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(b East Knoyle, Wilts, 20 Oct 1632; d London, 25 Feb 1723). English architect. The leader of the English Baroque school, he was the creator of St Paul's Cathedral, London, completed in his lifetime, and remains the most famous architect in English history.
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The English architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) interpreted the baroque style in England and dominated English architecture for 50 years. His most important work is St. Paul's Cathedral, London.
Christopher Wren was born in East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on Oct. 20, 1632, and educated at Oxford. Apparently destined for a career as a scientific scholar, he became professor of astronomy at Gresham College in London when he was 24. In 1661 he was appointed Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford.
Wren did not give his attention to architecture until he was 30. No information is available to explain the development of his interest in architecture, but his training in science and mathematics and his ability in solving practical scientific problems provided him with the technical training necessary for a man who was to undertake complex architectural projects. His temperament and education, and the society in which he moved, would naturally have inclined him to wide interests.
Early Career
Wren's first venture into architecture came in 1662, when he designed the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, a building intended for university ceremonies. Based upon the concept of a Roman theater, his ingenious interior design left the space free of supports or columns, but for the exterior he had recourse to unimaginative copying from old architectural pattern books.
Wren made only one journey out of England, a visit of several months to France in 1665 to study French Renaissance and baroque architecture. The French journey had significant influence on his work and provided him with a rich source of inspiration.
After the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed much of London, King Charles appointed Wren a member of the commission created to supervise the reconstruction of the city. He had already drawn up a visionary plan for a new London. His design was typical of 17th-century city planning and called for a combination of radiating and grid-plan streets accented by squares and vistas, but his plan was not accepted.
Wren was given the responsibility for replacing the 87 parish churches demolished by the Great Fire. Between 1670 and 1686 he designed 51 new churches; they constitute a major part of the vast amount of work done by him and are known as the City Churches. They are uneven in quality both in design and execution, and their varied plans and famous steeples reveal Wren's empirical eclecticism and his ingenuity. The churches are essentially classical in design or baroque variations on classical themes as adapted to English taste and the requirements of Anglican worship. His work on the City Churches firmly established his position as England's leading architect; he was appointed surveyor general in 1669, a post which he held until 1718, and was knighted in 1673.
While Wren was working on the City Churches, he undertook many other projects. One of the most important was Trinity College Library at Cambridge (1676-1684), an elegantly severe building derived from the late Italian Renaissance classicism of Andrea Palladio as transmitted to England by Inigo Jones in the early 17th century. By 1670 Wren was also at work on designs for a new St. Paul's Cathedral.
St. Paul's Cathedral
St. Paul's, which took nearly 35 years to build, is Wren's masterpiece. The Great Fire had so damaged the old St. Paul's as to render it dangerous, and the authorities decided that a new cathedral was needed. In 1673 Wren presented an impressive design in the form of a large wooden model known as the Great Model. The Great Model, which still exists, shows a cathedral based on a Greek-cross plan and dominated by a massive central dome. The exterior of the building was to have curved walls and an entrance block faced with a portico of giant Corinthian columns. The design of the Great Model is Wren's expression of baroque vitality tempered by classicism and reveals the influence of French and Italian architecture as well as that of Inigo Jones.
The English were accustomed to cathedrals built on the medieval Latin-cross plan with a long nave; the Great Model design, which was much criticized, departed from this tradition and seemed to the Protestant English to be too Continental and too Catholic. In the face of such opposition, Wren prepared a new design based on the Latin cross with a dome over the crossing and a classical portico entrance. This compromise, known as the Warrant Design, was accepted in 1675, but as the building progressed Wren made many changes which reflected his increasing knowledge of French and Italian baroque architecture gained from books and engravings. The Cathedral as finished in the early 18th century is very different from the Warrant Design; the building, a synthesis of many stylistic influences, is also Wren's uniquely organic creation. With its splendid dome, impressive scale, and dramatic grandeur, St. Paul's is fundamentally a baroque building, but it is English Protestant baroque in its restraint and disciplined gravity.
