CHAPTER X

NINETEENTH CENTURY: ORIGINAL DESIGN

The work of Henry Hobson Richardson may be named as a noticeably intelligent attempt to regain the lost excellence of an ancient style without copying it closely. This appreciation has to do only with his buildings of the years from 1875 to a short time before his early death in 1886. He studied deliberately the Romanesque architecture of the middle and south of France, and as the elaborate sculpture of human subject, so common in the churches of that style, would not have been practicable in America in the nineteenth century, he developed, with the assistance of certain American sculptors, a semi-Byzantine system of foliated design which adapted itself well to his arched porticoes and his elaborate interior compositions of woodwork. Other lands than France were visited and their treasures put to use: thus, the central tower and the general grouping of the masses in his celebrated design, Trinity Church in Boston, Massachusetts (see Plate LVIII), are evidently studied from a Spanish original. This is well shown in the illustration named, which shows the church as Richardson left it. The tower on the extreme left has been replaced by the accessories of the new west porch.

Now in such a design as this we have to separate that which is frankly copied and that which is of independent design. Thus, the inlay of different colored stones, so marked in the apse, and in a simpler way in the transept, on the left of the picture, is taken directly from churches of Auvergne. The question, then, would be whether, the idea of a mosaic on a large scale being once adopted, the design furnished is a good one for the place. Such designs are almost common property: they float around the world and every designer has his mind stored with them: the question is not of originality in combining a star with some zigzags, but rather of providing a pattern of just the right size and character to fill the given spot, as well as to have an independent beauty of its own. The great central tower, studied probably from the cathedral of Salamanca in Spain, is evidently open to question as to whether it is sufficiently massive in appearance. There is to many persons an appearance as if the stone work were composed of too many and too slight colonnettes, lintels, arches, and the rest, involving the use of a great number of small stones, laid up not in a massive wall but in a slighter and more exposed fashion, not a skeleton, but suggesting the idea of something very open to the weather. The Spanish originals have somewhat the same effect but it is less marked in the old buildings and with them it is not combined with that mosaic of different colored stones which, although the practiced builder knows it to be superficial merely, yet gives to most spectators a feeling as if the wall were not solidly laid up. The building is certainly faulty in lacking the appearance of ponderosity. Seen through a haze or by dim light it is a noble composition, the forms exquisitely balanced, the central tower perfectly well marking its place and its structure. It is not until the building is seen in a brilliant light and its detailed effect begins to tell upon its general masses that any exception can be taken to its merit as a general central tower. That the lack of solidity in appearance may be the more clearly understood, it is well to compare with the church itself the porch which was built long after Richardson’s death, though avowedly according to his general design. This porch, though a small structure, has a massiveness in all its parts, which the church has been said to lack. The sculpture is also especially noteworthy as being full of that mediæval feeling which forced even the carefully modelled human figure, with elaborate drapery, into the service of the architectural design; while still the modelling has that anatomical truth which modern school-taught generations require.

The conclusion is, with regard to this church, that we are free to judge of it as an independent design once we have cleared away some few doubts of archæological accuracy: once it is established that the designer has felt at liberty to take a general form of his central tower from impressions received in Spain, while many of the details are taken almost bodily from the heart of France, the rest is to be accepted, as also the adaptation and working-in of the borrowed details, as a design well adapted to the requirements of the building, to its place in an open and uncrowded site where the building stands free on every side, and to its material, a sandstone, not very fine nor very hard. It is one of the best designs in the picturesque fashion which modern times have seen.

A similar piece of bold adaptation to an ancient style is seen in Truro Cathedral (Plate LIX) in Cornwall, begun about 1880. No person who has lived among English cathedrals could ever mistake this building for a design of the Middle Ages; and yet

its character as a Gothic structure is perfectly maintained. It is to be judged, then, as an ancient Gothic building is to be judged. One asks whether the system of vaulting with ribs, and a filling or shell of light stone work between the ribs, is supported and resisted in the best and most economical way by the system of buttressing, and whether this system of buttressing without, and the system of vaulting within, are equally expressed in the artistic design. The fact that the modern building cannot be allowed the cost of much architectural sculpture in its exterior, though unfortunate, cannot be urged as a serious defect, in view of the fact that the English mediæval churches have but little sculpture as compared with those of the Continent, their adornment being concentrated more generally upon the West front, or parts of the interior.

If now we try to call to mind some building inspired, on the whole, by classical taste and the classical spirit of design, but showing also independence and a strictly modern conception, we shall find that the search is not a rewarding one. There are few modern buildings in which the classic orders are used at all, or in which classic details have been carefully studied, without what seems to be a strict adherence to recognized types of classic or neo-classic general design. The Greek who was building oblong temples, very strictly limited to a given number of columns and a given slope of roof, might still group small shrines as they are grouped in the Erectheum; and he, the Greek designer, generally careful of his Orders, may substitute for his columns a row of draped statues with perfect success. The designers of imperial Rome, dealing with dwelling houses, all on one floor, with columned courtyards and covered porticoes surrounding gardens open to the sky, were still capable of building on the side of a cliff and in the Imperial City, too, and producing a house three stories high on one side and one story on the other--handling their semi-Greek and semi-Italian details with perfect ease and nearly perfect grace, and investing the whole with a consistent scheme of ornament. The modern designer in the classical styles will not do that very often. In the first place, he will have studied only the grandiose buildings of antiquity, the great temples and porticoes with their minutely accurate symmetry of plan: and in the second place, he will have conceived of the modern use of classic forms as being, on the whole, a simple thing, easy to the naturally gifted designer. The one thing which the modern workman in classic styles expects to get from his building is refinement of proportion, reaching on the one side towards dignity and on the other side towards grace. Now, to one who is naturally strong in such things, the obtaining of these beauties of proportion is an easy thing: it is achieved or it is not achieved in the course of a very few hours of preparation and study of the problem. It is hardly conceivable that a modern adept in the classical system of design should think much of detail except as to the accurate copying of sculpture and of the curvature of mouldings from ancient examples.

