Sir George Gilbert Scott

“ It is true that the gradual decay of the Empire caused a decline in the artistic quality of its buildings; yet we must admit its architecture to be one of the boldest and most original of developments; and we owe to Byzantium a heavy debt of gratitude for having kept alight the lamp of art during the long and dreary ages when Western Europe was trampled down by barbarian hordes, its arts destroyed, and its civilisation well-nigh forgotten. ”

“ The carrying out of the whole—its proportions, its details, its mouldings, the massive strength of its construction, united with just a sufficient degree of lightness, the great elegance of its vaulting, and the grandeur of its eastern façade—render it one of the most valuable objects of study which we possess. The tomb of its founder is a wonderful work of art—a canopied effigy surrounded by statuettes, angels, and even subjects, all in a single block of Purbeck marble. ”

“ In sculpture I hold that we ought to be able to follow what is good and noble in the form of that art which belonged to the finest period of our architecture, and yet to unite it with the most perfect art which can be produced. Greek art unites perfectly with Gothic, but both demand the spirit and soul of the true artist, aided by the use of what he sees in actual life. ”

“ Gilbert Scott R.A. Architect
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to press upon you is, that it should be equally welcomed into our revived Gothic architecture. That revival needs but such a welcoming of all that is good and noble to render it complete, and no feature possesses these qualities in a higher degree than the cupola. Let us, therefore, make it our own.
I have myself made some few attempts at this, which I venture to submit to you. [71]
The dome, however, without its appropriate decorations, is but the body without the soul. It is the sister art of painting which breathes life into the otherwise breathless form. ”

“ I will not, however, weary you with barren bills of fare and outline tours, but will content myself with saying that the same course of close all-gathering study must be followed up wherever you go, whether making a tour of village churches or of the great northern abbeys, or seating yourselves down before a majestic cathedral.
Architecture properly so called, wood-work, metal-work, decorations, stained glass, and every form of art and workmanship, must be studied as if you had to perform like work for yourselves; and you must make yourselves perfect masters of it in every way ”

“ The whole tendency, too, of the onward movement of the art was towards increased height; and, while walls and pillars might avail themselves to the full of this upward striving, it was hard that the arch—the very essence of the style—should be condemned to unalterable stuntiness. Proportion evidently claimed that the arch should have its fair share in the increasing height of the buildings, yet the inexorable semicircle said, “Nay, my proportions are fixed. You may lengthen your straight lines as you please; but by no law of science can my height exceed one-half of my width.” ”

“ If we transfer our researches from Greece to Rome—though we now view the vestiges of that mighty empire whose world-wide sway stretched its iron sceptre over our own land, and though we find among them the germ of the arcuated architecture which forms the nucleus of our own styles—they are still severed from us by so wide a gulf that, were it not for the modern revival of their style, they would appear perfectly alien to our race and climate. ”

“ It suffers also from a degree of capriciousness even among its abler and more art-loving followers, who, jealous, perhaps, or contemptuous of others, refuse to co-operate in any steady purpose, and who, morbidly keen in their perceptions of beauty, are apt to follow momentary fancies—now favouring one type, and now another, and, perhaps, reviving styles little allied to their purpose, as if the object of the age were to revive just for revival’s sake, rather than to gather in these extraneous beauties to enrich the resources and to widen the capabilities of one received style. ”

“ Nor are its later portions unworthy of your study: its brick chimneys have a beauty about them which modern architects have striven in vain to emulate; the half-timber gable fronts are models of timber construction; within there are remnants of oak panelled ceilings, of wall linings, of doors perhaps with moulded oak door-cases, of simple but well-designed chimney-piers, and all sorts of little odds and ends, all worthy of being carefully and minutely noted, whatever may be their age; for our old house architecture is often most valuably suggestive, even down to very late periods. ”

“ It is now the fashion to speak contemptuously of revivals; and truly they do seem strange and inconsistent after following the more natural history of art from the dawn of civilisation to the Renaissance. Yet I cannot but agree with Mr. Smirke that the Classic revival was, in the land, at least, of its rise, a natural, spontaneous, and unpremeditated movement of the human mind. That the Gothic Renaissance was so too, I know, for it was my own happy lot to be a humble agent in it, and I am old enough to have watched it, I may say practically, if not literally, from its commencement. ”

“ Strongly as I appreciate the intrinsic beauty of the monuments of classic antiquity, and the merits of very many works of the Revival, I should doubt whether it were possible for any unsophisticated youth, before studying their architecture as a science, to entertain towards its productions in this country any feelings bordering upon real affection. He may see in them much to admire—much to lead him to study the art which has produced them; and this study will, no doubt, often kindle those warmer feelings which ripen into love. ”

