Intaglio

“ Be content with a single one! If you once get into comparison, you have abandoned yourself to the witchery of the unknown and unattainable perfection.
Engraved gems or simple intaglios in pietra dura seem to belong to Greek art rather than Etruscan. The style of finishing the stone was more in accordance with the simple and elegant ideal of the Greek intellect. The intaglio was all to the Greek artist, and anything more was labor worse than wasted. ”

“ With etchings, in which the image is in intaglio, gradation in the lines is possible; because, according to the depth of the etched line, a greater or less amount of ink is contained, and a grey line can be printed therefrom. And so, for this reason, etchings are misleading if used as copies or examples from which to draw in pen and ink. ”

“ Inferior brilliants may be bought very low; I have now a lot before me, in which are some of two grains, for which I would not give four guineas per carat, and roses of the same denomination may be bought at forty or fifty shillings.
Bad discolord diamonds are sold to break into powder, and may be said to have a more extensive sale than brilliants with. all their captivating beauty. In many operations of art they are indispensible; the fine Cameo and Intaglio owe their perfection to the diamond, with which alone they can be engraved. ”

“ Nor was it to architecture alone that the arts of the period were devoted: we find the same art expended on stained glass, on metal-work of all sorts, on enamels of the most magnificent character, on the illumination of manuscripts, the painted decoration of the buildings, on jewellery, on ivory-carving, on embroidery, on{204} woven fabrics, tapestry, seal-engraving—in fact, on every branch of decoration; every one of which arts were carried out with a degree of skill and instinctive taste truly amazing. ”

“ And thus, in all those arts of which modern civilization is proudest, and in which the genius of man has soared to the loftiest heights, the ancients were not merely our equals: they were our superiors. It is greater to originate than to copy. In architecture, in sculpture, and in painting the Greeks attained absolute perfection. Any architect of our time, who should build an edifice in different proportions than those which were recognized in the great cities of antiquity, would make a mistake. ”

“ Under Henry II. and Charles IX. this activity continued, and the architects who sought their inspirations in Grecian and Roman antiquity, as much as in the souvenirs of the Italian Renaissance, delighted in loading all the elegant and graceful buildings with ornaments, with bas-reliefs, and with statues, which they seemed to carve in the stone, as delicately wrought as a piece of goldsmith’s work. ”

“ For the present, I will close my remarks on the manner in which Gothic architecture should be studied, by saying that it is not mere architecture which you will have to attend to: painted decoration, whether in its nobler or humbler branches, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, metal-work, jewellery, enamelling, seals, carved ivories, embroidery, and a hundred other subsidiary branches, possess an almost equal claim upon your attention ”

“ At the abbeys bells were cast, glass manufactured, buildings designed, gold and silver ornaments wrought, jewels enamelled, and unskilled labour organised by the most trained intelligence of the land. They thus remained as they had begun, homes and retreats for those exceptional minds which were capable of carrying on the arts and the knowledge of a dying civilisation across the gulf of predatory barbarism which separates the artificial culture of Rome from the industrial culture of modern Europe. ”

“ The ornamented parts of the Greek and Roman Orders, figure sculpture apart, show how two cognate nations, each with transcendent abilities but of an entirely different range, abstracted the beauties of plants, and conferred them on stone and marble to emphasize and adorn the rigid forms of Architecture ”

“ In the light of what we have seen I think it must appear that the claims which have been advanced for the architecture of the Renaissance as the only architecture of correct principles since that of classic antiquity, and as an architecture in comparison with which the Gothic art of the Middle Ages should be considered as the barbarous product of an unenlightened age, are without justification. ”

“ The immense room from floor to cornice was walled with books: the writings of the fathers of the church—huge folios hasped in brass and ornamented with priceless illuminations—side by side with pagan literature, Greek manuscripts, and volumes of the Roman classics, while all the new harvest of the Italian Renaissance, in every department then known, had been carefully garnered. ”

“ Some of the goldsmith's and silversmith's work of the day was very finely executed, and many of the finest painters and sculptors themselves did not scorn to work at the jeweller's craft. But the real glory which lightens the general darkness of the Middle Ages, is the splendour of the architecture—the cathedrals and churches, the public buildings and the palaces of the great nobles. ”

“ In some cases I have also thought it desirable to give a brief account of the religion of those nations that have created distinct styles of architecture and ornament; for in many cases, such as in the art of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, we find that the art of a country was so bound up with the religion of its people, that to understand the former it is indispensable to have some knowledge of their religious ceremonies and beliefs. ”

“ Every form of chronicled lore, be it register, [Pg 243] fabric roll, charter, or brief, teems with some peculiar custom which is a moving history, an heirloom from the old world, helping to connect the past and the present.
Architectural items enter largely into the varied forms of church documents; the Indulgence often gave full particulars as to the repairs of a building, a fact most valuable for supplying the date at which any portion was built or renewed. ”