In mediæval styles, we moderns study the small town house, the humble parish church, with its squat tower and plain windows without tracery, as well as the great cathedral, typical of the style and embodying its full character. Of classical antiquity there were no such things to study, during the years when the modern feeling for classical art took shape; nor have there been until the present day many opportunities for judging of the smaller and simpler designs. And therefore we take from classical art mainly its colonnades, its stately use of the three great Orders of Greco-Roman antiquity, with a very few of their slighter modifications. Those buildings of the great days of the empire in which no columnar adornment existed, we have hardly learned to respect--we still look upon them as exceptions hardly worthy of the attention of one who would study the great arts of antiquity. Now it appears to one who will study the past closely and fearlessly, that the Romans themselves were a little overawed by their system of columnar architecture, and were slow to abandon or even modify it during the long centuries of its constant application to the diverse needs of the old Mediterranean world. Still more are we moderns overawed by the columns and entablatures, so that we dare not play with them: and yet, how can you hope to design if you are afraid to play with the members of your composition? The taste of the American communities, our great cities within the borders of the United States, is markedly for that kind of gravity which we associate with the classical styles--with the few large openings, the horizontal cornices, the low-pitched or invisible roofs, the smooth white, or light colored, surfaces of unbroken simplicity, the carefully studied classical colonnade. The taste of similar communities in England is as evidently based upon a long familiarity with the picturesque forms of the Middle Ages and of the Elizabethan and earlier Jacobean styles, that is to say, of so much of the Renaissance as reached England before the foundation, by Inigo Jones, of the Italian semi-classical style in that country. Similar to this is the feeling in Germany: for it is most surprising to Americans living, as they have done since 1880, in a time of almost complete agreement among the architects as to the unique and solitary importance of Italian neo-classic methods of design, to see the numerous German publications teem with studies of sixteenth century half timbered fronts, of seventeenth century stepped gables and turrets crowned with “extinguishers,” and of eighteenth century florid modifications of the rococo style. In France there is an orthodox style, a recognized style: and yet it is in France that the most seriously considered departures from that style have been made.

The difficulty of expressing in words this complication of architectural thought is very great. The English designers are in one sense the most original of all, for they follow less closely in the general arrangements of the mass, or of the street front, the example set by former ages. In Germany, such indifference to what the past has taught is more seldom seen, and when seen, it takes, most generally, an ugly form of unrestrained fancy, guided neither by tradition nor by strong over-ruling good taste. In France, good taste is rather the rule. As in literature, so in all departments of fine art, the fault of the French work is in the desire not to be rash in the way of innovation, and good taste is always ready to instruct its votaries to follow the path marked out by the men who have just passed by in the human procession and who had needs to supply quite like those of the present day.

It will be well to rehearse these conclusions in the immediate presence of special examples. Plate LX is an apartment house in that region of West London which is just northwest of Kensington Gardens. It is not a costly building in proportion to its size; it is not adorned by sculpture except for an unimportant piece above the large arches of the entrance front and slight adornment of the frontons; it is built of brick with stone moderately used for the purpose of color-contrast, and its architectural ordonnance is limited to the marshalling of a certain number of pilasters supporting the simulacra of entablatures and the reality of very obvious pediments--these, and a tower well enough shaped and placed at the angle. And the point that the student should make at once in looking upon such a building is that it is so decidedly removed from the world of obvious copying. Nothing is copied except a detail here and there. One has the pleasant conviction that not a square yard of space has been sacrificed nor a square foot of possible or desirable window space abandoned for the purpose of archæological verity or the repute of having built something beautiful in a recognized style. So in the case of the building shown in Plate LXI, that planned for the West Ham Institute and built about 1895 in that suburban village which lies just north of “Woolwich Reach” on the Thames. The design is as independent of

any past style as in the simpler and more commercial building. There is much sculpture, rather carefully designed and cut with great brilliancy. There is a rather free use of pseudo-classic columns and colonnettes; there is a daring combination of larger architectural details, such as gables of cut stone with rounded outline, capped with bold drip moulds, pinnacle-towers wrought into niches with statuary, a porch of entrance with a very boldly projecting hood, well handled, with caryatid figures, a staircase tower with a cut stone attic of great merit, and ventilation towers combined with the roof structure and differentiated finely from the masonry-built forms near them. It is a costly building, a refined and thought-out design; and yet one cannot say that there is anything of the past in it more than this--that it is based upon the spirit and taste of the Renaissance rather than upon that of the classic epoch, or of the mediæval epoch, early or late, or of the Post-Renaissance epoch, beginning in the North about 1650. This relative independence is what the foreigner sees most strongly in modern English architectural practice.

Now, in German lands, there is a little less freshness of artistic thought; the artist is always in the presence of the great past, in such a way that even his deviations from its spirit are self-conscious in a way; and this feeling it is which drives the daring designer--the man who would be original and who asks us to sympathize with his manly desire to build for the nineteenth century what the nineteenth century needs, not what a former century made for itself--to very strange vagaries. Plate LXII is one of the best of these dashing attempts at novelty. Every part of the wall-surface is occupied with painting in neutral colors, which painting is in some cases reinforced by reliefs in plaster. It is not a polychromatic design, but a design in light and shade wrought into emblematic, armorial, purely decorative, and even representative forms. It is noticeable that the realized painting of human figures and accessories, so marked a feature of the ground story, with its splendid King Gambrinus at the left, and the Lady Hopfen at the right, stops with the sill-course, and that the rest of the painting is much more abstract and conventional. Apart from the painting, the design is somewhat commonplace in its main masses; though that statement is unfair as it stands, because it was not intended to be seen without the painting, while the details, as of the window jambs and mullions, are very carefully wrought and very interesting. It is only above the eaves that the design becomes commonplace, and even there it is redeemed by the very bold fire wall on each side broken into gable-steps of unusual design.

