THE LAMP OF POWER.
I. In recalling the impressions we have received from the works of man,
after a lapse of time long enough to involve in obscurity all but the
most vivid, it often happens that we find a strange pre-eminence and
durability in many upon whose strength we had little calculated, and
that points of character which had escaped the detection of the
judgment, become developed under the waste of memory; as veins of harder
rock, whose places could not at first have been discovered by the eye,
are left salient under the action of frosts and streams. The traveller
who desires to correct the errors of his judgment, necessitated by
inequalities of temper, infelicities of circumstance, and accidents of
association, has no other resource than to wait for the calm verdict of
interposing years; and to watch for the new arrangements of eminence and
shape in the images which remain latest in his memory; as in the ebbing
of a mountain lake, he would watch the varying outlines of its
successive shore, and trace, in the form of its departing waters, the
true direction of the forces which had cleft, or the currents which had
excavated, the deepest recesses of its primal bed.
In thus reverting to the memories of those works of architecture by
which we have been most pleasurably impressed, it will generally happen
that they fall into two broad classes: the one characterized by an
exceeding preciousness and delicacy, to which we recur with a sense of
affectionate admiration; and the other by a severe, and, in many cases,
mysterious, majesty, which we remember with an undiminished awe, like
that felt at the presence and operation of some great Spiritual Power.
From about these two groups, more or less harmonised by intermediate
examples, but always distinctively marked by features of beauty or of
power, there will be swept away, in multitudes, the memories of
buildings, perhaps, in their first address to our minds, of no inferior
pretension, but owing their impressiveness to characters of less
enduring nobility--to value of material, accumulation of ornament, or
ingenuity of mechanical construction. Especial interest may, indeed,
have been awakened by such circumstances, and the memory may have been,
consequently, rendered tenacious of particular parts or effects of the
structure; but it will recall even these only by an active effort, and
then without emotion; while in passive moments, and with thrilling
influence, the image of purer beauty, and of more spiritual power, will
return in a fair and solemn company; and while the pride of many a
stately palace, and the wealth of many a jewelled shrine, perish from
our thoughts in a dust of gold, there will rise, through their dimness,
the white image of some secluded marble chapel, by river or forest side,
with the fretted flower-work shrinking under its arches, as if under
vaults of late-fallen snow; or the vast weariness of some shadowy wall
whose separate stones are like mountain foundations, and yet numberless.
II. Now, the difference between these two orders of build-ing is not
merely that which there is in nature between things beautiful and
sublime. It is, also, the difference between what is derivative and
original in man's work; for whatever is in architecture fair or
beautiful, is imitated from natural forms; and what is not so derived,
but depends for its dignity upon arrangement and government received
from human mind, becomes the expression of the power of that mind, and
receives a sublimity high in proportion to the power expressed. All
building, therefore, shows man either as gathering or governing: and the
secrets of his success are his knowing what to gather, and how to rule.
These are the two great intellectual Lamps of Architecture; the one
consisting in a just and humble veneration for the works of God upon the
earth, and the other in an understanding of the dominion over those
works which has been vested in man.
III. Besides this expression of living authority and power, there is,
however, a sympathy in the forms of noble building, with what is most
sublime in natural things; and it is the governing Power directed by
this sympathy, whose operation I shall at present endeavor to trace,
abandoning all inquiry into the more abstract fields of invention: for
this latter faculty, and the questions of proportion and arrangement
connected with its discussion, can only be rightly examined in a general
view of all arts; but its sympathy, in architecture, with the vast
controlling powers of Nature herself, is special, and may shortly be
considered; and that with the more advantage, that it has, of late, been
little felt or regarded by architects. I have seen, in recent efforts,
much contest between two schools, one affecting originality, and the
other legality--many attempts at beauty of design--many ingenious
adaptations of construction; but I have never seen any aim at the
expression of abstract power; never any appearance of a consciousness
that, in this primal art of man, there is room for the marking of his
relations with the mightiest, as well as the fairest, works of God; and
that those works themselves have been permitted, by their Master and
his, to receive an added glory from their association with earnest
efforts of human thought. In the edifices of Man there should be found
reverent worship and following, not only of the spirit which rounds the
pillars of the forest, and arches the vault of the avenue--which gives
veining to the leaf, and polish to the shell, and grace to every pulse
that agitates animal organization,--but of that also which reproves the
pillars of the earth, and builds up her barren precipices into the
coldness of the clouds, and lifts her shadowy cones of mountain purple
into the pale arch of the sky; for these, and other glories more than
these, refuse not to connect themselves, in his thoughts, with the work
of his own hand; the grey cliff loses not its nobleness when it reminds
us of some Cyclopean waste of mural stone; the pinnacles of the rocky
promontory arrange themselves, undegraded, into fantastic semblances of
fortress towers; and even the awful cone of the far-off mountain has a
melancholy mixed with that of its own solitude, which is cast from the
images of nameless tumuli on white sea-shores, and of the heaps of reedy
clay, into which chambered cities melt in their mortality.
IV. Let us, then, see what is this power and majesty, which Nature
herself does not disdain to accept from the works of man; and what that
sublimity in the masses built up by his coralline-like energy, which is
honorable, even when transferred by association to the dateless hills,
which it needed earthquakes to lift, and deluges to mould.
And, first of mere size: It might not be thought possible to emulate the
sublimity of natural objects in this respect; nor would it be, if the
architect contended with them in pitched battle. It would not be well to
build pyramids in the valley of Chamouni; and St. Peter's, among its
many other errors, counts for not the least injurious its position on
the slope of an inconsiderable hill. But imagine it placed on the plain
of Marengo, or, like the Superga of Turin, or like La Salute at Venice!
The fact is, that the apprehension of the size of natural objects, as
well as of architecture, depends more on fortunate excitement of the
imagination than on measurements by the eye; and the architect has a
peculiar advantage in being able to press close upon the sight, such
magnitude as he can command. There are few rocks, even among the Alps,
that have a clear vertical fall as high as the choir of Beauvais; and
if we secure a good precipice of wall, or a sheer and unbroken flank of
tower, and place them where there are no enormous natural features to
oppose them, we shall feel in them no want of sublimity of size. And it
may be matter of encouragement in this respect, though one also of
regret, to observe how much oftener man destroys natural sublimity, than
nature crushes human power. It does not need much to humiliate a
mountain. A hut will sometimes do it; I never look up to the Col de
Balme from Chamouni, without a violent feeling of provocation against
its hospitable little cabin, whose bright white walls form a visibly
four-square spot on the green ridge, and entirely destroy all idea of
its elevation. A single villa will often mar a whole landscape, and
dethrone a dynasty of hills, and the Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon and
all, has, I believe, been dwarfed into a model by the palace lately
built beneath it. The fact is, that hills are not so high as we fancy
them, and, when to the actual impression of no mean comparative size, is
added the sense of the toil of manly hand and thought, a sublimity is
reached, which nothing but gross error in arrangement of its parts can
destroy.