Later Work
After 1675 English architecture began to turn away from the sober Palladianism of Wren's Trinity College Library and to manifest influences from Continental baroque architecture. These trends are evident in St. Paul's and in his later works. English taste rejected the emotional drama and fluid design of Italian and German baroque and was closer to the classical baroque of France. Nevertheless, during the last quarter of the century English architects began to conceive of buildings in baroque terms, that is, as sculptural masses on a large scale, and to introduce elements of richness, grandeur, and royal splendor which reflected the temper of the age. Important example of Wren's design in the idiom of the English baroque are the Royal Hospital at Chelsea (1682-1689), the work done at Hampton Court Palace (1689-1696) for King William III and Queen Mary, and the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich (1696-1705).
Wren died in London on Feb. 25, 1723, and was buried in St. Paul's. His tomb bears a simple inscription: "Reader, if you seek his monument, look about you."
Further Reading
A comprehensive modern biography of Wren is Sir John Summerson, Sir Christopher Wren (1953). Older but also excellent is Geoffrey Webb, Wren (1937). Margaret Whinney and Oliver Millar, English Art, 1625-1714 (1957), is valuable for placing Wren within the context of 17th-century English art. For a brilliant analysis of Wren's place in the history of English architecture see Sir John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (1954; 5th ed. 1969). Edward F. Sekler, Wren and His Place in European Architecture (1956), relates Wren's work to that of his contemporaries on the Continent. Ralph Dutton, The Age of Wren (1951), places the architect within the framework of his period.
For more information on Sir Christopher Wren, visit Britannica.com.
Wren, Sir Christopher (1632-1723). Wren was an instinctive mathematician and geometrician, whence came the constructional resource evident in the span of the Sheldonian theatre, Oxford (1664-9), and the dome of St Paul's (1705-11). A more reticent individualist than Inigo Jones, as an astronomer Wren's individualism was of the age of Newton, in which spatial values were pre-eminent. His work ranges from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich (1675), to Hampton Court palace (1689-1702) and Greenwich hospital (1696-1702). Apart from his masterpiece, St Paul's, Wren designed some 25 churches for London between 1670 and 1694. In 1669 he became surveyor-general of the king's works, holding the post until 1718.
One of the greatest English architects. His father was the High Church Rector of Knoyle, Wilts., and he was well connected, but he was also exposed to a spirit of enquiry, and became a pioneer of experimental learning. While at Oxford, he assisted Dr Charles Scarburgh (1616–94), the physician, mathematician, and anatomist, and himself developed an interest in anatomy and astronomy. He invented a model (the Panorganum Astronomicum) to demonstrate various periodical positions of the earth, sun, and moon, and became a skilled maker of models and diagrams. Made a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, in 1653, in 1657 he was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London. In 1661 he returned to Oxford as Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and, although only 28, was highly regarded by his peers. By that time he was becoming interested in architectural matters, and in 1663 his advice was sought by the Commission appointed to repair St Paul's Cathedral in London. In the same year he designed the new
After the Great Fire of London (1666) he prepared a plan for rebuilding the City that was not adopted, but he was appointed (with Pratt and May) as one of the Commissioners to survey and determine how best to proceed with the work. He was also appointed (with Hooke and Woodroffe) to rebuild the City churches, and for this task Wren had overall control, although claims that he personally designed each building are exaggerated, and in nearly all cases the furnishings and architectural details were designed by craftsmen, Wren and his colleagues acting in supervisory roles. Designs for the 50 or so City churches either originated in or were vetted by his office, and in most cases accorded with Wren's idea of how ecclesiastical designs should be adapted for Protestant worship. The inventive towers, however, including that of St Dunstan-in-the-East (1697–9—Gothic), all seem to have originated in, or were modified by, Wren's office. Plans were also varied and interesting, notably the domed St Stephen, Walbrook (1672–9), and St Mary Abchurch (1681–6), a single-volume domed space. The galleried
In 1668/9 Wren became Surveyor-General of the King's Works, succeeded May as Comptroller at Windsor in 1684, was appointed Surveyor at Greenwich Palace in 1696, and was Architect in charge of the building of the Military Hospital at Chelsea. The last, with its bold and severe Roman
Other works include the Garden Quadrangle, Trinity College, Oxford (1668–1728—much altered), the Gothic Tom Tower, Christ Church, Oxford (1681–2), and the very grand Library at Trinity College, Cambridge (1676–84), one of the noblest buildings of its time. He designed Marlborough House, St James's, London (1709–11—later altered on numerous occasions), in which work he was assisted by his son, Christopher (1675–1747), who collected the papers that led to Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens, published by Christopher jun.'s son, Stephen, in 1750. Sir Christopher Wren's work was influenced by French architecture, notably that of Mansart and Le Vau, and by Netherlands
Bibliography
The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)
From our Archives: Today's Highlights, October 20, 2005
In 1669 Wren was named royal architect, a post he retained for more than 45 years. From 1670 to 1711 he designed 52 London churches, most of which still stand, notable for their varied and original designs and for their fine spires. They include St. Stephen, Walbrook; St. Martin, Ludgate; St. Bride, Fleet Street; and St. Mary-le-Bow, the latter manifesting the type of spire in receding stages generally associated with Wren's name. Among his numerous secular works are the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford; the elegant library of Trinity College, Cambridge; the garden facade of Hampton Court Palace; Chelsea Hospital; portions of Greenwich Hospital; and the buildings of the Temple, London. Wren also built residences in London and in the country, and these, as well as his public works, received the stamp of his distinctive style. His buildings exhibit a remarkable elegance, order, clarity, and dignity. His influence was considerable on church architecture in England and abroad. Wren was knighted in 1675, and is buried in the crypt of St. Paul's.
