Architectural Art in reference to the Past, the Present, and the Future.
Sculpture and Painting arise directly from artistic aspirations,
Architecture from practical necessities beautified--Architecture,
as distinguished from mere building, is the _decoration of
construction_--The History of Architecture has never been viewed as
an object of study previous to our own day--Phases of the
study--Dangers to be avoided--History of Architecture is the
history of civilisation--Western distinct from Eastern
civilisation, and to be studied separately--Source of our
branch--Its development and progressive stages--The Gothic
Renaissance--Advice to the architectural student.
I am now about to close the very fitful and non-continuous series of
lectures which I have from time to time, during the last fourteen years,
had the honour of delivering from this chair.
I have to express my regret that it has never been in my power, owing to
the press of other engagements, to give the full complement of six
lectures in each season; and that in some years I have been prevented by
circumstances--wholly beyond my own control--from lecturing at all. I
may further mention that my earlier lectures were only
_pro_-professorial, and were coupled with a parallel course on Classic
Architecture by Mr. Smirke, who subsequently, on being appointed
professor, took for five years the whole duty upon himself; so that, as
I said before, my own lectures have been but fitful and non-continuous.
I have further to confess that these lectures have been for the most
part limited to the particular phase of our art in which I am myself
most deeply interested; for I do not see much utility in artificially
forcing myself to appear as a teacher in a phase which is not that which
I view as my special mission.
I trust, however, that on my own special subject I may have been useful;
anyhow, I believe I have done more than has been done before, and I am
sure that I have at least taken an infinity of pains.
My lectures have been non-continuous, not only as to their periods of
delivery, but as to their subjects. I think, however, they will be found
to contain a fairly clear account of the rise and development of our
Mediæval architecture, with some useful digressions extending somewhat
beyond this range.
I have not continued this history of Mediæval architecture beyond the
period of its perfect development; because, beautiful though are its
late phases, their history does not maintain the same interest with that
of the noble enthusiasm which urged on its earlier growth.
On now closing my lectures I think I may become, for once, rather more
discursive, and may venture a little to the right and left, and in other
directions, in search of matters bearing generally upon architectural
art as viewed in reference to the past, the present, and the future, and
(which concerns yourselves more nearly) in reference to your own
individual studies.
Our art, as has so often been remarked, differs from the sister arts of
painting and sculpture in this, that whereas they arise directly from
the artistic aspirations of our nature, apart from practical
necessities and utility, ours arises first from these necessities, and
then from the desire to clothe the results with beauty. It may be said
that the yearning after abstract beauty unlinked with utility is the
higher and more spiritual sentiment; but, on the other hand, if we look
around us throughout the creations of nature, we are prompted to reply
that, in linking beauty with utility, we are more directly imitating Him
who made man in His own image, and in whose works this union of the
useful and the beautiful is one of the most universal characteristics.
Architecture, then, as distinguished from mere building, is the
_decoration of construction_. If I were lecturing on architecture, in
the broadest form of the expression, I must treat throughout of
construction, and of its decoration, _pari passu_, as the latter has but
little meaning if severed from the former, which is its groundwork. And,
even in lectures from this chair, where architecture is viewed specially
in its character as a Fine Art, it is still impossible--as indeed it
would be undesirable--wholly to sever that higher characteristic from
the more practical phase to which it owes its origin.
Now, the history of this concurrence of art with construction is the
History of Architecture; and, to an architectural historian who is
capable of taking at once an artistic, a philosophical, a political, and
a religious view of the facts which he chronicles, nothing can be more
interesting than to follow out from the earliest ages to which we can
carry back our researches, firstly, the practical changes in building,
arising from the exigencies of climate, the stage of civilisation, the
traditions of race, and the varied influences of political and religious
circumstances; and to connect with these the changes, the progress, and
perhaps the decline and degradation of the art made use of in the
decoration of their buildings; and to trace out the causes which led to
these changes.
Let us not, however, suppose that a knowledge, however intimate or
accurate, of architectural history, is of necessity a part of the study
of architecture itself. On the contrary, at no period when a genuine,
unborrowed style of architecture has prevailed, has any knowledge
whatever existed of the history of art; nor at any period previous to
our own has the history of architecture--beyond a very limited knowledge
of that of Greece and Rome--been viewed as an object of study.
From the dawn of civilisation to what is known as “the revival of
letters,” the leading nations of the world possessed each a genuine
architecture of their own; all growing, by a natural growth, from an
original stem--unborrowed and unimitated--and practised by artists
highly skilled in their art, but ignorant of its history.
The “revival of letters” was followed by a revival also of the
architecture of those races whose literature was resuscitated; and with
this revival came a certain, though scanty, knowledge of its history;
but the investigation of the entire history of architectural art, and
the constituting it into a branch of our literature, has been reserved
for a period which possesses no architectural style of its own,
excepting as the result of revival or imitation.
Is, then, this study to be viewed as a thing to be avoided? Certainly
not. Our predecessors worked honestly, and with perfect success, in
accordance with the conditions of their times; those of our times are
wholly different, though, I fear, the reverse of favourable; but,
nevertheless, they _are_ the conditions to which we have succeeded in
the due course of events which we could but little control. It may be
that this historical and archæological tendency of our time is the
saving clause in our position, which, in its absence, might have been an
utter blank. Let us not, then, throw away that which, for aught we know,
may be our solitary birthright, in the vain hope of recovering
conditions long since passed out of our reach. It is ours rather to use
well and wisely what we possess, regulating, controlling, and guiding
it; striving earnestly after better things by whatever means; but
without rejecting those suggested by the circumstances of our period.
Nevertheless, let it ever be remembered that _art history_ is not _art_,
nor architectural history architecture. They may, like the syren’s song,
lead us wide of our mark, though they may, perhaps, if rightly used, be
made to guide or aid us in a right path.