V. While, therefore, it is not to be supposed that mere size will
ennoble a mean design, yet every increase of magnitude will bestow upon
it a certain degree of nobleness: so that it is well to determine at
first, whether the building is to be markedly beautiful or markedly
sublime; and if the latter, not to be withheld by respect to smaller
parts from reaching largeness of scale; provided only, that it be
evidently in the architect's power to reach at least that degree of
magnitude which is the lowest at which sublimity begins, rudely
definable as that which will make a living figure look less than life
beside it. It is the misfortune of most of our modern buildings that we
would fain have an universal excellence in them; and so part of the
funds must go in painting, part in gilding, part in fitting up, part in
painted windows, part in small steeples, part in ornaments here and
there; and neither the windows, nor the steeple, nor the ornaments, are
worth their materials. For there is a crust about the impressible part
of men's minds, which must be pierced through before they can be
touched to the quick; and though we may prick at it and scratch it in a
thousand separate places, we might as well have let it alone if we do
not come through somewhere with a deep thrust: and if we can give such a
thrust anywhere, there is no need of another; it need not be even so
"wide as a church door," so that it be _enough_. And mere weight will do
this; it is a clumsy way of doing it, but an effectual one, too; and the
apathy which cannot be pierced through by a small steeple, nor shone
through by a small window, can be broken through in a moment by the mere
weight of a great wall. Let, therefore, the architect who has not large
resources, choose his point of attack first, and, if he choose size, let
him abandon decoration; for, unless they are concentrated, and numerous
enough to make their concentration conspicuous, all his ornaments
together would not be worth one huge stone. And the choice must be a
decided one, without compromise. It must be no question whether his
capitals would not look better with a little carving--let him leave them
huge as blocks; or whether his arches should not have richer
architraves--let him throw them a foot higher, if he can; a yard more
across the nave will be worth more to him than a tesselated pavement;
and another fathom of outer wall, than an army of pinnacles. The
limitation of size must be only in the uses of the building, or in the
ground at his disposal.
VI. That limitation, however, being by such circumstances determined, by
what means, it is to be next asked, may the actual magnitude be best
displayed; since it is seldom, perhaps never, that a building of any
pretension to size looks so large as it is. The appearance of a figure
in any distant, more especially in any upper, parts of it will almost
always prove that we have under-estimated the magnitude of those parts.
It has often been observed that a building, in order to show its
magnitude, must be seen all at once. It would, perhaps, be better to
say, must be bounded as much as possible by continuous lines, and that
its extreme points should be seen all at once; or we may state, in
simpler terms still, that it must have one visible bounding line from
top to bottom, and from end to end. This bounding line from top to
bottom may either be inclined inwards, and the mass, therefore,
pyramidical; or vertical, and the mass form one grand cliff; or inclined
outwards, as in the advancing fronts of old houses, and, in a sort, in
the Greek temple, and in all buildings with heavy cornices or heads.
Now, in all these cases, if the bounding line be violently broken; if
the cornice project, or the upper portion of the pyramid recede, too
violently, majesty will be lost; not because the building cannot be seen
all at once,--for in the case of a heavy cornice no part of it is
necessarily concealed--but because the continuity of its terminal line
is broken, and the _length of that line_, therefore, cannot be
estimated. But the error is, of course, more fatal when much of the
building is also concealed; as in the well-known case of the recession
of the dome of St. Peter's, and, from the greater number of points of
view, in churches whose highest portions, whether dome or tower, are
over their cross. Thus there is only one point from which the size of
the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the
Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens
that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts. In
all cases in which the tower is over the cross, the grandeur and height
of the tower itself are lost, because there is but one line down which
the eye can trace the whole height, and that is in the inner angle of
the cross, not easily discerned. Hence, while, in symmetry and feeling,
such designs may often have pre-eminence, yet, where the height of the
tower itself is to be made apparent, it must be at the west end, or
better still, detached as a campanile. Imagine the loss to the Lombard
churches if their campaniles were carried only to their present height
over their crosses; or to the Cathedral of Rouen, if the Tour de Beurre
were made central, in the place of its present debased spire!
VII. Whether, therefore, we have to do with tower or wall, there must be
one bounding line from base to coping; and I am much inclined, myself,
to love the true vertical, or the vertical, with a solemn frown of
projection (not a scowl), as in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence. This
character is always given to rocks by the poets; with slight foundation
indeed real rocks being little given to overhanging--but with excellent
judgment; for the sense of threatening conveyed by this form is a nobler
character than that of mere size. And, in buildings, this threatening
should be somewhat carried down into their mass. A mere projecting shelf
is not enough, the whole wall must, Jupiter like, nod as well as frown.
Hence, I think the propped machicolations of the Palazzo Vecchio and
Duomo of Florence far grander headings than any form of Greek cornice.
Sometimes the projection may be thrown lower, as in the Doge's palace of
Venice, where the chief appearance of it is above the second arcade; or
it may become a grand swell from the ground, as the head of a ship of
the line rises from the sea. This is very nobly attained by the
projection of the niches in the third story of the Tour de Beurre at
Rouen.
VIII. What is needful in the setting forth of magnitude in height, is
right also in the marking it in area--let it be gathered well together.
It is especially to be noted with respect to the Palazzo Vecchio and
other mighty buildings of its order, how mistakenly it has been stated
that dimension, in order to become impressive, should be expanded either
in height or length, but not equally: whereas, rather it will be found
that those buildings seem on the whole the vastest which have been
gathered up into a mighty square, and which look as if they had been
measured by the angel's rod, "the length, and the breadth, and the
height of it are equal," and herein something is to be taken notice of,
which I believe not to be sufficiently, if at all, considered among our
architects.
Of the many broad divisions under which architecture may be considered,
none appear to me more significant than that into buildings whose
interest is in their walls, and those whose interest is in the lines
dividing their walls. In the Greek temple the wall is as nothing; the
entire interest is in the detached columns and the frieze they bear; in
French Flamboyant, and in our detestable Perpendicular, the object is to
get rid of the wall surface, and keep the eye altogether on tracery of
line; in Romanesque work and Egyptian, the wall is a confessed and
honored member, and the light is often allowed to fall on large areas of
it, variously decorated. Now, both these principles are admitted by
Nature, the one in her woods and thickets, the other in her plains, and
cliffs, and waters; but the latter is pre-eminently the principle of
power, and, in some sense, of beauty also. For, whatever infinity of
fair form there may be in the maze of the forest, there is a fairer, as
I think, in the surface of the quiet lake; and I hardly know that
association of shaft or tracery, for which I would exchange the warm
sleep of sunshine on some smooth, broad, human-like front of marble.