“ Among the treasures must have been works of Greek and Roman art, that kept alive the old spirit among the guild of builders gathered there; but alas! after the long generations when art was decaying, and uncalled for, their hands lost their skill, they could no longer reproduce the perfect works. ”

“ In architecture, road-making, and bridge-building, in bronze-casting and the art of cutting precious stones, they were masters. The art of fortification and the siege enginery of the later Romans are truly wonderful. But, if we would estimate aright the degree of technical skill reached by the ancients, we must compare it with the results attained by other nations. The technical skill wherein they excelled belongs to a comparatively low grade of culture. ”

“ In the architectural creations of the Middle Ages, the time of the free trades' associations, we admire the richness and variety of sculpture, which are still preserved in the old cathedrals, courts of palaces, universities, etc. ”

“ If the descendants of the mound and temple builders yet exist, the traditions of the era have passed from them in the process of their declension. But whoever the builders were, and whether their blood still flows in the existing race or not, they clung, like this race, so firmly to their ancient mythology and religion as to impress it indelibly on the features of their architecture, and in almost every work or labor which they attempted. ”

“ It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with other populations who do the same sort of things. ”

“ When the nations of modern Europe began to emerge from the chaos of centuries, and to generate for themselves a new civilisation, their aim, as regards architecture, seems rather to have been to recover that of ancient Rome, than to generate a new style for themselves ”

“ 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. ”

“ GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT. The Gothic or “Pointed” style grew, as we have seen, out of the Romanesque. Churches were built in which the pointed arch was used side by side with the round arch of Romanesque. These were the buildings of the transitional period. In France, Germany, and in England some of the earlier Gothic buildings were purer in style than those of the later period. The work of the thirteenth century is more correct in artistic principles, more restrained, and less bewildering in the principles of construction than the work of any subsequent period. ”

“ In the middle ages, either constructive parts were exposed to view, or the decorations which concealed them were designed simply as decorations, without in any degree professing to be constructive—plain honest common sense being the ruling principle, as it ought to be, and once was in other styles. ”

“ They welcomed every invention as it arose: let us do the same by the inventions of our own prolific age. They utilised every material which presented itself to them: let us do so by all the materials which modern science{273} or ingenuity has placed at our command; only let us do all this truthfully and consistently with reason; for example, if we meet with an invention suited to the surface decoration of rooms but devoid of constructive strength, let us use it as a surface decoration, and not, as is too commonly done, make troughs and pipes of it, and pass them off for beams and columns! ”

“ To be Roman in architecture, to be Greek, even to be Italian, one need not cease to be English or French or German. But to be Tudor one must be English, as to be François I one must be French, or so it seemed to most architects and their clients in the forties. ”

“ The mistaken notions of the Italian writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (labouring under strange misapprehension of the principles of classic art on the one hand, and ignorance of the true Gothic on the other) have been too much inculcated in our own time; and the belief that classic art offers suitable models for modern uses, and that the architecture of the Renaissance embodies classic principles, has been accepted with too little examination of its grounds. ”

“ Nor was this all; the influence of the civilization of the Renaissance, of a civilization directly issued from the Middle Ages, was entirely at variance with the influence of antique civilization through the medium of ancient art; the Middle Ages and Antiquity, Christianity and Paganism, were even more opposed to each other than could be the statue and the easel picture, the fresco and the bas-relief. ”

“ There are then the noble conventional decoration of the early Gothic schools, and the noble conventional arabesque of the great Italian schools. All these were reached from above, all reached by stooping from a knowledge of the human form. Depend upon it you will find, as you look more and more into the matter, that good subordinate ornament has ever been rooted in a higher knowledge; and if you are again to produce anything that is noble, you must have the higher knowledge first, and descend to all lower service ”

“ The influence of these short-sighted and mechanical Italian rules has been great in modern times. The formidable body of architectural dogma, contained in the literature of the Renaissance on this subject, has been so widely accepted as authoritative that modern art has been largely shaped by it. ”

“ For since the architect, whom we will suppose capable of doing all in perfection, cannot execute the whole with his own hands, he must either make slaves of his workmen in the old Greek, and present English fashion, and level his work to a slave’s capacities, which is to degrade it; or else he must take his workmen as he finds them, and let them show their weaknesses together with their strength, which will involve the Gothic imperfection, but render the whole work as noble as the intellect of the age can make it. ”

“ The implicit confidence of the neo-classicists in the art of Roman antiquity as the embodiment of all true principles of architectural design, and their unquestioning belief that mediæval art was wholly false in principle and barbaric in character, have seldom been more naïvely expressed. ”

“ While we should treat ancient churches and their furniture with respect—a respect which should not be denied to the despised, though often quaint and interesting, high pews and west galleries—as being edifices or instruments formed for the use of the worshippers of God, yet for antiquarian purposes they should be examined and dissected in exactly the same spirit as that in which we investigate the temples of ancient Greece, or the stone weapons of prehistoric man. ”

“ Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively confined to bad architecture—Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even in the mediæval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some of its noblest examples. ”