When Inigo Jones designed the catafalque for James I’s funeral in 1625 (Pl. 2) what he produced was a version of Bramante’s Tempietto (Pl. 3a), that key work in the canon of Renaissance architecture which is also a kind of funerary monument, since it commemorates the martyrdom of St Peter. This derivation has already been recognized; what has not been discussed is the fact that Jones’s design draws on a recent tradition of tempietto-catafalques, and is particularly close to that designed by Domenico Fontana in 1591 for the obsequies of Sixtus V (Pl. 3b). Comparing the two, we see that Jones’s dome is derived closely from Fontana’s and his two principal statues are copied almost exactly. The idea of scrolls along the ribs of the dome comes from Fontana at one remove, from the adaptation of his design made by Sergio Venturi in 1622 for the obsequies of Paul V (Pl.3c).

At first sight Tredegar House seems sui generis (Pl. 4). There is nothing else like it in Wales, nor does any obvious English parallel come to mind. The quadrangular plan with corner pavilions distinguishes it from the double-pile houses of the 1670s and 1680s, while the lavish external decoration is difficult to match in the relatively sober elevations characteristic of British domestic architecture of the same period. What we have, in fact, is a great country house of the 1670s designed with something of the love of architectural ornament that was typical of the ‘artisan mannerist’ houses of twenty years earlier. At Tredegar the ornamental vocabulary is not quite what is usually described as ‘artisan mannerist’, but we may nevertheless suspect the hand of an artisan rather than that of a gentleman architect such as Hooke, May or Pratt.

The sketch book (Pls 6-11) in which François-Joseph Bélanger made his observations while in England is a fascinating document of inter-cultural exchange; and, in a number of cases, records vanished buildings of whose appearance we are now ignorant. The sketch book (in the École des Beaux Arts, Paris) has not hitherto been the subject of a detailed analysis. It was referred to by Jean Stern in his biography, À I’Ombre de Sophie Arnould: François-Joseph Bélanger (Paris, 1930), where he hazards a guess that it belongs to a visit Bélanger may have made as a very young man, when he left the École de l’Académie Royale d’Architecture in 1766. He could certainly have had introductions from his master David Leroy, who had known and corresponded with William Chambers since their student days. Chambers was then well established in practice as an architect, although not yet Comptroller of the Works. He was the obvious person to whom the master would send a promising student anxious to study the latest trends of architecture in England. However, a cursory glance at Bélanger’s sketches shows that some of them at any rate belong to a later date; for instance Adam’s designs for Pulteney Bridge at Bath (fol. 116) were not made until 1768, and the bridge was not completed until 1774; the water-wheel at Painshill (fol. 78) was not installed until 1772; and the elevation of a villa (fol. 96, Pl. 17b), inscribed ‘Cobham M. Hamilton’, is evidently the design by Richard Jupp exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1778, which, although possibly made for Hamilton, was almost certainly built after he had sold Painshill to Benjamin Bond Hopkins in 1773. What therefore are we to make of Bélanger’s sketch book? Does it cover several visits? What does it tell us of his interests, and how do these relate to his activities in France?

Two hundred years ago the Venetian-born architect Giannantonio Selva (1751-1819) crossed the Channel on his one and only visit to England. He landed at Dover on 16 June 1781, and set out again for Ostend on the first of September. The most remarkable facts about his sojourn, apart from its relative brevity, are that he kept a written record of it, and that he is the only Italian architect known to have done so at that period. Moreover, Selva is one of the very few Italians to have made such a trip at any period, so his travel diary is doubly precious. By contrast, the travels of eighteenth-century student architects from Britain to Italy were so frequent as to be almost commonplace. It is true, however, that few of them kept so meticulous a diary as Selva. Its existence has been known to scholars for some time. Elena Bassi in her biography of Selva alluded to it, without having had the chance to consult it. Subsequently, it was presented by the heirs of the art critic Ugo Ojetti to the Biblioteca Querini Stampalia in Venice. Since the donation in 1954, Bassi has published excerpts, and has mentioned the English section, but only in passing. The following account of it is, therefore, the first to appear in English and the most extensive to deal with the English section. At the same time, no attempt has been made here to incorporate or translate the entire document.