In this inquiry we are taking smaller buildings as more likely to express the general thought of the community than are those exceptional monuments which form landmarks in history. We are compelled, of course, to select the designs of men who are famous, however unknown they may have been when the buildings we select were put into shape: but even the work of such renowned architects as Charles Garnier shows and explains the general trend of thought, especially when seen in their earlier tasks. Thus, the building shown in Plate LXIII, the Club-house of the Cercle de la Librairie, which was completed about 1880, shows the exceptional merit (exceptional in modern cities) of the Paris fronts, together with their comparative lack of significance, at least in detail. The entrance on the corner and the round tower forming a vestibule below and an admirable card-room above, are characteristic of Paris streets. Straight from this doorway, and, therefore, diagonally to both the fronts, goes a passageway into a staircase which forms another round tower-like structure. In the upper story, the large room at the left is a billiard room, that on the right, a salon of reception and entertainment, the “conversation room” of the club. All this is perfectly well expressed in the external design: and that credit--the credit of that sort of realism always restrained and always

guided by good taste, is to be given without reserve to the French designers of the long years beginning with 1860. Good taste is visible everywhere, not in an exceptional measure in this building; on the contrary, it is to be thought by a careful student of the street fronts of Paris that there is a relative clumsiness which other and less noticeable buildings have escaped: but there is everywhere the visible presence of thought--of matured study of the problem, and that is a thing so rare in the modern architecture of other lands that we are never brought face to face with the French instances of its active presence without a new thrill of admiration.

In the United States, some of the most thoughtful buildings have been those inspired by the semi-Spanish style of the provinces torn from Mexico in 1848; the missions of California and New Mexico. Inspired by those blessings of a temperate region, a steady warmth, a brilliant sun, they are most assuredly: and yet there is originality, so much as to cause the student almost to forget the origin of their design in such work of the not very famous past. Such buildings are the hotels built in Saint Augustine about 1885--the Ponce de Leon, in which the architecture of old Spain has been studied more carefully, the Alcazar, where the simpler appliances of Western America are more in evidence.

One of the best things in modern original design is the building shown in plate LXIV. Its treatment is picturesque rather than severe; and a sufficient reason for that treatment is the recognized difficulty of applying the classically simple method of design to one of the modern high and narrow buildings of many stories and of many, similar, window-openings. The walls of the side, on the by-street and on the court, are diminished by the adoption of a roof of abnormally steep pitch with two stories in it. The two gable-walls are broken, as a result of the same device, by the beginning of the slope or step inward of the gable itself. In this way the use of a great many windows all of the same size is made practicable; the slight differences in design, as where one story has a row of round arches, and the like, are perhaps even more marked than was essential; the monotonous repetition of these openings is prevented from hurting the design by the very picturesqueness of that design, which overcomes their monotony. The treatment of the two gables themselves is a remarkable achievement, securing, as it does, a vivacity which we associate with the Renaissance of the North: while it is still restrained in such a way as not to clash with the extreme refinement of the porch of entrance, which in its general design, as in its sculptured details, has the delicate and subtile quality of the art of Italy a hundred years before.

This is, it appears, the way in which modern men might design; and this is the way in which they might succeed if they were able, more often, to give personal thought to the matter of design. It is obvious, however, that this giving of personal thought is exactly the most difficult thing which can be proposed to a twentieth century architect. He must do everything else first. He must see that the heating apparatus, the ventilating apparatus, the electrical lighting, the ventilating system, the cooking appliances, which will come in somewhere, the plumbing, which will come in everywhere, and the endless modifications of drainage--he must see that all that is faultless. The owner, or owners, really care about those things--they do not care about the design. Then he must see to it that no time is lost. From the moment when the previous tenants move out and tearing down of the old structure has begun there must not elapse too many weeks before the new tenants may move in. Ten months may be allowed; when every consideration demands two years and a half, or thirty months. And throughout the few weeks before and after the beginning of that ten-months’ space, the architect employed will have so very little opportunity to “retire into himself”--to retire at least into his study and lock the door and think out that design, taken in its artistic sense, that the hours so given are hardly to be reckoned with, at all. Uninterrupted thought is not for the busy architect. The altogether likely sequence of things will be this--that the design is sketched in a drawing-room car and turned over next day to a high-paid subordinate to work out according to the well-known office scheme.

Such traditional ways of doing have proved good in the great days of art: but the nineteenth century was not, and the twentieth century is not as yet certain to be a great day of art in the decorative or artistic sense. It becomes the writer on architecture to treat those two adjectives as synonymous, for in architecture they are synonymous; and the decorative, or in other words, the architectural treatment of a building has grown to be so foreign to our habits, and, from the nature of the case, so difficult (as urged in the last paragraph), that nothing but long-continued and enthusiastic thinking over the scheme will conduce to fine designing.

It is for these reasons that the building of the New York Life Insurance Company at St. Paul has been shown in our final plate. There seems to be evidence there of much and of well applied artistic thought. If a similar instance be sought in the older homes of art, and among more costly structures, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of London, now approaching completion in the district south of Buckingham Palace, may be chosen as such an instance. A few such buildings there are; a few works of art which show that the power of thoughtfully working out a complex design is not wholly lost to the world.

Index.

A.