Nevertheless, if breadth is to be beautiful, its substance must in some
sort be beautiful; and we must not hastily condemn the exclusive resting
of the northern architects in divided lines, until at least we have
remembered the difference between a blank surface of Caen stone, and one
mixed from Genoa and Carrara, of serpentine with snow: but as regards
abstract power and awfulness, there is no question; without breadth of
surface it is in vain to seek them, and it matters little, so that the
surface be wide, bold and unbroken, whether it be of brick or of jasper;
the light of heaven upon it, and the weight of earth in it, are all we
need: for it is singular how forgetful the mind may become both of
material and workmanship, if only it have space enough over which to
range, and to remind it, however feebly, of the joy that it has in
contemplating the flatness and sweep of great plains and broad seas. And
it is a noble thing for men to do this with their cut stone or moulded
clay, and to make the face of a wall look infinite, and its edge against
the sky like an horizon: or even if less than this be reached, it is
still delightful to mark the play of passing light on its broad surface,
and to see by how many artifices and gradations of tinting and shadow,
time and storm will set their wild signatures upon it; and how in the
rising or declining of the day the unbroken twilight rests long and
luridly on its high lineless forehead, and fades away untraceably down
its tiers of confused and countless stone.
IX. This, then, being, as I think, one of the peculiar elements of
sublime architecture, it may be easily seen how necessarily consequent
upon the love of it will be the choice of a form approaching to the
square for the main outline.
For, in whatever direction the building is contracted, in that direction
the eye will be drawn to its terminal lines; and the sense of surface
will only be at its fullest when those lines are removed, in every
direction, as far as possible. Thus the square and circle are
pre-eminently the areas of power among those bounded by purely straight
or curved lines; and these, with their relative solids, the cube and
sphere, and relative solids of progression (as in the investigation of
the laws of proportion I shall call those masses which are generated by
the progression of an area of given form along a line in a given
direction), the square and cylindrical column, are the elements of
utmost power in all architectural arrangements. On the other hand, grace
and perfect proportion require an elongation in some one direction: and
a sense of power may be communicated to this form of magnitude by a
continuous series of any marked features, such as the eye may be unable
to number; while yet we feel, from their boldness, decision, and
simplicity, that it is indeed their multitude which has embarrassed us,
not any confusion or indistinctness of form. This expedient of continued
series forms the sublimity of arcades and aisles, of all ranges of
columns, and, on a smaller scale, of those Greek mouldings, of which,
repeated as they now are in all the meanest and most familiar forms of
our furniture, it is impossible altogether to weary. Now, it is evident
that the architect has choice of two types of form, each properly
associated with its own kind of interest or decoration: the square, or
greatest area, to be chosen especially when the _surface_ is to be the
subject of thought; and the elongated area, when the _divisions_ of the
surface are to be the subjects of thought. Both these orders of form, as
I think nearly every other source of power and beauty, are marvellously
united in that building which I fear to weary the reader by bringing
forward too frequently, as a model of all perfection--the Doge's palace
at Venice: its general arrangement, a hollow square; its principal
facade, an oblong, elongated to the eye by a range of thirty-four small
arches, and thirty-five columns, while it is separated by a
richly-canopied window in the centre, into two massive divisions, whose
height and length are nearly as four to five; the arcades which give it
length being confined to the lower stories, and the upper, between its
broad windows, left a mighty surface of smooth marble, chequered with
blocks of alternate rose-color and white. It would be impossible, I
believe, to invent a more magnificent arrangement of all that is in
building most dignified and most fair.
X. In the Lombard Romanesque, the two principles are more fused into
each other, as most characteristically in the Cathedral of Pisa: length
of proportion, exhibited by an arcade of twenty-one arches above, and
fifteen below, at the side of the nave; bold square proportion in the
front; that front divided into arcades, placed one above the other, the
lowest with its pillars engaged, of seven arches, the four uppermost
thrown out boldly from the receding wall, and casting deep shadows; the
first, above the basement, of nineteen arches; the second of twenty-one;
the third and fourth of eight each; sixty-three arches in all; all
_circular_ headed, all with cylindrical shafts, and the lowest with
_square_ panellings, set diagonally under their semicircles, an
universal ornament in this style (Plate XII., fig. 7); the apse, a
semicircle, with a semi-dome for its roof, and three ranges of circular
arches for its exterior ornament; in the interior of the nave, a range
of circular arches below a circular-arched triforium, and a vast flat
_surface_, observe, of wall decorated with striped marble above; the
whole arrangement (not a peculiar one, but characteristic of every
church of the period; and, to my feeling, the most majestic; not perhaps
the fairest, but the mightiest type of form which the mind of man has
ever conceived) based exclusively on associations of the circle and the
square.
I am now, however, trenching upon ground which I desire to reserve for
more careful examination, in connection with other aesthetic questions:
but I believe the examples I have given will justify my vindication of
the square form from the reprobation which has been lightly thrown upon
it; nor might this be done for it only as a ruling outline, but as
occurring constantly in the best mosaics, and in a thousand forms of
minor decoration, which I cannot now examine; my chief assertion of its
majesty being always as it is an exponent of space and surface, and
therefore to be chosen, either to rule in their outlines, or to adorn by
masses of light and shade those portions of buildings in which surface
is to be rendered precious or honorable.
XI. Thus far, then, of general forms, and of the modes in which the
scale of architecture is best to be exhibited. Let us next consider the
manifestations of power which belong to its details and lesser
divisions.
The first division we have to regard, is the inevitable one of masonry.
It is true that this division may, by great art, be concealed; but I
think it unwise (as well as dishonest) to do so; for this reason, that
there is a very noble character always to be obtained by the opposition
of large stones to divided masonry, as by shafts and columns of one
piece, or massy lintels and architraves, to wall work of bricks or
smaller stones; and there is a certain organization in the management of
such parts, like that of the continuous bones of the skeleton, opposed
to the vertebrae, which it is not well to surrender. I hold, therefore,
that, for this and other reasons, the masonry of a building is to be
shown: and also that, with certain rare exceptions (as in the cases of
chapels and shrines of most finished workmanship), the smaller the
building, the more necessary it is that its masonry should be bold, and
_vice versa_. For if a building be under the mark of average magnitude,
it is not in our power to increase its apparent size (too easily
measurable) by any proportionate diminution in the scale of its masonry.