The study, however, of architectural history has many and wholly
differing phases. It may, for example, be followed purely from an
historical and archæological point of view, or it may be pursued mainly
with an artistic sentiment. Both are interesting, but, I need hardly
say, the latter is the spirit in which our studies as artists should be
followed up.
It may, again, even if artistic in its purpose, be followed up
generally, and through the whole course of the history of the art; or it
may, while not neglecting the main line of history, be concentrated and
intensified upon those styles, or that style, which we desire to be the
guide and foundation of our own artistic productions. I need not say
that here, again, the latter is the course most profitable to ourselves.
The great danger of the study is the dissipation and unfocussing of our
own artistic thoughts; just as the great strength of the days when this
study was unknown, was the absolute concentration of all architectural
thought upon the matter actually in hand; an advantage which in our day
is absolutely, and, I fear, irrecoverably lost.
Be this, however, as it may, it has become a part of the necessary
education of a gentleman to know something of the past history of our
great art; and, _a fortiori_, it is necessary to an _architect_, if only
as a matter of literary culture. We must, however, take care that our
thoughts and tastes are not led away by it into a state of objectless
dissipation, having no concentration on any one guiding form of art, but
viewing all forms of beauty with equal pleasure, and free from any
strong and healthy preference.
The most natural course for the student of architectural history is to
limit himself mainly and firstly (though not eventually, perhaps) to
those styles from which our own architecture, whether native or
borrowed, whether living or revived, is lineally descended--“to look to
the rock whence we were hewn.” And truly it is a right glorious
genealogy which we can boast.
The history of architecture is the history of civilisation, for
architecture unites and embraces the sister arts, and art is the visible
exponent of civilisation.
Our more Western civilisation is distinct from that of the far East;
and, without disparagement to the latter, its study may be viewed as
separate from it.
Our own branch of civilisation and art may be said to have arisen on the
banks of the Euphrates, of the Tigris, and of the Nile, and to have
moved westward with a quiet course along the genial shores of the
Mediterranean; while the Eastern branch took a contrary direction by
India and China, reaching Japan, and perhaps the opposite continent of
America. Let us, however, confine our attention to our own branch.
Though the banks of the Euphrates and the Tigris were the nursery of our
traditions, and though recent discovery has made us in some degree
familiar with their architectural monuments, we, nevertheless, fail to
trace them back to a period which will compare with the antiquity of the
remains on the banks of the Nile. In studying the one we long for relics
carrying us back to a date even approaching that of the known history of
the inhabitants, while in the other we are perplexed to find
chronological room for works stretching back into such unknown regions
of the past.
Egypt must, we may fear, ever remain a land of mystery. Its chronology
seems inscrutable; its painting, its sculpture, and its architecture
alike wonderful and mysterious. One flash of historical light shines
upon its early days--like the lightning upon the midnight landscape--in
the Scriptural history of those three centuries during which the people
of Israel sojourned there, and helped in their slavery to prepare
materials for its structures. After this it seems again involved in
indistinctness till the period of its decline. Its monuments seem
continuous through all these ages, and even onwards to the days of the
Roman Empire; but how early they commenced no antiquary has yet been
able to show; while the earliest and latest monuments--those preceding
Greek architecture by, perhaps, fifteen hundred years, and those erected
when that art was in decay--as clearly belong to one and the same style
as do the earlier and later of our own Mediæval buildings.
Their character may be said to be threefold. The imitation almost of
mountains in the pyramids, the rock-cut tombs, and the architecture
proper, which is columnar in its most stupendous form, and whose
greatest remaining monument is the mighty Hall of Karnac, with its
hundred and thirty columns, perhaps the most impressive of all the works
of antiquity. All these were accompanied by painting and sculpture of a
highly mythic but most marked and characteristic kind.
An art like this, existing in full perfection in its ancient monuments,
and also as a still living art, side by side with the rise of Grecian
architecture, could not fail to exercise some influence upon it; yet the
evidences of that influence are far from being clear. The genius of the
two peoples was absolutely distinct, and Egypt was already a conquered
nation while Greece was making its early strides towards fame. They
were, too, of wholly different races, so that, though the young
nation--during those brilliant strivings which led to its surpassing
all races of men in its culture--was familiar with Egypt, and must have
looked with wonder at its almost appalling structures, it is, after all,
but little that we can trace of actual imitation, and that, strangely
enough, not of the productions of its living art, but of a phase which
had been extinct fully a thousand years. The inner and earliest
sanctuaries at Karnac, and an obscure rock-cut tomb at Beni Hassan,
contain pillars to which we trace some resemblance in the Grecian Doric,
but whether that resemblance was intentional or accidental no one can
say. Curiously, the tomb at Beni Hassan evinces proof of the imitation
of timber construction, which gives it an additional alliance with the
Doric; but can we conceive of a new art, founded on wood construction,
being imitated from an art of a thousand years back, which chanced to
evince the same conditions? As reasonable would it be for timber
constructors in our own colonies to make pilgrimages to Anglo-Saxon
churches which happen to suggest a timber prototype, in search of types
for their new structures.
More reasonable, however, it may be to suppose that the latest type of
Greek art, the Corinthian capital, may have been suggested by the
foliated and bellshaped capitals of Egyptian columns.
Passing, for a moment, from the Nile to the Tigris, we find buried under
the Assyrian mounds an architecture as different as possible from the
Greek, yet containing a few almost accidental foreshadowings of some of
its details. This architecture seems, however, to have influenced
firstly that of Babylon (now almost wholly lost), and subsequently that
of the Persian monarchy, which brings us again in contact with the
Greeks.
