STAIRCASES IN BNGIAND AND FRANCE

one very neat solution. Here and in
any of die other contemporary h&tels
the ingenious tricks of anti-chambres
and cabinets and garderobes and little
inner service courts should be studied,
all devised to facilitate the running of
a house and fill the many odd corners
behind curved rooms and alcoves.
The form and position of the stair-
case was another problem. As to its
position, it had to communicate easily
with vestibule and service rooms,
without interfering with the smooth
run of room into room and the
representational splendour of vistas.
The same desire for a smooth run
was extended to the interaction
between floor and floor, and staircase
forms were chosen accordingly. It
has been shown that Spain, for all we
know, invented both the most
popular types of Baroque staircases
(fig. 91). The square one with three
flights round an open well became
popular in Jacobean England, where
it was interpreted in timber, character-
istically reduced in size to a somewhat
cramped mediaeval narrowness, but
gorgeously decorated by Flemish or English woodcarvers (Hat-
field, Audley End, etc.). Only when we come to Inigo Jones at
Ashburnham House, London (perhaps by him), is the spaciousness
of Spain emulated. However, Ashburnham House and a few other
examples of Baroque breadth such as Coleshill, Berks (by Roger
Pratt, one of Wren's early competitors), are rare exceptions in
England. There are at jthat time exceptions in Italy too (Longhena:
S. Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 1643-45—the example from which
Coleshill seems to be derived). Only Genoa took a real liking to
staircases as wide, light and airy as those of Spain, France must have
got to know of these through several channels. The Escorial type
was taken up by Levau at the Tuileries in Paris. Since then it was

177

91.

THE TWO CHIEF TYPES
BAROQUE STAIRCASES.

OF