Bibliography
See biographies by A. Tinniswood (2001) and L. Jardine (2003); studies by G. Webb (1937), E. F. Sekler (1956), V. Fürst (1956), J. N. Summerson (new ed. 1965), and M. Whinney (1972).
Wren, Christopher (1632–1723), English architect. Sir Christopher Wren was an English scientist and architect, important for confirming, in what later was jokingly referred to as the "Wrenaissance," a tradition of classical architecture in England in the seventeenth century that lasted for two centuries. His father was a distinguished cleric, and Wren was well educated, coming into contact while a student at Oxford with a group of scientists who were later, in 1661, to found the Royal Society. His interests at this time were science and astronomy; after receiving his degrees, he was elected a member of All Souls College and in 1661 he became the Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford.
Gradually, however, Wren became interested in architecture, then considered a part of mathematics. When in 1663 his uncle, the bishop of Ely, asked him to design a chapel at Pembroke College, Cambridge, he was able to produce an adequate design, simple and classical in its forms. A year later he began the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, a complex structure, taken as to be expected from the design of classical theaters, but roofed with a new truss system without columns, based on a floor plan devised by John Wallis, formerly professor of geometry at Oxford. It was in 1665 that Wren made his only visit abroad, to Paris, where he visited the new classical buildings and met, if briefly, the Italian architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
On his return to London, Wren began further restorations at St. Paul's Cathedral. But in 1666 came the Great Fire, and with it an opportunity for him not only to rebuild the fabric of the cathedral, but also to redesign the whole city of London on a regular and ordered plan. As one of the commissioners appointed to survey the areas destroyed, Wren was very much involved in the restoration of London; when in 1668 he was also appointed surveyor general of the king's works, he resigned from Oxford and turned all his attention to architecture. Of the project for London, which was taken from some of the new plans for Rome, little was realized, commerce and expediency requiring that everything in the city be quickly rebuilt along the existing patterns of streets. Wren was also involved in rebuilding more than fifty local city churches. Their designs, varied and distinct as they were in their plans, established a new form for the Protestant church, with open galleries inside and bell towers outside, often set apart from the basic structure and effectively recalling, in all their classical details, the spires of the older medieval churches that had earlier been present at the same sites.
Wren's design for St. Paul's Cathedral was equally important. Its great dome, with the colonnade running around the drum, taken from a design by Donato Bramante for St. Peter's, was a model for many later buildings—such as the Capitol in Washington, D.C.—where a dome was to be used for purely secular buildings. Wren also worked on several projects for King Charles II. Although many of his designs for Winchester Palace, Whitehall, and Hampton Court were never realized, at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea (begun in 1682), and at the Royal Hospital for Seamen, Greenwich (1696 onward), he defined an ideal of monumental architecture, deeply influential on architects of the next generation. In addition, Wren again worked for the universities, notably at the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (1676–1684) and at Tom Tower at Christ Church, Oxford (1681–1682), which, following what he called customary rather than natural beauty, was constructed in a Gothic style to complement its older architectural surroundings.