Here we find, at last, a direct similarity in taste; for, different as
are their capitals, no one can look at drawings of the columns of the
Chehil Minar--the great hall or temple built by Xerxes at
Persepolis--without being convinced that there was a near relationship
in their style to that of Greece. This resemblance, however, is not to
the earliest phase of Greek--the Doric--which was its contemporary, but
to its second phase--the Ionic--which, putting aside the chronological
difficulty, need not be wondered at, as the Ionian cities had long lain
within the Persian monarchy. Yet it goes to prove that the influence of
Persian architecture was unconnected with the origin of that of Greece,
and only affected its more advanced stage.
I view Greek architecture, then, in the main, as an art of spontaneous
growth. Its first form, the Doric, as strictly and absolutely Greek; the
second, the Ionic, as Greek in the main, but with a few suggestions from
the land of the Great King; and the third, the Corinthian, as equally
Greek, but with one single suggestion, perhaps from Egypt; the whole as
the spontaneous creation of that most wonderful, in intellectual power,
of all the races of man--that race, inspired as it would almost seem, of
God, to be our instructors in literature and art, and our initiators in
science, just as was another people to be the teachers of His holy
religion.
The actual origin of Greek architecture is buried in impenetrable
obscurity. If the building called the Treasury of Atreus, or the Tomb
of Agamemnon, was really of that period, it would distinctly prove that
what we now know as Grecian architecture was unknown to the heroes in
the “Iliad,” inasmuch as over its entrance remains a little piece of
highly-decorative columnar work, bearing no resemblance to the
subsequent architecture of Greece, and going far to prove that these
early inhabitants of Greece had a style of building which did not evince
a timber but a stone original. Of these early structures, including the
Cyclopean walls of the Pelasgian cities, Mr. Freeman eloquently
remarks:--“These awful remains of the world’s youth stand before us as
the relics of unrecorded days, of the dim times of poetic legend,
enveloped as they were in religious mystery for ages before a line of
what we deem ancient history was penned. The historians and philosophers
of the days of Pericles knew no more of the authors of these gigantic
fragments than ourselves; all that survived, even to them, were the
shadows of fallen greatness, the feeble echoes of a voice long since
hushed in death. Our ancients had to explore the remains of these far
earlier days by the same faint glimmerings of legend and tradition as
ourselves ... and to us, whose early youth is spent among the immortal
lays, whose living substance is called up by even the pictured
resemblance of these massive piles--monuments, as we would fain believe,
of the days of Achilles and the Atridæ, and the old time before them--to
us every rugged stone seems vocal with some old heroic legend. Each
gateway may have seen the marshalling of heroes arrayed to man the
thousand ships of Argos, and to wait upon their chariot-wheels, to whom
Zeus had consigned her twofold throne and sceptre.”
The difficulty is to explain how, in a country where a distinctly stone
architecture (stone not only in fact but in idea) had for ages existed,
it could be suddenly changed for an architecture evidently based upon a
timber ideal. Were it only the Cyclopian walls of the old cities which
remained, the perplexity would be less. Such walls exist also in
Etruria; yet we gather from Vitruvius that the Etruscan temples had a
construction founded upon timber. It is that little scrap of actual
columnar architecture at Mycenæ which defies explanation, but which is
thought to point to an Assyrian original.
The Dorians, however, were a different (how different is not known) and
an invading race. It may be that their former seat had been in a
specially timber country, and their former architecture actually of
wood; and that, on migrating into a stone country, they translated their
architecture into its prevailing material.
The intrinsic marvel, however, is their power to invest an art, so
homely in its origin and so simple in its character, with such sublimity
of aspect and such refined beauty of detail. But why should we wonder at
this? Look for a moment at their figure-sculpture even in its first
archaic simplicity, and we need not wonder at what such men could do.
But, oh! look at it again, after the desolating Persian had been driven
from their shores, when the shattered institutions of Greece had been
re-established, and her ruined temples restored; when national glory,
self-gratulation, and thankfulness had given a new and generous impulse
to every feeling of the great mind and soul of Greece; and see then
what art they produced (you know it right well in the Elgin-room at our
own museum), and you need not wonder at any other miracles of art that
they performed!
I am not going to drag you through all the changes in ancient
architecture: you will see for yourselves how the majesty of the Doric
Temple was succeeded by the greater refinement and elegance of the
Ionic, and the richness of the Corinthian, though their developments
were not exclusive of one another like those of Mediæval art, but
cumulative and practised side by side.
I confess that, so far as capitals are concerned, I agree with Mr.
Ruskin in thinking the first and the last each more reasonable than the
second. The moulded capital and the foliated capital are things of all
time. The voluted capital was an accidental introduction from the East,
and has no permanent meaning, wonderful though it be.
The special features, however, for artistic study in Grecian
architecture, of whatever order, are the exquisiteness of its
proportions, the purity of its lines, the refinement of its mouldings
and enrichments, and the superhuman instinct it evinces for delicacy and
almost spirituality in the refinement and perfection of every line; but
above all these is the manner in which it welcomes, indeed presses, into
its service--or rather devotes itself to the service of--the
all-glorious sculpture of which it was at once the dutiful handmaid and
the loving mistress. Nor need we doubt that it treated the painter’s art
one whit less lovingly.
As a style, the sentiment of Greek architecture may be said to be a
quiet, calm solidity and repose, free from all question as to its
stability, because it admits of no pressure but what is vertical. This
quality, however, it shares with the Egyptian; but the Greek unites with
it the most studied symmetry of proportion, the greatest purity of line,
the most refined detail, and the noblest allied art.
When the Greek orders were adopted by the Romans--a most natural
alliance, seeing that the Greeks built within a comparatively short
distance from Rome on the south, and that the Etruscans in the north
borrowed Greek decorative art--we find that they united with it an
element in itself discordant with the simple static principle which gave
such calm dignity to the Greek. It is, as I have heard, a saying among
the Moslem builders in India that the arch “never sleeps;” it is always
night and day pushing outward. Thus, purely trabeated architecture
sleeps in safety, while arcuated architecture never ceases to exert
force. The one is a static, the other a dynamic style--only becoming
static when its abutments are of undoubted sufficiency. Thus, repose
belongs of a right to one, but has to be purposely secured in the other.
