
what lies behind the Stuarts’ taste for extravagant buildings and interiors
On 7 Could 1603, James VI of Scotland and now James I of England rode into the capital of his new kingdom: the Stuarts experienced arrived. Countless numbers of Londoners collected to check out and, at Stamford Hill, the Lord Mayor was waiting around to existing the keys of the metropolis although 500 magnificently dressed citizens joined the procession on horseback.
There was a compact specialized hitch. James should have been certain for the Tower of London until eventually proclaimed and crowned but, in spite of frantic constructing perform, it was nowhere around completely ready. As Simon Thurley recounts—twitching aside a velvet curtain to expose the shabby backstage machinery—parts of the Tower, common powerbase of English monarchs given that William the Conqueror, had been derelict. The great hall gaped open to the skies and for decades the royal lodgings experienced been junk rooms. For the duration of James’s stay, a monitor wall experienced been developed to hide a gigantic dung heap.
Art and architecture for the Stuart monarchs in England—an amazing time period when the globe was turned upside down twice with the execution of a single king (Charles I in 1649) and the deposition of one more (James II in 1688)—were neither about holding out the temperature nor entirely about outrageous luxury. The royal residences had been sophisticated statements of electricity, authority and rank. The architecture controlled the jealously guarded access to the king and queen: in quite a few reigns, almost anyone could get in to stand powering a railing and enjoy the king taking in or praying, and a remarkably broad circle was admitted to the condition bedrooms, but only a handful acquired into the actual sleeping destinations. The alternatives of fantastic and decorative artwork from England, Italy, France or the Reduced Countries, who received to see it—whether an English Mortlake or a Flemish tapestry, a bed made of strong Tudor Oak or an opulent French a person, swathed in amazing imported gold-swagged silk—and wherever courtiers or mistresses were being stashed, were being all important choices and interpreted as this kind of.
From James’s astonishing takeover of Royston in Hertfordshire as a hunting base—nobody who reads Thurley’s account will once more see it as just (forgive me) a somewhat dull prevent on the highway north—to the disastrous obstetric historical past of Queen Anne, which finished the Stuart reign in 1714, the sums used were being remarkable, even devoid of translating into up to date terms or comparison with the golden wallpaper of present-day Prime Minister Boris Johnsons’ flat. Anne of Denmark, wife of James I, invested £45,000 reworking Somerset Property on the Strand. Henrietta Maria, spouse of Charles I, spent a further fortune, together with on the most delicate architecture of the Stuart reigns, an elaborate Roman Catholic chapel (ransacked by a rioting mob in the mid-century Civil Wars).
Thurley recreates some vanished residences, which include the reputedly beautiful Theobalds in Hertfordshire and a incredibly non-public pleasure dome in just a superb garden in Wimbledon. Maybe the most incredible insight is that in his previous months, imprisoned on the Isle of Wight and engaged in failing negotiations with the Parliamentarians, Charles I was also considering designs to fully rebuild Whitehall palace, a job finished by the axe at the Banqueting Property, a person of the couple structures that would have been saved.
There’s significantly less architectural historical past and extra gossip in this lively compendium than in the thorough experiments of specific buildings Thurley has presently published, but there are myriad ground options and contemporary engravings, and a great deal to set the intellect of the normal reader wandering by the extended galleries—the new Whitehall would have experienced a 1,000 ft gallery—and a 29-webpage bibliography for those people who want additional.
• Simon Thurley, Palaces of Revolution: Everyday living, Dying and Artwork at the Stuart Court, William Collins, 560pp, eight colour plates in addition black-and-white intext illustrations, £25 (hb), revealed September 2021
• Maev Kennedy is a freelance arts and archaeology journalist and a typical contributor to The Artwork Newspaper