A. D. F. Hamlin

“ In the latter, an edifice of brick with terra-cotta enrichments, the windows were Gothic in outline—an unusual mixture of styles, even in Italy. The munificence of the Sforzas, the hereditary tyrants of the province, embellished the semi-Gothic Certosa of Pavia with a new marble façade, begun 1476 or 1491, which in its fanciful and exuberant decoration, and the small scale of its parts, belongs properly to the early Renaissance. Exquisitely beautiful in detail, it resembles rather a magnified altar-piece than a work of architecture, properly speaking. ”

“ Seemingly deficient in culture, they were yet able to recast the forms of Greek architecture in new moulds, and to evolve therefrom a mighty architecture adapted to wholly novel conditions. They brought engineering into the service of architecture, which they fitted to the varied requirements of government, public amusement, private luxury, and the common comfort. They covered the antique world with arches and amphitheatres, with villas, baths, basilicas, and temples, all bearing the unmistakable impress of Rome, though wrought by artists and artisans of divers races. ”

“ Among the masterpieces of the early Renaissance are many buildings of small dimensions, such as gates, chapels, tombs and fountains. In these the individual fancy had full sway, and produced surprising results by the beauty of enriched mouldings, of carved friezes with infant genii, wreaths of fruit, griffins, masks and scrolls; by pilasters covered with arabesques as delicate in modelling as if wrought in silver; by inlays of marble, panels of glazed terra-cotta, marvellously carved doors, fine stucco-work in relief, capitals and cornices of wonderful richness and variety. ”

“ The security and prosperity of Venice in the Middle Ages, and the ever present influence of the sun-loving East, made the massive and fortress-like architecture of the inland cities unnecessary. Abundant openings, large windows full of tracery of great lightness and elegance, projecting balconies and the freest use of marble veneering and inlay—a survival of Byzantine traditions of the 12th century (see p. 133) —give to the Venetian houses and palaces an air of gayety and elegance found nowhere else. ”

“ The second obstacle was the persistence of classic traditions of form, both in construction and decoration. The spaciousness and breadth of interior planning which characterized Roman design, and its amplitude of scale in every feature, seem never to have lost their hold on the Italians. The narrow lofty aisles, multiplied supports and minute detail of the Gothic style were repugnant to the classic predilections of the Italian builders. ”

“ The excellence of Gothic architecture lay not so much in its individual details as in its perfect adaptation to the purposes for which it was developed—its triumphs were achieved in the building of cathedrals and large churches. In the domain of civil and domestic architecture it produced nothing comparable with its ecclesiastical edifices, because it was the requirements of the cathedral and not of the palace, town-hall, or dwelling, that gave it its form and character. ”

“ STYLE is a quality; the “historic styles” are phases of development. Style is character expressive of definite conceptions, as of grandeur, gaiety, or solemnity. An historic style is the particular phase, the characteristic manner of design, which prevails at a given time and place. It is not the result of mere accident or caprice, but of intellectual, moral, social, religious, and even political conditions. Gothic architecture could never have been invented by the Greeks, nor could the Egyptian styles have grown up in Italy. ”

“ No style of architecture has ever evolved nobler forms of ceiling than the groined vault and the dome. Moreover, the use of vaulting made possible effects of unencumbered spaciousness and amplitude which could never be compassed by any combination of piers and columns. It also assured to the Roman monuments a duration and a freedom from danger of destruction by fire impossible with any wooden-roofed architecture, however noble its form or careful its execution. ”

“ THE RENAISSANCE OF THE ARTS. Classic Roman architecture had never lost its influence on the Italian taste. Gothic art, already declining in the West, had never been in Italy more than a borrowed garb, clothing architectural conceptions classic rather than Gothic in spirit. The antique monuments which abounded on every hand were ever present models for the artist, and to the Florentines of the early fifteenth century the civilization which had created them represented the highest ideal of human culture. ”

“ The new religion rapidly enlisted in its service for a common purpose and under a common impulse races as wide apart in blood and culture as those which had built up the art of imperial Rome. It was Christianity which reduced to civilization in the West the Germanic hordes that had overthrown Rome, bringing their fresh and hitherto untamed vigor to the task of recreating architecture out of the decaying fragments of classic art. ”

“ The joy of living, the hitherto forbidden delight in beauty and pleasure for their own sakes, the exultant awakening to the sense of personal freedom, which came with the bursting of mediæval fetters, found in classic art and literature their most sympathetic expression. It was in Italy, where feudalism had never fully established itself, and where the municipalities and guilds had developed, as nowhere else, the sense of civic and personal freedom, that these symptoms first manifested themselves. ”

