ENGLISH BAROQUE LIBRARIES Author(s) : EMILY L. DANIEL

Yale University
Yale University Library
ENGLISH BAROQUE LIBRARIES

Author(s): EMILY L. DANIEL
Source: The Yale University Library Gazette, Vol. 72, No. 3/4 (April 1998), pp. 116-140
Published by: Yale University, acting through the Yale University Library
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^ ENGLISH BAROQUE LIBRARIES
BY EMILY L. DANIEL
This is a survey of the key English baroque libraries -both built an

unbuilt- of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, public and ac
demic, chiefly the architectural masterpieces of Sir Christopher Wre
Nicholas Hawksmoor, and James Gibbs.
In the 1620s Francis Bacon announced in his Novum Organum th
three discoveries unknown to the ancients had changed the "whole
face and condition of things throughout the world, in literature,
warfare, and in navigation," and they were "the arts of printing, gu
powder, and the compass." In the history of library design, th
fifteenth-century invention of printing was to have an incredible
impact- probably equaled only by the change from papyrus roll to
parchment codex from the third century A.D. or by the twentiet
century revolution in information technology.
Transformation did not happen overnight, but evolved over t
course of a century in response to certain changes. Giles Barber em
phasizes the importance of the introduction of paper, which gradu
ally replaced the use of the animal product, parchment, and pr
vided a good supply of a suitable surface for printing. This reduce
the weight of the books, allowing for the use of smaller formats an
lighter bindings, which, combined with the huge increase in book
production, meant that the shelf took over from the desk as the mo
practical system of book storage. The concurrent decrease in t
value of books made the practice of chaining books obsolete, thoug
in some libraries, such as the Bodleian, this continued well into th
eighteenth century. The direct connection between the growth of co
lections, printing, and a thriving book trade is demonstrated in th
agreement of the Stationers Company in 1610 to give a copy of eve
book printed by its members to the Bodleian. And, of course, the
were the traditional ways of acquiring books, and indeed entire li-
braries: that is, through donation, inheritance, theft, or loot of wa
Whether a Borromini in Rome or a Wren in Cambridge, the archite
designing a library could not design only for the present, but had
to think of future book storage needs. This was a self-fulfilling prop
ecy: for as in the case of Trinity College's library, the new buildin
Yale University Library Gazette 116

April 1998
encouraged the donation of such important collections as that of
Thomas and Roger Gale and, in the late eighteenth century, Edward
Capell's famous collection of Shakespeariana.
But the utilitarian aspect of book storage is only half of the story-
or, to use the description of a seventeenth-century Cambridge under-
graduate, Charles Lewis, "non tantum ad usum sed ad luxum," not
only for use but also for splendor. The magnificent spatial and dec-
orative programs of the baroque library are symptoms of a growing
realization since the Renaissance that the library- and in particular
the public library -was the perfect vehicle with which to express new
political, intellectual, religious, and aesthetic ideals. Words other
than library were used frequently by contemporaries about these
buildings, such words as "temple," "mausoleum," "treasure house,"
"Muses Palace," and even "medicine chest of the soul." Jonathan
Swift in his 1697 Battle of the Books asserts that libraries are "akin to
cemeteries," and are infused with a certain unruly spirit, or "brutum
hominis." Moreover, the architectural prototypes for many of these li-
braries were such other types of buildings as palaces, villas, churches,
temples, and monuments.
Four visual hallmarks define a baroque library. First is the introduc-
tion of wall-shelving, ushering the gradual disappearance of rows of
desks with books chained to them. Second, and as a result of the
first, the hall design, "an undivided room covered with either ex-
posed trusses, a flat or coved ceiling, or one vault," replaced the me-
dieval basilical design of "a vaulted space divided into three aisles by
two rows of columns." The change in design can be seen by com-
paring Michelozzo's fifteenth-century library of San Marco in Flor-
ence with Juan de Herrera's great library of the Escoriai, which,
dating from the 1560s, was extremely influential in molding baroque
library design. But as soon as wall-shelving became the norm there
was room for upward expansion with galleries, as well as spatial in-
novation, in that architects were no longer limited to rectangular de-
signs. Uninterrupted ceilings and vaults were blank pages just
waiting to be filled with exuberant baroque decorative programs,
especially in the libraries of Counter-Reformation Europe. Third is
the freeing up of the central space for exhibition cases and the ad-
dition of adjoining rooms for rare manuscripts, coins, and antiqui-
ties. The inclusion of "cabinets of curiosities" in the collections of
such scholars as the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher looks back
ultimately to the great museum and library of Alexandria, and looks
forward to Sir Hans Sloane's extraordinary bequest that formed the
117
foundation of the British Museum. And lastly the location of the li-
brary became more prominent. No longer was it a subordinate
building in a complex of buildings, but now, as in the case of the li-
brary of the Escoriai and Francesco Borromini's Vallicelliana in Rome,
its facade forms part of the main facade next door to the church. This
was a sign that the Counter-Reform Church regarded scholarship
and propaganda as effective as faith in the battle for souls. At the
same time, access was improved to encourage usage by the public,
scholars, Fellows, and even undergraduates, who reached these
rooms via spectacular staircases and anterooms. In 1726 Emperor
Charles VI declared that the imperial library in Vienna was open to
all except "idiots, servants, idlers, chatterboxes, and casual strollers."
Concomitant with these architectural changes was a new outpour-
ing of library literature and theory by such scholar/librarians as Ga-
briel Naudé, Claude Clément, and Louis Jacob as self-help books for
kings and gentlemen all over Europe who wished to erect and orga-
nize a library in the new continental style. In Naude's Instructions con-
cerning the erecting of a library the connection between building a li-
brary and effective political power is made for the first time. He
maintains that "a curious and well-furnished library," just as victories
in the held, is a prerequisite to the "supreme and Sovereign degree
of esteem and reputation" and he backs this up with names of power-
ful monarchs from Pergamus to Francis I who built famous libraries.
Naudé, Clément, and the great philosopher/librarian Leibniz, were
hugely influential in transmitting new ideas in library organization
and design throughout the courts and universities of Europe. Their
example and emphasis on practical librarianship helped to raise the
status of the librarian. The effect can be found in the records of
Trinity College, Cambridge, where before 1608 the "Library Keeper"
was a College servant on the level with the butler or janitor, and after-
wards, due to a bequest from Sir Edward Stanhope, M.P., the li-
brarian was to be an unmarried B.A. or M.A. who was to enjoy a
Fellow's privileges. The statutes of the Bodleian similarly required
the librarian to be "a graduât . . . and a Linguist, not encombred with
mariage," adding by way of explanation, "mariage is too full of do-
mesticai impeachements."
The transition between the library of the Renaissance and of the
Baroque eras is found in the Bodleian Library, or, as its founder called
it, "The Publique librarie in the Universitie of Oxford." Sir Thomas
Bodley's resolve to set up his "staff at the library door" was probably
inspired by visiting Leiden University Library during his eight years
118
as English Resident in the Netherlands. Duke Humphrey's library
above the Divinity School, completed in 1488 and restored by
Thomas Bodley at the turn of the seventeenth century, contains a
perfect example of the English stall-system- double-sided desks
supporting three shelves of chained folios projecting into the room
and lit by windows in between. Bodley would have known of this
system from his time as a Fellow at Merton College where it was first
used in 1590. However, only twenty years later, when adding Arts
End, Bodley was to use the latest continental fashion of wall-shelving
with a gallery- a feature previously used only in the great Counter-
Reformation library in Milan, the Ambrosiana. Seiden End, at the
other end of Duke Humphrey's, built after Bodley's death, followed
suit. Anthony Hobson suggests that David Loggan's plates of Arts
End and Seiden End in Oxonia Illustrata (1675) (fig. 1) may have in-
spired the design of the University Library of Coimbra (1717-28),
built in the reign of John V of Portugal, especially the galleries with
their fragile pillars and balustrades.
The English knight Bodley is held up as a role model in Naudé's
treatise. He is immortalized in his eponymous library, where his two
globes stand sentinel to the entrance into Duke Humphrey's from
Arts End- and the library, symbolized by piles of books- is immor-
talized on the tomb of its founder in Merton. After the destruction
of English books and libraries in the sixteenth century following the

