fire-boards which, until thirty or forty years ago, were used to close
the opening of the fireplace in summer. These fire-boards are now
associated with old-fashioned boarding-house parlors, where they are
still sometimes seen, covered with a paper like that on the walls, and
looking ugly enough to justify their disuse. The old fire-boards
were very different: in rooms of any importance they were beautifully
decorated, and in Italian interiors, where the dado was often painted,
the same decoration was continued on the fire-boards. Sometimes the
latter were papered; but the paper used was designed expressly for the
purpose, with a decorative composition of flowers, landscapes, or the
ever-amusing _chinoiseries_ on which the eighteenth-century designer
played such endless variations.
Whether the fireplace in summer should be closed by a board, or left
open, with the logs laid on the irons, is a question for individual
taste; but it is certain that if the painted fire-board were revived,
it might form a very pleasing feature in the decoration of modern
rooms. The only possible objection to its use is that it interferes
with ventilation by closing the chimney-opening; but as fire-boards
are used only at a season when all the windows are open, this drawback
is hardly worth considering.
In spite of the fancied advancement in refinement and luxury of
living, the development of the modern heating apparatus seems likely,
especially in America, to do away with the open fire. The temperature
maintained in most American houses by means of hot-air or hot-water
pipes is so high that even the slight additional warmth of a wood fire
would be unendurable. Still there are a few exceptions to this rule,
and in some houses the healthy glow of open fires is preferred to the
parching atmosphere of steam. Indeed, it might almost be said that the
good taste and _savoir-vivre_ of the inmates of a house may be guessed
from the means used for heating it. Old pictures, old furniture and
fine bindings cannot live in a furnace-baked atmosphere; and those who
possess such treasures and know their value have an additional motive
for keeping their houses cool and well ventilated.
No house can be properly aired in winter without the draughts produced
by open fires. Fortunately, doctors are beginning to call attention to
this neglected detail of sanitation; and as dry artificial heat is the
main source of throat and lung diseases, it is to be hoped that the
growing taste for open-air life and out-door sports will bring about a
desire for better ventilation, and a dislike for air-tight stoves,
gas-fires and steam-heat.
Aside from the question of health and personal comfort, nothing can be
more cheerless and depressing than a room without fire on a winter
day. The more torrid the room, the more abnormal is the contrast
between the cold hearth and the incandescent temperature. Without a
fire, the best-appointed drawing-room is as comfortless as the shut-up
"best parlor" of a New England farm-house. The empty fireplace shows
that the room is not really lived in and that its appearance of luxury
and comfort is but a costly sham prepared for the edification of
visitors.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] In Italy, where the walls were frescoed, the architectural
composition over the mantel was also frequently painted. Examples of
this are to be seen at the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, and at the
Villa Giacomelli, at Maser, near Treviso. This practice accounts for
the fact that in many old architectural drawings of Italian interiors
a blank wall-space is seen over the mantel.
[21] It is to be hoped that the recently published English translation
of M. Émile Bourgeois's book on Louis XIV will do much to remove this
prejudice.
[22] It is curious that those who criticize the ornateness of the
Louis XIV style are often the warmest admirers of the French
Renaissance, the style of all others most remarkable for its excessive
use of ornament, exquisite in itself, but quite unrelated to structure
and independent of general design.
[23] It is said to have been put at this height in order that the
porcelain vases should be out of reach. See Daviler, "Cours
d'Architecture."
[24] Examples are to be seen in several rooms of the hunting-lodge of
the kings of Savoy, at Stupinigi, near Turin.