The last years of Wren's life were not happy. His supervision of the Office of Works became haphazard, and in 1718 he was dismissed, retaining only his surveyorship at St. Paul's and at Westminster Abbey. It was then that the Palladian group, led by Lord Burlington, took charge of this office, arguing for a new native style of architecture, based on the theories of Andrea Palladio and Inigo Jones, to replace the more pragmatic baroque style of Wren and his followers. But what Wren had done was of immense importance. And if his designs never reached the quality of those executed by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor, who had begun his career in Wren's office, his ideas about his work, carefully preserved by his son, served to demonstrate, in ways now compatible with the experimental approaches he learned as a scientist, how architecture and its history could be seriously thought about and seen as part of a design tradition that dated back to Italy and antiquity.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Soo, Lydia M. Wren's "Tracts" on Architecture and Other Writings. New York and Cambridge, U.K., 1998.
Wren, Stephen. Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens. Reprint. Hampshire, U.K., 1965. Originally published London, 1750.
Secondary Sources
Bennett, J. A. The Mathematical Science of Sir Christopher Wren. Cambridge, U.K., 1982.
Jardine, Lisa. On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Christopher Wren. London, 2002.
Jeffery, Paul. The City Churches of Sir Christopher Wren. London and Rio Grande, Ohio, 1996.
Whinney, Margaret. Christopher Wren. New York, 1971.
—DAVID CAST
An English architect of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Wren designed many buildings in London for the large rebuilding effort that followed the city's “Great Fire” of 1666. Saint Paul's Cathedral is his best-known work.
Quotes:
"Choose an author as you choose a friend."
"Architecture has its political Use; publick Buildings being the Ornament of a Country; it establishes a Nation, draws People and Commerce; makes the People love their native Country, which Passion is the Original of all great Actions in a Common-wealth. Architecture aims at Eternity."
| Sir Christopher Wren | |
|---|---|
 Sir Christopher Wren in Godfrey Kneller's 1711 portrait |
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| Born | 20 October 1632 East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England |
| Died | 25 February 1723 (aged 90) London |
| Residence |  England |
| Nationality | English |
| Field | Architecture, physics, astronomy, and mathematics |
| Alma mater | Wadham College, University of Oxford |
| Known for | Designer of 53 churches including St. Paul's Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings of note in London after the Great Fire |
Sir Christopher Wren, (20 October 1632 – 25 February 1723) was a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, and the greatest English architect of his time. Wren designed 53 London churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings of note. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal.
Wren was born at East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren DD (1589-1658), at that time the rector of East Knoyle and later Dean of Windsor. A previous child of Dr Wren, also named Christopher, was born on 22 November 1631, and had died the same day. John Aubrey’s confusion of the two persisted occasionally into late twentieth-century literature.
As a child Wren "seem'd consumptive"[1]. Although a sickly child, he would survive into robust old age. He was first taught at home by a private tutor and his father. After his father's appointment as Dean of Windsor in March 1635, his family spent part of each year there. Little is known about Wren’s life at Windsor and it is misleading to say that Wren and the son of Charles I became childhood friends there and "often played together"[2].
Wren’s schooling is not at all definitive. The story that he was at Westminster School from 1641 to 1646 is unsubstantiated. Parentalia, the biography compiled by his son a third Christopher, places him there "for some short time" before going to Oxford (in 1650). Some of his youthful exercises preserved or recorded (though few are datable) showed that he received a thorough grounding in Latin; he also learned to draw. According to Parentalia, he was "initiated" in the principles of mathematics by Dr. William Holder, who married Wren’s elder sister Susan in 1643. During this time period, Wren manifested an interest in the design and construction of mechanical instruments. It was probably through Holder that Wren met Sir Charles Scarburgh, with whom he assisted in the anatomical studies.
Wren entered Wadham College, Oxford, on 25 June 1650. At Wadham, Wren’s formal education was conventional. The curriculum was still based on the study of Aristotle and the discipline of the Latin language, and it is anachronistic to imagine that he received scientific training in the modern sense. However, Wren became closely associated with John Wilkins, who served as warden in Wadham. Wilkins was a member of a group of distinguished scholars. This group, whose activities led to the formation of Royal Society, consisted of a number of distinguished mathematicians, original and sometimes brilliant practical workers and experimental philosophers. This connection probably influenced Wren’s studies of science and mathematics at college. He graduated B.A. in 1651, and three years later received M.A.