dissolution of the monasteries, Bodley is seen as ushering a new
golden age of learning in England, lyrically expressed in Richard
Burton's mourning verse:
Now from gilt beam and painted roof there falls

New fretted light on Bodley's noble halls;
The well-bound volumes shine in goodly rows;
Each Muse her own appointed alcove knows,
And is herself again, through Bodley's care,
Now what belonged to one now all may share.
Even when John Evelyn was walking through Domenico Fontana's

new home for the Vatican Library of Sixtus V, the Salone Sistino
(1587-88), the Bodleian is his native point of reference. On 18 January
1645 he writes in his diary: "This library is the most nobly built, fur-
nished, and beautified of any in the world; ample, stately, light and
cheerful, looking into a most pleasant garden. The walls and roof are
painted, not with antiques and grotesques, like our Bodleian at Ox-
ford, but emblems, figures, diagrams, and the like learned inven-
tions, found out of the wit and industry of famous men, of which
119
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thepe are now whole volumes extant. There were likewise the effigies
of the most illustrious men of letters and fathers of the church, with
divers noble statues, in white marble, at the entrance, viz., Hippo-
lytus and Aristides."
Evelyn's description gives us an important insight into English con-
temporary taste, and in no more important a library than that of the
Vatican, the intellectual hub of the papacy's spiritual and temporal
power. Although Counter-Reformation themes are prevalent, such
as in the frescos of the Church councils, the overriding aesthetic is
that of the ancient library. Statues, portraits, busts, inscriptions of au-
thors and other distinguished men evoked the ancient library. Fulvio
Orsini, librarian to the Farnese, in his treatise on ancient busts, en-
titled Imagines (1570), cited Gaivs Asinius Pollio, who founded the first
public library in Rome about 39 B.C., as an exponent of the Roman
tradition of placing busts in libraries. Moreover, the Vatican fresco of
the library of Augustus provides a contemporary visual representa-
tion of the ancient library; that is, wall-shelving framed by marble
columns, a wooden book press standing in the middle of the room,
and a view of the circular temple of Apollo. Fontana makes direct ref-
erence to this in the salone itself, where he placed wooden presses
around the central piers and against the walls between the windows.
Roman baroque libraries of the next century, such as the Barberin-
iana, and Borromini's institutional libraries the Vallicelliana and Ales-
sandrina, would go one step further and incorporate the classical
orders into wall-shelving systems, the earliest surviving examples
being found in the library of the Escoriai. No doubt influenced by
the Escorial's vaulted hall, Fontana achieved a new effect of spatial
grandeur with his 100-pace-long hall, lit by seven large windows on
the north and south walls. But unlike the Spanish library, the salone
is divided into two by piers- perhaps, again, a conscious reference
to Roman libraries, such as the Palatine, with their two adjoining
halls for Greek and Latin texts. Moreover, with its absence of desks,
chairs, and books, combined with its overwhelming decoration,
Sixtus's library was created more for show (and a rather large dose
of papal propaganda) than for use- a library in the Augustan sense,
a meeting place for the learned and unlearned alike. The figures ap-
pear in mid-conversation and the impression is more of a gentleman's
club than a working library.
With these formative influences, we find Evelyn back in England
in 1661 dedicating his translation of Naudé's Instructions to the Earl
of Clarendon, Chancellor of Oxford University, with an "honorable
121
mention" of the Royal Society. Civil War and the Interregnum meant
that little progress had been made in English library building since
Bodley-but this was to change with the Restoration. A debate was
heating up on the lack of major English libraries- exacerbated by the
damage and neglect of cathedral libraries during the Interregnum -
which was only to be finally silenced by the foundation of the British
Museum in 1753. Peace and prosperity encouraged the competitive
building, rebuilding, and refitting of such cathedral libraries as St
Paul's and Lincoln, such palace libraries as the Long Library at Blen-
heim, and college and university libraries. The impetus came from
a group of "gentlemen and refined spirits" who formed the early
membership of the Royal Society- such men as Evelyn, Pepys, Wren,
Barrow, Gibbs, Bernard, and Sloane. They were, according to Evelyn,
"universally learn'd, that are read, travelTd, experienc'd and stout"
and who proceeded in that "glorious work of restoring the sciences,
interpreting nature, unfolding the obstrusities of arts, for the re-
covery of the lost; inventing and augmenting of new and useful
things." Their collective interest in the organization and administra-
tion of knowledge was put to the test when the society was given
the Arundel Collection in 1666I7 which formed the basis of its own
library. In 1678 Sir Christopher Wren put forward plans for a building
that would have brought the books together, as he put it "after the
moderne way in glass presses." Sadly, this library was never built,
and the books were removed to the gallery of Gresham College. The
connection between the Royal Society and libraries persists into the
next century, when presidents of the Royal Society and the College
of Physicians are numbered among the original trustees of the British
Museum.
The theory, however, was easier than the practice. Evelyn tried
three times to introduce Naudé's two catalogue system to his own
rambling library, but failed on each occasion. His friend, Samuel
Pepys, wrote in his diary on 5 October 1665 that he found Evelyn's