“ It is the most majestic creation of the Renaissance, and one of the greatest architectural conceptions of all history. It measures 140 feet in internal diameter, and with its two shells rises from a lofty drum, buttressed by coupled Corinthian columns, to a height of 405 feet to the top of the lantern. The church, as left by Michael Angelo, was harmonious in its proportions, though the single order used internally and externally dwarfed by its colossal scale the vast dimensions of the edifice. ”

“ Speaking broadly, it may be said that in France the influence of the École des Beaux-Arts, while it has tended to give greater unity and consistency to the national architecture, and has exerted a powerful influence in behalf of refinement of taste and correctness of style, has also stood in the way of a free development of new ideas. French architecture has throughout adhered to the principles of the Renaissance, though the style has during this century been modified by various influences. ”

“ Oriels, bay-windows, and turrets, starting from corbels or colonnettes, or rarely from the ground, diversify the façade, and spires of curious bulbous patterns give added piquancy to the picturesque sky-line. The plans seldom had the monumental symmetry and largeness of Italian and French models; courtyards were often irregular in shape and diversified with balconies and spiral staircase-turrets. The national leaning was always toward the quaint and fantastic, as well in the decoration as in the composition. ”

“ The earliest Renaissance building in Rome was the P. di Venezia, begun in 1455, together with the adjoining porch of S. Marco. In this palace and the adjoining unfinished Palazzetto we find the influence of the old Roman monuments clearly manifested in the court arcades, built like those of the Colosseum, with superposed stages of massive piers and engaged columns carrying entablatures. The proportions are awkward, the details coarse; but the spirit of Roman classicism is here seen in the germ. The exterior of this palace is, however, still Gothic in spirit. The architects are unknown ”

“ Van Pelt, A Discussion of Composition.
Ware, The American Vignola; Scranton.
xxi HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. INTRODUCTION.
A history of architecture is a record of man’s efforts to build beautifully. The erection of structures devoid of beauty is mere building, a trade and not an art. Edifices in which strength and stability alone are sought, and in designing which only utilitarian considerations have been followed, are properly works of engineering. Only when the idea of beauty is added to that of use does a structure take its place among works of architecture. ”

“ CONSTRUCTION AND DETAIL. The architects of the Renaissance occupied themselves more with form than with construction, and rarely set themselves constructive problems of great difficulty. Although the new architecture began with the colossal dome of the cathedral of Florence, and culminated in the stupendous church of St. Peter at Rome, it was pre-eminently an architecture of palaces and villas, of façades and of decorative display. Constructive difficulties were reduced to their lowest terms, and the constructive framework was concealed, not emphasized, by the decorative apparel of the design. ”

“ The interesting domestic architecture of this period is preserved in whole towns and villages in the Hauran, which, deserted at the Arab conquest, have never been reoccupied and remain almost intact but for the decay of their wooden roofs. They are marked by dignity and simplicity of design, and by the same picturesque massing of gables and roofs and porches which has already been remarked of the churches. The arches are broad, the columns rather heavy, the mouldings few and simple, and the scanty carving vigorous and effective, often strongly Byzantine in type. ”

“ The crude brick walls are immensely thick and without windows, the only openings being for doors. The absence of columns made wide halls impossible, and great size could only be attained in the direction of length. A terraced pyramid supported an altar or shrine to the southwest of the palace; at the west corner was a temple, the substructure of which was crowned by a cavetto cornice showing plainly the influence of Egyptian models. The whole palace stood upon a stupendous platform faced with cut stone, an unaccustomed extravagance in Assyria. ”

“ Everyone at some point comes in contact with the work of the architect, and from this universal contact architecture derives its significance as an index of the civilization of an age, a race, or a people. ”

“ The vaulting is most ingenious and beautiful, and its forms, whether executed in brick or in plaster, are sufficiently varied without resort to the perplexing complications of stalactite work. In Persian decoration the most striking qualities are the harmony of blended color, broken up into minute patterns and more subdued in tone than in the Hispano-Moresque, and the preference of flowing lines and floral ornament to the geometric puzzles of Arabic design. Persian architecture influenced both Turkish and Indo-Moslem art, which owe to it a large part of their decorative charm. ”

“ ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. While Arabic architecture, in Syria and Egypt alike, possesses more decorative than constructive originality, the beautiful forms of its domes, pendentives, and minarets, the simple majesty of the great pointed barrel-vaults of the Hassan mosque and similar monuments, and the graceful lines of the universally used pointed arch, prove the Coptic builders and their later Arabic successors to have been architects of great ability. ”

“ THE ETRUSCAN STYLE. Although the first Greek architects were employed in Rome as early as 493 B.C., the architecture of the Republic was practically Etruscan until nearly 100 B.C. Its monuments, consisting mainly of city walls, tombs, and temples, are all marked by a general uncouthness of detail, denoting a lack of artistic refinement, but they display considerable constructive skill. In the Etruscan walls we meet with both polygonal and regularly coursed masonry; in both kinds the true arch appears as the almost universal form for gates and openings. ”