Receiving his A.M. in 1653, Wren was elected a fellow of All Souls College in the same year and began an active period of research and experiment in Oxford. His days as a fellow of All Souls ended when Wren was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London in 1657. He was provided with a set of rooms and a stipend and was required to give weekly lectures in both Latin and English to all who wished to attend; admission was free. Wren took up this new work with enthusiasm. He continued to meet the men with whom he had frequent discussions in Oxford. They attended his London lectures and in 1660, initiated formal weekly meetings. It was from these meetings that the Royal Society, England’s premier scientific body, was to develop. He undoubtedly played a major role in the early life of what would become the Royal Society; his great breadth of expertise in so many different subjects helping in the exchange of ideas between the various scientists. In fact, the report on one of these meetings reads:
Memorandum November 28 1660. These persons following according to the usual custom of most of them, met together at Gresham College to hear Mr Wren's lecture, viz. The Lord Brouncker, Mr Boyle, Mr Bruce, Sir Robert Moray, Sir Paule Neile, Dr Wilkins, Dr Goddard, Dr Petty, Mr Ball, Mr Rooke, Mr Wren, Mr Hill. And after the lecture was ended they did according to the usual manner, withdraw for mutual converse. [3]
In 1662, they proposed a society "for the promotion of Physico-Mathematicall Experimental Learning." This body received its Royal Charter from Charles II and "The Royal Society of London for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge" was formed. In addition to being a founder member of the Society, Wren was president of the Royal Society from 1680 to 1682.
In 1661, Wren was elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, and in 1669 he was appointed Surveyor of Works to Charles II. From 1661 until 1668 Wren's life was based in Oxford, although the Royal Society meant that he had to make occasional trips to London.
The main sources for Wren's scientific achievements are the records of the Royal Society. His scientific works ranged from astronomy, optics, the problem of finding longitude at sea, cosmology, mechanics, microscopy, surveying, medicine and meteorology. He observed, measured, dissected, built models, and employed, invented and improved a variety of instruments. It was also around these times that his attention turned to architecture.
The second of Wren's architectural endeavors, the first being the chapel of Pembroke Hall in Cambridge, was the design of the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, which was completed in 1662. This, the gift of Bishop Sheldon of London to his old university, was influenced by the classical form of the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, but was a mixture of this classical design with a modern empirical design. It was probably around this time that Wren was drawn into redesigning a battered St. Paul's Cathedral. Making a trip to Paris in 1665, Wren studied the architecture, which had reached a climax of creativity, and perused the drawings of Bernini, the great Italian sculptor and architect. Returning from Paris, he made his first design for St. Paul’s. A week later, however, the Great Fire destroyed two-thirds of the city. Wren submitted his plans for rebuilding the city to King Charles II, although they were never adopted. With his appointment as King’s Surveyor of Works in 1669, he had a presence in the general process of rebuilding the city, but was not directly involved with the rebuilding of houses or companies' halls. Wren was personally responsible of the rebuilding of 51 churches; however, it is not necessarily true to say that each of them represented his own fully developed design.
Wren was knighted 14 November, 1673. He was bestowed after his resignation from the Savilian position in Oxford, by which time he had already begun to make his mark as an architect both in services to the Crown and in playing an important part in rebuilding London after the Great Fire.
Additionally, he was sufficiently active in public affairs to be returned as Member of Parliament for Old Windsor in 1680, 1689 and 1690, but did not take his seat.
By 1669 Wren's career was well established and it may have been his appointment as Surveyor-General of the King's Works in early 1669 that persuaded him that he could finally afford to take a wife. In 1669 the thirty-seven year old Wren married his childhood neighbor, the thirty-three year old Faith Coghill, daughter of Sir John Coghill of Bletchingham. Little is known of Faith's life or demeanor, but a love letter from Wren survives, which reads, in part:
"I have sent your Watch* at last & envy the felicity of it, that it should be soe near your side & soe often enjoy your Eye......but have a care for it, for I have put such a spell into it; that every Beating of the Balance will tell you 'tis the Pulse of my Heart, which labors as much to serve you and more trewly than the Watch; for the Watch I beleeve will sometimes lie, and sometimes be idle & unwilling...but as for me you may be confident I shall never..."[4]
This brief marriage produced two children: Gilbert, a sickly child given to convulsions fits, born October 1672; the infant died not quite a year-and-a-half old. The second child, also a son, named Christopher after his father, was born February 1675. The younger Christopher was trained by his father to be an architect. It was this Christopher that supervised the topping out ceremony of St Paul’s in 1710 and wrote the famous Parentalia. Faith Wren died of small pox on 3 September 1675. She was buried in the chancel of St.-Martin-in-the-Field beside the infant Gilbert. A few days later Wren's mother-in-law, Lady Coghill, arrived to take the infant back with her to Oxfordshire to raise.