VII
CEILINGS AND FLOORS
To attempt even an outline of the history of ceilings in domestic
architecture would exceed the scope of this book; nor would it serve
any practical purpose to trace the early forms of vaulting and
timbering which preceded the general adoption of the modern plastered
ceiling. To understand the development of the modern ceiling, however,
one must trace the two very different influences by which it has been
shaped: that of the timber roof of the North and that of the brick or
stone vault of the Latin builders. This twofold tradition has
curiously affected the details of the modern ceiling. During the
Renaissance, flat plaster ceilings were not infrequently coffered with
stucco panels exactly reproducing the lines of timber framing; and in
the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, there is a curious and
interesting ceiling of carved wood made in imitation of stucco (see
Plate XXIII); while one of the rooms in the Palais de Justice at
Rennes contains an elaborate vaulted ceiling constructed entirely of
wood, with mouldings nailed on (see Plate XXIV).
In northern countries, where the ceiling was simply the under side of
the wooden floor,[25] it was natural that its decoration should
follow the rectangular subdivisions formed by open timber-framing. In
the South, however, where the floors were generally of stone, resting
on stone vaults, the structural conditions were so different that
although the use of caissons based on the divisions of timber-framing
was popular both in the Roman and Renaissance periods, the architect
always felt himself free to treat the ceiling as a flat, undivided
surface prepared for the application of ornament.
The idea that there is anything unarchitectural in this method comes
from an imperfect understanding of the construction of Roman ceilings.
The vault was the typical Roman ceiling, and the vault presents a
smooth surface, without any structural projections to modify the
ornament applied to it. The panelling of a vaulted or flat ceiling was
as likely to be agreeable to the eye as a similar treatment of the
walls; but the Roman coffered ceiling and its Renaissance successors
were the result of a strong sense of decorative fitness rather than of
any desire to adhere to structural limitations.
Examples of the timbered ceiling are, indeed, to be found in Italy as
well as in France and England; and in Venice the flat wooden ceiling,
panelled upon structural lines, persisted throughout the Renaissance
period; but in Rome, where the classic influences were always much
stronger, and where the discovery of the stucco ceilings of ancient
baths and palaces produced such lasting effects upon the architecture
of the early Renaissance, the decorative treatment of the stone vault
was transferred to the flat or coved Renaissance ceiling without a
thought of its being inapplicable or "insincere." The fear of
insincerity, in the sense of concealing the anatomy of any part of a
building, troubled the Renaissance architect no more than it did his
Gothic predecessor, who had never hesitated to stretch a "ciel" of
cloth or tapestry over the naked timbers of the mediæval ceiling. The
duty of exposing structural forms--an obligation that weighs so
heavily upon the conscience of the modern architect--is of very recent
origin. Mediæval as well as Renaissance architects thought first of
adapting their buildings to the uses for which they were intended and
then of decorating them in such a way as to give pleasure to the eye;
and the maintenance of that relation which the eye exacts between main
structural lines and their ornamentation was the only form of
sincerity which they knew or cared about.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIII._
CARVED WOODEN CEILING, VILLA VERTEMATI.
XVI CENTURY.
(SHOWING INFLUENCE OF STUCCO DECORATION.)]
If a flat ceiling rested on a well-designed cornice, or if a vaulted
or coved ceiling sprang obviously from walls capable of supporting it,
the Italian architect did not allow himself to be hampered by any
pedantic conformity to structural details. The eye once satisfied that
the ceiling had adequate support, the fit proportioning of its
decoration was considered far more important than mere technical
fidelity to the outline of floor-beams and joists. If the Italian
decorator wished to adorn a ceiling with carved or painted panels he
used the lines of the timbering to frame his panels, because they
naturally accorded with his decorative scheme; while, were a large
central painting to be employed, or the ceiling to be covered with
reliefs in stucco, he felt no more hesitation in deviating from the
lines of the timbering than he would have felt in planning the pattern
of a mosaic or a marble floor without reference to the floor-beams
beneath it.