We know next to nothing of the early architecture of the Romans. Recent
excavations show the walls of the time of the kings to have been pretty
much like those of Etruscan cities; and it is probable that, like the
Etruscans, they early introduced the arch as a leading principle of
construction. When they superadded to their own architecture (whatever
it was) that of Greece, the latter became in many cases an artistic
veil, concealing more or less the actual construction; and even where
the artistic effect was purely trabeated, we find arches used behind it
to aid the apparent construction. The two systems were thus used
together and side by side, gradually uniting themselves into one. In
purely engineering works the arch became boldly predominant. In purely
architectural works it was often wholly concealed; while in works of an
intermediate kind the two were used together, naturally and with perfect
freedom. Nor were these or the purely arcuated structures open to the
objection of presenting any apparent instability, for their massiveness
was such as to defy all suspicion of want of strength.
It is true that the Romans, from a want of that delicacy of taste and
eye which characterised the Greeks, failed to treat their details with
the same refinement, though this was not always the case; but, in spite
of this defect, the Roman style greatly amplified and extended the
capabilities of classic architecture, rendering it capable of meeting
every possible emergency and demand, whether of material or of
construction, and giving it a cosmopolitan character suited to a people
which had conquered the world, and which, if itself a race of iron,
united under its world-wide sway the brass, the silver, and the gold of
the older rulers of mankind.
Of Egyptian architecture we have little but of vast tombs and colossal
temples; of Assyrian and Persian structures much the same may be said.
Of Greek we have little but the temples, and a few public works of a
monumental character; while of Roman architecture we have works of every
possible description, meeting every demand, necessity, or wish. Such
works must have existed during older periods, but were probably on an
inferior scale and of ephemeral construction; but those of Rome were
marked and permanent in their structure, and have thus been handed down
to our own day, so that we may say that the whole range of their
architecture is perfectly known to us; and, so far as we are concerned,
it is the first of ancient styles which can be called complete.
As time went on, we find the arch, the vault, and the dome asserting,
ever more and more, their supremacy. The influence of the Christian
Church followed this on in the most marked manner; and, when the seat of
empire was removed to a new, an Eastern and Christian metropolis, where
no great monuments of older or Pagan art existed, this change would
appear to have gone on with yet increased rapidity.
We have of late years become better acquainted with the course of this
change through the discovery of the ancient cities of Central Syria, and
their illustration by the Count de Vogüé, which show us what the late
Roman and early Byzantine buildings of every class were on a scale
suited to provincial towns, though influenced by the local tendency to
megalithic construction which pervades the old architectures of Syria. I
have not time to dwell upon these most instructive remains, which,
beginning in Pagan and going on into Christian times, culminate in the
vast and splendid dome erected over the pillar of St. Simeon Stylites.
I, however, commend De Vogüé’s work to your attention.
In my lectures on the Dome I have said almost as much on Byzantine
architecture as is perhaps needful for the purpose of this rapid
sketch. I may add, however, that it was a purely or almost purely
arcuated style, though yet more pre-eminently a domed style, and most of
all a purely Christian style; that it rejoiced in surface decoration, in
painting and mosaic, and in marble incrustation and inlay, though, from
religious scruples, it discouraged sculpture. It delighted in every form
of Oriental splendour, and the representation which its mosaics afford
us of its secular buildings, when in full perfection, shows us that,
though splendid solemnity characterised its churches, gaiety was a
marked element in its more ordinary architecture. It is true that the
gradual decay of the Empire caused a decline in the artistic quality of
its buildings; yet we must admit its architecture to be one of the
boldest and most original of developments; and we owe to Byzantium a
heavy debt of gratitude for having kept alight the lamp of art during
the long and dreary ages when Western Europe was trampled down by
barbarian hordes, its arts destroyed, and its civilisation well-nigh
forgotten.
It was from this still glimmering lamp that Charlemagne nobly attempted,
though almost in vain, to rekindle that of the Western Empire. It was
from the same that the three first Othos made a second and more
successful effort; it was from thence that the revived art was further
aided at the time of the Crusades; and to this source we, in a large
degree, owe our modern civilisation. All thanks and honour, then, be to
the unfortunate Eastern Empire, which, having performed its work, has
now so long been trodden under foot of the Gentiles!
As architectural art recovered itself, after the ages of darkness, the
later works of old Christian Rome, the still living architecture of
Byzantium, and the half-living architecture of the day in Rome itself,
formed together the groundwork of the revival. This architecture was all
mainly arcuated; and the increased difficulty of obtaining and
transporting large blocks of stone tended to render this the necessary
element in the reviving style. We know the style which thus rose in
Italy. I do not believe myself that much of this is so old as the time
of the Lombard kings, but that it was in a much greater degree the work
of the Othos--emperors at once of Italy and of Germany--and thus
extending the same style from the south of the Alps, across into
Germany, and onwards almost to the Baltic. I cannot, in this short
lecture, follow up the details of this early Romanesque style; but I beg
you to do so for yourselves, and at the same time to make yourselves
acquainted with the contemporary architecture of France, in which,
subject to many variations, the same feeling will be found to prevail.
I have, in my last lecture, mentioned the introduction of purely
Byzantine architecture at Venice, as especially illustrated in St.
Mark’s and the churches at Torcello, etc., and, I may add, in secular
buildings. I mentioned also its transference, apparently by the
Venetians, into the south-west of France, where and whence it exercised
a very decided influence on the subsequent architecture, and I have, in
one of my early lectures, shown the extension of that influence at a
later date--in the form of architectural sculpture--into the north of
France, and thence into our own country. I will here add that parallel,
though not exactly similar, evidences of Byzantine influence pervade the
Romanesque of Germany, whose rulers were in constant communication with
the Eastern Empire--an influence greatly promoted in decorative art by
the importation of woven fabrics, metal-work, jewellery, and
illuminations from the East into the West.