translation of Naudé "above my reach." In 1700 Pepys was equally
convinced of this assessment. He writes: 'In distinction noe lesse
from those of the more extensive, pompous, and stationary libraries
of princes, universities, colleges, and other publick societies, than of
the more restrained though otherwise voluminous collections incident
to those of the professors of particular faculties: as being calculated
for the self -entertainment onely of a solitary, unconfined enquirer into
books, and votary of Cicero's Otium Literatum." If Naudé was respon-
sible for writing the manifesto of the universal library of kings and
122
institutions, Pepys gives us the manifesto for the private, eclectic li-
brary formed for the personal enjoyment of the modern collector.
The result of his endeavors can be seen today in the Bibliotheca
Pepysiana in Magdalene College, Cambridge, which came into being
when his 3,000 volumes were moved there in 1724. Its first floor room
is of little interest- it was not built to be a library but part of an ex-
tension to the college. However, the beautiful oak presses were built
by Pepys for his growing library in Buckingham Street, London, as
shown in situ in a drawing of 1693. Designed by Pepys with
"Sympson the Joiner" in 1666, they are the earliest known to contain
books behind glass doors- at the Restoration, the collections of pri-
vate persons were usually kept in boxes and chests. The portraits -
commissioned at considerable expense- of friends, relatives, and fa-
mous men, such as Evelyn, Newton, James II, and Pepys's kinsman
Thomas Gale were unusual for a private library- the closest contem-
porary parallel was the library of the Earl of Clarendon- but they
were integral to Pepys's conception of a library, which followed an-
cient precedent and Naude's recommendations. But Pepys dis-
missed Naude's austere position regarding decorative bindings, and
the bookshelves are filled with the most elaborate and colorful ex-
amples. The Bibliotheca Pepysiana- repository for his immortal
diary and "preserved for the benefit of posterity"- is Pepys's me-
morial, or, as one eighteenth-century German traveler remarked, his
"monumentum vanitatis." His portrait by Kneller hangs in the library
and appears in engraved form on every bookplate, while each end-
plate bears his motto, or, was it his epitaph, "Mens cuiusque is est
quisque," the mind is the man. His will of 1703 confirms that his li-
brary was his most treasured possession, and its preservation was
not going to be left to chance. The final stipulation reads, somewhat
mischievously, "And that for a yet further security herein, the said
two colleges of Trinity and Magdalene have a reciprocal check upon
one another, and that college which shall be in present possession
of the said library, be subject to an annual visitation from the other,
and to the forfeiture thereof to the life, possession, and use of the
other, upon conviction of any breach of their said covenants." There
are no records to prove that Trinity ever enforced its right of inspec-
tion. Perhaps, this is because its Fellows were fully consoled for the
loss of Pepys's library by the gain of the Wren Library.
In the 1670s, Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was approached by
his friend and fellow member of the Royal Society, Dr Isaac Barrow,
Master of Trinity and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, who
J-23
wanted to build the equivalent of Oxford's Sheldonian in Cam-
bridge. As a result, Wren not only produced a set of designs for a
Senate House but also a university library. The scheme, however,
was not approved by the rest of the university authorities, and
Barrow, "piqued at this pusillanimity," according to Roger North, "de-
clared that he would go straight to his college, and lay out the foun-
dations of a building to enlarge his back court, and close it with a
stately library, which should be more magnificent and costly than
what he had proposed to them." Due, no doubt, to Dr Barrow's influ-
ence, the result was unprecedented in scale. And, by choosing Wren
as architect, who was known to favor classical styles, it was to break
the mold of previous English libraries, such as St John's College Li-
brary (1623-24) next door, which tended to adopt traditional Gothic
styles. The library was funded largely as a result of appeals to "Lovers
of Magnificent Building" and "all Liberal Persons, Favorers of Learn-
ing" and was built for about £15,000 over a twenty-year period. It ap-
pears that Wren gave his services gratis, no doubt because of his
friendship for Barrow, but perhaps also because of his commitment
to create a great academic library in the center of the ancient univer-
sity town.
Unlike Evelyn, Wren had not been to Rome, but had spent six
months in Paris in 1665I6. It is likely during this time that he visited
Cardinal Mazarin's public library that had opened in 1648, as he re-
corded his admiration for what he terms "the masculine furniture of
the Palais Mazarin." Both Mazarin and his librarian, Gabriel Naudé,
had strong connections with Rome- Naudé had been librarian to the
Barberini family from 1642 to 1644. Certain features in the Mazarine,
such as the spiral staircases, may well have been inspired by those
in the Barberiniana. It is probable, therefore, that they brought cur-
rent fashions in library design from Rome to Paris, and Wren may
have helped to export them across the Channel.
Of Wren's two schemes for the library, one had no precedent in li-
brary design; a freestanding circular domed building on a square
base with an Ionic portico reminiscent of Palladio's Villa Rotonda (fig.
2). It is an example of Wren's predilection for centralized plans, recently
demonstrated in ecclesiastical architecture in his "Great Model"
design for St Paul's Cathedral. Curved exedrae were intended to con