It was ironic that Scotland, which Robert Adam had regarded in the 1750s as ‘a narrow place where scarce will ever happen the opportunity of putting one noble thought in execution’, should have provided most of his commissions towards the end of his life. After the financial troubles, frustrations and decline in his practice that marked the later 1770s and early 1780s he spent an increasing amount of time north of the Border on a growing number of commissions which, besides some public works, included the distinctive castles and restrained villas that appealed to a crop of Scottish clients, bankers and merchants, lawyers and soldiers. The year 1785 saw the resumption of work at the Register House. In 1786 he did battle with the South Bridge Trustees over their reluctance to adopt his plans for that scheme in full, travelling back to London in November in company with Sir Samuel Hannay, for whom he was shortly to design Kirkdale House in Galloway. In September 1788 he visited Culzean Castle, accompanied on the journey from Edinburgh by his brother-in-law, John Clerk of Eldin.

There are thirteen designs for Lea Castle, Worcestershire, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They are executed in watercolour and consist of two elevations and eleven views of a building in the Norman style (Pls 21b-23d). The elevations are meticulously drawn and reveal the hand of an architectural draughtsman, whereas the interior views are closer to artists’ impressions, with details indistinctly suggested rather than defined. The rough state of these sketches indicates that they were merely suggestions for the rooms of the proposed castle. The designs have been attributed by Professor Alistair Rowan to the antiquarian and architect John Carter (1748-1817) on calligraphic evidence and from the existence of other drawings by Carter for Lea Castle in his papers at the British Museum. These pencil sketches include an elevation, a ‘Saxon design covering entrance to Ice House at Lea Castle [executed in September and October 1816] Worcestershire, seat of J. Knight Esq.’, views from the north gate tower, ‘Details. Lea Castle’, showing various Norman doorways, and views from towers.

One of the pleasures of British architecture in the years around 1900 is the quality of the printed illustrations that accompanied it; the stylish pen drawings of Andrew Prentice or Gerald Horsley, the atmospheric pencil of C. E. Mallows or F. L. Griggs, the carefully composed photographic plates of Dockree, Bedford Lemere and many anonymous photographers. True, the letterpress pages of the architectural weeklies are yellowing and dirty now, and the plates in the centre are invariably too tightly bound in, or frayed at the edges; but those plates are remarkable nevertheless for their freedom, crispness, delicacy of tone and sheer size, made possible by the introduction of photolithography in the 1860s, ’70s and ’80s. Late Victorian architectural books also have their excellences, not the least of which is the process known as collotype, used for reproducing halftones and photographs. It was expensive, and therefore never used very widely, but in architectural books of quality, and particularly in those published by B. T. Batsford, it produced spectacular results.

The German Bauhaus was as much a social experiment as an artistic outpouring. It was an educational experiment which aimed at unifying all aspects of environmental and aesthetic design in a system that provided a foundation course common to all students followed by interdependence of arts and crafts at all subsequent levels. In this way artists and craftsmen could learn a common language of expression. Mies van der Rohe called it ‘an idea’. However, it was an idea which had its origins in nineteenth-century Britain, still the leading industrial nation in the world, but rent by a cleavage between the aims and achievements of industrialists and the attitude of many artists, and in particular of architects. A strong tradition of hand craftsmanship had been revived with some feeling of revulsion, led by powerful figures like Ruskin and Morris, for the products of industrialization.

To suggest that the architectural reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh rests on one major building, the Glasgow School of Art, and two remarkable houses, is perhaps glib. Yet Mackintosh's contribution to the urban streetscape was minimal — and this in a city of the most densely agglomerated mercantile facades. Seldom did he find the kind of munificent commercial patronage so frequently enjoyed, for example, by Thompson, Honeyman or Burnet. But while Mackintosh's street buildings have been few and little remarked (pace those who have recently so delightfully restored the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street) a visit to one or other of his country houses has long been something of an architectural pilgrimage.

Of the many architectural theories that were being discussed during the early years of the present century one of the most comprehensive and intriguing was the theory of Organic Architecture. This theory, as expounded by its two most prominent exponents — Louis H. Sullivan (1856–1924) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1869–1959)—was based on the concept of organic expression — a concept which, interpreted in architectural terms, incorporated many of the underlying principles of the more popular theories associated with the Modern Movement in Architecture — ‘functionalism’, ‘rationalism’, ‘expressionism’, etc.