But it may be often in our power to give it a certain nobility by
building it of massy stones, or, at all events, introducing such into
its make. Thus it is impossible that there should ever be majesty in a
cottage built of brick; but there is a marked element of sublimity in
the rude and irregular piling of the rocky walls of the mountain
cottages of Wales, Cumberland, and Scotland. Their size is not one whit
diminished, though four or five stones reach at their angles from the
ground to the eaves, or though a native rock happen to project
conveniently, and to be built into the framework of the wall. On the
other hand, after a building has once reached the mark of majestic size,
it matters, indeed, comparatively little whether its masonry be large or
small, but if it be altogether large, it will sometimes diminish the
magnitude for want of a measure; if altogether small, it will suggest
ideas of poverty in material, or deficiency in mechanical resource,
besides interfering in many cases with the lines of the design, and
delicacy of the workmanship. A very unhappy instance of such
interference exists in the facade of the church of St. Madeleine at
Paris, where the columns, being built of very small stones of nearly
equal size, with visible joints, look as if they were covered with a
close trellis. So, then, that masonry will be generally the most
magnificent which, without the use of materials systematically small or
large, accommodates itself, naturally and frankly, to the conditions and
structure of its work, and displays alike its power of dealing with the
vastest masses, and of accomplishing its purpose with the smallest,
sometimes heaping rock upon rock with Titanic commandment, and anon
binding the dusty remnants and edgy splinters into springing vaults and
swelling domes. And if the nobility of this confessed and natural
masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by
smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in
chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as
they came from the quarry would often raise a building a story higher.
Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if
we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the
workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to take
advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the design delicate and
dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in
granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labor
necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself,
and to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendor
and sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire
subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But, in most
cases, I believe, the labor and time necessary to do this would be
better spent in another way; and that to raise a building to a height of
a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy
with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage
of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be
equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain
heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering
obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate
indeed, who would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.
XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the divisions of
the design itself. Those divisions are, necessarily, either into masses
of light and shade, or else by traced lines; which latter must be,
indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some
lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if
finely enough cut, be always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for
instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure
linear division.
Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall
surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a painter,
with this only difference, that the wall has already a sublimity in its
height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it
is more dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface.
And, for my own part, I think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of
gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it; much more,
a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is
caused to assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are
supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them.
And the principles on which this division is to be made, are as regards
relation of quantities, the same in architecture as in painting, or
indeed, in any other art whatsoever, only the painter is by his varied
subject partly permitted, partly compelled, to dispense with the
symmetry of architectural light and shade, and to adopt arrangements
apparently free and accidental. So that in modes of grouping there is
much difference (though no opposition) between the two arts; but in
rules of quantity, both are alike, so far forth as their commands of
means are alike. For the architect, not being able to secure always the
same depth or decision of shadow, nor to add to its sadness by color
(because even when color is employed, it cannot follow the moving
shade), is compelled to make many allowances, and avail himself of many
contrivances, which the painter needs neither consider nor employ.
XIII. Of these limitations the first consequence is, that positive shade
is a more necessary and more sublime thing in an architect's hands than
in a painter's. For the latter being able to temper his light with an
under-tone throughout, and to make it delightful with sweet color, or
awful with lurid color, and to represent distance, and air, and sun, by
the depth of it, and fill its whole space with expression, can deal with
an enormous, nay, almost with an universal extent of it, and the best
painters most delight in such extent; but as light, with the architect,
is nearly always liable to become full and untempered sunshine seen upon
solid surface, his only rests, and his chief means of sublimity, are
definite shades. So that, after size and weight, the Power of
architecture may be said to depend on the quantity (whether measured in
space or intenseness) of its shadow; and it seems to me, that the
reality of its works, and the use and influence they have in the daily
life of men (as opposed to those works of art with which we have nothing
to do but in times of rest or of pleasure) require of it that it should
express a kind of human sympathy, by a measure of darkness as great as
there is in human life: and that as the great poem and great fiction
generally affect us most by the majesty of their masses of shade, and
cannot take hold upon us if they affect a continuance of lyric
sprightliness, but must be serious often, and sometimes melancholy, else
they do not express the truth of this wild world of ours; so there must
be, in this magnificently human art of architecture, some equivalent
expression for the trouble and wrath of life, for its sorrow and its
mystery: and this it can only give by depth or diffusion of gloom, by
the frown upon its front, and the shadow of its recess. So that
Rembrandtism is a noble manner in architecture, though a false one in
painting; and I do not believe that ever any building was truly great,
unless it had mighty masses, vigorous and deep, of shadow mingled with
its surface. And among the first habits that a young architect should
learn, is that of thinking in shadow, not looking at a design in its
miserable liny skeleton; but conceiving it as it will be when the dawn
lights it, and the dusk leaves it; when its stones will be hot and its
crannies cool; when the lizards will bask on the one, and the birds
build in the other. Let him design with the sense of cold and heat upon
him; let him cut out the shadows, as men dig wells in unwatered plains;
and lead along the lights, as a founder does his hot metal; let him keep
the full command of both, and see that he knows how they fall, and where
they fade. His paper lines and proportions are of no value: all that he
has to do must be done by spaces of light and darkness; and his business
is to see that the one is broad and bold enough not to be swallowed up
by twilight, and the other deep enough not to be dried like a shallow
pool by a noon-day sun.
And that this may be, the first necessity is that the quantities of
shade or light, whatever they may be, shall be thrown into masses,
either of something like equal weight, or else large masses of the one
relieved with small of the other; but masses of one or other kind there
must be. No design that is divided at all, and is not divided into
masses, can ever be of the smallest value: this great law respecting
breadth, precisely the same in architecture and painting, is so
important, that the examination of its two principal applications will
include most of the conditions of majestic design on which I would at
present insist.
XIV. Painters are in the habit of speaking loosely of masses of light
and shade, meaning thereby any large spaces of either. Nevertheless, it
is convenient sometimes to restrict the term "mass" to the portions to
which proper form belongs, and to call the field on which such forms are
traced, interval. Thus, in foliage with projecting boughs or stems, we
have masses of light, with intervals of shade; and, in light skies with
dark clouds upon them, masses of shade with intervals of light.
This distinction is, in architecture, still more necessary; for there
are two marked styles dependent upon it: one in which the forms are
drawn with light upon darkness, as in Greek sculpture and pillars; the
other in which they are drawn with darkness upon light, as in early
Gothic foliation. Now, it is not in the designer's power determinately
to vary degrees and places of darkness, but it is altogether in his
power to vary in determined directions his degrees of light. Hence, the
use of the dark mass characterises, generally, a trenchant style of
design, in which the darks and lights are both flat, and terminated by
sharp edges; while the use of the light mass is in the same way
associated with a softened and full manner of design, in which the darks
are much warmed by reflected lights, and the lights are rounded and melt
into them. The term applied by Milton to Doric bas-relief--"bossy," is,
as is generally the case with Milton's epithets, the most comprehensive
and expressive of this manner, which the English language contains;
while the term which specifically describes the chief member of early
Gothic decoration, feuille, foil or leaf, is equally significative of a
flat space of shade.
XV. We shall shortly consider the actual modes in which these two kinds
of mass have been treated. And, first, of the light, or rounded, mass.