From such united influences, added to and aiding the earnest strivings
after refined and improved art, arose the Romanesque architecture of the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, becoming at length a perfectly original,
consistent, and artistic development of arcuated architecture.
I have, in my previous lectures, gone much into detail in recording and
explaining the history of the development of this Romanesque into the
subsequent pointed-arch style. It is, perhaps, mockery to refer you back
to lectures which probably no one now present heard; but time will not
allow me to do more, and should they be published, you may perhaps think
it worth your while to refer to them.
As the Byzantine was the Christian architecture of the East, so was the
Pointed style the culminating Christian architecture of our own group of
nations in the West; and, while the former had the disadvantage of being
developed during ages of gradually declining civilisation, the young and
vigorous shoot which grew from it in the West had the immense advantage
of developing itself during the vigorous upstriving of a new and better
civilisation.
To ourselves it is incomparably more interesting, inasmuch as it became
the architecture, _par excellence_, of our own and immediately
neighbouring countries. It grew up in this country with our
institutions; it is of the same age with our constitution and our system
of laws, and in many respects with our ecclesiastical polity. It adapted
itself to our climate, our materials, and our scenery. In this style are
the monuments of our kings and of our forefathers; and, above all, in
its original and identical temples do we still celebrate the offices of
our holy religion. Well, then, may we say--in common with each nation of
Western Europe--that this is our own, our natural and our national
style!
And well may we glory in this assertion, for look at the monuments of
that style! I have not been stinting or cold-hearted in my eulogy of the
architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, so I may call you to witness
that I am not narrow or one-sided if I give way to a generous enthusiasm
now I come to speak of that which we may proudly call our own.
The architecture which produced our glorious cathedrals and abbeys; our
churches of every scale, from these down to that of the humblest hamlet;
which produced the colleges of our universities, with their noble
chapels and halls; which produced the stately municipal buildings of the
great manufacturing cities of Mediæval Europe; with every form of
structure needed, for whatever purpose; and united true and appropriate
art with every form of building, from the humblest to the most stately.
An architecture, too, which decorated its edifices with such a form of
art as our ancient painted glass; and which carried on its influences
over metal-work, jewellery, painted decorations, and every collateral
art in the same spirit of exquisite and original taste, may well claim
to stand side by side with the most glorious productions of antiquity;
but to ourselves, as the inhabitants of the countries where it
prevailed, and the descendants of the artists who produced it, it has
pre-eminent claims to our most loving and enthusiastic admiration; while
the more closely, constantly, and carefully we study its remains, the
more entirely shall we be convinced that our love and admiration cannot
exceed what is due to its intrinsic excellencies.
This architecture, though a lineal descendant of those of the old world,
was, when in the fulness of its development, so absolutely diverse from
them that they can in no way be compared by likeness, but only by
contrariety. It was an absolutely new phase of art, bearing no kind of
resemblance to its early progenitors. Where their characteristics were
horizontality of line, directly downward pressure, a clinging closely to
mother-earth, and an imperturbable repose,--we may almost say an eternal
sleep,--those of this new creation were an upward soaring, an apparent
inversion of gravitation into a striving towards heaven, and a vivacious
wakefulness in every feature. Constructively, instead of the mere
support of dead weight, its principle is the systematic balancing of an
infinity of diagonal pressures; yet this, though a constructive fact, is
not an artistic characteristic, for in its more spiritual effects,
weight and thrust seem to be annihilated, and converted into upward
striving, so that the archivolt, the flying buttress, and the ribs of
the vaulted roofs, seem rather the medium of upward than of downward
pressure. In elegance and expressiveness of detail, no previous style
had surpassed it; in endless variety of imagination or in spirituality
of sentiment, none had ever approached it. It was the greatest marvel
that architectural art had produced, and it united all these magic
qualities with a gravity and solemnity in the temple, a stern solidity
in the castle, an asceticism in the monastery, a quiet, retiring
sentiment in the seat of learning, a cheerfulness in its civic and
domestic structures, and a deeply touching expression in its sepulchral
monuments, which no style could possibly go beyond, and none have yet
equalled.
It presented, too, during its course, a beautiful series of variations.
Its earliest phase stern and precise, with details rivalling the Greek
in the studiousness of their contour; in its second, lighter and less
severe; in its third, branching off into an infinity of charming lines,
suggestive almost of vegetable growth; and in its last, while returning
rather to earlier rigidity, indulging in new developments scarcely
foreshadowed by its earlier forms. Thus, at Glastonbury, at Salisbury,
in the choir of Westminster, in the naves of York and Winchester, and in
the Chapels of King’s College and of Henry VII. we have a series of
works, all belonging to the same general type of architecture, yet
presenting diversities the most marked and beauties the most varied.
Nor was it alone in its successive periods that varied phases were
produced. Each country in which it flourished had its own series of
national and provincial types. Thus, in France, in England, in Germany,
in Spain, and in Italy, and even in far-off Scandinavia, we find it
adopting ever-changeful forms, though all belonging to the same great
stem.
Mr. Fergusson, though an opponent of its revival, thus speaks of Gothic
architecture:--“Not even the great Pharaonic era in Egypt, the age of
Pericles in Greece, nor the great period of the Roman empire, will bear
comparison with the thirteenth century in Europe, whether we look to the
extent of the buildings executed, their wonderful variety and
constructive elegance, the daring imagination that conceived them, or
the power of poetry and lofty religious feeling that is expressed in
every feature and in every part of them.”
