Part 10

Most of these buildings, while varying in size and in accordance with the character of their sites, are rectangular in plan, and enclose quadrangular courts, the different stories being marked by superposed orders and arcades. They are planned on a liberal scale, with broad proportions and with great deference to symmetry. The beauty of the plan was, in fact, one of the best features of the new style, not only in domestic, but in ecclesiastical architecture, for the arbitrary Gothic arrangements being once discarded, it became possible to combine the circle and straight line in many novel and beautiful ways, for which the older Roman buildings furnished admirable examples. The study of these plans forms one of the most important elements in an architect’s education, and their examination in these days of iron props and twelve-inch walls is fraught with much pleasure and profit.

The light and brilliant creations of the early period are abundant in Northern Italy, and were models with which the French were readily impressed. The façade of the church in the Certosa of Pavia, with its elaborate detail and delicate ornament, and such buildings as the Spinelli Rezzonico and Vendramin palaces, the church of St. Zachariah, the Logetta and Library of St Mark’s of Sansovino, in Venice, and farther South the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, the Capella Pazzi attached to the older Sta. Croce in Florence, and the monument to Julius II. in Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome are a few beautiful examples of the early treatment which has so much affinity with the works produced in France under the Valois.

The great Italian cathedral upon which nearly all subsequent churches were modelled was commenced upon the site of the old basilica of St. Peter’s in Rome in the year 1506, upon plans by Bramante, and occupied a century and a half in completion. After Bramante, Giocondo, Julian Sangallo, Raphael, Perruzzi, Antonio di Sangallo, Michael Angelo and Carlo Maderno each worked upon it in turn.

Michael Angelo, who designed the dome, wished to adopt the plan of the Greek cross, that is, with equal arms, as shown in the accompanying plan. The result would have been much more monumental and would have given the dome its due effect within a moderate distance, while now it can only be properly judged from afar, and the high façade terminating the nave is both poor in composition and detrimental to the general conception. The building is essentially Classic in all its details, but differs from the general design of any particular Classical building. The nave is formed by a Corinthian arcade similar to those of ancient Rome, though on a vastly larger scale, supporting a tunnel-vault, which is decorated with sunken panels like those of the ancient Baths. The dome is supported on a circular drum carried on four immense piers and improves on the Pantheon only in size, while it is surpassed by St. Sophia in scientific construction.

The cathedral is most richly, even gaudily, decorated within, with coloured marbles and mosaics and contains numerous tombs of great magnificence and an altar with twisted columns designed by Bernini. It is the largest church in the world, and yet its proportions are so harmoniously, or inharmoniously designed, that it does not produce a corresponding sense of its vastness upon the beholder. The single order occupying the height of two stories is a feature, the invention, or rather arrangement of which, is attributed to Michael Angelo. In subsequent buildings it was nearly always adopted in preference to the smaller orders marking each floor.

The life of this great artist forms of itself a chapter in the history of architecture. Michael Buonarotti, surnamed Angelo, the most brilliant architect of the sixteenth century, was born of noble parentage in Arezzo in the year 1575. He developed extraordinary talents at an early age, and after outstripping his first instructor, took up his residence in Florence, where he studied anatomy and the human figure until he became the most expert draughtsman of his time. In Rome, where he was summoned by Julius II., he produced several fine works in statuary, but owing to the jealousy of Bramante was forced to quit the city and return to Florence. There he aided the citizens to sustain a siege during a year, by his superior knowledge of fortification, and subsequently went to Venice, where he designed the famous Rialto bridge. At the earnest solicitation of the pope he returned to Rome and commenced the great paintings in the Sistine Chapel, to which work he had been assigned by the counsels of Bramante, who wished to prove his inferiority to his own nephew Raphael. The result of the work, completed in a marvellously short period, however, was so successful that all Rome ran to see it.

After the accession of Paul III. to the Papal see, Michael Angelo was definitely appointed architect of St. Peter’s and worked on the building during the remainder of his life, although he returned to Florence several times and there executed the splendid statues which adorn the chapel of the Medicis. In his later days he was assisted by Vignola in his work, but died before its completion at the advanced age of eighty-eight.

Giacomo Barrozio, called Vignola from his birthplace near Bologna, is known for his great works, the chief of which are the Jesuits’ church in Rome and the castle of Caprarolla at Viterbo, which he built for the Cardinal Alexander Farnese, and also, especially to architects, for the rules and measurements of Classical orders which he composed from the buildings of Rome with the aid of the manual of Vitruvius.

This work comprises the elements of design used in nearly all the buildings erected during the two following centuries, many of their elevations being simple combinations of different pages of Vignola’s book, which to this day is the best guide for Classical proportions and the architects’ A B C.

The discriminator between the various architectural styles is fond of drawing a marked distinction between Italian, French, and German Renaissance, and illustrating it by views of the typical Italian palace, with a flat tile roof and low pediments, and the typical French house, with immensely high slate roofs and pretentious dormers. Although the eye of the practised architect can distinguish between the representative work of Sansovino and Philibert Delorme, and between that of Bernini and Claude Perrault, yet such distinctions do not form separate styles, for they are but unimportant differences, caused by local influences.