The modes in which relief was secured for the more projecting forms of
bas-relief, by the Greeks, have been too well described by Mr.
Eastlake[I] to need recapitulation: the conclusion which forces itself
upon us from the facts he has remarked, being one on which I shall have
occasion farther to insist presently, that the Greek workman cared for
shadow only as a dark field wherefrom his light figure or design might
be intelligibly detached: his attention was concentrated on the one aim
at readableness, and clearness of accent; and all composition, all
harmony, nay, the very vitality and energy of separate groups were, when
necessary, sacrificed to plain speaking. Nor was there any predilection
for one kind of form rather than another. Bounded forms were, in the
columns and principal decorative members, adopted, not for their own
sake, but as characteristic of the things represented. They were
beautifully rounded, because the Greek habitually did well what he had
to do, not because he loved roundness more than squareness; severely
rectilinear forms were associated with the curved ones in the cornice
and triglyph, and the mass of the pillar was divided by a fluting,
which, in distant effect, destroyed much of its breadth. What power of
light these primal arrangements left, was diminished in successive
refinements and additions of ornament; and continued to diminish through
Roman work, until the confirmation of the circular arch as a decorative
feature. Its lovely and simple line taught the eye to ask for a similar
boundary of solid form; the dome followed, and necessarily the
decorative masses were thenceforward managed with reference to, and in
sympathy with, the chief feature of the building. Hence arose, among the
Byzantine architects, a system of ornament, entirely restrained within
the superfices of curvilinear masses, on which the light fell with as
unbroken gradation as on a dome or column, while the illumined surface
was nevertheless cut into details of singular and most ingenious
intricacy. Something is, of course, to be allowed for the less dexterity
of the workmen; it being easier to cut down into a solid block, than to
arrange the projecting portions of leaf on the Greek capital: such leafy
capitals are nevertheless executed by the Byzantines with skill enough
to show that their preference of the massive form was by no means
compulsory, nor can I think it unwise. On the contrary, while the
arrangements of _line_ are far more artful in the Greek capital, the
Byzantine light and shade are as incontestably more grand and masculine,
based on that quality of pure gradation, which nearly all natural
objects possess, and the attainment of which is, in fact, the first and
most palpable purpose in natural arrangements of grand form. The rolling
heap of the thunder-cloud, divided by rents, and multiplied by wreaths,
yet gathering them all into its broad, torrid, and towering zone, and
its midnight darkness opposite; the scarcely less majestic heave of the
mountain side, all torn and traversed by depth of defile and ridge of
rock, yet never losing the unity of its illumined swell and shadowy
decline; and the head of every mighty tree, rich with tracery of leaf
and bough, yet terminated against the sky by a true line, and rounded by
a green horizon, which, multiplied in the distant forest, makes it look
bossy from above; all these mark, for a great and honored law, that
diffusion of light for which the Byzantine ornaments were designed; and
show us that those builders had truer sympathy with what God made
majestic, than the self-contemplating and self-contented Greek. I know
that they are barbaric in comparison; but there is a power in their
barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic nor penetrative, but
embracing and mysterious; a power faithful more than thoughtful, which
conceived and felt more than it created; a power that neither
comprehended nor ruled itself, but worked and wandered as it listed,
like mountain streams and winds; and which could not rest in the
expression or seizure of finite form. It could not bury itself in
acanthus leaves. Its imagery was taken from the shadows of the storms
and hills, and had fellowship with the night and day of the earth
itself.
[I] Literature of the Fine Arts.--Essay on Bas-relief.
XVI. I have endeavored to give some idea of one of the hollow balls of
stone which, surrounded by flowing leafage, occur in varied succession
on the architrave of the central gate of St. Mark's at Venice, in Plate
I. fig. 2. It seems to me singularly beautiful in its unity of
lightness, and delicacy of detail, with breadth of light. It looks as if
its leaves had been sensitive, and had risen and shut themselves into a
bud at some sudden touch, and would presently fall back again into their
wild flow. The cornices of San Michele of Lucca, seen above and below
the arch, in Plate VI., show the effect of heavy leafage and thick stems
arranged on a surface whose curve is a simple quadrant, the light dying
from off them as it turns. It would be difficult, as I think, to invent
anything more noble; and I insist on the broad character of their
arrangement the more earnestly, because, afterwards modified by greater
skill in its management, it became characteristic of the richest pieces
of Gothic design. The capital, given in Plate V., is of the noblest
period of the Venetian Gothic; and it is interesting to see the play of
leafage so luxuriant, absolutely subordinated to the breadth of two
masses of light and shade. What is done by the Venetian architect, with
a power as irresistible as that of the waves of his surrounding sea, is
done by the masters of the Cis-Alpine Gothic, more timidly, and with a
manner somewhat cramped and cold, but not less expressing their assent
to the same great law. The ice spiculae of the North, and its broken
sunshine, seem to have image in, and influence on the work; and the
leaves which, under the Italian's hand, roll, and flow, and bow down
over their black shadows, as in the weariness of noon-day heat, are, in
the North, crisped and frost-bitten, wrinkled on the edges, and
sparkling as if with dew. But the rounding of the ruling form is not
less sought and felt. In the lower part of Plate I. is the finial of the
pediment given in Plate II., from the cathedral of St. Lo. It is exactly
similar in feeling to the Byzantine capital, being rounded under the
abacus by four branches of thistle leaves, whose stems, springing from
the angles, bend outwards and fall back to the head, throwing their
jaggy spines down upon the full light, forming two sharp quatre-foils. I
could not get near enough to this finial to see with what degree of
delicacy the spines were cut; but I have sketched a natural group of
thistle-leaves beside it, that the reader may compare the types, and see
with what mastery they are subjected to the broad form of the whole. The
small capital from Coutances, Plate XIII. fig. 4, which is of earlier
date, is of simpler elements, and exhibits the principle still more
clearly; but the St. Lo finial is only one of a thousand instances which
might be gathered even from the fully developed flamboyant, the feeling
of breadth being retained in minor ornaments long after it had been lost
in the main design, and sometimes capriciously renewing itself
throughout, as in the cylindrical niches and pedestals which enrich the
porches of Caudebec and Rouen. Fig. 1, Plate I. is the simplest of those
of Rouen; in the more elaborate there are four projecting sides, divided
by buttresses into eight rounded compartments of tracery; even the whole
bulk of the outer pier is treated with the same feeling; and though
composed partly of concave recesses, partly of square shafts, partly of
statues and tabernacle work, arranges itself as a whole into one richly
rounded tower.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--(Page 88--Vol. V.)
CAPITAL FROM THE LOWER ARCADE OF THE DOGE'S PALACE, VENICE.]
XVII. I cannot here enter into the curious questions connected with the
management of larger curved surfaces; into the causes of the difference
in proportion necessary to be observed between round and square towers;
nor into the reasons why a column or ball may be richly ornamented,
while surface decorations would be inexpedient on masses like the Castle
of St. Angelo, the tomb of Cecilia Metella, or the dome of St. Peter's.
