VANBRUGH AND BLENHEIM
engaged in architectural work at Castle Howard. In 1702 he was
appointed Comptroller of Works—a curious career, very different
from Wren's.
Blenheim is planned on a colossal scale. One does not know
whether the Palladian villa with its wings or Versailles with its
cour d'honneur stands behind its plan. The corps de logis has a massive
portico with giant columns between giant pillars, and a heavy attic
above. The same Baroque weight characterises the side elevations,
especially the square squat corner towers of the wings (pL cxn).
If in the case of Wren the term Baroque could be used only with
careful qualifications, these towers would be called Baroque by
anyone familiar with the work of Bernini, Borromini and the others
in Italy. Here is struggle, mighty forces opposing overwhelming
weights; here are fiercely projecting mouldings and windows
crushed by thick-set pilasters pkced too close to them; here is the
deliberate discordance of the semicircular window placed against a
semicircular arch right above and higher up again a segmental arch*
Everything jars, and the top of the daring composition has nothing
of a happy end either. Vanbrugh in the forms which crown the
tower, .the vases and the ball, does not accept any indebtedness to
anybody. The pilasters and the windows are also highly original,
but not to the same extreme degree. In some details they appear
reminiscent of Michelangelo. However, the mentioning of Michel-
angelo makes Blenheim—the whole of the entrance front—at once
appear coarse, even meaty, and certainly theatrical and ostentatious:
that is Flemish as well as Baroque. Yet in spite of that Vanbrugh,
seen side by side with Michelangelo or Bernini, is also a classicist.
It seems a contradiction but it is not. It simply is, just as in the case of
Wren, the special English twist given to the Baroque. There is very
little in Wren and Vanbrugh of that plastic treatment of walls which
Michelangelo had first conceived and which produced die undulat-
ing facades and interiors of Baroque buildings in Italy and Southern
Germany. Movement is never in England so insinuating, nor so
frantic. Spatial parts never abandon their separate existence, to merge
into each other, as they do at S. Carlo or Vierzehnheiligen. The
individual members, especially the solid round detached columns,
also try to keep themselves to themselves. Vanbrugh's drama lies in
the visible forcing of this English aloofness into the service of an
overmighty plan. English Baroque is Baroque asserting itself against
an inborn leaning towards the static and the sober.
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