The subject should be looked upon in a broader sense, for all these subdivisions tend to confuse the student and lead him to forget the sequence of the great historical style of which they form part.

The Jacobean, Queen Anne, and kindred so-called styles in England were merely eccentric streams flowing out of the one main channel, which were scarcely worthy of distinction and certainly not of revival in our times.

In France, under each reign, there was a slight difference of treatment, chiefly in the decoration of interiors, which permits of a classification most convenient to the modern upholsterer, but for our purposes it is sufficient to apply the two divisions—Early and Late Renaissance.

The Chateaux of Blois, Chambord, and Chenonceaux in the Valley of the Loire, the Palaces of Fontainebleau, St. Germain en Laye, the Tuileries and the old Louvre in Paris are splendid examples of the former, and monuments worthy of the great artists, Pierre Lescot, Philibert Delorme, Jean Goujon, and others, who laboured upon them. They are illustrative of the employment of the small orders and ornament in low relief, which characterized the corresponding period in Italy, though they are generally richer and more spirited in design than the Italian buildings, and the soft stone which is so abundant in France permitted more lavish ornament upon the exteriors.

The skeletons of each design, that is to say, the main architectural lines, stripped of elaborate detail, are much alike and can nearly all be brought back to the ancient method of superposing orders. This is no disparagement on the value of the work, for the plans of many buildings were excellent, and the variety of ornamental design was of a delicacy and imaginative beauty which has rarely been surpassed.

It is questionable, indeed, whether the change which took place in the century of Louis XIV., in the introduction of larger proportions and greater severity of ornament, was so much a gain as it was considered at the time. To this period belong some of the great churches modelled upon or rather suggested by St. Peter’s in Rome: St. Paul’s in London, rebuilt by Christopher Wren; the Val de Grace, the joint work of Lemercier, Leduc, and Mansart, and the church of the Hotel des Invalides in Paris, also by Mansart, are among the finest of the period and style. The plan of the last-named church is appended as a particularly happy example in general arrangement and symmetrical variety, doing great credit to Mansart, who also built the larger portion of the celebrated Chateau de Versailles.

The publication of Stewart and Revetts’ great work upon the antiquities of Athens called general attention in England to the beauty of Greek art, toward the close of the last century, and resulted in the erection of a number of buildings in imitation of Athenian monuments which were utterly inappropriate and unsuited to the English climate.

In France architecture went through two or three fashionable phases, from great extravagance of design under Louis XV. to extreme simplicity under Louis XVI., finally relapsing under Napoleon into the servile copying of entire Classic buildings: a great falling off from the principle of the sixteenth century work, which had always been original in conception although borrowing detail from the antique.

During the early part of this century, architecture sank to the lowest ebb all over the world, probably owing to the disturbing influences of the great Napoleonic wars. Within the last thirty years the spirited writings of a few enthusiasts and the liberal teachings of the French schools have caused a general revival, and better work is being done now than at any time during the century.

Avaricious commerce and the predominance of the desire for display rather than quiet love of the arts are factors which stand much in the way of genuine progress, but it is not improbable that the spread of refined education will eventually succeed in planting the seeds of this love in the heart of the great masses, and enable architecture to resume its natural and elevating position in their midst.

XII.

CONCLUSION.

At the present stage of modern art we have the principles, broadly speaking, of two great styles of architecture to guide us in the design of the buildings which we may have to erect. These are the Classic and the Gothic; for we may apply the term Classic not merely to the works of the Greeks and Romans, but to their offshoots the Byzantine and Romanesque styles, the one branching Eastward and the other Westward, altered in many respects, but founded on the older systems; and we have seen that the Renaissance was but a revival of the same methods and forms.

In each of these styles the best result has always been attained where the constructional element has been held to be as important as the decorative, where the essential and useful have not been subservient to considerations of ornament or display. In Classic work much has been done that is unworthy, in the senseless repetition of columns and pilasters which support nothing, in decoration which serves only to conceal ill-adjusted architectural lines; and the same is equally true of degenerate Gothic, in which whole walls have been covered with meaningless panels, and massive buttresses built up to receive no strain.

Nevertheless, by following only what is good in the principles of each, and by avoiding the errors which experience has enabled us to perceive, especially those which have engrafted themselves upon us by bigoted custom, we can not only produce fine work but assist in the advance of architecture.

Before deciding upon what style to employ in the composition of an edifice, it is well to first consider thoroughly the programme of what is wanted in its plan, and then the special character with which we desire to invest it both exteriorly and interiorly. It is scarcely necessary to add that both should be intimately connected.

We have seen that the best period of Gothic art was that wherein the whole structure was raised on a theory of weights and strains thrown from vault to pier, and pier to buttress; it is, therefore, absurd, when a building occupies a space between the party-walls of modern street lots, to attempt an interior construction having the appearance of corresponding with buttresses and similar contrivances for which there is no room on the outside.

If, therefore, we choose Gothic for our style, let us follow no false theory, but work on the principles demonstrated in its innumerable examples, in which it may be possible to find room for further development, introducing no feature of construction which has not a full and consistent meaning.