But what has been above said of the desireableness of serenity in plane
surfaces, applies still more forcibly to those which are curved; and it
is to be remembered that we are, at present, considering how this
serenity and power may be carried into minor divisions, not how the
ornamental character of the lower form may, upon occasion, be permitted
to fret the calmness of the higher. Nor, though the instances we have
examined are of globular or cylindrical masses chiefly, is it to be
thought that breadth can only be secured by such alone: many of the
noblest forms are of subdued curvature, sometimes hardly visible; but
curvature of some degree there must be, in order to secure any measure
of grandeur in a small mass of light. One of the most marked
distinctions between one artist and another, in the point of skill, will
be found in their relative delicacy of perception of rounded surface;
the full power of expressing the perspective, foreshortening and various
undulation of such surface is, perhaps, the last and most difficult
attainment of the hand and eye. For instance: there is, perhaps, no tree
which has baffled the landscape painter more than the common black
spruce fir. It is rare that we see any representation of it other than
caricature. It is conceived as if it grew in one plane, or as a section
of a tree, with a set of boughs symmetrically dependent on opposite
sides. It is thought formal, unmanageable, and ugly. It would be so, if
it grew as it is drawn. But the power of the tree is not in that
chandelier-like section. It is in the dark, flat, solid tables of
leafage, which it holds out on its strong arms, curved slightly over
them like shields, and spreading towards the extremity like a hand. It
is vain to endeavor to paint the sharp, grassy, intricate leafage, until
this ruling form has been secured; and in the boughs that approach the
spectator, the foreshortening of it is like that of a wide hill
country, ridge just rising over ridge in successive distances; and the
finger-like extremities, foreshortened to absolute bluntness, require a
delicacy in the rendering of them like that of the drawing of the hand
of the Magdalene upon the vase in Mr. Rogers's Titian. Get but the back
of that foliage, and you have the tree; but I cannot name the artist who
has thoroughly felt it. So, in all drawing and sculpture, it is the
power of rounding, softly and perfectly, every inferior mass which
preserves the serenity, as it follows the truth, of Nature, and which
demands the highest knowledge and skill from the workman. A noble design
may always be told by the back of a single leaf, and it was the
sacrifice of this breadth and refinement of surface for sharp edges and
extravagant undercutting, which destroyed the Gothic mouldings, as the
substitution of the line for the light destroyed the Gothic tracery.
This change, however, we shall better comprehend after we have glanced
at the chief conditions of arrangement of the second kind of mass; that
which is flat, and of shadow only.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--(Page 90--Vol. V.)
ARCH FROM THE FACADE OF THE CHURCH OF SAN MICHELE AT LUCCA.]
XVIII. We have noted above how the wall surface, composed of rich
materials, and covered with costly work, in modes which we shall examine
in the next Chapter, became a subject of peculiar interest to the
Christian architects. Its broad flat lights could only be made valuable
by points or masses of energetic shadow, which were obtained by the
Romanesque architect by means of ranges of recessed arcade, in the
management of which, however, though all the effect depends upon the
shadow so obtained, the eye is still, as in classical architecture,
caused to dwell upon the projecting columns, capitals, and wall, as in
Plate VI. But with the enlargement of the window, which, in the Lombard
and Romanesque churches, is usually little more than an arched slit,
came the conception of the simpler mode of decoration, by penetrations
which, seen from within, are forms of light, and, from without, are
forms of shade. In Italian traceries the eye is exclusively fixed upon
the dark forms of the penetrations, and the whole proportion and power
of the design are caused to depend upon them. The intermediate spaces
are, indeed, in the most perfect early examples, filled with elaborate
ornament; but this ornament was so subdued as never to disturb the
simplicity and force of the dark masses; and in many instances is
entirely wanting. The composition of the whole depends on the
proportioning and shaping of the darks; and it is impossible that
anything can be more exquisite than their placing in the head window of
the Giotto campanile, Plate IX., or the church of Or San Michele. So
entirely does the effect depend upon them, that it is quite useless to
draw Italian tracery in outline; if with any intention of rendering its
effect, it is better to mark the black spots, and let the rest alone. Of
course, when it is desired to obtain an accurate rendering of the
design, its lines and mouldings are enough; but it often happens that
works on architecture are of little use, because they afford the reader
no means of judging of the effective intention of the arrangements which
they state. No person, looking at an architectural drawing of the richly
foliaged cusps and intervals of Or San Michele, would understand that
all this sculpture was extraneous, was a mere added grace, and had
nothing to do with the real anatomy of the work, and that by a few bold
cuttings through a slab of stone he might reach the main effect of it
all at once. I have, therefore, in the plate of the design of Giotto,
endeavored especially to mark these points of _purpose_; there, as in
every other instance, black shadows of a graceful form lying on the
white surface of the stone, like dark leaves laid upon snow. Hence, as
before observed, the universal name of foil applied to such ornaments.
XIX. In order to the obtaining their full effect, it is evident that
much caution is necessary in the management of the glass. In the finest
instances, the traceries are open lights, either in towers, as in this
design of Giotto's or in external arcades like that of the Campo Santo
at Pisa or the Doge's palace at Venice; and it is thus only that their
full beauty is shown. In domestic buildings, or in windows of churches
necessarily glazed, the glass was usually withdrawn entirely behind the
traceries. Those of the Cathedral of Florence stand quite clear of it,
casting their shadows in well detached lines, so as in most lights to
give the appearance of a double tracery. In those few instances in which
the glass was set in the tracery itself, as in Or San Michele, the
effect of the latter is half destroyed: perhaps the especial attention
paid by Orgagna to his surface ornament, was connected with the
intention of so glazing them. It is singular to see, in late
architecture, the glass, which tormented the older architects,
considered as a valuable means of making the lines of tracery more
slender; as in the smallest intervals of the windows of Merton College,
Oxford, where the glass is advanced about two inches from the centre of
the tracery bar (that in the larger spaces being in the middle, as
usual), in order to prevent the depth of shadow from farther diminishing
the apparent interval. Much of the lightness of the effect of the
traceries is owing to this seemingly unimportant arrangement. But,
generally speaking, glass spoils all traceries; and it is much to be
wished that it should be kept well within them, when it cannot be
dispensed with, and that the most careful and beautiful designs should
be reserved for situations where no glass would be needed.
[Illustration: PLATE VII.--(Page 93--Vol. V.)
PIERCED ORNAMENTS FROM LISIEUX, BAYEUX, VERONA, AND PADUA.]