nect the library to the unlengthened ranges of Nevile's Court.
But by January 1676, when an appeal was made to Trinity men and
friends of Cambridge for the new library, the circular scheme had
been given up in favor of a traditional elevated hall form entered a
124
Fig. 2. Elevation by Sir Christopher Wren of the proposed circular library for Trinity
College showing the attached Ionic portico facing east towards Nevile's court.
Permission of the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford.
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the end, with the east front closing the court (fig. 3) and west front
facing the river. Barrow's European travels (1655-59) and, in partic-
ular, his Italian sojourn may have been a decisive factor in the final
form and plan of the building. Not only had he spent several months
studying coins in Michelangelo's celebrated Biblioteca Laurenziana
in Florence, but had passed through Venice and may have returned
with an engraving showing Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana (com-
pleted 1591) in its setting in Piazza San Marco.
To highlight what was innovative and distinctive about this "sump-
tuous structure" (as Evelyn called it), we are lucky to have Wren's
letter to Dr Barrow explaining some of the principles he had followed
in proposing the design. Ancient Roman buildings and the ancient
library were clearly inspirations. The balustraded block is raised on an
arched loggia, closed on the west front, which was, Wren explained,
"according to the manner of the auncients who made double walkes
. . . about a forum." Furthermore, he added, "I have given noe other
frontispiece to the midle then Statues according to auncient ex-
ample." The statues- personifications of Divinity, Law, Mathematics,
and Medicine- were realized by Caius Gabriel Cibber, who was also
responsible for the central bas-relief, which depicts Ptolemy receiv-
ing the translation of the Septuagint in the Alexandrian Library. The
theme may have been derived from the frescos in the Vatican Library,
where Sixtus V gave the scene pride of place, as it was an event of
vital importance to both religious and library history. The subject
symbolized the ambitions of the founders; not only was Trinity Li-
brary the means of preserving and sharing the written word (a par-
ticularly potent message with the Civil War still in recent memory),
but a successor to the greatest library of antiquity.
Wren gave unprecedented attention to the furnishings and the
comfort of the readers. He and his assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor,
designed the bookcases, "both along the walls & breaking out from
the walls," as well as other furniture, such as a desk with a revolving
lectern (fig. 4). The genius of Wren's shelving solution at Trinity was
that he combined the old stall-system with the new continental wall-
system he had seen in the Bodleian and the Mazarine. The effect is
that the space is articulated by recurring three-dimensional bays-
emphasized by the composite pilasters above, and, in antique tradi-
tion, by the plaster busts of great authors, thirteen moderns and thir-
teen ancients, that mark the intervals from the top of each bookcase.
On entering Trinity Library, though, one is most struck by the
amount of light streaming through the vast windows that "rise high"
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above the bookshelves. This was achieved by another of Wren's con-
trivances-a device of which he had "seen the effect abroad in good
building" and, probably, in Parisian buildings, such as Le Vau's Col-
lège des Quatre Nations -which was to fill in the arches of the loggia,
so that the floor could be lowered to the level of the imposts. Thus,
Wren created new height in the long library salone.
In keeping with its Alexandrian heritage, the Wren Library func-
tioned as a museum or rather a baroque exhibition hall in a manner
replicated across the channel by the library, also begun in the 1670s,
assembled by Claude du Molinet in the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève.
Trinity's fame was increased in the late eighteenth century by the
Earl of Sandwich's gift of botanical, zoological, and ethnographic ma-
terials from Cook's exploratory voyages in the South Seas. A local
guidebook of the time described some of the library's main attrac-
tions: "a dried human body of one of the original inhabitants of the
Madeiras; a curious Chinese pagod, a lock of Sir Isaac Newton's hair,
... a large lizard, the greatest in the kingdom"; and a kidney stone
of terrifying proportions.
Moreover, the statues of Mathematics and Medicine on the parapet
of the east front, the Roubiliac pairs of busts at each end of the li-
brary hall- Royal Society Fellows Ray and Willoughby at the north
entrance and Bacon and Newton at the south- and exhibits of sci-
entific instruments and globes, make one think that a scientific