In France and England it was natural that timber-construction should
long continue to regulate the design of the ceiling. The Roman vault
lined with stone caissons, or with a delicate tracery of stucco-work,
was not an ever-present precedent in northern Europe. Tradition
pointed to the open-timbered roof; and as Italy furnished numerous and
brilliant examples of decorative treatment adapted to this form of
ceiling, it was to be expected that both in France and England the
national form should be preserved long after Italian influences had
established themselves in both countries. In fact, it is interesting
to note that in France, where the artistic feeling was much finer, and
the sense of fitness and power of adaptation were more fully
developed, than in England, the lines of the timbered ceiling
persisted throughout the Renaissance and Louis XIII periods; whereas
in England the Elizabethan architects, lost in the mazes of Italian
detail, without a guiding perception of its proper application,
abandoned the timbered ceiling, with its eminently architectural
subdivisions, for a flat plaster surface over which geometrical
flowers in stucco meandered in endless sinuosities, unbroken by a
single moulding, and repeating themselves with the maddening
persistency of wall-paper pattern. This style of ornamentation was
done away with by Inigo Jones and his successors, who restored the
architectural character of the ceiling, whether flat or vaulted; and
thereafter panelling persisted in England until the French Revolution
brought about the general downfall of taste.[26]
In France, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the liking for
_petits appartements_ led to greater lightness in all kinds of
decorative treatment; and the ceilings of the Louis XV period, while
pleasing in detail, are open to the criticism of being somewhat weak
in form. Still, they are always _compositions_, and their light
traceries, though perhaps too dainty and fragile in themselves, are so
disposed as to form a clearly marked design, instead of being allowed
to wander in a monotonous network over the whole surface of the
ceiling, like the ubiquitous Tudor rose. Isaac Ware, trained in the
principles of form which the teachings of Inigo Jones had so deeply
impressed upon English architects, ridicules the "petty wildnesses" of
the French style; but if the Louis XV ceiling lost for a time its
architectural character, this was soon to be restored by Gabriel and
his followers, while at the same period in England the forcible
mouldings of Inigo Jones's school were fading into the ineffectual
grace of Adam's laurel-wreaths and velaria.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXIV._
CEILING IN THE PALAIS DE JUSTICE, RENNES.
LOUIS XIV PERIOD.
(WOODEN CEILING IMITATING MASONRY VAULTING AND STUCCO
ORNAMENTATION.)]
In the general effect of the room, the form of the ceiling is of more
importance than its decoration. In rooms of a certain size and height,
a flat surface overhead looks monotonous, and the ceiling should be
vaulted or coved.[27] Endless modifications of this form of treatment
are to be found in the architectural treatises of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, as well as in the buildings of that period.
A coved ceiling greatly increases the apparent height of a low-studded
room; but rooms of this kind should not be treated with an order,
since the projection of the cornice below the springing of the cove
will lower the walls so much as to defeat the purpose for which the
cove has been used. In such rooms the cove should rise directly from
the walls; and this treatment suggests the important rule that where
the cove is not supported by a cornice the ceiling decoration should
be of very light character. A heavy panelled ceiling should not rest
on the walls without the intervention of a strongly profiled cornice.
The French Louis XV decoration, with its fanciful embroidery of stucco
ornament, is well suited to coved ceilings springing directly from
the walls in a room of low stud; while a ceiling divided into panels
with heavy architectural mouldings, whether it be flat or vaulted,
looks best when the walls are treated with a complete order.
Durand, in his lectures on architecture, in speaking of cornices lays
down the following excellent rules: "Interior cornices must
necessarily differ more or less from those belonging to the orders as
used externally, though in rooms of reasonable height these
differences need be but slight; but if the stud be low, as sometimes
is inevitable, the cornice must be correspondingly narrowed, and given
an excessive projection, in order to increase the apparent height of
the room. Moreover, as in the interior of the house the light is much
less bright than outside, the cornice should be so profiled that the
juncture of the mouldings shall form not right angles, but acute
angles, with spaces between the mouldings serving to detach the latter
still more clearly from each other."