XX. The method of decoration by shadow was, as far as we have hitherto
traced it, common to the northern and southern Gothic. But in the
carrying out of the system they instantly diverged. Having marble at his
command, and classical decoration in his sight, the southern architect
was able to carve the intermediate spaces with exquisite leafage, or to
vary his wall surface with inlaid stones. The northern architect neither
knew the ancient work, nor possessed the delicate material; and he had
no resource but to cover his walls with holes, cut into foiled shapes
like those of the windows. This he did, often with great clumsiness, but
always with a vigorous sense of composition, and always, observe,
depending on the _shadows_ for effect. Where the wall was thick and
could not be cut through, and the foilings were large, those shadows
did not fill the entire space; but the form was, nevertheless, drawn on
the eye by means of them, and when it was possible, they were cut clear
through, as in raised screens of pediment, like those on the west front
of Bayeux; cut so deep in every case, as to secure, in all but a direct
low front light, great breadth of shadow.
The spandril, given at the top of Plate VII., is from the southwestern
entrance of the Cathedral of Lisieux; one of the most quaint and
interesting doors in Normandy, probably soon to be lost forever, by the
continuance of the masonic operations which have already destroyed the
northern tower. Its work is altogether rude, but full of spirit; the
opposite spandrils have different, though balanced, ornaments very
inaccurately adjusted, each rosette or star (as the five-rayed figure,
now quite defaced, in the upper portion appears to have been) cut on its
own block of stone and fitted in with small nicety, especially
illustrating the point I have above insisted upon--the architect's utter
neglect of the forms of intermediate stone, at this early period.
The arcade, of which a single arch and shaft are given on the left,
forms the flank of the door; three outer shafts bearing three orders
within the spandril which I have drawn, and each of these shafts carried
over an inner arcade, decorated above with quatre-foils, cut concave and
filled with leaves, the whole disposition exquisitely picturesque and
full of strange play of light and shade.
For some time the penetrative ornaments, if so they may be for
convenience called, maintained their bold and independent character.
Then they multiplied and enlarged, becoming shallower as they did so;
then they began to run together, one swallowing up, or hanging on to,
another, like bubbles in expiring foam--fig. 4, from a spandril at
Bayeux, looks as if it had been blown from a pipe; finally, they lost
their individual character altogether, and the eye was made to rest on
the separating lines of tracery, as we saw before in the window; and
then came the great change and the fall of the Gothic power.
XXI. Figs. 2 and 3, the one a quadrant of the star window of the little
chapel close to St. Anastasia at Verona, and the other a very singular
example from the church of the Eremitani at Padua, compared with fig. 5,
one of the ornaments of the transept towers of Rouen, show the closely
correspondent conditions of the early Northern and Southern Gothic.[10]
But, as we have said, the Italian architects, not being embarrassed for
decoration of wall surface, and not being obliged, like the Northmen, to
multiply their penetrations, held to the system for some time longer;
and while they increased the refinement of the ornament, kept the purity
of the plan. That refinement of ornament was their weak point, however,
and opened the way for the renaissance attack. They fell, like the old
Romans, by their luxury, except in the separate instance of the
magnificent school of Venice. That architecture began with the
luxuriance in which all others expired: it founded itself on the
Byzantine mosaic and fretwork; and laying aside its ornaments, one by
one, while it fixed its forms by laws more and more severe, stood forth,
at last, a model of domestic Gothic, so grand, so complete, so nobly
systematised, that, to my mind, there never existed an architecture with
so stern a claim to our reverence. I do not except even the Greek Doric;
the Doric had cast nothing away; the fourteenth century Venetian had
cast away, one by one, for a succession of centuries, every splendor
that art and wealth could give it. It had laid down its crown and its
jewels, its gold and its color, like a king disrobing; it had resigned
its exertion, like an athlete reposing; once capricious and fantastic,
it had bound itself by laws inviolable and serene as those of nature
herself. It retained nothing but its beauty and its power; both the
highest, but both restrained. The Doric flutings were of irregular
number--the Venetian mouldings were unchangeable. The Doric manner of
ornament admitted no temptation, it was the fasting of an anchorite--the
Venetian ornament embraced, while it governed, all vegetable and animal
forms; it was the temperance of a man, the command of Adam over
creation. I do not know so magnificent a marking of human authority as
the iron grasp of the Venetian over his own exuberance of
imagination; the calm and solemn restraint with which, his mind filled
with thoughts of flowing leafage and fiery life, he gives those thoughts
expression for an instant, and then withdraws within those massy bars
and level cusps of stone.[11]
[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--(Page 95--Vol. V.)
WINDOW FROM THE CA' FOSCARI, VENICE.]
And his power to do this depended altogether on his retaining the forms
of the shadows in his sight. Far from carrying the eye to the ornaments,
upon the stone, he abandoned these latter one by one; and while his
mouldings received the most shapely order and symmetry, closely
correspondent with that of the Rouen tracery, compare Plates III. and
VIII., he kept the cusps within them perfectly flat, decorated, if at
all, with a trefoil (Palazzo Foscari), or fillet (Doge's Palace) just
traceable and no more, so that the quatrefoil, cut as sharply through
them as if it had been struck out by a stamp, told upon the eye, with
all its four black leaves, miles away. No knots of flowerwork, no
ornaments of any kind, were suffered to interfere with the purity of its
form: the cusp is usually quite sharp; but slightly truncated in the
Palazzo Foscari, and charged with a simple ball in that of the Doge; and
the glass of the window, where there was any, was, as we have seen,
thrown back behind the stone-work, that no flashes of light might
interfere with its depth. Corrupted forms, like those of the Casa d'Oro
and Palazzo Pisani, and several others, only serve to show the majesty
of the common design.
XXII. Such are the principal circumstances traceable in the treatment of
the two kinds of masses of light and darkness, in the hands of the
earlier architects; gradation in the one, flatness in the other, and
breadth in both, being the qualities sought and exhibited by every
possible expedient, up to the period when, as we have before stated, the
line was substituted for the mass, as the means of division of surface.
Enough has been said to illustrate this, as regards tracery; but a word
or two is still necessary respecting the mouldings.