theme was more than coincidental. A library with a specific theme
certainly existed in Oxford, as early as the 1630s- the Laudian Library
in St John's College, also known as the "Inner" or "Mathematical"
library, used for storing mathematical and scientific instruments, rare
items, and curios. Moreover, in Trinity Library, the central figures in
Cipriani's stained glass window- installed at the south end in the
mid-eighteenth century-were Bacon (who was virtually regarded as
the patron saint of the Royal Society) and Newton. Sir Howard
Colvin's convincing thesis of the main architectural precedent for the
library corroborates the idea of a consciously scientific library. This
was the library of the Royal College of Physicians (1651-53) - designed
by Inigo Jones's pupil, John Webb, and destroyed in the Great Fire
in 1666- a two-storied building of seven bays with a library and a "re-
pository" or museum on the upper floor and an open loggia below.
Moreover, Wren and Barrow, as professors at Gresham College a few
minutes walk away, would have known the building well. When John
Aubrey described Webb's library as "a noble building of Roman archi-
tecture," he could have been describing the Wren Library.
129
Dr Barrow died prematurely in 1677 before the library was com-
pleted. If only he had lived to hear the praise of that intrepid British
tourist, Celia Fiennes. She writes, following her visit to Trinity in
1697: "the Library farre exceeds that of Oxford." With Trinity Library,
Wren had created one of his most beautiful and successful buildings,
not least in its location overlooking the River Cam and the Backs. Its
influence can be clearly seen in the facade of The Queen's College
Library (1693-96) and Nicholas Hawksmoor's Codrington Library at
Oxford (begun 1716), as well as Thomas Burgh's library for Trinity Col-
lege, Dublin (1712-32). And, almost two centuries later, when C. R.
Cockerell came to build a university library (1837-40) for Cambridge,
he modeled it (not without a certain hint of irony) on Wren and
Barrow's Trinity Library.
The Codrington Library (1716-40) of All Souls College, Oxford, was
designed by Wren's pupil and assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-
1736), funded by a bequest from Christopher Codrington, a quondam
Fellow owning large estates in the West Indies, who died unmarried,
leaving the College £10,000- £6,000 to build the library and £4,000
to buy books. This spectacular legacy meant that the Bibliotheca
Chichleio-Codringtoniana became the key building in the designs
for the new north quadrangle, taking the place of the Common Room
and "Grand Dormitory," extending the full length of the north side.
Dr George Clarke and Sir Nathaniel Lloyd were appointed in 1715
by the Warden and Fellows as the inspectors of the project, and
Clarke, as a talented amateur architect, was influential in the library's
design. After all, at the same time, Clarke was designing the library
for Christ Church, Oxford. On 17 February 1715 Hawksmoor wrote
to Clarke to explain his designs for the north quadrangle of All Souls
and the library. Although the "Explanation" demonstrates that Hawks-
moor had been inspired by library precedents, in particular the
Vatican Library, this most inventive of British architects was almost
certain to include innovations. Like Trinity Library- on which Hawks-
moor worked closely with his master Wren -the Codrington was to
be attached to other college buildings in a quadrangle and adopt the
rectangular hall form. Unlike Trinity, and breaking with tradition, the
library was not elevated, but on the ground floor- hence the need
to protect the books from damp with vaulting. Moreover, the visitor
was meant to enter in the middle, not from the traditional short end,
opposite a 'large recess breaking toward Hart Hall." The effect is an
ambiguity of orientation, similar to that experienced in Hawksmoor's
city churches, as the axis between entrance and recess crosses the
130
long transverse axis, with Cheere's statue of Codrington at the junc-
tion (fig. 5). Although one of Wren's designs for Trinity Library in-
cludes an entrance via a central vestibule, this was more a feature of
residential architecture. It may have been inspired by Hawksmoor's
Kensington Orangery, entered in the center with rotundas at either
end or the gallery at the country house, Easton Neston. Moreover,
when one enters Hawksmoor's Long Library (1722-25) at Blenheim
Palace, entered in the center of the long wall with wall-shelving, the
Codrington's 200-foot-long hall comes to mind.
Lastly, Hawksmoor's most radical idea was to have a Gothic
interior- a Gothic turret in the form of a lantern rising over the cen-
tral space, supported by three Gothic arches. This would have been in
keeping with the style of the exterior for which Gothic had been cho-
sen to balance the existing hall and chapel opposite. Sir Howard
Colvin underlines the significance of Hawksmoor's intentions,
which, if realized, would have meant the existence of a Georgian
Gothic interior, predating that of Horace Walpole's celebrated house
at Strawberry Hill. But prevailing tastes won out -Dr Clarke was
clearly opposed, noting in the margin of Hawksmoor's letter, "I hope
the College will not build this Turret"- and, as an inspector of the
project, he made sure that not only was the turret not built, but that
the interior was strictly classical. Hawksmoor, however, rose to the
challenge designing those ingenious windows- Palladian within
and Perpendicular Gothic without.
Hawksmoor was not to see the completed library, which was
finished- somewhat deviating from his designs- after his death in
1736. However, Hawksmoor's designs for the north quadrangle of All
Souls cannot be separated from a more ambitious urban scheme that
was soon to preoccupy Hawksmoor and Clarke. With All Souls's
twin Gothic towers and entrance screen, Hawksmoor emphasized
the transverse axis toward his new projected "Forum Universitatis"
to the west- part of his grandiose vision of "Academiae Oxoniensis,"
which, if executed, would have transformed the center of Oxford into
Hawksmoor's idea of Ancient Rome. The scene was set for the crea-
tion of Radcliffe Square and, as its central monument- clearly visible
in Hawksmoor's plan of 1712 -the Radcliffe Library, named in honor
of its benefactor, Dr John Radcliffe, Queen Anne's physician. The full
force of the impact on the urban fabric is made clear by comparing
the square today with David Loggan's plan of 1675, showing how the
creation of the square and library redefined the center of Oxford
through the demolition of existing buildings.
131
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Daniel Defoe in his Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain of
1724, in anticipation of this new reading room for the Bodleian
Library, wrote as follows: "the late Dr Radcliff has left a legacy of
40000 1. say some, others say not quite so much, to the building a
new repository or library for the use of the University; this work is
not yet built, but I am told 'tis likely to be such a building as will be
a greater ornament to the place than any yet standing in it."
The Radcliff e Camera, as it is now called- swan song of English