In 1677, seventeen months after the death of his first wife, Wren married once again. He married Jane Fitzwilliam, a woman even more of a mystery than the first Mrs. Wren; especially to Wren's friends and companions. Robert Hooke, who often saw Wren two or three times every week, had, as he recorded in his diary, never even heard of her, and was not to meet her till six weeks after the marriage [5]. All that is know about the second Mrs. Wren was that she was the daughter of Lord Fitzwilliam of Lifford on the Irish peerage, and that her mother had been the daughter of a prosperous London merchant. As with the first marriage, this too produced two children: a daughter Jane, (1677-1702); and a son William, "Poor Billy" born June, 1679, was retarded. Like the first, this second marriage was also brief. Jane Wren died of tuberculosis in September 1680. She was buried along side Faith and Gilbert in the chancel of St.-Martin-in-the-Field. Wren was never to marry again; he lived to be 90 years old and of those was married only nine.
Bletchingham was the home of Wren's brother-in-law William Holder who was rector of the local church. Holder had been a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. An intellectual of considerable ability, he is said to have been the figure who introduced Wren to arithmetic and geometry.
After the death of Charles II in 1685, Wren's attention was directed mainly to Whitehall. The new king, James II, required a new chapel and also ordered a new gallery, council chamber and a riverside apartment for the Queen. Later, when James II was removed from the throne, Wren took on architectural projects such as Kensington Palace, Hampton Court and Greenwich Hospital, which was his last great work and the only one still in progress after St Paul’s had been completed in 1711.
Wren's later life was not without criticisms and attacks on his competence and his taste. In 1712, the Letter Concerning Design of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, circulated in manuscript. Proposing a new British style of architecture, Shaftesbury censured Wren’s cathedral, his taste and his long-standing control of royal works. Although he was appointed to the Fifty New Churches Commission in 1711, he was left only with nominal charge of a board of works when the surveyorship started in 1715. On 26 April 1718, on the pretext of failing powers, he was dismissed in favour of William Benson.
Contrary to popular belief,[citation needed] Wren did not die at his son’s house. The Wren family estate was in the area of Hampton Court. It had been bought by Wren many years before as part of a legacy for his son Christopher Wren, Jr. For convenience Wren also leased a house on St. James street in London. According to a nineteenth-century legend, he would often go to London to pay unofficial visits to St. Paul's, to check on the progress of 'my greatest work'. On one of these trips to London he caught a chill. Over the next several days the illness became increasingly worse. On 25 February, 1723 a servant tried to awaken Wren from his nap, but found that Wren had died.[6]
Wren was laid to rest on 5 March, 1723. His remains were placed in the south-east corner of the crypt beside those of his daughter Jane, his sister Susan Holder, and her husband William. The simple stone marker reads:
Here lieth
Sir Christopher Wren Knight
The Builder of this Cathedral
Church of St. Paul &c.
Who dyed
In the year of Our Lord
MDCCXXIII
And of his age XCI[7]
It was Wren's eldest son and heir, Christopher Wren, Jr., who wrote what is perhaps one of the most famous epitaphs of all time:
One of Wren's friends, another great scientist and architect in his time, Robert Hooke said of him "Since the time of Archimedes there scarce ever met in one man in so great perfection such a mechanical hand and so philosophical mind."
As a fellow of All Souls, he constructed a transparent beehive for scientific observation; he began observing the moon, which was subsequent to the invention of micrometers for the telescope. He experimented on terrestrial magnetism and had taken part in medical experiments, performing the first successful injection of a substance into the bloodstream (of a dog).