Abbeville: Church of S. Wulfrau, 126

Aisle (def.), (note) 54

Ægina: Sculptures from Greek Temple, at, 179

Aix-la-Chapelle: Cathedral, 85

Albi: Cathedral, 128

Amiens: Cathedral, Exterior, 102

Amiens: Cathedral, Interior, 96

Angoulême: Cathedral, 83

Anthemion (def.), (note) 37

Apse (def.), (note) 76

Arch, discharging, 57

Arch, flat, replacing lintel, 57

Architrave (def.), (note) 20

Archivolt (def.), (note) 135

Artists of the classical revival, (ff) 131

Athens: Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, 40

Athens: Church of St. Theodore, 86, 90

Athens: Erectheum, 35, 39, 198

Athens: Parthenon, 14

Athens: Restored model of Parthenon, 26

Athens: Sculptures of Parthenon, 28

Athens: “Portico of the Maidens”, 37

Athens: Temple of Victory, 39

Athens: Theseion, 14

Audenarde: Town Hall, 127

Augustan Roman Art, 47

B.

Barbaric art not unintelligent, 84

Baroque, 167

Barrel-vault (def.), (note) 54

Basilica (def.), (note), 71, 74, 76

Bay (def.), (note) 77

Bell (def.), (note) 23

Benevento: Arch of Trajan, 48, 57

Berlin (Prussia) decorative house front, 206

Blois: Château, Wing of Louis XII, 145

Blois: Château (Wing of François I.), 145

Boston (Mass.): Trinity Church, 193 Porch of that Church, 195

Bourg-en-Bresse: Ch. of Brou, 124

Bourges: Cathedral, 31

Budroun (Halicarnassos): Tomb of Mausolus, 58

Buttress (def.), (note) 82

Byzantine (def.), (note) 69

Byzantine Architecture, 69, 87

C.

Cambridge: King’s College Chapel, 121

Centralbau (centred building), (ff) 84

Chaîne (def.), (note) 146

Chartres: Cathedral, 105

Chevet (def.), (note) 103

Choir (def.), (note) 32

Choragic (def.), (note) 40

Church Architecture predominant, (ff) 70

Classical Architecture, only the more stately buildings studied in modern times, 197-199

Classical Revival in Italy, 131 the same affecting Architecture, (ff) 133, (ff) 143

Classicismo (def.), (note) 141

Clearstory (def.), (note) 74

Cologne: Ch. Gross St. Martin, 77, 79

Cologne: Church of The Holy Apostles, 79

Cologne: Church of St. Gereon, 85

Color, external decoration in, (ff) 193

Columnar architecture in Roman interiors, 53 overawes designer, 200

Constantinople: Church of Santa Sophia, Exterior, 88

Constantinople: Church of Santa Sophia, Interior, 88

Constantinople: The Hebdomon palace, 70

Constructional origin of design less marked after 1400 A.D., 118

Corinthian (def.), (note) 39

Coupled columns, 141, 172

Cupola (def.), (note) 51

Curvature in Greek horizontal lines, 21

D.

Decadence in Art; its true nature, (ff) 159

Decorative Art (def.), (note) 13

Design as suggested by structure and purpose, 31, 34, 187-188

Detail, inferior, injuring a good mass, 164, 169, 171

Doncaster (Yorkshire), Church of, 189

Doric (def.), (note) 14

Doric Order (def.), (note) 19

E.

Écouen: Château, 149

Egg & Dart (def.), (note) 37

Eleusis: The Telesterion, 33

English building in the 16th century, 150

Entablature (def.), (note) 18

Entasis, 22

Epidaurus: Temple of Asclepios (restored façade), 26

Epidaurus: The Tholos, 39

European Art founded upon Roman, 55

F.

Fan vaulting, 116, 120

Fashion governs architecture except in the great original styles, 165, (ff) 168

Florence: Baptistery, 85

Florence: Campanile, 111

Florence: Cathedral, 96

Florence: Church of San Miniato al Monte, 74

Florence: Chapel of the Pazzi (Ch. of Santa Croce), 134

Florence: Loggia dei Lanzi, 132

Florence: Palazzo dei Medici, 137

Florence: Palazzo Pitti, 137

Florence: Palazzo Rucellai, 137

Florence: Palazzo Strozzi, 137

Florid Gothic a new style, 115 its nature and epoch, (ff) 116 its origin not constructional, 117 in civic buildings, 127-145

Flying Buttress (def.), (note) 82

Frieze (def.), (note) 20

G.

Gelnhausen: Palace of Barbarossa, 70

Genoa: Ducal Palace, 172

Gerasa (Jerash), Syria, 60

Gloucester: Cloisters of Cathedral, 120

Gothic Architecture, 70

Gothic Architecture analysis and dates as in Amiens Cathedral, (ff) 98

Gothic Architecture constructional in origin, 93, 99, 101, 103, 117, 118, 124

Gothic Architecture Details as in Reims Cathedral, (ff) 101

Gothic Architecture: English contrasted with French, 108

Gothic Architecture: Exterior design as exemplified in Chartres, 105

Gothic Architecture: Geographical limitations of, 95-96

Gothic Architecture not strong in Italy, 96

Gothic large churches generally incomplete, 107

Gothic Vaulting, 93, 94

Greek buildings: Their simple plan, 32, 56

Greek buildings: Their simple structure, 33, 56

Greek buildings: Modern opinion of, when first discovered and later, 44-45

Groin-vaulting (def.), (note) 51

H.

Hall, the, of a Country House, or College, 152

Hellenic civilization preserved by the Roman Empire, 67-68

Hexastyle (def.), (note) 18

Hypæthral (def.), (note) 42

I.

Imitative 19th century work--accurate, (ff) 182 --inaccurate, (ff) 182

In antis (def.), (note) 62

Independent judgment of art, how formed, 11-12

Inlay of Marble, 76

Intercolumniation, why varied, 17-18, 21

Interior, architecture of the, originates with the Romans, 52

Intrados (def.), (note) 135

Ionic (def.), (note) 35

L.