Baroque -does not disappoint: its centralized plan and unique set-
ting giving it a special place in the history of library design. Its design
and building spanned almost forty years, because of delays caused
by funding and site restrictions, together with a certain amount of
committee procrastination. It is arguably the most important aca-
demic commission of the eighteenth century- a fact emphasized by
the architects approached by the trustees: the minutes mention "Sr
Christopher Wren, Sr John Vanbourg, Sr James Thornell, Mr Archer,
Mr Hawksmore, Mr James and Mr Gibbs &c." Furthermore, it is
proof of the adage that two minds are greater than one, as it is the
fruit of the inventive and persistent endeavors of two great British
architects, Nicholas Hawksmoor, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren
and Sir John Vanburgh, and James Gibbs (1682-1754), a Scottish Cath-
olic, who, taught by leading architect Carlo Fontana in Rome, was the
first British architect to receive a professional training abroad.
Where the Radcliffe Library fails in being a library, it succeeds in
being a monument to its benefactor- it was with good reason that
in 1748 Thomas Salmon referred to the building as "RadclifFs Mau-
soleum." According to Thomas Hearne, Dr Radcliffe, "being very am-
bitious of glory," was more interested in personal fame than in books
and learning. It is likely that Hawksmoor showed Radcliffe some de-
signs before his death in 1714- probably through his patron at All
Souls, Dr George Clarke- and these catered to Radcliffe's desire for
a grandiose and highly visible memorial. In seven different projects
in the Gibbs Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, generally ac-
cepted to be Hawksmoor's early designs, we find almost every geo-
metric form represented, not only anticipating Gibbs's later designs
and building, but later libraries, such as Smirke's circular reading
room for the British Museum Library and the square form of the Pier-
pont Morgan Library. Hawksmoor seems to be drawing from the
widest range of sources from his city churches to mosques to ancient
mausolea, and, occasionally, the traditional library hall form. Height
in relation to neighboring buildings and an effect of Roman grandeur
133
were constant considerations, as highlighted by a print from the 1716
Oxford Almanack. Susan Lang further argues that Hawksmoor may
have been responsible for convincing the doctor to move the library
from the obscured west end of the old Bodleian onto the new site
of some houses "between St Mary's and the Schools in Catstreet"-
which happened to be the proposed site of Hawksmoor's forum.
In 1734/5, a wooden model was commissioned at the expense of the
trustees showing their chosen design. Hawksmoor developed the
mausoleum theme of an attached circular domed building on a square
base, scooping out the corners to create a Borrominesque sense of
movement. Circular or centrally planned libraries were still relatively
new phenomena, but had the benefit of adapting easily to irregular
sites, and expressing the encyclopedic function of a library. Hawks-
moor would have known of Wren's circular design for Trinity Library.
Since 1710, in Lower Saxony, there was also the executed example of
Hermann Korb's Wolfenbüttel -an oval within an oblong, with am-
bulatory, gallery, drum, and dome- the first detached secular library
ever built, and whose chief librarian was the great philosopher,
Leibniz. Wolfenbüttel probably inspired J. B. Fischer von Erlach's de-
signs for the central oval domed section of the magnificent imperial
library in Vienna. Leibniz certainly knew of Fischer's plans for the
Hofbibliothek, submitted in 1716 and carried out by his son after his
death. The centralized section, reminiscent of an ancestral hall with
its statues and ceiling paintings glorifying the House of Habsburg,
was inserted into an oblong hall with barrel vaulting, ostensibly
based on the library of the Escoriai. The columnar screens with Pal-
ladian motif, however, follow a famous precedent not from library
but from palace architecture -Antonio del Grande's monumental gal-
lery (1665) in the Palazzo Colonna in Rome. The idea of a scientific
library- so clearly expressed in the iconography of the two wings of
the Hofbibliothek respectively embodying the sciences of war and
peace, and in the gigantic celestial globe on the ceiling of Wolfenbüt-
tel-was probably inspired by Leibniz, who promoted the founda-
tion of scientific academies in Vienna, Berlin, and St Petersburg and
was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on a visit to England in 1673.
A hundred years later, Robert Morris wrote in his diary, "the Ratcliffe
Library seems taken from [Wolfenbüttel] so they there said it was."
A common theme, the centralized form and radial arrangement of
the interiors of both libraries, seem to confirm the connection.
Hawksmoor's illness and subsequent death in 1736 led to his replace-
ment on the Radcliffe project by the Tory Gibbs, who like Hawks-
134
moor had been a surveyor for the new churches under Queen Anne
and had already proved himself in the academic arena by designing
the Public Building in Cambridge. But if we take Hawksmoor out
of the equation, what kind of library would Gibbs have built? One of
the great criticisms of the Radcliffe Library as a working library is the
monumental waste of the central space and lack of book storage
areas. It is an argument that is used today in terms of libraries, such
as the new public library in San Francisco. Gibbs's original solution
would have been far more practical, far less monumental. Several de-
signs show a preference for a traditional rectangular library. He had
already used the hall form when designing the Royal Library in Cam-
bridge, which was reminiscent of Michelangelo's Campidoglio in the
use of the colossal order and the placement of the library, alongside
the consistory, register office, and senate house to create a three-
sided courtyard. Considering the negative reception of the earlier
Wren/Barrow project, it is not a cause for great surprise that of
Gibbs's project, only the Senate House was realized.
From an original manuscript in the Sir John Soane's Museum it is
clear that Gibbs knew the great Casanatense Library, designed by his
master Carlo Fontana between 1698 and 1700 in the Dominican Mon-
astery of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. In form, the Casanatense fol-
lowed in the hall tradition of Borromini's Alessandrina and Vallicel-
liana with tunnel-vault and gallery; and it was open to the general
public, like the future Radcliffe Library. Strikingly similar between
Fontana's building and one of Gibbs's designs is the way light is re-
stricted to small top lights above high wall-shelving. This contrasted
with Wren's solution at Trinity and Hawksmoor's at the Codrington
next door, where the height of the windows is maximized. In ex-
ternal elevation, this design is reminiscent of Trinity Library, espe-
cially in the use of the Corinthian order.
Internally, moreover, with their hall form, ample wall-shelving,
book storage areas, and small rooms for administration and special
