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A Complete Body of Architecture

Print
1756 (published)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Plate 110:111, Stone Bridge, the Earl of Kildare's.


Object details

Category
Object type
TitleA Complete Body of Architecture (suite title)
Materials and techniques
Brief description
Isaac Ware (after), 1 of 3 plates from 'A Complete Body of Architecture', London, 1756.
Physical description
Plate 110:111, Stone Bridge, the Earl of Kildare's.
Object history
From The Royal Academy of Art, record 06/4121:

'The publication-date of 1756 is carried by the title page; but the work was published serially between 29 November 1755 and 3 September 1757. It formed part of a new series of publications being brought out by Osborne and Shipton (who had earlier published Ware's translation of Sirigatti's Pratica di prospettiva). Their Complete Body of Husbandry was already in publication and would be followed by their A Complete Body of Gardening. Ware takes the scope of the project to embrace not only architectural design but also the practicalities of engineering - including, for example, a double plate to illustrate the drainage of a house (pl. '30.31'). As was usual in his time, he tends to combine Palladian exteriors (though, he says, neither Vitruvius nor Palladio should be taken as an infallible guide) with more decorative, rococo interiors. The text is divided into ten books: 1. on terms and materials; 2. on location, functional parts of a building, the orders; 3. house construction; 4. doors; 5. windows; 6. interior ornament; 7. exterior ornament and garden buildings; 8. bridges; 9. the construction of elevations on true principles (with some criticism of modern practice); 10. mathematics and mensuration. The plates include some of Ware's own designs - rococo interiors of Chesterfield House (demolished in 1937)(pl. 60-61, 81-83, 85, 88); Amisfield House (pl.39, 45), Clifton Hill (pl. 40), Oxford Town Hall (pl.48-9), Wrotham Park (pl. 52-53), Eythrop House (pl. 104-105, 107), and several chimneypieces. The frontispiece shows Minerva directing an architect and builders. The title-page vignette shows the Pantheon, Rome, and the headpiece of the first page of the text shows an aqueduct. A few plates are captioned as showing work of Inigo Jones; but these are not now thought to be by him.'
Bibliographic reference
(Berlin II) Berlin Staatliche Museen, Katalog der Ornamentstich-Sammlung der Staatlichen Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Berlin and Leipzig, 1936-39, 2283.
Collection
Accession number
29479B/67

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
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