§ 93. What I think it right, in conclusion, to insist upon is this: that a proper knowledge of Greek art, instead of being the mere amusement of the dilettante, is likely to have an important
effect upon the general appearance of our public buildings and our homes, and to make them not only more beautiful, but also instructive to the rising generation. The day for new developments of architecture and of decorative art seems past, though the modern discovery of a new material for building—iron—ought to have brought with it something fresh and original. In earlier ages the quality of the material can always be shown to be a potent factor in style.
Modern revivals of ancient styles,—Gothic, Renaissance.
If, however, we are not to have a style of our own, we must necessarily go back to the great builders and decorators of former ages, and make them the models of our artists. This has in fact been the history of the revivals since the universal reign of vulgarity in what we call the early Queen Victoria period in England. First there was a great Gothic revival, when we began to understand what the builders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant, and to reproduce their ideas with intelligence. This has since given way to the Renaissance style, in which most recent buildings have been erected, and which has beauties which the Gothic revivalists used to regard with horror.
There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model. This, however, will have been gained,—that our ordinary lay public will have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic works of the early, but the great Renaissance works
of the late Middle Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or added to it[211:1].
Probability of Hellenic revival.
It is more than likely that the next revival will be a Hellenic revival. Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or late Hellenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676) from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2].
Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose, Dörpfeld.
Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann, had studied with real care