INTRODUCTION - Notes
[1]. Sigfried Giedion introduced this term in his Spätbarocker und romantischer Klassizismus in 1922 and provided an extended discussion of the concept. Fiske Kimball first used the term in English in his article ‘Romantic Classicism in Architecture’, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXV (1944), 95-112.
[2]. See Hautecœur, L., Rome et la renaissance de l’antiquité à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1912. However, the deeper background of theory was French, not Roman. Unhappily the brevity with which this whole matter must be treated here, where it is merely prefatory to an account of nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture, makes it impossible to discuss such French theorists of the early eighteenth century as J.-F. Félibien (1656-1733), A.-L. Cordemoy, and A.-F. Frézier (1682-1773); even Laugier appears somewhat out of context, since he was active not in Rome but in France. Hautecœur in Histoire de l’architecture classique, vols III and IV, and Kaufmann in Architecture in the Age of Reason—particularly in Chapter XI—elaborate this background of theory in France centring round the Cours d’architecture ..., Paris, 1770-7, of J.-F. Blondel (1705-74).
[3]. See Harris, J., ‘Robert Mylne at the Academy of St Luke’, Architectural Review, CXXX (1951), 341-52.
[4]. Monographs on major architects will be found listed alphabetically by architect in the Bibliography and are not referenced from the text.
[5]. The changing attitudes towards the Greek Doric order provide a measure of the rise of Romantic Classicism. It is noteworthy that Soufflot was one of the first to make drawings of the very archaic Doric of Paestum, but it never occurred to him to emulate it in his own work. See Pevsner, N., and Lang, S., ‘Apollo or Baboon’, Architectural Review, CIV (1948), 271-9.
[6]. Winckelmann’s major work is the Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, 2 vols, Dresden, 1764.
[7]. Interest in Egyptian forms can be traced all the way back through the Baroque period to the early Renaissance, but it undoubtedly increased after 1750 and lasted well into the next century. See Pevsner, N., and Lang, S., ‘The Egyptian Revival’, Architectural Review, CXIX (1956), 242-54. For a remarkable, rather late (1838-41) example of an ‘Egyptian’ mill, see Bonser, K. J., ‘Marshall’s Mill, Holbeck, Leeds’, Architectural Review, CXXVII (1960), 280-2. In the second quarter of the nineteenth century Egyptian forms were most likely to be used, especially in America, for prisons and cemetery accessories.
[8]. Adam studied, with the assistance of the French pensionnaire C.-L. Clérisseau (1722-1820), the Late Roman ruins of Diocletian’s Palace at Spalatro in 1757, and began his brilliant career in London two years later with the Admiralty Screen in Whitehall. See Adam, R., Ruins of the Palace of the Emperor Diocletian at Spalatro, London, 1764, and Fleming, J., Robert Adam and his Circle, London, 1962.
[9]. The present dome is a relatively late emendation; the original crowning feature was much less severe. Soufflot sent a pupil named Roche to London to make measured drawings of St Paul’s in 1776, the year before he prepared this design.
In general, the Panthéon appears much more Romantic Classical today than what Soufflot actually built. The towers which once rose over the corners of the portico—in any case disapproved by Soufflot—were removed by Antoine Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) in 1791, and he also filled up the windows that originally cut into the plain wall surfaces. The murals are all of the nineteenth century.
[10]. Actually many of the spans are much too great to be covered by single stones and the entablatures are really flat arches. There is also considerable use of iron.
[11]. See Petzet, M., Soufflot’s Sainte Geneviève und der französische Kirchenbau des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin, 1961.
[12]. See Rosenau, H., ‘George Dance the Younger’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, LIV (1947), 502-7. Even more significant of developing Romantic Classical taste at this point was the character of the designs in Peyre, M.-J., Livre sur l’architecture, Paris, 1765.
[13]. See Rosenau, H. (ed.), Boullée’s Treatise on Architecture, London, 1953; and Boullée, E.-L., Mémoire sur ... la Bibliothèque du Roi ..., [Paris] 1785.
[14]. This more classical arrangement was first proposed in the 1760s by Pierre Patte (1723-1814), a theorist in the Blondel tradition, on the analogy of Palladio’s theatre in Vicenza.
[15]. This is not true, however, of much of his executed work at Arc-et-Senans which has heavily plastic roofs of various shapes.
[16]. So did Friedrich Gilly in Germany and—according to Kaufmann—Valadier in Italy.