London: Middle-Temple Hall, 152

London: Recent Apartment House, 203

London: Westminster Abbey, Chapel of Henry VII, 121

London: Westminster Hall (roof), 152

Louvain: Town Hall, 116

Lucca: Church of San Frediano, 77

M.

Masonry, Roman, 50

Masonry with dry joints, ch. I, II, 56

Masonry with mortar, 50

Mayence (Mainz): Cathedral, 82

Metope (def.), (note) 17

Milan: Church of Sant’ Ambrogio, 77

Modern Design: English the freest, 202 French the most tasteful, 203, 208 German marked by innovations, 206 How marked by thought in U. S., 209, 210 How marked by thought in England, 214 why made difficult, 212

Modern Taste in the U. S.--in England, 201 in Germany, in France, 202

Mohammedan Architecture, 70

Monreale: Cathedral, 77, 96

Mosaic, 76

Munich: Allerheiligenhofkirche, 180

Munich: Auer-Kirche (Mariahilf-Kirche), 181

Munich: Basilica of St. Boniface, 181

Munich: Church of All Saints (see Ch. of Allerheiligenhofkirche).

Munich: Church of St. Boniface (Basilica), 181

Munich: Church of St. Louis, (see Ludwigskirche).

Munich: Church of The Theatiner Monks, 162

Munich: Exhibition Building, 185

Munich: Glyptothek, 180-185

Munich: Königsbau, southern front, 180

Munich: Ludwigskirche, 179

Munich: Pinakothek, the old, 180

Munich: Post Office, north front, 180

Munich: Propylæa, 186

Munich: Royal Library, 180

Munich: Royal Palace (see Königsbau).

Munich: Ruhmeshalle, 181

N.

Naos (def.), (note) 18

Nave (def.), (note) 53

Neo-classic (def.), (note) 32

Neo-classic architecture begins to decline in less than a century, 159

O.

Octastyle (def.), (note) 18

Olympia: Temple of Zeus, 26, 29

Orders of columnar architecture, the Roman use of them, 56

Orvieto: Cathedral, 94

P.

Pæstum: Temple, 14, 24, 29

Painting of Greek buildings, 24

Palazzo, the, in Florence, 137

Palazzo, the, in Rome, 138

Palermo: Cathedral, 77

Pandrosion (def.), (note) 38

Parenzo (in Istria): Basilica (8th century), 77

Paris: Buildings on Place de la Concorde, 174

Paris: Cathedral, 31

Paris: Cercle de la Librairie, 208

Paris; École Militaire, 173

Paris: Louvre (east front), 141

Parma: Baptistery, 85

Parthenon (Athens), 14, 26, 28

Pavia: Church of San Michaele, 77

Pediment (def.), (note) 28

Peterborough: Vault of Choir-aisle of Cathedral, 120

Pilaster in ancient and modern works, 135, 137

Pisa: Baptistery, 85

Poitiers: Tower of St. Radegonde, 83

Poitiers: Church of Notre Dame la Grande, 83

Portico of the Maidens (Caryatides), 36-37

Priene (in Asia Minor): Temple of Athena Polias, 43

Proportion varied in Greek art, 19-20, 29-30 Cathedral, (ff) 102, 105

Pteroma (def.), (note) 17, 27

Purpose of the artist, the important thing, 16

R.

Ravenna: Baptistery, 84

Ravenna: Basilica of St. Apollinare Nuovo, 77

Ravenna: Basilica of St. Apollinare in Classe, 77

Refinements of Design (see Curvature, Intercolumniation, Slope).

Reims: Cathedral, 31, 101

Renaissance in Italy; (see Classical Revival, Risorgimento).

Renaissance in the North, cause and dates, 144

Renaissance in art at first not classic, (ff) 145

Renaissance introduced gradually, 148

Renaissance classical at Écouen, 149

Respond (def.), (note) 75

Revivals in architecture numerous, 176

Revivals, those only which succeed are notable, 177

Revivals, those of the 19th century did not succeed, 179, 184

Risorgimento (def.), (note) 46

Rocaille (def.), (note) 168

Roman Art of the Empire, 47

Roman changes in Greek design, 56

Roman Empire, intellectual influence, 66-67

Roman Empire, its divergent influence East and West, 66-68

Romanesque (def.), (note) 69

Romanesque Architecture, (ff) 69, 74, 77

Roman Order, the, 139

Rome: Altar of Peace (Arar Pacis), 66

Rome: Basilica of Maxentius, 53

Rome: Basilica of Septa Julia, 53

Rome: Church of S. Maria Maggiore, 72

Rome: Church of S. Maria della Pace Cloister, 141

Rome: Church of San Pietro in Vaticano, 154

Rome: Church (round) San Stefano, 85

Rome: Column of Trajan, 63

Rome: Courtyard of the Cancellaria, 138

Rome: Double Temple of Venus and Rome, 53

Rome: Forum of Nerva, Enclosing Wall, 60

Rome: Forum of Trajan, 47

Rome: Forum Transitorium of Nerva, 60

Rome: Liberian Basilica, (see St. Maria Maggiore).

Rome: Palatine Hill, Dwellings on, 53

Rome: Palazzo Borghese, 141

Rome: Palazzo di Venezia, interior court, 138

Rome: Temple of Antoninus Pius, 48

Rome: Temple of Augustus (Ruined), 49

Rome: Temple of Castor, 48, 49

Rome: Temple of Mars, 49

Rome: Temple of Mars the Avenger (in the Forum of Augustus), 48

Rome: Temple of Minerva, 60

Rome: Temple of Saturn, 48

Rome: Temple of Trajan, 62

Rome: Temple of Vespasian, 48

Rome: Temple of Vespasian, part of Entablature, 57

Rome: Pantheon, 47, 49, 50, 51, 133

Rome: Ulpian Basilica, 53, 62

Ruins not to be judged as works of art, 14, 15

Russia: (Caucasus) Monastery of Gelati near Kutais, 90

S.