“ It is the function of the historian of architecture to trace the origin, growth, and decline of the architectural styles which have prevailed in different lands and ages, and to show how they have reflected the great movements of civilization. ”

“ It was not until the Empire that Roman architecture took on a truly national form. True Roman architecture is essentially imperial. The change from the primitive Etruscan style to the splendors of the imperial age was due to the conquest of the Greek states. Not only did the Greek campaigns enrich Rome with an unprecedented wealth of artistic spoils; they also brought into Italy hosts of Greek artists, and filled the minds of the campaigners with the ambition to realize in their own dominions the marble colonnades, the temples, theatres, and propylæa of the Greek cities they had pillaged. ”

“ In Russia and Greece the Byzantine style has continued to be the official style of the Greek Church. The Russian monuments are for the most part of a somewhat fantastic aspect, the Muscovite taste having introduced many innovations in the form of bulbous domes and other eccentric details. In Greece there are few large churches, and some of the most interesting, like the Cathedral at Athens, are almost toy-like in their diminutiveness. ”

“ During this fifteenth century the Renaissance style matured in Italy, where it speedily triumphed over Gothic fashions and produced a marvellous series of civic monuments, palaces, and churches, adorned with forms borrowed or imitated from classic Roman art. This influence spread through Europe in the sixteenth century, and ran a course of two centuries, after which a period of servile classicism was followed by a rapid decline in taste. ”

“ During the so-called Cinquecento, that is, from the close of the fifteenth century to nearly or quite 1550, architecture still retained much of the freedom and refinement of the Quattrocento. There was meanwhile a notable advance in dignity and amplitude of design, especially in the internal distribution of buildings. Externally the orders were freely used as subordinate features in the decoration of doors and windows, and in court arcades of the Roman type. The lantern-crowned 289 dome upon a high drum was developed into one of the noblest of architectural forms. ”

“ When the new home is virgin soil, destitute of cultivation, government, or civilized inhabitants, the accompaniments and activities of civilization introduced by the colonists manifest themselves at first in curious contrast to the primitive surroundings. The struggle between organized life and chaos, the laborious subjugation of nature to the requirements of our complex modern life, for a considerable period absorb the energies of the colonists. The amenities of culture, the higher intellectual life, the refinements of art can, during this period, receive little 384 attention. ”

“ But although nothing has come down to us of the actual work of the builders who wrought in the primitive ages of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia almost countless monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent times, but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions where they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common heritage of traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on the probable character of the transition from barbaric to civilized architecture. ”

“ The whole range of historic art is brought within our survey, and while this has on the one hand tended toward the confusion and multiplication of styles in modern work, it has on the other led to a slavish adherence to historic precedent or a literal copying of historic forms. Modern architecture has thus oscillated between the extremes of archæological servitude and of an unreasoning eclecticism. In the hands of men of inferior training the results have been deplorable travesties of all styles, or meaningless aggregations of ill-assorted forms. ”

“ Through various channels the Greeks inherited from both Egyptian and Assyrian art, the two influences being discernible even through the strongly original aspect of Greek architecture. The Romans in turn, adopting the external details of Greek architecture, transformed its substance by substituting the Etruscan arch for the Greek construction of columns and lintels. They developed a complete and original system of construction and decoration and spread it over the civilized world, which has never wholly outgrown or abandoned it. ”

“ They longed to revive in their own time the glories of ancient Rome, and appropriated with uncritical and undiscriminating enthusiasm the good and the bad, the early and the late forms of Roman art, Naïvely unconscious of the disparity 272 between their own architectural conceptions and those they fancied they imitated, they were, unknown to themselves, creating a new style, in which the details of Roman art were fitted in novel combinations to new requirements. ”

“ The preference for small parish churches, treated as audience-rooms rather than as places of worship, has interfered with the development of noble types of church-buildings. Yet there are signs of improvement; and the new Cathedral of St. John the Divine at New York, in a modified Romanesque style, promises to be a worthy and monumental building. In semi-public architecture, such as hotels, theatres, clubs, and libraries, there are many notable examples of successful design. The Ponce de Leon Hotel at St. Augustine, a sumptuous and imposing pile in a free version of the Spanish Plateresco ”

“ The Tchinli Kiosque, now the Imperial Museum, is however, a simple but graceful two-storied edifice, consisting of four vaulted chambers in the angles of a fine cruciform hall, with domes treated like those of Bijapur on a small scale; the tiling and the veranda in front are particularly elegant; the design suggests Persian handiwork. The later palaces, designed by Armenians, are picturesque white marble and stucco buildings on the water’s edge; they possess richly decorated halls, but the details are of a debased European rococo style, quite unworthy of an Oriental monarch. ”