Christopher Wren, England's best known architect and one of its greatest natural philosophers, experimented with everything: stone and wood, cones and domes, animals and men. He liked to depart from revered authorities. Under his hands plans for a church steeple or an academic hall would turn into a bold revision of Vitruvian schemes, the twitches of an anatomised dog into a startling challenge to Galenic orthodoxy, the motion of a planetary model into liberation from the 'tyranny' of ancient astronomy. The puzzle, now, is to understand this entanglement of tradition and experimentation, then to see how the mix was put to work. Late in life, Wren morosely described his ultimate profession of architecture as 'rubbish'. He guessed he'd have been wealthier had he remained a doctor. Ever since the early 18th century, when Wren's devoted son embarked on a defensive collection of documents to display his father's greatness, under the telling title of Parentalia, the success or failure of his work has been made to depend on the virtues or vices of his life.

LRB 21 February 2002 | PDF Download