collections, Gibbs's designs followed the lead of the Casanatense and
its Roman forebears. As for furnishings, one has only to enter the
Codrington Library to gain a strong idea of what Gibbs would have
planned for the interior of a rectangular Radcliffe Library, as his pro-
fessional advice was sought by All Souls in 1740 after Hawksmoor's
death. For the tall cases, Gibbs replaced Hawksmoor's idea of an attic
story with "a modilion cornich with its architrave and frize made ac-
cording to the Ionick Order, with a handsome pedestall over it, for
bustos, vases, or balls." Gibbs, like Wren, Fontana, and Borromini,
135
is making clear reference, through the design of the interior, to the
ancient library.
Gibbs was probably instructed by Radcliffe's trustees in 1737 to fol-
low Hawksmoor's centrally planned design and was probably given
Hawksmoor's designs, and other drawings relating to the library in
Dr Clarke's portfolio, when he took over the project. However, in-
stead of Hawksmoor's version of an ancient mausoleum, we have a
centrally planned baroque church that derived its force from Gibbs's
travels and training in Rome. Gibbs, when defending his candidacy
as one of the surveyors for the fifty new churches, states that he
"studied architectur abroad for several years under the greatest
masters at Rome, and especially that part that relates to churches."
In design- and, in particular, its polygonal ground plan- Rudolf
Wittkower cites Radcliffe's library as a descendant of Baldassare
Longhena's Venetian church of Santa Maria della Salute (an appro-
priate model for a physician's memorial), via Carlo Fontana's designs
for the church of St Ignatius for the Jesuit College at Loyola in Spain.
Though centrally planned freestanding libraries were rare, cen-
trally planned freestanding churches were not. Gibbs's primary con-
tribution was to detach the building from the Schools quadrangle
and move it into the center of Radcliffe Square. Even his rectangular
designs were intended to be freestanding with the great block oc-
cupying most of Radcliffe Square. For the most part, Hawksmoor
had intended an attached structure with a statue holding center
stage. However, Roger White draws our attention to Hawksmoor's
plan for Brasenose College (dated 12 May 1734), which shows the out-
line of the library design, still on axis with the Schools, with its
east-west axis aligned on Brasenose Lane, but freestanding. In a sec-
ular context and university town, Gibbs (perhaps inspired by Hawks-
moor) did what Borromini or Fontana could never do in Rome- he
made the library not just a central feature of the building or complex,
but a freestanding building in its own right. Indeed, the visual im-
pact of the domed rotunda with balustrade, surrounded on four
sides, reminds us of a great Roman Renaissance building, built on
the site of St Peter's crucifixion, adapting ancient Roman temple
forms -that is, Bramante's Tempietto.
There are important changes to the exterior and, in particular,
dome area of Gibbs's design between 1737 and 1740. Perhaps these
were due to the influence of the heads of colleges and undergradu-
ate nobility to whom Gibbs distributed sets of engravings, entitled
Bibliotheca Radcliviana, for approval (fig. 6). The exterior was further
136
Fig. 6. Perspective view of the outside of the Radcliffe Library, Oxford, in James
Gibbs's Bibliotheca Radcliviana; or a short description of the Radcliffe Library at
Oxford, 1747.
enlivened by coupled columns instead of coupled pilasters and en-
riched with ornament. A plain dome was replaced by a ribbed dome,
and Gibbs continued to modify its design, in particular reducing the
height of the drum and increasing the height of the dome and lan-
tern. Terry Friedman points to St Peter's- for which Gibbs claimed
the "first place among the modern buildings'- as the obvious model,
and closer at hand, was Wren's St Paul's- the balustrade is clearly
reminiscent. Hawksmoor's emphasis on height, visibility, and
Roman grandeur -which was so acceptable to Dr Radcliffe and his
trustees- is, therefore, continued by Gibbs using a new set of Renais-
sance and baroque models. These may have included a major Vene-
tian votive church, built for deliverance from the plague; the central
sanctuary of a great Spanish Jesuit college; the church on the site of
St Peter's crucifixion, and the principal church of the Catholic world,
where the saint's relics are housed at the crossing under the great
dome. Gibbs, who remained secretly loyal to his Catholic faith, had
created in the heart of Oxford- the city no less of the Protestant
martyrs- a monument to the great churches of Counter-Reformation
Europe. Moreover, the contemporary setting, with Gibbs's original
boundary of stone bollards and miniature obelisks, evoked the piaz-
zas of baroque Rome. It was the appropriate resting-place for Gibbs's
collection of books, prints, and drawings, which he stipulated in his
will should be placed in the library "of which I was architect next to
my bustoe." In academic, Protestant Oxford, a secular library as-
sumes the equivalent place of St Peter's in Catholic Rome -a fitting
analogy, if you think of a library as did Erasmus and, perhaps, Gibbs
as housing "the relics of the mind."
The combined effect of Gibbs's library in Hawksmoor's asymmet-
rical square is truly scénographie. Enter stage right from dark and
narrow Brasenose Lane and you are suddenly confronted by Gibbs's
great domed cylinder- truly baroque in its scale and the richness of
its surface decoration. Radcliffe Square, like St Peter's Square, func-
tions as a stage every June in the Encaenia procession. But at no time
was this more epitomized than in the opening celebrations for the
library in April 1749, with processions between performances of
Handel's works in St Mary's Church, the opening ceremony in the
new library, and on to the Sheldonian to the "flourish of musick."
The central illustration of the 1751 Oxford Almanack shows the
Trustees assembled in the great rotunda- with an audience around
them- handing the keys to Alma Mater, attended by the genii of
Anatomy, Botany, Chemistry, and Physick, while Dr Radcliffe's statue
138
looks down on the proceedings like a secular pontiff. The idea of a
scientific library- already found in Trinity Library- matures to full
fruition in the Radcliffe Library, whose core collection originally com-
prised the doctor's scientific tomes. If the Wren Library was described
as a Temple of the Muses, Gibbs's library was a temple to science and
medicine. As a memorial, it fulfilled Dr Radcliffe's most grandiose
dreams. The Radcliffe Camera dominates the center of Oxford:
Hawksmoor's Gothic twin towers of All Souls and even the spire of
St Mary's Church cannot compete on the skyline. In conclusion,
turn to the words of our Cambridge friend, Dr Barrow, who, in a
public oration, compared the architectural splendors of Oxford and
Cambridge to the great churches and public buildings of other coun-
tries. "Where else," he enthused, "are the Muses treated so hand-
somely or housed so magnificently?"
References
Hans Aurenhammer, /. Β. Fischer von Erlach (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).

