / 62:3, SEPTEMBER 2003

Figure 13 Castle Howard, map of the estate and surrounding area, O

Through various Paths to Happiness you've

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Figure 19 Hawksmoor, "Turret" project for the Temple,

Figure 20 Andrea Palladio, Villa Rotonda, Vicenza,

pies for modern domestic purposes. Like its Palladian

surrounding landscape and the Arcadian world of pastoral

CASTLE HOWARD 339

ering the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Tomb of King

continuous open arcade, following the example of Early

everything but date (Figure 24).43

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Figure 23 Mausoleum, Castle Howard, preliminary project, 1728

in the southeastern quadrant of Castle Howard's extended

TO THEE O VENERABLE SHADE

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Figure 26 Pyramid, Castle Howard

of the Temple and Mausoleum.47 The significance of these

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CASTLE HOWARD 351

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