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Christopher Wren

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   CAPTION: Sir Christopher James Wren

   Sir Christopher Wren in Godfrey Kneller's 1711 portrait
   Sir Christopher Wren in Godfrey Kneller's 1711 portrait
   Born 20 October 1632
   East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England
   Died 25 February 1723
   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 James Wren, ( 20 October 1632– 25 February 1723) was a
   17th century English designer, astronomer, geometrician, 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.

Biography

Early life and education

   Wren was born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, on 20 October 1632, 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’---the kind of sickly child who
   survives 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”.

   Wren’s schooling is also not anything like 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. John Wilkins was a member of a
   group of distinguished scholars. This group, whose activities led to
   the formation of Royal Society, was 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.

Middle years

   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.

   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 appears, however, that, having tested himself
   successfully in so many directions, he still, at 30, had not found the
   one in which he could find complete satisfaction. It is from around
   these times, his attention begins to turn to architecture.

   One of Wren’s first architectural endeavors was the designs 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, however, was 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. Look
   below for more information on St. Paul’s and concurrent projects.

   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.

   Wren married Faith Coghill, daughter of Sir John Coghill of
   Bletchingham, in 1669. 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. 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. Little is known of Faith's
   life or demeanor, but a charming love letter from Wren survives and it
   is clear that the young Wren was entirely devoted to her. Faith died of
   smallpox a few months after giving birth to their second child, in
   September 1675.

   In 1677, at the age of 45, and only a couple of years after Faith's
   death, Wren married again. He married Jane Fitzwilliam, who was the
   daughter of Lord Fitzwilliam of Lifford. He was probably at least
   partly prompted by wanting to provide a mother for his young children.
   It was, however, a short marriage for she died of tuberculosis in 1679
   having given birth to two children. After this second tragedy Wren
   never remarried.

   Faith gave birth to two children, Gilbert, born in 1672, and
   Christopher, born in 1675. Gilbert died in infancy in 1674. Christopher
   was trained by his father to be an architect. It was Christopher that
   supervised the topping out ceremony of St Paul’s in 1710. He never was
   a successful architect but died a country gentleman. From his second
   marriage, Wren had two children. Jane, who was born in 1677, looked
   after her father when she grew up. She, however, died at the age of 26,
   before her father. Wren’s youngest son was William, born in 1679;
   however, he never had any sort of career and was possibly mentally
   handicapped.

   After the king Charles II’s death 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.

Late life

   The great architect did not live a late life surrounded by flowers and
   applause. Instead, the criticisms and attacks on his competence and his
   taste were mounting fiercely. In 1712, the Letter Concerning Design of
   Anthony Ashley Copper, 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 broad of
   works when the surveyorship started in 1715. On 26 April 1718, on the
   pretext of failing powers, he was dismissed in favour of incompetent
   William Benson.

   Wren died on 25 February 1723 at his son’s house after ‘catching a
   cold’; the attribution of this to a winter visit to St Paul’s is
   apocryphal. He was buried in the cathedral crypt, beneath a simple
   black marble floor slab. An inscribed wall tablet nearby ends with the
   words "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice" ("Reader, if you
   seek his monument, look around you").

Scientific and architectural works

   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." This comparison seems a little
   extravagant. However, there is no doubt that Wren was as deep as he was
   versatile at once a man of science and a great artist.

Scientific achievements

   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 35ft 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 is created and Wren becomes 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 continues
   with his work with the Royal Society, however, after the 1680’s, 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,
   ballistics, water and freezing, to investigating light and refraction
   only to name a few. Thomas Birch's History of the Royal Society is one
   of the most important sources of our knowledge not only of the origins
   of the Society, but also the day to day running of the Society. It is
   in these records that the majority of Wren’s scientific works are
   recorded.

Architectural career

First steps to architecture

   It is not unusual for the well-educated to take up architecture as a
   gentlemanly activity, widely accepted in theory 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, which saw much fine buildings throughout
   the first half of seventeenth century, he became familiar with
   Vitruvius' De architectura and absorbed intuitively the fundamentals of
   the architectural design there.

   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 Geometrician 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 be 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 Ile-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. However, Wren might never have been more than the first of
   a line of Oxford Scholars with architectural interests. The Great Fire
   of London lit the splendid star in the sky of architecture, and the
   light of this star illuminated, directly or indirectly, all the
   architects in England since that time to the Second World War.

Wren and St Paul's

   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 Aug. 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
   buildigns was passed in 1667. In 1669, the King's Surveyor of Works
   died and Wren was promptly installed.
   Wren's "warrant design" for St Paul's.
   Enlarge
   Wren's "warrant design" for St Paul's.

   ‎ It was not until 1670 when 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 a economic drawback. Wren was confined to a
   'cathdral 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 on which work began only a
   few weeks ago.
   Wren's cathedral as built.
   Enlarge
   Wren's cathedral as built.

   The cathedral that Wren started to build bears only a slight
   resemblance to the Warrant Design. A mature and superbly detailed
   structure began to rise. 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 misguided 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 materpiece 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'.

Major architectural works in the 1670s and 1680s

   Monument to the Great Fire of London
   Enlarge
   Monument to the Great Fire of London

   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 of Trinity College were
   the most important ones. The former two of the three works also
   involved Hooke, but Wren was in control of the final design.

   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 fulfils 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.

Conclusion: Wren's achievement and reputation

   At his death, Wren was 91. He had far outlived the age to which his
   genius belonged. Even the men he had trained and who owed much of their
   success to Wren’s original and inspiring 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, St Paul’s Cathedral’s influence 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. Nobody with a
   dome to build could ignore Wren’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, 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.
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