Francis Bacon, Novum Organum; with other Parts of the Great Instauration; trans-
lated and edited by Peter Urbach and John Gibson (Chicago, 1994).
Giles Barber, Arks for Learning (Oxford, 1995).
John Willis Clark, The Care of Books: An Essay on the Development of Libraries
and their Fittings, from the earliest Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1902).
Howard M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of English Architects, 1600-1840
(first edition, Cambridge, Mass., 1954; third edition, New Haven and
London, 1995).
Howard M. Colvin and J. S. G. Simmons, All So

Buildings (Oxford, 1989).
Joseph Connors, Delle Biblioteche romane attor
Studium Urbis (Rome, 1992).
Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island
edited by P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens (Ne
Kerry Dowries, English Baroque Architecture (L
The Diary of John Evelyn, selected and edited by Jo

York, 1983).
The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, edited by Christop
Terry Friedman, James Gibbs (New Haven and Lo
Philip Gaskell and Robert Robson, The Library of T
A Short History (Cambridge, 1971).
James Gibbs, "A few Short Cursory Remarks on S
and Modern Buildings in Rome," manuscript in
(1707).
139
Stanley Gillam, The Radcliffe Camera (Oxford, 1992).
Anthony Grafton, editor, Rome Reborn: The Vatican Lib
ture (New Haven and London, 1993).
Hellmut Hager, "Carlo Fontana and the Jesuit Sanctua
of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes xxxvii (1974).
Alfred Hessel, A History of Libraries (Washington, D.
Anthony Hobson, Great Libraries (New York, 1970).
Susan Lang, "Cambridge and Oxford Reformed:
Planner," Architectural Review 103 (April 1948).
Review 105 (April 1949).

B. Little, Sir Christopher Wren (London, 1975).
E. Makowiecka, The Origin and Evolution of Architectur
brary (Warsaw, 1978).
André Masson, The Pictorial Catalogue: Mural Decorat
1981).
David McKitterick, editor, The Making of the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cam-
bridge (Cambridge, 1995).
Gabriel Naudé, Instructions Concerning Erecting of a Library, translated by John
Evelyn in 1661 (London, 1966).
James F. O'Gorman, The Architecture of the Monastic Library in Italy, 1300-1600
(New York, 1972).
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, edited by H. B. Wheatley (London, 1893-99).
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types, especially chapter 7, "Li-
braries" (Princeton, 1976).
Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books (1697).
Roger White, Nicholas Hawksmoor and the Replanning of Oxford (Norfolk, 1997).
Rudolf Wittkower, Studies in the Italian Baroque, especially chapters 7, "Santa
Maria della Salute," and 10, "A Sketchbook of Filippo Juvarra at Chats-
worth" (London, 1975).
Giles Worsley, Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age (New Haven and
London, 1994).
140

ENGLISH BAROQUE LIBRARIES Author(s) : EMILY L. DANIEL

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ENGLISH BAROQUE LIBRARIES

This is a survey of the key English baroque libraries -both built an

Yale University Library Gazette 116

of English books and libraries in the sixteenth century following the

Now from gilt beam and painted roof there falls

Even when John Evelyn was walking through Domenico Fontana's

design for St Paul's Cathedral. Curved exedrae were intended to con

entific instruments and globes, make one think that a scientific

Hans Aurenhammer, /. Β. Fischer von Erlach (Cambridge, Mass., 1973).

Howard M. Colvin and J. S. G. Simmons, All So

The Diary of John Evelyn, selected and edited by Jo

Review 105 (April 1949).

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