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English country house near Woodstock, Oxon, designed by John Vanbrugh for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. It was begun in 1705 and completed c. 1725. The gardens, initially laid out by Vanbrugh and Henry Wise, were largely redesigned in 1764–74 by ‘Capability’ Brown. Blenheim Palace is regarded as one of the finest examples of English Baroque architecture. It was a gift to the Duke from a grateful Crown and nation to commemorate his victory in 1704 over the French and Bavarians at Blenheim (now Blindheim) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). The intention was to create a public monument symbolizing the glory of Britain and a palace fit for a hero, rather than a building on a domestic scale. This is reflected in Vanbrugh’s dramatic and monumental design, inspired by both English and French architecture, which developed the style he had begun to formulate in his earlier work at Castle Howard, N. Yorks. In both undertakings he was assisted by ...

[Reggia]

Large 18th-century palazzo situated in Italian town of Caserta, the successor of ancient and medieval Capua. The town is the capital of a province of the Campania region and is situated 28 km from Naples. Its growth dates from the 19th century. The Bourbon king Charles VII of Naples (from 1759 King Charles III of Spain) decided to make Caserta the site of a royal residence in imitation of Versailles. His choice was based on the excellent local hunting and the vulnerability of his palazzo at Naples in the event of a popular uprising or an attack from the sea. The building was designed by Luigi Vanvitelli and executed between 1752 and 1772. It was inhabitable from 1775 onwards and in the late 1770s and during the 1780s such artists as Fidele Fischetti and Domenico Mondo produced frescoes for various rooms (e.g. Mondo’s Classical Heroes, 1781, for the overdoors of the Sala delle Dame, and ...

English country house in N. Yorks built (1701–24) by John Vanbrugh for Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle; the gardens were laid out by George London during the same period. One of the largest, grandest and, architecturally, most important country houses in England, Castle Howard was first planned in October 1698, when the 3rd Earl took out a lease for life on the ruinous Henderskelfe Castle (burnt 1693; destr. 1724) and its manor from his grandmother, Anne Howard, Countess of Carlisle. The following spring he consulted the architect William Talman, Comptroller of Works to William III, on the design for a house to replace the old castle of Henderskelfe, but during the summer Talman was supplanted by the playwright John Vanbrugh. Castle Howard was Vanbrugh’s first important architectural commission. A model in wood was shown to the King in the summer of 1700, and work on the hill-top site began in the spring of ...

(b ?Abbeville, Somme; fl 1714–56).

French sculptor, active in the northern Netherlands. His earliest known works are two signed and very elegant Louis XIV garden vases decorated with allegories of the seasons (1714; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.); they were commissioned by David van Mollem (1670–1746), a silk merchant, who was laying out a fine garden for the country house on his estate of Zijdebalen, near Utrecht. Cressant’s name is first mentioned in Utrecht c. 1730–31 in connection with his statue of Justice for the Stadhuis; it is now in the Paleis van Justitie in Utrecht. The many commissions for garden sculpture that Cressant received from van Mollem probably account for his settling in Utrecht: other artists who made sculptures and vases for these gardens are Jan-Baptiste Xavery, Jan van der Mast (fl c. 1736) and J. Matthijsen. Cressant made for van Mollem, among other things, vases, putti and a wooden Neptune: very little of this work survives....

(bapt Dachau, Feb 4, 1687; d Munich, Feb 23, 1745).

German architect. His family had been gardeners in the service of the Electors of Bavaria for several generations, and Effner also trained as a gardener in Paris from 1706. However, with the permission of Elector Maximilian II Emanuel, then living in exile in France, he soon transferred to architecture and became a pupil of Germain Boffrand. Effner collaborated with Boffrand on the decoration (1713) of the château of St Cloud for Maximilian Emanuel II before returning to Munich with the Elector in 1715. As a court architect and, after the death of Enrico Zuccalli, as Chief Court Architect, Effner controlled architectural projects at the court in Munich. At first he altered and extended existing castles in the Munich area, including the Schloss at Dachau, where he also laid out the court garden, the hunting-lodge at Fürstenried and above all Schloss Nymphenburg (see Munich §IV 3.), which he enlarged considerably. Effner also worked on the plans for the park at Nymphenburg and created three pavilions there: the Pagodenburg (...

(b Paris, Feb 24, 1735; d Vernouillet, Sept 20, 1808).

