ABSTRACT
At the core of the Royal Academy building lies the only surviving mansion from a bygone Piccadilly: Burlington House, designed by Sir John Denham, built in 1664 and, in 1714, inherited by the third Lord Burlington — a young aristocrat who included architecture among his enthusiasms and was to be described as ‘the Apollo of the arts’. Boyle began to develop his estate in 1715 and — together with Colen Campell and the man who was to become his protégé, William Kent — he was to transform Burlington House into a showpiece of Italian Palladianism, based upon his experiences of Palladio’s work on two Grand Tours and his studies of Palladio’s Quattro Libri. Initially, however, signifi cant architectural work began with a French-style screened and gated entry forecourt together with a double quadrant arcade, designed by the Italian-trained James Gibbs (later ousted during political machinations) and was later complemented by a host of trend-setting artists-in-residence. Burlington House came to epitomise Good Taste. Perhaps it still does.
