How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

Versailles.—This immense palace is representative at once of the monarchical spirit of the time and of the sterility of classicism. Colossally pretentious, for the total length of the garden façade is one thousand three hundred and twenty feet, the design in its monotonous repetition of orders, scarcely relieved by the tame projections, is also monumentally dull. It fronts upon formal gardens, laid out with terraces and fountains, that in their magnificence are a memorial to the genius of Le Nôtre. The decorations of the interior of the palace exhibit the unfortunate taste for prodigal display, represented in exuberant and oppressively heavy relief work, executed in gilded papier maché, and set off with prodigious canvases by Lebrun and his assistants.

J. H. Mansart also designed the Place Vendome, around the four sides of which all the houses are treated with a uniform order of colossal pilasters, out of scale with the size of the square and pretentiously inappropriate. His, too, was the Veterans’ home, the Hôtel des Invalides.

Hôtel des Invalides.—The latter is vast but truly barrack-like, with tedious repetition of the orders; but is celebrated for the stately grace of the dome. This surmounts the church that is in the form of a Greek cross, the angles being filled with chapels, so as to make the complete plan a square. The exterior design of the dome includes a high drum, pierced with windows, between which project eight coupled columns that form buttresses. These terminate in carved corbels, which reinforce a smaller drum, with round topped lights. From this springs the dome; the grace of its curve being echoed in the airy cupola whose roof diminishes in concave curves to a soaring point.

The somewhat excessive height of the exterior needed on the inside very considerable reduction, in order to bring it into proportion with the rest of the interior. This the architect accomplished by erecting beneath the wooden shell of the outer dome two interior ones, a middle and a lower one, independently constructed. The lower, which rises immediately above the lower drum, has a large circular opening, through which is visible the decorations painted on the middle dome, which rests upon the upper drum and is lighted by its windows. The whole structure is supported upon four large piers, which, as in S. Paul’s, London, are pierced by arched openings, leading, in the case of the Invalides, into the four angle chapels.

Another instance of a triple dome occurs in the Church of S. Geneviève, better known as the Pantheon, which we shall refer to later in connection with the Classic revival, although its construction, extending from 1755 to 1781, occupied a considerable part of the Rococo period.

Rococo.—The Rococo is marked by a further decline into dry and pedantic formality in the use of the orders, which, however, in time produced a reaction toward a more intelligent, if uninspired, observance of the principles of classic design. It appears in the façade added to the Church of S. Sulpice in 1755 by the Italian, Servandoni. This comprises a Doric portico, supporting an Ionic arcade, above which, at the extremities, rise turrets in two tiers of orders. Other examples which mark the end of the reign of Louis XV will be referred to in the subsequent chapter on Classic Revival.

Meanwhile the style that is recognised as Rococo is characteristically exhibited in the interior decorations. These reflect the change of spirit that came over court life with the death of Louis XIV and the succession of the Duke of Orleans as regent during the minority of Louis XV. The old King under the control of Madame de Maintenon and his confessor had become gloomily religious; the court spirit, punctilious as ever, was ponderously dull. With the Regency it rebounded into lightsomeness. Versailles was abandoned for the Luxembourg; the peruke and stiff fashions gave way to powdered hair and elegance of costume; rigid etiquette was replaced with gay wit and gallantry; all that was lightest in the Gallic temperament bubbled sparkling to the surface. To the call of this new spirit the decorators responded. The papier-maché ornament was discarded for stucco; profusion still abounded, but it was no longer heavy and oppressive; it wandered in light luxuriance over walls, doors, and ceilings; exhibiting a fertility of decorative invention in its combinations of curly-cues, scrolls, shells, foliage, flowers, and rockwork. The last named motive (rocca in Italian) is the doubtful origin attributed to the term Rococo.

It was a style that characteristically avoided straight lines and, in general, the formality of arrangement which distinguishes classic ornament. Accordingly it fell under the ban of the Classical Revival and is always condemned by those whose preferences are classical. And, undoubtedly, its freedom often degenerated into license and its profusion became excess, especially in the hands of German or Spanish imitators. Yet, at its best, when considered as a setting to the costumes and manners of the period and as an expression of the social spirit, it represented something so vitally appropriate to the time and place of its creation that it commands the consideration of the student. Under an impulse infinitely inferior to that which inspired the decorators of the Gothic and Early Renaissance, it yet represents the same fecundity of Gallic creativeness.