French landscape designer and writer. He inherited a considerable fortune, which allowed him to develop his interests as a seigneur-philosophe. In 1754 he joined the army and, following the cessation of the Seven Years War in 1763, entered military service at Lunéville under the exiled King of Poland, Stanislav I Leszczyński. Between 1761 and 1766 Girardin also travelled in Italy, Germany and England, where he visited several English landscape gardens, including Stowe, Blenheim and the Leasowes.

In 1766, following the death of Stanislav, Girardin settled at Ermenonville, Oise, where during the next decade he laid out an influential Picturesque landscape garden. Shortly after its completion he published De la composition des paysages (1777), in which he codified his own accomplishments and presented his theory of landscape gardening. Although this treatise reveals his intimate understanding of the associationist aesthetics of contemporary French and English garden theory, as found for example in Thomas Whately’s ...

(b Stockholm, 1700; d Stockholm, 1753).

Swedish architect. His father, Johan Hårleman (1662–1707), was a landscape gardener who collaborated with Nicodemus Tessin the younger at Steninge Manor and on the garden at Drottningholm, near Stockholm. Carl Hårleman first trained as a draughtsman and architect at the palace works in Stockholm under Tessin and G. J. Adelcrantz (1668–1739). On Tessin’s recommendation he was sent to study in Paris and Italy (1721–6); he also visited Britain. In 1727 he was recalled to Stockholm to direct work on the Royal Palace as Tessin’s successor, and in 1741 he was appointed Superintendent. He visited France in 1731–2 and 1744–5 to recruit artists and craftsmen to work on the interiors of the Royal Palace and Drottningholm in Stockholm. Such visits also enabled him to remain in touch with French stylistic developments.

There are close connections between Hårleman’s designs for town and country houses and those of such French architects as Charles-Etienne Briseux and Jean-Baptiste Bullet. Svartsjö (...

(b 1683; d Copenhagen, Sept 21, 1755).

Danish architect, gardener and landscape designer. He trained as a gardener in the Danish royal castle parks, and as an architect, probably on study trips to Holland and England. After his return to Denmark he was appointed gardener at the park of Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen, but from 1720 he also worked as an architect and landscape architect. He planned and built the castle at Fredensborg, the summer residence of the Danish court, and he laid out the attached park (1720–35). The central corps-de-logis, with a square hall in the middle, three storeys high and roofed with a four-sided cupola, was repeatedly rebuilt and enlarged after his time. The plan derives ultimately from Palladian models. In front of the corps-de-logis is an eight-sided courtyard surrounded by original single-storey buildings. The garden was laid out as a semicircle with the main building in the middle. It was divided into six segments by seven paths, which extended as avenues into the surrounding deer park. The layout has something in common with the formal garden at ...

[Ger. Eisgrub]

Town in southern Moravia, Czech Republic, known for its manor house and garden. Situated on the border with Lower Austria, about halfway between Brno and Vienna, the estate belonged to the Liechtenstein princes from the mid-13th century to 1945. Before 1588 Hartmann II, Landgrave of Feldberg, had commissioned a house and ornamental garden for use as the family’s country seat. The house was modernized in the 17th century by Charles Eusebius, Prince of Liechtenstein, who employed, among others, the stuccoist Bernardo Bianchi, the masons Pietro Maderna, Pietro Tencalla and Francesco Caratti (1632) and the architects Giovanni Battista I Carlone (ii), Giovanni Giacomo Tencalla from Vienna and Andrea Erna from Brno (1638–41). Further modifications were made by Antonio Beduzzi in the 1730s, by Isidore Canevale in 1766–72 and by Joseph Kornhäusel, who gave the house a Neo-classical façade in 1815. The only part of the house to remain unaltered was the monumental riding school and its stables, designed in ...

(b Lacima [now Cima], Lake Lugano, Jan 22, 1669; d Vicenza, Feb 21, 1747).

Italian architect, architectural editor and expositor, landscape designer, draughtsman and cartographer. His work represents the transition from late Venetian Baroque to Neo-classicism, which his studies of Palladio did much to promote in its early stages. His style, however, was never entirely free of the Baroque elements acquired during his formative years.

Muttoni was the son of a builder, and in 1696 he went to work in Vicenza, as members of his family had done since the 16th century, enrolling that year in the stonemasons’ guild. From the beginning of the 18th century he was active as an expert consultant (‘perito’) and cartographer, as is exemplified by the plan of the fortifications of Vicenza that he drew in 1701 for the Venetian government (Vicenza, Archv Stor. Mun.). Throughout his life he continued to undertake various small professional commissions for surveys and on-site studies. His first major commission, however, was the majestic Palazzo Repeta (...