Saint Augustine (Florida) Hotel Alcazar, 210

Saint Augustine (Florida) Hotel Ponce de Leon, 210

St. Paul (Minnesota), Building of New York Life Insurance Co., 214

Salamanca: University portal, 116

Salisbury: Cathedral, 108

Saracen: (see Mohammedan).

Screen, the, of a hall, 152-3

Sculpture, architectural, in Doric buildings, 36

Sculpture, architectural, in Ionic buildings, 36

Sculpture, architectural, in Roman buildings, 57

Sculpture, architectural, feeble in 18th century, (see Romanesque Gothic), 172

Sculpture, architectural, foliated, 19th century, 192

Sculpture, architectural, of the figure, 19th century, 195

Siena: Cathedral, 96

Slope of Grecian columns, 22

Standard of Excellence hard to fix, 30-31

Stylobate (def.), (note) 21

Sunion: Temple of Athena, 29

T.

Tetrapylon (four fronted gateway), 59

Thermæ (def.), (note) 112

Tholos (def.), (note) 39

Tournai: Cathedral, 78

Tournai: Tower-group, 82

Trabeated (def.) (note), 64

Triforium (def.) (note), 97

Troyes: Church of Saint Urbain, 160

Truro, (Cornwall, England) Cathedral, 196

Turin: Palazzo Carignano, 169

Turin: Palazzo Madama, 171

V.

Valencia: Casa Lonja, 116

Valhalla, The, (near Ratisbon, Bavaria), 181

Valladolid: Portal of Church of St. Paul, 116

Vaulting, 50-51

Vaulting, Roman, 50

Venice: Church of San Marco, 92

Verona: Church of San Zeno, 77

W.

West Ham (Essex), England, West Ham Institute, 204

Windsor Castle, St. George’s Chapel, 121

Wollaton Hall, England, 151

Workmanship of Greek buildings, 24

* * * * *

Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures

BY HENRY R. POORE, A.N.A.

_A Companion Volume to “How to Judge Architecture.”_

Quarto, Handsomely Illustrated with 80 Reproductions. Net $1.50.

Postage 14 Cents.

The book develops the processes of pictorial construction, setting forth the principles which, as a necessary foundation, underlie the work of the artist.

R. SWAIN GIFFORD, N.A., Director of the Cooper Union Art School, New York

“ ‘Fills the bill’ admirably and must be of great use not only to beginners, but to professional artists. I shall use it and refer to it.”

IRVING R. WILES, N.A.

“Not only charmingly written, but remarkably able and instructive. I have read nothing on the subject that compares with it in clear explanations of qualities in painting that are always most mysterious to the layman and frequently so to the professional artist.”

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

_Publishers_

33-37 E. 17TH STREET, UNION SQ. NORTH, N. Y.

Mr. Sturgis is acknowledged the leading critic of art and architecture in the country. In this book he has sketched the history of modern opinion of architecture. Aided by plentiful illustrations from the early Grecian temples, and passing through the great Cathedrals to the modern business blocks, he has shown the influences which have brought about the various styles and deduced simple rules for the architectural judgment of these buildings. No attempt is made to set up absolute standards, but the reader is enabled to form bases for his own opinion, and to learn the fundamentals of good and bad in buildings. A reading of the book will give even the common buildings which are passed every day a new interest and a new meaning. This book is a companion to “Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures,]” by H. R. Poore.

* * * * *

ERRATA.

(Corrected in etext)

Page 14, for “Campagna,” read Campania.

Plate II, for “Southeast,” read Northeast.

Page 36, line 6, for “plan given here shows,” read views given here show.

Page 70, last line, for “make,” read makes.

Page 89, middle, for “North, west,” read Northwest.

Page 95, middle, for “Mercy,” read Mersey.

Page 102, middle, delete comma after “them”; insert comma after “nave.”

Page 120, the plate opposite this page should be lettered XXXIII.

Page 145, middle, for “was called,” read is called.

Page 172, middle, for “LV,” read LIV.

Plate LV, upper figure, for “Madama,” read Carignano.

Plate LVI, for “Gebaude,” read Gebäude.

Page 173, 5th line from bottom, delete comma.

Page 193, middle, for “left of the church,” read left of the picture.

Page 206, middle, for “--what,” read not what.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Decorative Art: Fine art which is applied to the beautifying of that which has primarily a useful purpose. Architecture is the most complex of the decorative arts, and for this reason, and because it is also carried out on a large scale with great possibilities of noble effects, the most important of the decorative arts.

[2] Doric: Belonging to the Dorians, a Greek people. The term, Doric style, was first applied to the very few Roman buildings and parts of buildings of which the basement story of the Theatre of Marcellus and that of the Colosseum at Rome, are good instances. When the Grecian buildings of Athens, Girgenti and Pæstum were studied, the term was extended to them; and these give us what we call Grecian-Doric.

[3] Metope: The word means originally the space between two triglyphs (see definition of entablature); but is generally applied in English writing to the slab or block of stone which fills this space in the Doric temples known to us. It is evident that the outer surface of this block was sometimes painted, and it is known that it was sometimes carved in low relief, as at Selinuntum, of which temple sculptured slabs are preserved in the museum at Palermo; while those of the Theseion and the Parthenon were in very high relief.

[4] Pteroma: The side or flank, hence, in modern usage, the space covered by the roof of a portico, and therefore including the columns and intercolumniations, although in general usage it applies only to the passage between the columns and the wall behind.