The choice of the substance out of which a ceiling is to be made
depends somewhat upon the dimensions of the room, the height of the
stud and the decoration of the walls. A heavily panelled wooden
ceiling resting upon walls either frescoed or hung with stuff is
likely to seem oppressive; but, as in all other kinds of decoration,
the effect produced depends far more upon the form and the choice of
ornamental detail than upon the material used. Wooden ceilings,
however, both from the nature of the construction and the kind of
ornament which may most suitably be applied to them, are of necessity
rather heavy in appearance, and should therefore be used only in large
and high-studded rooms the walls of which are panelled in wood.[28]
Stucco and fresco-painting are adapted to every variety of decoration,
from the light traceries of a boudoir ceiling to the dome of the
_salon à l'Italienne_; but the design must be chosen with strict
regard to the size and height of the room and to the proposed
treatment of its walls. The cornice forms the connecting link between
walls and ceiling and it is essential to the harmony of any scheme of
decoration that this important member should be carefully designed. It
is useless to lavish money on the adornment of walls and ceiling
connected by an ugly cornice.
The same objections extend to the clumsy plaster mouldings which in
many houses disfigure the ceiling. To paint or gild a ceiling of this
kind only attracts attention to its ugliness. When the expense of
removing the mouldings and filling up the holes in the plaster is
considered too great, it is better to cover the bulbous rosettes and
pendentives with kalsomine than to attempt their embellishment by
means of any polychrome decoration. The cost of removing plaster
ornaments is not great, however, and a small outlay will replace an
ugly cornice by one of architectural design; so that a little economy
in buying window-hangings or chair-coverings often makes up for the
additional expense of these changes. One need only look at the
ceilings in the average modern house to see what a thing of horror
plaster may become in the hands of an untrained "designer."
The same general principles of composition suggested for the treatment
of walls may be applied to ceiling-decoration. Thus it is essential
that where there is a division of parts, one part shall perceptibly
predominate; and this, in a ceiling, should be the central division.
The chief defect of the coffered Renaissance ceiling is the lack of
this predominating part. Great as may have been the decorative skill
expended on the treatment of beams and panels, the coffered ceiling
of equal-sized divisions seems to press down upon the spectator's
head; whereas the large central panel gives an idea of height that the
great ceiling-painters were quick to enhance by glimpses of cloud and
sky, or some aerial effect, as in Mantegna's incomparable ceiling of
the Sala degli Sposi in the ducal palace of Mantua.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXV._
CEILING OF THE SALA DEGLI SPOSI, DUCAL PALACE, MANTUA.
BY ANDREA MANTEGNA, 1474.]
Ceiling-decoration should never be a literal reproduction of
wall-decoration. The different angle and greater distance at which
ceilings are viewed demand a quite different treatment and it is to
the disregard of this fact that most badly designed ceilings owe their
origin. Even in the high days of art there was a tendency on the part
of some decorators to confound the two plane surfaces of wall and
ceiling, and one might cite many wall-designs which have been
transferred to the ceiling without being rearranged to fit their new
position. Instances of this kind have never been so general as in the
present day. The reaction from the badly designed mouldings and
fungoid growths that characterized the ceilings of forty years ago has
led to the use of attenuated laurel-wreaths combined with other puny
attributes taken from Sheraton cabinets and Adam mantel-pieces. These
so-called ornaments, always somewhat lacking in character, become
absolutely futile when viewed from below.
This pressed-flower ornamentation is a direct precedent to the modern
ceiling covered with wall-paper. One would think that the
inappropriateness of this treatment was obvious; but since it has
become popular enough to warrant the manufacture of specially designed
ceiling-papers, some protest should be made. The necessity for hiding
cracks in the plaster is the reason most often given for papering
ceilings; but the cost of mending cracks is small and a plaster
ceiling lasts much longer than is generally thought. It need never
be taken down unless it is actually falling; and as well-made repairs
strengthen and improve the entire surface, a much-mended ceiling is
stronger than one that is just beginning to crack. If the cost of
repairing must be avoided, a smooth white lining-paper should be
chosen in place of one of the showy and vulgar papers which serve only
to attract attention.
Of all forms of ceiling adornment painting is the most beautiful.
Italy, which contains the three perfect ceilings of the world--those
of Mantegna in the ducal palace of Mantua (see Plate XXV), of Perugino
in the Sala del Cambio at Perugia and of Araldi in the Convent of St.