And again, while speaking of its sculpture, which is not usually
considered as its strongest point, he remarks:--“The great cathedrals of
Chartres and Rheims even now retain some 5000 figures scattered about or
grouped together in various parts, beginning with the history of the
creation of the world and all the wondrous incidents of the first
chapter of Genesis, and then continuing the history through the whole of
the Old Testament. In these sculptures the story of the redemption of
mankind is told, as set forth in the New, with a distinctness and at the
same time with an earnestness almost impossible to surpass. On the other
hand, ranges of statues of kings of France and other popular potentates,
carry on the thread of profane history to the period of the erection of
the cathedral itself. Besides these, we have, interspersed with them,
the whole system of moral philosophy, as illustrated by the virtues and
vices, each represented with an appropriate symbol, and the reward or
punishment its invariable accompaniment. In other parts are shown all
the arts of peace, every process of husbandry in its appropriate season,
and each manufacture or handicraft in all its principal forms. Over all
these are seen the heavenly hosts, with saints, angels, and archangels.
All this is so harmoniously contrived and so beautifully expressed, that
it becomes a question even now whether the sculpture of these cathedrals
does not excel the architecture.”
Noble and exquisite, however, as it was, it at length ran its course;
and, by some uncontrollable movement of the human mind, it gave way to
what the world had, till then, never witnessed--a resuscitated style.
I will not attempt to philosophise on this new phenomenon in art. It
seems to have originated in a double cause; firstly, the very natural
pride felt by the Italians in the antique monuments of their own land
and their own race; and, secondly, in the appreciation of these antique
monuments which was engendered and fostered by the revived love of
classical literature.
It is not difficult to understand how this tended to the revival in
Italy of old Roman art; and, once revived there, the centre of
ecclesiastical and, in a great degree, of literary influence, the
centre, too, of the revival of painting in its highest form, it need not
be wondered that it spread itself as a fashion into more northern
countries where the same literary tastes had taken root. However this
may be, the fact is undoubted, that from this time forward original art
ceased, and borrowed or resuscitated art took its place.
My predecessor, Mr. Smirke, in one of his lectures, gave a highly
interesting description of the noble enthusiasm which inspired the early
architects of the Renaissance in Italy; and I can quite appreciate this
feeling in a land where the Mediæval styles were less deeply rooted,
where classical traditions had never been extinct, and where the
reminiscences of ancient Rome were a subject of national exultation. The
revival of the noble literature of their mighty ancestors could scarcely
fail, in such a country, to prompt a wish to revive their arts; and I am
convinced that such a revival became a spontaneous and irresistible
movement, wholly unconnected with any premeditated plan.
Anyhow, whether for good or for ill, the revival was a great and potent
fact; and its results have now lasted as long as the whole period of the
ascendancy of Pointed architecture, and have extended their sway to all
parts of the globe where European influence is felt; nor can its
opponents deny that, on its native soil especially, its productions were
often of the most masterly description and exquisite beauty; enriched as
they are by decorative painting which has never been excelled; by
sculpture of which antique artists would not have been ashamed; and by
other arts of proportionate merit. In other lands, it has produced works
of which no one would venture to dispute the value; and, though a
borrowed style, it has developed anew many marked chronological and
national varieties, and has produced, as we have seen in my last
lecture, works and types scarcely even foreshadowed by its antique
originals.
Nevertheless, in the opinion at least of many, it had, by the close of
the last century or early in the present, so far run its course, at
least in this country, as to have lost its old artistic power. Art had
become enfeebled, while art-history had risen more prominently into
view; and the decay of the one was promoted by the distraction of
thought occasioned by the other.
The revived knowledge of the architecture of Greece rudely disturbed the
vernacular style derived from Rome, so that by about the year 1830 the
old state of things seemed almost hopelessly damaged; and every
architect, instead of working on the traditions handed down to him by
his predecessors, seemed to do just what was right in his own eyes,
though with a special rage for not very practicable reproductions of
Greek, coupled with a conviction that Roman and its derivatives were
little short of barbarous.
All the traditions of the past appeared to be broken up. Our every-day
architecture, as exhibited in ordinary houses, had become mean and
contemptible in the extreme; and, though things have since greatly
mended, it has been from a purely eclectic, and not in the least degree
from a traditional, point of view; while the untutored house-builder,
left to himself, even now disports himself in reminiscences of these
first decades of our century--the halcyon days of Gower Street and
Tavistock Place.
It was just at this strange juncture that, by some occult influence, the
public mind was brought back to view--first with interest, and then with
admiration and love--the long-neglected architecture of our own country
and our own race (or group of kindred races). At first this was with no
intention or thought of revival; it was only interest, admiration, and
love. Writers on this subject, whether friendly or hostile, affect to
systematise the movement; but it was wholly unsystematic. It arose from
the inmost feelings of the heart, and in no degree from premeditation or
plan.
It is now the fashion to speak contemptuously of revivals; and truly
they do seem strange and inconsistent after following the more natural
history of art from the dawn of civilisation to the Renaissance. Yet I
cannot but agree with Mr. Smirke that the Classic revival was, in the
land, at least, of its rise, a natural, spontaneous, and unpremeditated
movement of the human mind. That the Gothic Renaissance was so too, I
know, for it was my own happy lot to be a humble agent in it, and I am
old enough to have watched it, I may say practically, if not literally,
from its commencement.
People talk of Horace Walpole, of Sir Walter Scott, or of any one else
they like, as the early promoters of the feeling which led to the
revival. I do not know how it may have been with others, but, for
myself, I know that my love for Gothic architecture was absolutely
spontaneous, and that I had no kind of incentive for following up its
study other than the delight I took in it, before I knew a word about
other architecture, or was acquainted even with the published works on
our own, and that, without a thought of its study ever becoming
practically useful to me. I am convinced that the revived love for our
old buildings, followed as it was subsequently by a desire to imitate
their architecture, was as spontaneous and as irresistible a movement
of the human mind as those which had originated either Classic or
Mediæval art, or that which, two thousand years after its first rise,
had led to the revival of the former. It is true that its results have
not yet been so all-pervading as those of the Classic Renaissance, yet
they have been very great; out and away the most marked feature in
modern architectural history, inasmuch as it, almost alone, has resulted
from ardent and genuine enthusiasm, and from the inmost recesses of the
heart.
