From Gothic Chapel to Renaissance Palace
The reign of Henry VIII began with a masterpiece of Gothic architecture in the chapel of Henry VII and ended with the building of royal palaces in the Renaissance manner; and this very change of style truly pictured the triumph of the state over religion. The government's attack on bishops, monasteries and church revenues stopped religious architecture in England, and this condition lasted nearly a hundred years.
Before his death Henry VII devoted 140,000 pounds to building the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey, to be his burial place. The chapel has little architectural value in itself, but in its decoration it counts as a masterpiece, from the tomb itself to the interwoven stonework of its fan vault, which has rightly been called "the most finished piece of stonework made by the hand of man." Since the plan of this chapel is Gothic and its ornament is Renaissance, here we have before us the first specimen of the Tudor, or "florid," style.
Torrigiano and the Tomb of Henry VII
Henry VIII, himself a young humanist, soon became attached to classical architectural forms; he and Wolsey invited a number of Italian artists to England. One of them, Pietro Torrigiano, was commissioned to decorate the tomb of the king's father. On the sarcophagus, made of white marble and black stone, the Florentine sculptor created decorative designs in carving and gilt bronze: plump children, garlands of flowers and leaves of heavenly delicacy, reliefs of the Virgin and other saints, angels sitting above the grave with their graceful little feet dangling in space, and over all two recumbent figures of Henry and his queen Elizabeth. This group was a kind of sculpture England had never seen before, and nothing finer was produced in England afterward. In this tomb, as Francis Bacon said, lay the miserly king who had squeezed the cheeses to spend the pounds, "with much more splendor than when he lived in his royal palaces."
The Tombs That Were Never Finished
Henry VIII was not a man to allow anyone else to be buried with more pomp than himself. In 1518 he agreed to pay Torrigiano 2,000 pounds to build a tomb "a quarter larger" than his father's; but the contract was never carried out, because the artist, like Henry VIII, had a royal temper and left England after a sudden quarrel (1519); and when he later returned to that country he did no work on the tomb of Henry VIII. Instead, for the chapel of Henry VII he designed a high canopied altar with an ornamental screen behind it, which was destroyed in 1643 by Cromwell's men. In 1521 Torrigiano emigrated to Spain.
Once more, in 1524, the comedy of death took the stage, when Wolsey commissioned another Florentine, Benedetto da Rovezzano, to build him a tomb in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, which according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury "was far more magnificent in design than the tomb of Henry VII." When Cardinal Wolsey fell into disgrace and lost his office, he asked the king's permission to take at least the sculpted figure for his tomb to a modest tomb at York, but Henry VIII refused and took over Wolsey's unfinished tomb as a vessel for himself, ordering the artists to carve his own statue in place of Wolsey's figure on the gravestone. But religion and marriage kept him busy, and that splendid monument was never finished. Later Charles I wished to be buried there, but Parliament, which opposed him, sold its decorations piece by piece until only the black marble sarcophagus remained, which in the end (1810) was used to make the tomb of Nelson in St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Country House
Apart from these undertakings, and the beautiful and attractive chapel of King's College, Cambridge, with its wooden screen, stalls, stained glass and splendid fan vault, the architecture of this age was largely devoted to converting the country houses of the nobility into luxurious fairy-tale mansions, which gradually rose amid the fields and woods of England. The architects were all English, though several Italian artists collaborated with them in the decoration. A broad and imposing front, a mixture of Gothic and Renaissance elements; gateways with pyramidal turrets opening onto a courtyard; a spacious hall with ample room for great banquets; a heavy staircase, usually of carved wood; rooms adorned with murals and tapestries, lit by lattice windows or bay windows; and outside the building a flower garden, a large park for deer and, farther off, a private hunting ground: this was what a skeptical English gentleman bought in advance of the promised paradise.
Hampton Court, Sutton Place, Nonsuch
One of the most famous Tudor country palaces was Hampton Court, which Wolsey built for himself in 1515 but later, out of fear, gave to the king (1525). Not one architect but a body of English master-builders made it. The building was essentially in perpendicular Gothic, on a medieval plan, with towers, battlemented walls and a defensive moat; but Giovanni da Maiano's addition of round framed medallions of modeled clay on the outer facade gave it a little of the Renaissance character. The Duke of Wurttemberg, who visited England in 1592, called Hampton Court the most magnificent palace in the world. A little less splendid was Sutton Place in Surrey, built for Sir Richard Weston (1521-1527), and also Nonsuch, which was first planned for Henry VIII in 1538 on a royal scale. An old account of the latter palace reports: "He invited the best craftsmen, architects, stonecutters and sculptors of various nations, Italian, French and Dutch architects as well as native English, and each, to decorate that palace, brought out a wonderful specimen of his art, and they adorned the inside and outside with statues which renewed the beauty of the masterpieces of ancient Rome." Two hundred and thirty men worked there constantly to raise this palace, which was to surpass Chambord and the Fontainebleau of Francis I in beauty and splendor. Seldom were the kings of England so rich, or the people of England so poor. Henry VIII died before he could finish Nonsuch; Elizabeth made it her private residence; Charles II gave it to his mistress, Lady Castlemaine (1670), who tore it down and sold it in pieces, as though that were the only way to turn aristocratic ceremony into the necessities of living.