“ No bolder idea was ever introduced in constructive architecture; for now the dome, instead of being, as at the Pantheon, supported firmly by a solid wall throughout every portion of its circumference, finds its conditions absolutely reversed; for in no portion of its circumference has it now a solid support, but all floats upon vacuity, suggesting the poetical similitude to Procopius that the Dome of St. Sophia appeared as if suspended by a chain from heaven. ”

“ Their great point of difference is that the choir of one has been vaulted, and that of the other has shown its timber roof; but in glorious architecture they are equal, and almost unequalled. As you go from York to Whitby you pass a small fragment of the Abbey of Kirkham: stop and look at it: small as it is, it is one of the best designed pieces of work I ever saw. If from Whitby you cross the moors to Guisborough, you will see what was probably the work of the very end of the century—the stupendous east end of that abbey, with its east window exceeding even that at Lincoln in height. ”

“ Why, then, if all its essential characteristics are to be found in ancient examples, do we call this form of dome “modern”? I would reply that, though its elementary ideas were old, their systematic combination, and the vast scale on which they were worked out, is due to the architects of the Renaissance. It is, in my opinion, their greatest achievement, being the union of the Classic with the Byzantine and the Mediæval ideals, and the working them into a feature which no previous style had produced in so complete a manner or on so noble a scale. ”

“ It seems necessary that it should not be a country already so thoroughly provided with noble churches as to preclude the probability of a great architectural movement, nor one which had already made so determined an effort in perfecting its national style as to have become too much enamoured of its successes to be in a position to strike out boldly in a new line: indeed, it should be a people of so active a spirit, and with so strong a tendency to progress and to change, as to render it improbable that they should ever settle down in quiet contentment with their own attainments. ”

“ If Gothic architecture is that on which your loving choice has fallen, you are more happily situated. Then you are not studying an imported art, but that of your own country; you have not to travel widely from home to study its noblest productions, for they are at your very doors; you have not to go through a long course of book-study, treating of examples of art which you have no means of seeing and studying with your own eyes ”

“ Every necessity becomes a motive of decoration. The roofs, the leading off of the water, the introduction of light, the means of access and circulation to the different stages of the building—even less important matters, such as iron-work, lead-work, ties, props, the means of warming and ventilation, not only are not concealed, as is so often done in our buildings since the sixteenth century, but are, on the contrary, frankly acknowledged, and contribute, by their ingenious combination and the taste which ever presides over their execution, to the enrichment of the architecture. ”

“ When thus perfect, it must have formed an interior of surpassing beauty, lighted as it was solely through the central eye, and the light tempered by the linen veil stretched across its rich bronze cornice, which still remains round the opening, and retains vestiges of gilding. The Pantheon can scarcely be called a daring effort of construction, because its vast solidity seems to defy all doubts as to its duration. ”

“ I believe that most of those we see in modern works are pure inventions for the sake of novelty and apparent cleverness. The little stumpy columns with gigantic capitals, and all the thousand-and-one pieces of quirkiness which one sees, are things which, I confess, I have rarely if ever found in old work in any country or of any period. We have really become so French of late, in our own imagination, that no Frenchman would recognise his native style as seen in our exaggerations of it. ”

“ If I were lecturing on architecture, in the broadest form of the expression, I must treat throughout of construction, and of its decoration, pari passu, as the latter has but little meaning if severed from the former, which is its groundwork. And, even in lectures from this chair, where architecture is viewed specially in its character as a Fine Art, it is still impossible—as indeed it would be undesirable—wholly to sever that higher characteristic from the more practical phase to which it owes its origin. ”

“ On the other hand, it is necessary that the exercise of this zeal, heartiness, and veneration, should be regulated by sound and discriminating judgment,—a perfect and unfettered freedom of thought, and an eye to real beauty of form and reasonableness of construction and design; so that our generous enthusiasm may not betray us into forming erroneous judgments.
However perfect a style of art may be, its productions are not all perfect nor all of equal merit; while every human art has had its period of rise, culmination, and decline ”

“ The moulded capital and the foliated capital are things of all time. The voluted capital was an accidental introduction from the East, and has no permanent meaning, wonderful though it be.
The special features, however, for artistic study in Grecian architecture, of whatever order, are the exquisiteness of its proportions, the purity of its lines, the refinement of its mouldings and enrichments, and the superhuman instinct it evinces for delicacy and almost spirituality in the refinement and perfection of every line ”

“ The arch, its normal feature, supplies to it an endless store of beauty. The vault supplies another inexhaustible fund, and assumes forms unrivalled in any other style. The window, comparatively neglected by the ancient architects, and even hated by the Greeks, was, in the hands of the Gothic builders, a perfect treasury of architectural loveliness; and the introduction of window-glass, an invention nearly unknown to the ancients, became the source of an entirely new and most enchanting art, and one which exercised the most surprising influence upon architecture. ”