In Gresham College, he did experiments involving determining longitude through magnetic variation and through lunar observation to help with navigation, and helped construct a 35 foot telescope with Sir Paul Neile. Wren also studied and improved the microscope and telescope at this time. He had also been making observations of the planet Saturn from around 1652 with the aim of explaining its appearance. His hypothesis was written up in De corpore saturni but before the work was published, Huygens presented his theory of the rings of Saturn. Immediately Wren recognized this as a better hypothesis than his own and De corpore saturni was never published. In addition, he constructed an exquisitely detailed lunar model and presented it to the king. Also his contribution to mathematics should be noted; in 1658, he found the length of an arc of the cycloid using an exhaustion proof based on dissections to reduce the problem to summing segments of chords of a circle which are in geometric progression.
A year into Wren's appointment as a Savilian Professor in Oxford, the Royal Society was created and Wren became an active member. As a Savilian Professor, Wren studied thoroughly in mechanics, especially in elastic collisions and pendulum motions, which he studied extensively. He also directed his far-ranging intelligence to the study of meteorology, and fabricated a "weather-clock" that recorded temperature, humidity, rainfall and barometric pressure, which could be used to predict the weather. In addition, Wren experimented on muscle functionality as well, hypothesizing that the swelling and shrinking of muscles might proceed from a fermentative motion arising from the mixture of two heterogeneous fluids. Although this is incorrect, it is at least founded upon observation and may mark a new outlook on medicine: specialization. Another topic to which Wren contributed was optics. He published a description of an engine to create perspective drawings and he discussed the grinding of conical lenses and mirrors. Out of this work came another of Wren's important mathematical results, namely that the hyperboloid of revolution is a ruled surface. These results were published in 1669. In subsequent years, Wren continued with his work with the Royal Society, however, after the 1680s, his scientific interests seem to have waned: no doubt his architectural and official duties absorbed all his time.
Mentioned above are only a few of Wren’s scientific works. He also studied in other areas not mentioned ranging from
agriculture,
In Wren's age, the profession of architect as understood today did not exist. Since the early years of the 17th century it was not unusual for the well-educated gentleman, (virtuosi), to take up architecture as a gentlemanly activity; a pursuit widely accepted as a branch of applied mathematics. This is implicit in the writings of Vitruvius and explicit in such sixteenth-century authors as John Dee and Leonard Digges. When Wren was a student at Oxford, he became familiar with Vitruvius' De architectura and absorbed intuitively the fundamentals of the architectural design there. In the past, buildings had been constructed to the needs of the patron and the suggestions of building professionals, such as master carpenters or master bricklayers.
Through the Royal Society and his use of optics, Wren came particularly to the king's notice. In 1661 he was approached by his cousin Matthew with a royal commission, as "one of the best Geometer in Europe", to direct the refortification of Tangier. Wren excused himself on grounds of health. Although this invitation may have arisen from Charles II's casual opportunism in matching people to tasks, Wren is believed to have been already on the way to architecture practice. Before the end of 1661 Wren was unofficially advising the repair of old St Paul's Cathedral after two decades of neglect and distress; his architectural interests were also evident to his associates at the time. Two years after, he set his only foreign journey to Paris and the Île-de-France, during which he acquired the firsthand study of modern design and construction. By this time, he had mastered and thoroughly understood architecture. Unlike several of his colleagues who took it up as a set of rules and formulas for design, he possessed, understood, and exploited the combination of reason and intuition, experience and imagination. [8]
St Paul's has always been the touchstone of Wren's reputation. His association with it spans his whole architectural career, including the thirty-six years between the start of the new building and the declaration by parliament of its completion in 1711.
Wren had been involved in repairs of the old cathedral since 1661. In the spring of 1666, he made his first design for a dome for St Paul's. It was accepted in principle on August 27, 1666. One week later, however, The Great Fire of London reduced two-thirds of the City to a smoking desert and old St Paul's to a ruin. Wren was most likely at Oxford at the time, but the news, so fantastically relevant to his future, drew him at once to London. Between September 5 and 11 he ascertained the precise area of devastation, worked out a plan for rebuilding the City and submitted it to Charles II. Others also submitted plans. However, no new plans proceeded any further than the paper on which it was drawn. A rebuilding act which provided rebuilding of some essential buildings was passed in 1667. In 1669, the King's Surveyor of Works died and Wren was promptly installed.