As one of the survivors from among the more active of the earlier agents
in this great movement, I may claim a right to dilate a little on my
reminiscences of it.
In writing respecting it, nearly nineteen years ago, when my memories
were more fresh, I made the following remarks:--
I described the movement as “being the development of a new and vigorous
style upon the foundation of the glorious architecture of our own
country and of our own forefathers, in the place of one at once alien to
our race and our religion.
“This,” I went on to say, “I need hardly tell you is a mighty and most
arduous undertaking--so mighty indeed, and so arduous, that I doubt
whether, if it had been in the first instance fully appreciated, any
body of men could have been found with sufficient daring to set about
it. The strength, however, of the movement lies in the fact that it was
not deliberate nor preconcerted, but was the involuntary working out of
a deeply-seated mental revolution. It was not that a body of men
deliberately banded themselves together to carry out and propagate
particular tastes or opinions; such would have been but a feeble, or at
best an ephemeral and merely local movement; it was rather that a number
of persons, in different neighbourhoods and countries, and without any
concert, had been led by their own unbiassed and unguided instincts to
an appreciation of the long-neglected beauties of our own indigenous
architecture. This” (with other feelings), I proceeded to say, “had led
them first to study, then to imitate, and ultimately to attempt the
revival of the style which had thus involuntarily approved itself to
their natural perceptions of what is right and beautiful.
“There is here no conspiracy, no organised movement, no preconcerted
effort. Not one of those engaged in it ever thought of its being a
movement at all; few of them knew in the first instance that others were
affected by the same feelings with themselves, nor perhaps were
conscious of any external causes which had given rise to such sentiments
in themselves. Yet all, from some internal impulse, seem severally to
have been impelled in one and the same direction; and, having at a later
period discovered the concurrence of their feelings, their efforts have
since assumed the form of a united movement, though originating from the
individual and unbiassed feeling of persons wholly unknown to each
other.”
In the same paper I spoke in the following terms of the greatest of the
early promoters, and in fact the great hero and Coryphæus of our
revival, and of the societies which were formed throughout the country
for the furthering of the study of our ancient architecture:--“About the
time I am referring to, an immense impulse was given to the reformation
of architecture by the earlier publications of Pugin. His _Contrasts_,
published in 1836,”--an architectural _jeu d’esprit_, placing side by
side in somewhat burlesqued contrast, selections from Mediæval and
modern works,--“while it enraged the majority of our architects, excited
others most strongly to press forward toward better things. His _True
Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture_, which appeared in
1841, was a gigantic step in advance. It grappled at once with all the
fallacies which had corrupted modern architecture, and established a
code of rules, founded upon common sense, utility, and truth; while his
_Apology_ which came out a little later, showed the necessity of falling
back upon our national style, and its ready applicability to every
requirement of our day. In the meantime the success of his own personal
labours was truly astonishing. Not only were the advances he made in the
revival of Pointed architecture most rapid, showing genius in every
touch,--this was, in fact, the smallest of his achievements,--he
actually revived by his own personal exertions nearly every one of its
subsidiary arts: architectural carving and sculpture, stained glass,
decorative painting, metal-work,--whether in brass or wrought
iron,--gold and silver work, enamelling, embroidery, woven textures,
paperhangings, encaustic tiles, the manufacture of furniture, and even
of ordinary household crockery-ware,--all felt the impress of his hand
and of his genius.
“Shortly after Pugin became publicly known, the same course began to be
vigorously taken up in our own Church. The societies formed in
connection with both Universities were followed up by others in all
parts of the country. That vigorous periodical, the _Ecclesiologist_ ...
did immense service in exposing the desecration and degradation to which
our old churches were subjected, and in promulgating correct principles
of ecclesiastical architecture and arrangement.
“A noble feeling for the subject rapidly spread itself among all
classes. The zeal for church building and restoration greatly outran the
increased knowledge, acts of individual munificence multiplied on all
hands, and an entirely new state of things came about.”
Two more decades have nearly passed over our revival since I thus
chronicled its progress; and, if it has had (as has been my own painful
experience) reverses to deplore, it has had a continued series of
successes to rejoice over; and if its early ardour has at all sobered
down, this has served, for the most part, to give steadiness and
maturity to its efforts; and anyhow, it now possesses architects and
other artists of distinguished talent to carry on the work, and, while
it has long held absolute possession of the ecclesiastical architecture
of the day, it now adds to this many of the most important of our
secular buildings.
Its success has been indeed enormous; yet its failures and drawbacks
have been in proportion to it. Its artistic merit has been limited to
those who have followed it up with an earnest and generous enthusiasm,
for it has unhappily been practically followed up by a mixed multitude
who view it as a fashion of the day, by which professional practice is
to be obtained; but are devoid of all ardour and love for what they are
engaged upon. The consequence is that, while we have a certain
proportion of new churches and other buildings which need not shrink
from comparison with those of the Middle Ages, we have a swarm of
others--mere cold-blooded, heartless travesties--a disgrace to our age,
and a disfigurement to our towns; but, worse still, while a minority (as
I fear) of our ancient churches have been repaired or restored by men
who treat them with a loving care, and with studious and intelligent
reverence, a large proportion are left to the tender mercies of the mere
pretenders,--often not architects at all,--who have no knowledge of, or
reverence for, the treasures committed to their unworthy hands; and who
have done and are doing their best to rob our country of one of its
richest inheritances--its genuine and indigenous architecture.
Nor is this the only drawback to the Gothic revival.