Those of the earlier times were, in the plurality of instances, composed
of alternate square and cylindrical shafts, variously associated and
proportioned. Where concave cuttings occur, as in the beautiful west
doors of Bayeux, they are between cylindrical shafts, which they throw
out into broad light. The eye in all cases dwells on broad surfaces, and
commonly upon few. In course of time, a low ridgy process is seen
emerging along the outer edge of the cylindrical shaft, forming a line
of light upon it and destroying its gradation. Hardly traceable at first
(as on the alternate rolls of the north door of Rouen), it grows and
pushes out as gradually as a stag's horns: sharp at first on the edge;
but, becoming prominent, it receives a truncation, and becomes a
definite fillet on the face of the roll. Not yet to be checked, it
pushes forward until the roll itself becomes subordinate to it, and is
finally lost in a slight swell upon its sides, while the concavities
have all the time been deepening and enlarging behind it, until, from a
succession of square or cylindrical masses, the whole moulding has
become a series of _concavities_ edged by delicate fillets, upon which
(sharp _lines_ of light, observe) the eye exclusively rests. While this
has been taking place, a similar, though less total, change has affected
the flowerwork itself. In Plate I. fig. 2 (_a_), I have given two from
the transepts of Rouen. It will be observed how absolutely the eye rests
on the forms of the leaves, and on the three berries in the angle, being
in light exactly what the trefoil is in darkness. These mouldings nearly
adhere to the stone; and are very slightly, though sharply, undercut. In
process of time, the attention of the architect, instead of resting on
the leaves, went to the _stalks_. These latter were elongated (_b_, from
the south door of St. Lo); and to exhibit them better, the deep
concavity was cut behind, so as to throw them out in lines of light. The
system was carried out into continually increasing intricacy, until, in
the transepts of Beauvais, we have brackets and flamboyant traceries,
composed of twigs without any leaves at all. This, however, is a
partial, though a sufficiently characteristic, caprice, the leaf being
never generally banished, and in the mouldings round those same doors,
beautifully managed, but itself rendered liny by bold marking of its
ribs and veins, and by turning up, and crisping its edges, large
intermediate spaces being always left to be occupied by intertwining
stems (_c_, from Caudebec). The trefoil of light formed by berries or
acorns, though diminished in value, was never lost up to the last period
of living Gothic.
XXIII. It is interesting to follow into its many ramifications, the
influence of the corrupting principle; but we have seen enough of it to
enable us to draw our practical conclusion--a conclusion a thousand
times felt and reiterated in the experience and advice of every
practised artist, but never often enough repeated, never profoundly
enough felt. Of composition and invention much has been written, it
seems to me vainly, for men cannot be taught to compose or to invent; of
these, the highest elements of Power in architecture, I do not,
therefore, speak; nor, here, of that peculiar restraint in the imitation
of natural forms, which constitutes the dignity of even the most
luxuriant work of the great periods. Of this restraint I shall say a
word or two in the next Chapter; pressing now only the conclusion, as
practically useful as it is certain, that the relative majesty of
buildings depends more on the weight and vigor of their masses than on
any other attribute of their design: mass of everything, of bulk, of
light, of darkness, of color, not mere sum of any of these, but breadth
of them; not broken light, nor scattered darkness, nor divided weight,
but solid stone, broad sunshine, starless shade. Time would fail me
altogether, if I attempted to follow out the range of the principle;
there is not a feature, however apparently trifling, to which it cannot
give power. The wooden fillings of belfry lights, necessary to protect
their interiors from rain, are in England usually divided into a number
of neatly executed cross-bars, like those of Venetian blinds, which, of
course, become as conspicuous in their sharpness as they are
uninteresting in their precise carpentry, multiplying, moreover, the
horizontal lines which directly contradict those of the architecture.
Abroad, such necessities are met by three or four downright penthouse
roofs, reaching each from within the window to the outside shafts of its
mouldings; instead of the horrible row of ruled lines, the space is thus
divided into four or five grand masses of shadow, with grey slopes of
roof above, bent or yielding into all kinds of delicious swells and
curves, and covered with warm tones of moss and lichen. Very often the
thing is more delightful than the stone-work itself, and all because it
is broad, dark, and simple. It matters not how clumsy, how common, the
means are, that get weight and shadow--sloping roof, jutting porch,
projecting balcony, hollow niche, massy gargoyle, frowning parapet; get
but gloom and simplicity, and all good things will follow in their place
and time; do but design with the owl's eyes first, and you will gain the
falcon's afterwards.
XXIV. I am grieved to have to insist upon what seems so simple; it looks
trite and commonplace when it is written, but pardon me this: for it is
anything but an accepted or understood principle in practice, and the
less excusably forgotten, because it is, of all the great and true laws
of art, the easiest to obey. The executive facility of complying with
its demands cannot be too earnestly, too frankly asserted. There are not
five men in the kingdom who could compose, not twenty who could cut, the
foliage with which the windows of Or San Michele are adorned; but there
is many a village clergyman who could invent and dispose its black
openings, and not a village mason who could not cut them. Lay a few
clover or wood-roof leaves on white paper, and a little alteration in
their positions will suggest figures which, cut boldly through a slab of
marble, would be worth more window traceries than an architect could
draw in a summer's day. There are few men in the world who could design
a Greek capital; there are few who could not produce some vigor of
effect with leaf designs on Byzantine block: few who could design a
Palladian front, or a flamboyant pediment; many who could build a square
mass like the Strozzi palace. But I know not how it is, unless that our
English hearts have more oak than stone in them, and have more filial
sympathy with acorns than Alps; but all that we do is small and mean, if
not worse--thin, and wasted, and unsubstantial. It is not modern work
only; we have built like frogs and mice since the thirteenth century
(except only in our castles). What a contrast between the pitiful little
pigeon-holes which stand for doors in the east front of Salisbury,
looking like the entrances to a beehive or a wasp's nest, and the
soaring arches and kingly crowning of the gates of Abbeville, Rouen, and
Rheims, or the rock-hewn piers of Chartres, or the dark and vaulted
porches and writhed pillars of Verona! Of domestic architecture what
need is there to speak? How small, how cramped, how poor, how miserable
in its petty neatness is our best! how beneath the mark of attack, and
the level of contempt, that which is common with us! What a strange
sense of formalised deformity, of shrivelled precision, of starved
accuracy, of minute misanthropy have we, as we leave even the rude
streets of Picardy for the market towns of Kent! Until that street
architecture of ours is bettered, until we give it some size and
boldness, until we give our windows recess, and our walls thickness, I
know not how we can blame our architects for their feebleness in more
important work; their eyes are inured to narrowness and slightness: can
we expect them at a word to conceive and deal with breadth and solidity?
They ought not to live in our cities; there is that in their miserable
walls which bricks up to death men's imaginations, as surely as ever
perished forsworn nun. An architect should live as little in cities as a
painter. Send him to our hills, and let him study there what nature
understands by a buttress, and what by a dome. There was something in
the old power of architecture, which it had from the recluse more than
from the citizen. The buildings of which I have spoken with chief
praise, rose, indeed, out of the war of the piazza, and above the fury
of the populace: and Heaven forbid that for such cause we should ever
have to lay a larger stone, or rivet a firmer bar, in our England! But
we have other sources of power, in the imagery of our iron coasts and
azure hills; of power more pure, nor less serene, than that of the
hermit spirit which once lighted with white lines of cloisters the
glades of the Alpine pine, and raised into ordered spires the wild rocks
of the Norman sea; which gave to the temple gate the depth and darkness
of Elijah's Horeb cave; and lifted, out of the populous city, grey
cliffs of lonely stone, into the midst of sailing birds and silent air.