[5] Naos: Called also cella: the enclosed part of a Greek temple, that which has solid walls and may be divided into two or three rooms: also sometimes the larger of these subdivisions as distinguished from the Opisthodomos, or Treasury.

[6] Octastyle: Having eight columns, when said of a portico; having eight columns in front, when said of a temple or similar building.

[7] Hexastyle: Having six columns; as in the case of octastyle for eight.

[8] Entablature: In a piece of classic architecture, the three horizontal members above the columns when these three are taken together as forming one part of the order. The entablature consists of architrave or epistyle, immediately above the columns, the frieze, and the cornice, each of which may have several decorative subdivisions. Thus in the Ionic Order the epistyle may be divided horizontally into three surfaces projecting slightly more and more from the bottom upward. The frieze in the Doric style (Roman or Greek) is divided by triglyphs into metopes; and in the other orders has often sculptured ornament. The varieties of form in the cornice are very considerable. A triglyph is one of those blocks cut with vertical channels, which seem to rest upon the epistyle and to support the cornice. The metopes are the spaces between; and also the non-structural slabs or blocks which fill those spaces. In a very few instances the entablature is irregular in some respect; thus the portico of Caryatides, Pl. VI, may be said to have no frieze, but epistyle and cornice only. In Roman work the whole entablature is occasionally arched up, bent to a curve, as in a temple at Baalbec, and as in a palace at Spalato.

[9] Doric Order: In Greek and Roman architecture, and in those neo-classic styles founded upon antiquity, the Order is the unit of design and consists of one complete column (shaft and capital, with base, if any, and pedestal, if any) and so much of the entablature as may be sufficient to show its whole character. The Grecian Doric Order alluded to in the text, is peculiar in the shape and number of the channels of the shaft, in the echinos-shaped bell of the capital, in the square and unadorned abacus, in having no base, in having the frieze broken up into short lengths by the triglyphs, and in the minor details depending upon the above.

[10] Architrave:

[11] Frieze: for these terms see footnote Entablature above.

[12] Stylobate: The flat, continuous surface upon which the columns stand, as in a colonnade. When the whole flat surface forming the floor of the passageway (see Pteroma) is considered, the word stereobate is employed.

[13] Bell: That part of the capital of a column which is between the necking below and the abacus above. The term is applied also to the imagined general form of the same member apart from the ornamentation; thus the bell of a Corinthian capital is to be traced beneath the acanthus leaves.

[14] Pediment: The triangular wall at the end of the low pitched roof, in a Greek or Roman building. The sunken panel alone, above the horizontal cornice and beneath the raking cornice, is called the Tympanum, or, in Greek temples, often the Aetos (ἀετός) or Eagle.

[15] Neo-classic: Studied from Greco-Roman monuments; said of a work of art or of a style. The neo-classic architecture of Europe begins about 1420 in Italy. (See Risorgimento and Renaissance.)

[16] Choir: Properly, the space in a church reserved for the clergy and their assistants, especially the singers: hence, by extension I--The enclosure itself which is sometimes very massive and elaborate, a high stone wall sculptured or otherwise richly adorned, and

II--That part of a cruciform church which contains this enclosure, namely, the fourth arm of the cross, that one which extends generally towards the east from the meeting of the nave and transept.

[17] Ionic: Belonging to the Ionian Greeks; Ionic style, that characterized by capitals adorned with volutes, shafts much more slender than in the Doric style and decorated by flutes instead of channels; these flutes having a nearly semicircular section and being separated by narrow fillets or flat bands instead of meeting at the sharp arris.

[18] Anthemion: Any floral ornament arranged like a bouquet; an abstract decoration of sprigs or branches rising from a common point and separating into a broader head. The Greek anthemion, often called palmette, or honeysuckle ornament, seems to be composed of slender leaves; whereas the anthemion in Persian and other Asiatic art is often a group of flowers, perhaps alternating with leaves.

[19] Egg-and-Dart: An ornament consisting of an alternation of flattened balls or bosses with sharp pointed members like arrow heads. The minor details vary much; but it is usual for the flattened eggs to be surrounded by a deep cutting or a raised rim, and for the arrow points to be alternated with these.

[20] Pandrosion: The shrine temple or enclosure of the nymph Pandrosos, a daughter of Cecrops. It is known that this was situated close to the temple of Erectheus, and therefore the portico of Caryatides on the south flank of the Erectheion has been called by that name.

[21] Corinthian: Derived from Corinth; Corinthian Order, the latest to be introduced of the three Grecian Orders and the one taken over most readily by the Romans. The details are very like those of the Ionic Order except the capital which is the first instance in antiquity of a generally concave bell invested thickly with leafage.

[22] Tholos: A circular building; used in archæological writing to describe one whose purpose is not certainly known, as the Tholos of Atreus at Mykenai, generally thought to be a tomb; that near Epidauros thought by some to be the spring-house, or the sacred well of Asklepios.

[23] Choragic: Having to do with the Choragos, the manager of the sacred chorus in Athens. This was an honorary post involving much expense and labor to the occupant.

[24] Hypæthral: Open to the sky; Hypæthral opening, a space uncovered, part of a Greek temple, perhaps entirely unroofed, perhaps only having a roof partly opened in sky-lights. Hypæthral Theory: any one of several opinions as to the possible lighting of the interior of a temple from above, either through the roof, or by the partial omission of a roof so as to form a central open court.

[25] Risorgimento: In Italian, a new arising; this is the common term for the revival of classical learning in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, coupled with the advance in expressional painting and sculpture of the same epoch, and developing later in the revival of classical design in architecture. The term Rinascimento (rebirth) is used in the same sense, but is apparently rather a reflection of the prevailing French word Renaissance. It would be well if English writers would employ the term Risorgimento for the Italian movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and Renaissance for the French movement of the sixteenth century with its equivalents in northern Europe. As for Spain, in which the classical revival followed very closely upon that of Italy, the term Renacimiento seems to correspond very closely to the Italian Risorgimento and the French Renaissance.

