How to Study Architecture

Following the trend of modern civilisation, architecture to-day, in so far as it is not continuing to imitate the past, is becoming, on the one hand, more cosmopolitan and, on t...

We have noted in the previous chapter that Hellenic art, like Hellenic culture generally, was a product of the senses guided by the intellect--the expression of intellectualised...

=Transition.=--The direct effect of the Italian Renaissance did not reach English architecture until the seventeenth century, when Inigo Jones introduced the Palladian style. Th...

The Romans enlarged the scope of architecture in the direction of the art of the engineer. While Hellenic architecture had been an expression of the faculties of reasoning and o...

Romanesque is the term applied to the architectural style of the early Middle Ages which prevailed from 1000 to 1200. It manifests considerable variety, according to locality, b...

Notwithstanding the close commercial relations that cities such as Augsburg and Nüremburg maintained with Northern Italy, especially with Venice, the Renaissance influences did...

In the latter half of the eighteenth century commenced a Classical Revival, which in the various countries that it affected lasted far on into the nineteenth. In some directions...

When the “Peace of the Church” had been proclaimed by Constantine and Christians were able to worship openly, the age of church-building commenced, the Emperor himself setting a...

The remains of monumental architecture in Egypt afford a remarkable opportunity of studying the development from primitive types of structure. The earliest, which comprise the _...

Renaissance architecture was developed from the study of classical antiquities and, to some extent, of classic literature. It was adapted to conditions of society which became i...

In the early years of the fourteenth century a new spirit became manifest in art. It showed itself, for example, in the sculpture that embellishes Amiens and Chartres, in the br...

The method that we have followed so far in this book has been to study architecture in relation to problems of construction and to the materials employed, and to think of a buil...

Such empire as Hellas achieved was succeeded by the Roman Empire. The earlier, as we have seen, was an empire loosely founded on kinship of race, ideals, and character, and on c...

By the middle of the fifteenth century commercial relations with Italy and the number of Italian ecclesiastics holding benefices in France, had caused a steady influx of Italian...

While the two later phases are distinguished, as in France, by the character of the decorative details, they also involved in England a certain development of constructive princ...

The most ancient civilisation known to us is that of Egypt, and the knowledge of it is mainly derived from its architectural remains and the sculpture, painting, and inscription...

The use of the term Hellenic can be traced back to the seventh century B.C. It was the name under which the various streams of migration--Achæan, Æolian, Dorian, and Ionian--mer...

The Koran prescribed that every believer when praying should face toward Mecca. This could be done as readily in the open desert as in a building, so the early mosques were prob...

The term Gothic, with the suggestion of “barbarian,” was applied by men of the Renaissance to Mediæval Art. Unlike the term Romanesque, it is not a name that defines. Hence an a...

Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting share the distinctive title of the Fine Arts, or, as the Italians and French more fitly call them, the Beautiful Arts; the arts, that is to...

In Germany the Romanesque style had been developed on lines so monumental that the architects were slow to abandon it for the Gothic. Accordingly, while the French and English w...

The earliest examples of domestic buildings are the lake-dwellings which have been discovered at the bottom of some of the Swiss lakes, as well as in other countries both in the...

=Brick Construction.=--In its principal features and general character of construction, the architecture of each of these three civilisations is similar, being based upon the me...

Rooted deep in the recesses of the past was the ancient civilisation that flourished in Mesopotamia. Some latest scholars are disposed to believe that it even preceded the civil...

The period of architecture to which this chapter forms an introduction is from A.D. 1000 to 1200. It is usually known as the Romanesque period because the architecture in certai...

=Combination of Style.=--In the days before their supremacy the Persians, as agriculturists and breeders of cattle and horses, preserving their simple existence, had no desire o...

In so far as the prehistoric remains of Minoan or civilisation belonged to the Polished Stone Age and Bronze Age, they are in the phase of development that is represented in the...

The introduction at this point of Muhammedan or Saracenic architecture unfortunately breaks the continuity of the evolution of Early Christian and Byzantine architecture into th...

We have already noted that the rib-vault, which made possible the development of Gothic architecture in the Ile de France, originated in Lombardy. But the Italian builders used...

The change in architectural style, known as the Gothic, which began in the twelfth century and reached its full development in the thirteenth, represents so wonderful an express...

So far our study of ancient civilisation and architecture has been fairly consecutive. We have now to break the continuity of the story and take a leap back into a remote past a...

As the power of Rome waned and the Empire became disintegrated, the force of Christianity increased and spread and the organisation of the Church became consolidated. The immedi...

The Early French Gothic dates from about 1150 to 1275. It is the period in which most of the great cathedrals were created and in most instances with money contributed by the la...

The name Iran, by which the Persians still call their country, preserves the origin of their race. They were Aryans, as distinguished from the Semitic peoples; a branch of the r...