A Golden Age of Architecture: Rare Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Drawings by Thorpe and the Smythsons

This online exhibition presents findings from two major cataloguing projects: one on the 'Book of Architecture of John Thorpe' in Sir John Soane's Museum, a project undertaken by Manolo Guerci, Reader at the School of Arts and Architecture at the University of Kent, and the second on the Smythson drawings at the Royal Institute of British Architects, currently being researched by Olivia Horsfall Turner, Chief Curator, RIBA Collections. The Book of Architecture of John Thorpe (c.1565-1655) was described by the architectural historian and Curator of the Soane Museum Sir John Summerson as 'perhaps the most important relic in existence of architectural drawings and designs in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I'. Thorpe's album is one of only two such collections to survive. The other is the Smythson collection held by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Thorpe's album is a bound volume of some 295 drawings ranging primarily from the 1590s to the 1620s. It documents 168 buildings which are mainly, but not only, English, including surveys of the greatest architectural achievements of the period in addition to Thorpe's own prospective designs. The drawings include plans, elevations and some full-size profiles of architectural mouldings, as well as a depiction of the five orders derived from Hans Blum's 1550 treatise on the architectural orders. The Smythson collection contains around 170 drawings by Robert Smythson (d.1614) and his son John Smythson (d.1634) who worked together around the turn of the sixteenth century. The majority of the drawings date from the 1580s to the 1630s, closely contemporaneous to when Thorpe produced his album. The Smythsons made a variety of types of architectural drawings including survey drawings of existing buildings by other architects and their own original designs, some of which were later executed and some of which remained unbuilt. They also drew detailed designs for interior features and used drawings to record practical technologies, such as tool-making and brewing. Both collections are of central significance for British architectural history of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and for the history of architectural representation. They also shed light on how the practice of drawing contributed to the identity and authority of the early-modern architect, a role which developed significantly during this period.