Context 152 - November 2017

C O N T E X T 1 5 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7 37 emphasis in interiors and townscapes, such as the sinister Carceri d’Invenzione of Giovanni Piranesi or the dystopian streetscapes of Giorgio de Chirico. At the other end of the scale there is Pompeo Batoni’s magnificent triple portrait of Sir WatkinWilliams- Wynn and his Grand Tour travelling companions (Cardiff). This picture is a very clear statement of the sitters’ artistic refinement and taste, which must naturally include the beautiful floor of marble tiles of five different shapes and colours prominently lit in the foreground. In high-renaissance painting of the North European school, fine pavements were used in paintings to denote high status. Some artists favoured layouts of plain tiles laid in geometric patterns: David Gerard’s Annunciation (The Met, NewYork); Petrus Christus’s Annunciation (Bruges); and a particularly fine example, Dieric Bouts’ Last Supper (Leuven). Others favoured designs in which the tiles themselves were patterned, such as Jan Van Eyck’s Annunciation (Washington), in which an overall geometric design contains panels of quite elaborate pictorial scenes. Another Van Eyck, TheVirgin of Chancellor Rolin (Louvre) has not only a magnificent floor of tiles, some plain and some with elaborate geometric designs, but also a view from the centrally placed arcade of an external floorscape: a paved garden behind battlements, with planters and with two children looking at the view from the walkway. By contrast Sassetta, in his St Francis’sVision (National Gallery), depicts a plain gravel path, an appropriate touch of asceticism, but also tries to show us what the Heavenly City might look like from below: a strange square surface almost suggesting that it should be tiled. Of course Van Eyck understood the understated refinement of floorboards too. In his Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and hisWife (National Gallery) the plainness of the floor serves to emphasise the restrained richness of the setting as a whole: an early example of ‘less is more’, to be sure. The portrait is a template for what became a motif in Dutch painting. In the 17th century the device of a scene back-lit from a side window was much used by painters of interiors, particularly Pieter De Hooch and Jan Vermeer but also others including, occasionally, Rembrandt van Rijn. Vermeer’s paintings are notable for their repeated use of objects (such as chairs, carpet-draped table and yellow ermine-trimmed jacket) and the floors are no exception. These are mostly of large black-and-white tiles laid diagonally, although not always to exactly the same design. Pieter de Hooch’s interiors and exteriors depict a wide range of floor surfaces: tiles, red, black and white in various combinations, and laid square or diagonally; red and yellow brick; and floorboards, often with changes of surface material visible through open doors or down passages. Some of the patterns depicted have very bold repeats of two metres or more. De Hooch’s influence was considerable. A nice 20th century example I encountered recently is Fred Elwell’s My Neighbour’s House (Bristol). A favourite painting of mine is Gustave Caillebotte’s The Floor Planers (Musée d’Orsay) . It reminds us that high-quality floor finishes were often achieved in situ after laying.We are lucky these days to have mechanised techniques to take the heavy labour out of tasks like this and rubbing down mosaics. At the time Caillebotte’s painting caused a furore, partly because it showed real life in a non- pastoral context but mainly because it depicted male torsos in the process of sweaty hard work. This was a similar reaction to that of the nudes of William Etty 50 years earlier, clearly not of classical mythology because of their fashionable contemporary hairdos. All these examples tell us something about appropriateness. Maintaining our historic streetscapes appropriately has become extraordinarily complex and the task of the streetscape designer has not become any easier over the years. As recently as the 18th century the considerations he was faced with were limited to the acquisition of suitably hard-wearing materials, matching these to the skills of his workforce and laying the whole so that the surface drained properly. In John Bulmer’s photographic series North, UK there are numerous images showing that traditional streetscapes of this simplicity were common as recently as the 1960s. There are now many more factors that affect floorscape design. The list, in rough order of their introduction, is long: bollards; cellar hatches; coal drops; man-hole covers; lamp standards; water stop-cocks and hydrants; gas industry cut-offs; electric-cable inspection chambers; basement lighting and smoke vents; telephone equipment boxes; cable TV junctions; traffic-control markings; aids for the disabled; cycle lanes; pedestrian controls; the retention of historic surfaces and infrastructure such as tram lines; inlaid memorials and inscriptions; up-lighters; and fountain arrays, with or without computer controlled choreography. After all this, the designer may just have a little wriggle room to use some imagination. Even then, careful design may soon be undone. As the breadth of functions lurking beneath our streetscapes has increased, so has the likelihood that one or other of them will require disinterment for some reason. Floorscapes are such an important feature of place. But they are fragile and liable to damage; and we shall always need to replace them from time to time. If we can do this well, perhaps younger generations will respect us for it. James Caird, chair@ihbc.org.uk