It suffers also from a degree of capriciousness even among its abler and
more art-loving followers, who, jealous, perhaps, or contemptuous of
others, refuse to co-operate in any steady purpose, and who, morbidly
keen in their perceptions of beauty, are apt to follow momentary
fancies--now favouring one type, and now another, and, perhaps, reviving
styles little allied to their purpose, as if the object of the age were
to revive just for revival’s sake, rather than to gather in these
extraneous beauties to enrich the resources and to widen the
capabilities of one received style. This tendency seems to threaten the
noble movement with premature decay, though I do trust that there remain
earnestness and steadiness of heart enough to avert this danger, and to
guide these artistic strivings into a healthy channel, and cause them to
add new life to the general movement.
It is, in truth, as yet unsettled whether we should concentrate our
revival on one phase of the old style, or whether, as the ancients did
with their orders, we should use them _ad libitum_. The one seems
somewhat artificial, the other somewhat too eclectic; but _solvitur
ambulando_, and perhaps this discursiveness I have been regretting may
promote that solution.
I have found, as I went on, that the scheme of my lecture was much too
extensive for the time at my command. I had intended to say something of
the application of the sister arts to architecture, as well as on the
subordinate and allied arts. I must omit this; nor do I much regret it,
as I trust I shall be succeeded by men better qualified to deal with the
subject.
I will close my lecture,--itself the last of my long but disjected
series,--with a few words of advice to architectural students.
First of all, I would repeat what I once heard from that accomplished
artist who formerly graced this chair,--Professor Cockerell,--that the
first rule for success in art is the same which the wise man laid down
with reference to morals, “Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of
it are the issues of life.” If the inmost heart of the student is purely
and earnestly devoted, with generous ardour and enthusiasm, to his work,
you may make pretty sure of his success; but if he follows it up in a
cold perfunctory spirit; from a sense of duty or self-interest rather
than of earnest love; whatever may be his success in a merely
professional point of view, he will never do any good in a higher and
an artistic sense. The first thing, then, to encourage is a loving zeal
for the art you have chosen.
The next aim is self-culture, and that of a twofold kind--the
cultivation at once of an intimate knowledge of the form of art which
you select as your groundwork, and of a personal artistic power to work
in it.
In these days of miscellaneous distraction, it is difficult to give
advice as to the choice of a groundwork of study. Having no actual style
belonging to our age, you must choose between the two Renaissances,--the
Classic and the Gothic,--as best you may.
It was my own lot, arising from the period at which I commenced, to have
been trained in one (at its deadest period), and to have, from the love
of it, trained myself in the other; but I will suppose, for simplicity’s
sake, a single and simple choice. Nor is it for me to dictate, were it
in my power to do so, what that choice should be.
What I have to say is that, your choice being made, you must study with
all diligence, and with the most assiduous attention, the best and
purest examples of the style you have chosen; making yourself thoroughly
acquainted with it from its very root to its minutest details, and using
every endeavour to catch the true artistic spirit of the style in its
best phases.
If Classic architecture (whether antique or as revived) be your aim, you
are at some disadvantage from not having within your reach its most
authentic examples. Books and the works of our own best architects must
supply the need till you have opportunity to study it in its native
land.
If Gothic architecture is that on which your loving choice has fallen,
you are more happily situated. Then you are not studying an imported
art, but that of your own country; you have not to travel widely from
home to study its noblest productions, for they are at your very doors;
you have not to go through a long course of book-study, treating of
examples of art which you have no means of seeing and studying with your
own eyes; but, though not rejecting books, you may go from them to the
originals and judge of them for yourselves. Even if kept pretty closely
in London or its vicinity, you do not want opportunity for the study
from its noblest productions of the art of your choice. The glorious
fane of St. Peter at Westminster supplies an inexhaustible fund for
study, while the history of Mediæval art may be followed up by the aid
of such examples as the Chapel in the Tower, St. Bartholemew’s Priory
Church, the Temple Church, St. Saviour’s, Westminster Hall, Crosby and
Eltham Halls, and other minor examples; while an hour’s run will take
you to the stupendous church of England’s proto-martyr, which equals its
sister abbey as a fund of artistic study and information. The advice,
then, I give to the student of Mediæval art is, lose no opportunity of
studying and carefully sketching from old examples, wherever they may be
found; nor, I would add, should you neglect the aid afforded by
collections of objects of study such as our museums contain;[72] but
study not only the mere facts, but the spirit and sentiment of the style
you are learning.
This, however, alone is but the skeleton. You must clothe it with
muscles, and breathe into it the breath of life, by the direct culture
of your own individual artistic powers. Make yourselves artists,--not so
much artists in the lower sense of being able to make your ideas look
well on paper, as in the incomparably more important sense of making
your works really noble works of art in reality and in execution. It is
of very little importance to any but yourselves whether your drawings
look well; but it is of infinite importance that your works, when
carried out, should be really worthy of admiration, and should produce
the impression on the mind which they ought to produce.
Make yourselves, then, artists, not alone in respect of mere
architecture itself, but in respect also of its allied arts; in respect
of architectural sculpture, in respect of painted decoration, in respect
of figure sculpture and of figure-painting in forms suited to
architecture; of painted glass, mosaic work, metal work, and all the
subordinate arts. I do not say that you should really practise these
arts yourselves, but by training yourselves in them you will become
fitted to direct, guide, and check those whom you employ, or who are
made your art colleagues.
Few, indeed, of us have as yet come up to this standard,--very few have
even approached it. I address you as the rising generation of
architects, and urge you to do what your immediate predecessors have,
for the most part, failed of having the means of doing. Let your new
generation go far beyond its predecessor. It is not for us moderns to be
content with a standard of our own degenerate age. To “measure
ourselves _by_ ourselves, and to compare ourselves _with_ ourselves,” is
never the part of wisdom. Set, rather, before yourselves a standard of
glorious days of old; and, remembering always the right noble _Catæna
Patrum_, whose successors you hope to be, make it your first endeavour
to raise yourselves to a level worthy of your parentage, and then to
press ardently onwards, if Providence shall permit, to ever new and
higher attainments.