One can scarcely go the lengths to which many venture, in saying that Gothic architecture is suited only to ecclesiastical buildings, for there are many splendid military and civil structures, from the keeps and castles of England and France, to the town-halls of Belgium. But there is this much to be said in their favour, that while the laws of fortification and domestic life have altered entirely since the Middle Ages, on the one hand, those governing the observances of religion have remained unchanged and no manner of building is so essentially religious in its character or better calculated to command the reverence and awe of the devotee, on the other.

In support of this view many will agree in admitting that there is nothing of this religious sentiment expressed in the Corinthian colonnades of St. Peter’s, or, in fact, in any of the great number of Renaissance churches which are scattered throughout the cities of Europe, while it never fails to exercise its influence upon anyone entering the great Gothic cathedrals.

The great prevailing thought of Mediæval times was a religious one, and we see it reflected in the minutest details of the lives of the people of that age; it was, consequently, but natural that it should attain its highest expression when they filled their churches with the best that could be produced in architecture, sculpture, and painting. While the Classic orders seem out of place in a temple of Christian worship they are appropriate in civil buildings, and we have no better examples for beauty of proportion. They are the result of the thought and taste of generations of architects and have stood the test of time, for they are as pleasing to-day as in the days of ancient Greece and Rome.

It is their proportion rather than their component parts which we should follow, for a column, unless needed as a support, is a questionable decoration, and pilasters or engaged columns are only desirable where additional thickness of wall is required, used as the Gothic architect would have used buttresses, and never as mere ornaments, which are at once a fraudulent delusion and a retrogression in the progress of architecture.

A multiplicity of columns and entablatures does not make perfect architecture, but great leading lines, good proportion, clear detail, and appropriate ornament.

The guiding rule is to do nothing which has not intrinsic merit. It is better to have an absolutely plain wall than one covered with poor decoration; far better to have no cornice at all than a galvanized iron one, painted to look like stone.

The true definition of architecture is “ornamental construction.” It is not a utilitarian science, because if so there would be no _raison d’être_ for beauty of design, for mere shelter and commodious arrangement could as well be provided by the engineer as by the architect. The art of the architect lies in the composition of buildings at once suited to their purpose and beautiful to the eye; and as such his art is one that can progress, not through a series of changing fashions which grow wearisome before they have lasted a decade, but step by step, according to the example of the great periods of the past.

This example teaches us never to copy slavishly, but to imitate old examples only so far as they may suit modern needs, in principle rather than in detail, and to eschew the reproduction of defects, however picturesque, so that architecture may be a living art instead of the mummified representation of archæological researches.

In pursuing the study of so vast and splendid an art we should do so with some feeling of reverence for its dignity, not looking upon it as a mere money-making trade, for the greatest architects the world has known have been satisfied in being only worshippers at a great shrine. Reverence is a sentiment slightly regarded in an age when delicacy of feeling in such matters is often held up as a butt for the jests and derision of the vulgar, and the dignity of the art has little foothold when it has become a custom for the vendor of cheap furniture to style his shop an “Art Repository,” and the founder of cast-iron abortions to call his factory “The Art Metal Works.”

Nevertheless all of our work must reflect something of our inner thoughts, and if we do not place them upon a high plane it is not possible for their reflection to contain what is noble and true. We cannot become artists in the true sense of the word without loving and reverencing the beauty and principles which have made the art so great a one.

It is the custom among certain people to sneer at sentiment, and call for practical art; but the most practical art is essentially the product of thoughtful sentiments.

As an illustration, let us compare the Laocoön, of sculpture; the Halls of Karnak, of architecture; the Dead March, of music; the “Descent from the Cross,” of painting, with the “Dancing Faun,” the arabesques of the Renaissance, the waltzes of Chopin, and the gay feasts depicted by Paolo Veronese, and the contrast shows us that each branch of an universal art expresses the opposite feelings of gravity or tragedy, of joy or comedy, each in its separate manner.

In designing, questions arise every moment which can only be decided by an innate sentiment of what is good and appropriate. There are no fixed laws governing the height of a spire or the projection of a moulding; they are matters which depend upon correct feeling, or, in other words, upon educated taste.

If it were not so, art would become a mechanical science, and could no longer be called by that name. Emotion has no place in mechanics, but it has great influence in the arts. We know the Greeks were an emotional race, and it is said that Michael Angelo wept before a beautiful statue or painting; and the works of the people and of the individual were proportionate to the depth of their feelings, and have perhaps never been excelled.

Let us, therefore, commence this study—for the omega of this book is but the alpha of architecture—despising none of its delicate subtleties, and endeavour to grasp its principles, in the hope of doing our share in its further advance, laying aside the petty gratification of our vanity in a genuine affection for our art.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.

The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Page 21: “tenemos” replaced by “temenos”. 31: “Chilambaram” replaced by “Chidambaram”. 32: “baldaquins” replaced by “baldachins”. 40: “ababaster” replaced by “alabaster”. 111: “Adb-el-Rhaman” replaced by “Abd-el-Rhaman”. 119: “continuons” replaced by “continuous”. 126: “weer” replaced by “were”.