It was not until 1670 that the pace of rebuilding started accelerating. A second rebuilding act was passed that year, raising the tax on coal and thus providing a source of funds for rebuilding of churches destroyed within the City of London. Wren presented his initial "First Model" for St Paul's. This plan was accepted, and demolition of the old cathedral began. By 1672, however, this design seemed too modest, and Wren met his critics by producing a design of spectacular grandeur. This modified design, called "Great Model", was accepted by the King and the construction started in November, 1673. However, this design failed to satisfy the chapter and clerical opinion generally; moreover, it has an economic drawback. Wren was confined to a 'cathedral form' desired by the clergy. In 1674 he produced the rather meager Classical-Gothic compromise known as the Warrant Design. However, this design, called so from the royal warrant of 14 May 1675 attached to the drawings, is not the design upon which work had begun a few weeks before.
The cathedral that Wren started to build bears only a slight resemblance to the Warrant Design. In 1697, the first service was held in the cathedral when Wren was 65. There was still, however, no dome. Finally in 1711 the cathedral was declared complete, and Wren was paid half of his salary that, in the hope of accelerating progress, Parliament had withheld for fourteen years since 1697. The cathedral had been built for 36 years under him, and the only disappointment he had about his masterpiece is the dome: against his wishes the commission engaged Thornhill to paint the inner dome in false perspective and finally authorized a balustrade around the proof line. This diluted the hard edge Wren had intended for his cathedral, and elicited the apt parthian comment that "ladies think nothing well without an edging".[9]
During the 1670s Wren received significant secular commissions which manifest both the maturity and the variety of his
architecture and the sensitivity of his response to diverse briefs. Among many of his remarkable designs at this time, the
monument commemorating the Great Fire, the Royal Observatory, and the library at
Trinity College, Cambridge were the most important ones. The former two of
the three works also involved
By historical accident, all Wren's large-scale secular commissions dated from after 1680s. At the age of fifty his personal development, as was that of English architecture, was ready for a monumental but humane architecture, in which the scales of individual parts relates both to the whole and to the people who used them. The first large project Wren designed, the Chelsea Hospital, does not entirely satisfy the eye in this respect, but met its belief with such distinction and success that even in the twentieth century it fulfills its original function. The reconstruction of the state room at Windsor Castle was notable for the integration of architecture, sculpture, and painting. This commission was in the hand of Hugh May, who died in February, 1684, before the construction finished. Wren assumed his post and finalized the works.
Wren did not pursue his work on architectural design as actively as he had before the 1690s, although he still played important roles in a number of royal commissions. In 1696 he was appointed Surveyor of Greenwich Naval Hospital, and three years later Surveyor of Westminster Abbey. He resigned the former role in 1716 but held the latter until his death.
At his death, Wren was 90. Even the men he had trained and who owed much of their success to Wren's original and leadership were no longer young. Newer generations of architects were beginning to look past Wren's style. The Baroque school his apprentices had created was already under fire from a new generation that brushed Wren’s reputation aside and looked back beyond him to Inigo Jones. Architects of the 18th century could not forget Wren, but they could not forgive some elements in his work they deemed unconventional. The churches left the strongest mark on subsequent architecture. In France, where English architecture rarely made much impression, the influence of St Paul's Cathedral can be seen in the church of Sainte-Geneviève (now the Panthéon); begun in 1757, it rises to a drum and dome similar to St Paul's, and there are countless versions of it, from St Isaac's (1840-42) in St Petersburg to the Capitol at Washington, D.C. (1855-65).
In the twentieth century the potency of the influence of Wren's work on English architecture was reduced. The last major architect who admitted to being dependent on him was Sir Edwin Lutyens [10], who died in 1944. With the purposeful elimination of historic influences from international architecture in the early 20th century, Wren's work gradually stopped being perceived as a mine of examples applicable to contemporary design.
Sir Christopher Wren was also a Freemason and Master of Lodge Original, No. 1, now the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2 "adopted" May 18, 1691.
The crater Wren on Mercury was named in his honour.
At one time Wren was credited with the design of the King's House at Newmarket. The attribution gave rise to an apocryphal story in which Charles II, who was over six feet tall, complained about the low ceilings. Wren, who wasn't, replied that 'they were high enough', at which the king crouched down until he was on a level with his Surveyor and strutted about saying, 'Ay, Ay, Sir Christopher, I think they are high enough.' [11]
| Preceded by Sir John Denham |
Surveyor of the King's
Works 1669–1718 |
Succeeded by William Benson |
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wren, Sir Christopher |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Architect, physicist, astronomer, and mathematician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 20 October, 1632 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | 25 February, 1723 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | London |
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