Polish village, c. 70 km south-west of Warsaw. It is the site of one of the few Polish palaces preserved with all its furnishings. The property belonged to the Nieborowski family in the 16th century, and it was redesigned (c. 1695) by Tylman van Gameren as a Baroque palace for the Primate Michał Stefan Radziejowski. It was a rectangular two-storey building with a façade framed by two towers. In 1922 a third storey, designed by Romuald Gutt, was built into the mansard roof. The palace was redecorated in 1766–8 for Prince Michał Kazimierz Ogiński. The Radziwiłł family, who owned the property from 1774 to 1945, also redecorated the interiors several times. The interiors dating to 1766–8 include the stairwell, with walls covered with faience tiles manufactured in Harlingen, and the Rococo Red Salon. Neo-classical decorations (c. 1784–5) by Simon Bogumił Zug, with grotesque wall paintings by ...

[PetergofPetrodvorets, 1944–c. 1994]

Russian town, palace and park 29 km west of St Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. It was founded by Peter I in 1709 as his summer residence and is renowned for its cascades and fountains. In 1715–24 a two-storey palace was built with a central section flanked by two projecting bays; the original architect is unknown, but further construction followed the designs of Le Blond, Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste and Niccolò Michetti. Empress Elizabeth (reg 1741–62) commissioned Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to enlarge the palace (see Rastrelli family, §2). Between 1745 and 1755 he raised the building to three storeys and added three-storey wings facing the Upper Park, with galleries ending in two domed pavilions.

Of the early 18th-century interiors, the Tsar’s study, with oak panelling in Rococo style by Nicolas Pineau, remains unchanged, as does the oak staircase. Rastrelli designed five staterooms and a series of reception-rooms, which were sumptuously decorated with gilded wood-carving, ceilings painted by ...

[Tsarskoye Selo]

Former summer residence of the emperors of Russia, 24 km south of St Petersburg; also the adjacent town. It consists of several imperial and private palaces set in parks: the Bol’shoy (‘great’; or Yekaterininsky, after Catherine I) Palace, surrounded by the Stary (‘old’; or Regulyarny, ‘regular’) Gardens and the Novy (‘new’; or Zhivopisny, ‘picturesque’) Gardens; the Aleksandrovsky Palace; and, near by, the Boblovsky Palace (destr. World War II), the Paley Palace, the Fyodorovsky Gorod (a barracks) and other buildings. A village was built close by in the mid-18th century, becoming a town in 1780. In Soviet times the town was renamed Pushkin, in honour of the poet.

Emperor Peter I presented the estate to his wife Catherine after his victories against Sweden: the first building, a stone villa, was commissioned in 1718 to be built by the German architect J. Braunstein in a northern Baroque style. J. Roosen laid out a Dutch garden at the same period. In ...

[La Granja]

Architectural ensemble near Segovia in central Spain. It comprises a palace with gardens, created for the first Spanish Bourbon monarch, and a town that developed to house the royal retinue and workers on the estate. In 1720 Philip V ordered the purchase of the site, at that time a recreational granja (grange) of the Hieronymite Order of El Parral. The construction of a real sitio (‘royal residence’) began in 1720, to a design by Teodoro Ardemans. Ardemans, trained in the classical tradition of Madrid, designed a square ground-plan with an inner courtyard and four towers at the corners, an architectural type closely linked to the alcázars of the 16th-century Spanish Habsburg monarchy, with elevations of great sobriety. As was the usual privilege in Spanish royal architecture, he built, on a pre-eminent site, a beautiful collegiate church, stressing its axial line with a Latin-cross ground-plan and a cupola supported by a cane frame, in the Madrid tradition, which occupies the central part of the west side....

German town in the province of Baden-Württemberg, c. 10 km west of Heidelberg. During the 17th and 18th centuries Schloss Schwetzingen was the summer residence of the electors of the Palatinate. The 72-ha castle gardens were created between 1753 and 1777 in the reign of the Elector Charles Theodore, and they remain among the finest in Europe. The juxtaposition of the strictly geometrical Baroque-style French garden and the surrounding English landscape garden gives the castle grounds their special charm. The French garden, which was re-created from 1978 on the basis of the original 18th-century plans, was laid out by the court gardener Johan Ludwig Petri and the architect Nicolas de Pigage, while the landscape gardens were designed by Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell. Pigage erected a series of splendid buildings in the park, among them a bath pavilion (1773), a mosque (1778), a monopteral Temple of Apollo (...