[26] Cupola: A cup-shaped roof, either built of solid masonry and so really a vault, or a mere decorative shell.

[27] Groin-vaulting: Vaulting in which one barrel vault meets and intersects another, so that the projecting solid angles, called groins, are formed by the meeting of the hollow rounded surfaces.

[28] Nave: In a building with three or more parallel subdivisions, forming together one great hall, like a large Gothic church, that part which rises highest, and has generally windows above the roofs of the lower aisles.

[29] Aisle: See the definition of nave.

[30] Barrel-vault: A vault whose cross-section is everywhere the same as if part of a tube.

[31] In antis: Latin, between the antæ. The anta is the end of a wall treated so as to be an almost independent member, like a square pillar in which the wall ends. The portico made by two of these set opposite one another and with columns between, is said to have two columns or four columns in antis.

[32] Trabeated: Built with beams or lintels (said of a building, or part of a building) or characterized by the use of beams and lintels to the exclusion of arches (said of a building or a style). Thus the Pantheon at Rome though entirely vaulted in its main structure has a trabeated portico, and the screens in front of the great niches within (see Pl. IX) are of trabeated construction as far as they go--that is they consist of an entablature supported on columns. The term “arcuated” is used in direct contradistinction from trabeated and denotes that which is constructed on the principle of the arch or that which is characterized by the use.

[33] Romanesque: Literally, semi-Roman, or would-be Roman; applied to any or all styles of art, especially architecture, which were developed directly from the Roman imperial art of the years before 450. In ordinary usage, the basilica style of Italy and even the similar art in the northwest of Europe are called Latin, and the style built up in eastern Europe with Constantinople for its centre, is called Byzantine; but Romanesque may be considered a term covering all these, and as including, too, all European art until the complete establishment of the Gothic art in the northwest, and in the East until the establishment of Saracenic or Mohammedan art about the ninth century, A. D.

[34] Byzantine: The art of the Eastern Empire centred in Byzantium or Constantinople. Modern developments of this art, without radical changes, exist in Moldavia and the Caucasian regions, and its influence is seen in the native architecture of Russia.

[35] Basilica: Originally, under the Roman imperial system, a building for varied business, public and private, having often a courtroom connected with the open hall: hence, under the earlier Christian control, a church built like most of the earlier basilicas, that is to say, with a nave and two or more aisles. A special feature of the Christian basilicas was the transept, a high and open hall built across the upper end of the nave and aisles: and beyond this (that is, farther from the entrance doorways) was often the apse, a generally semicircular projection.

[36] Clearstory: That part of the nave which rises above the aisle roofs, and has windows to light the interior.

[37] Respond: The pilaster, or engaged column, or pier of any shape, which forms the end of an arcade or colonnade marking the place of meeting with the enclosing wall.

[38] Apse: A projecting member of a building, usually forming an enlargement or addition to a large hall, as a Roman basilica, or especially, a Church. The plan is usually a semicircle, or a semicircle with an added parallelogram to lengthen it, or a polygon approaching a half circle.

[39] Bay: One division of a long building whose successive parts are alike, or very similar.

[40] Buttress: A mass of material, usually masonry, intended to resist, by its dead weight, the thrust of an arch, or vault, or, more rarely, the spread of a framed roof or the like.

Flying buttress: A sloping bar of stone, supported on an arched structure which serves to carry the thrust of an arch or vault across a space to the buttress beyond.

[41] Triforium: Properly, a gallery more or less open, built in the wall opposite the aisle roof, and therefore above the great arches of the nave and choir and below the clearstory windows. Often, a gallery in the wall below the clearstory but less accurately placed.

[42] Chevet: In mediæval and especially Gothic architecture the rounded end of the choir including the aisles which pass around the sanctuary and the chapels outside of the aisles. The shape may be curvilinear or polygonal. The original term in French is applied to square east ends also; but this is hardly accepted in the English usage.

[43] Thermæ: In Latin an establishment for warm baths: a plural noun used for a single building or group of buildings. The Thermæ of Caracalla mentioned in this chapter, occupied all the space within a bounding wall which formed a square of 1,100 feet (about twenty-eight acres) and within this were gardens, running grounds and the like, and among these the massive central building itself, 400 × 750 feet, twice the space occupied by the capitol at Washington, which is also immeasurably less massive and permanent in structure.

[44] Risorgimento: See note, p. 46.

[45] Archivolt: the outer vertical face of an arch; and, where there are several concentric arches, the general outer face of the whole group; that face which seems to form part of the wall in which the arch is built.

[46] Intrados: The under or concave face of the solid structure of an arch.

[47] Classicismo: The epoch of close study of antiquity, 1520 to 1570.

[48] Chaîne: In French, a system usually vertical of larger and more perfectly dressed stones in a wall of lighter or rougher material. Thus the quoins at the corner of a building and the alternately long and short stones at a window opening or door opening are chaînes, but the same device may be used to stiffen a long and unbroken wall.

[49] Rocaille Decoration: That which had originally a rough imitation of natural rock forms mingled with shells; a fashion passing rapidly into scroll-work in relief, giving very peculiar shapes to panels, doors, window-casements and even to details of masonry. The rococo style is partly based upon rocaille decoration.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

the cloister of S. Maria delle Pace=> the cloister of S. Maria della Pace {pg 141}

(see Ch. of Allerheiligenkirche=> (see Ch. of Allerheiligenhofkirche {pg 217}

End of Project Gutenberg's How to judge architecture, by Russell Sturgis