Paul at Parma--is the best field for the study of this branch of art.
From the semi-classical vaults of the fifteenth century, with their
Roman arabesques and fruit-garlands framing human figures detached as
mere ornament against a background of solid color, to the massive
goddesses and broad Virgilian landscapes of the Carracci and to the
piled-up perspectives of Giordano's school of prestidigitators,
culminating in the great Tiepolo, Italian art affords examples of
every temperament applied to the solution of one of the most
interesting problems in decoration.
Such ceilings as those on which Raphael and Giovanni da Udine worked
together, combining painted arabesques and medallions with stucco
reliefs, are admirably suited to small low-studded rooms and might
well be imitated by painters incapable of higher things.
There is but one danger in adapting this decoration to modern
use--that is, the temptation to sacrifice scale and general
composition to the search after refinement of detail. It cannot be
denied that some of the decorations of the school of Giovanni da Udine
are open to this criticism. The ornamentation of the great loggia of
the Villa Madama is unquestionably out of scale with the dimensions
of the structure. Much exquisite detail is lost in looking up past the
great piers and the springing of the massive arches to the lace-work
that adorns the vaulting. In this case the composition is less at
fault than the scale: the decorations of the semi-domes at the Villa
Madama, if transferred to a small mezzanin room, would be found to
"compose" perfectly. Charming examples of the use of this style in
small apartments may be studied in the rooms of the Casino del Grotto,
near Mantua.
The tendency of many modern decorators to sacrifice composition to
detail, and to neglect the observance of proportion between ornament
and structure, makes the adaptation of Renaissance stucco designs a
somewhat hazardous undertaking; but the very care required to preserve
the scale and to accentuate the general lines of the design affords
good training in the true principles of composition.
Equally well suited to modern use are the designs in arabesque with
which, in France, Bérain and his followers painted the ceilings of
small rooms during the Louis XIV period (see Plate XXVI). With the
opening of the eighteenth century the Bérain arabesques, animated by
the touch of Watteau, Huet and J.-B. Leprince, blossomed into
trellis-like designs alive with birds and monkeys, Chinese mandarins
balancing umbrellas, and nymphs and shepherdesses under slender
classical ruins. Side by side with the monumental work of such artists
as Lebrun and Lesueur, Coypel, Vouet and Natoire, this light style of
composition was always in favor for the decoration of _petits
appartements_: the most famous painters of the day did not think it
beneath them to furnish designs for such purposes (see Plate XXVII).
In moderate-sized rooms which are to be decorated in a simple and
inexpensive manner, a plain plaster ceiling with well-designed
cornice is preferable to any device for producing showy effects at
small cost. It may be laid down as a general rule in house-decoration
that what must be done cheaply should be done simply. It is better to
pay for the best plastering than to use a cheaper quality and then to
cover the cracks with lincrusta or ceiling-paper. This is true of all
such expedients: let the fundamental work be good in design and
quality and the want of ornament will not be felt.
In America the return to a more substantial way of building and the
tendency to discard wood for brick or stone whenever possible will
doubtless lead in time to the use of brick, stone or marble floors.
These floors, associated in the minds of most Americans with shivering
expeditions through damp Italian palaces, are in reality perfectly
suited to the dry American climate, and even the most anæmic person
could hardly object to brick or marble covered by heavy rugs.
The inlaid marble floors of the Italian palaces, whether composed of
square or diamond-shaped blocks, or decorated with a large design in
different colors, are unsurpassed in beauty; while in high-studded
rooms where there is little pattern on the walls and a small amount of
furniture, elaborately designed mosaic floors with sweeping arabesques
and geometrical figures are of great decorative value.
Floors of these substances have the merit of being not only more
architectural in character, more solid and durable, but also easier to
keep clean. This should especially commend them to the
hygienically-minded American housekeeper, since floors that may be
washed are better suited to our climate than those which must be
covered with a nailed-down carpet.