History of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture

by J. S. Memes

——without o'erflowing—full.

Whether the Ionic order of architecture originated merely as a variation on the 'Dorian mode,' or as a separate invention, it is not easy, and not of much importance, to determine. The two ideas may be reconciled; remains of Ionic are found coeval with the earliest certain accounts of the Doric edifices; so far the former was independent, and having arisen among the Ionian states, where subsequently it continued to be employed in preference, it thus obtained a distinct name and character. Afterwards, however, on being brought into use in European Greece, architects appear to have studied its capabilities, chiefly in contrast with the corresponding proprieties of the Doric. Here something like an encroachment was made on its separate identity; or rather, the artists of those times contemplated each system as a modification, in part, of one great whole, bearing a relation only to the emotions of grandeur and beauty. This is still the proper view in which the orders are to be regarded in reference to excellence in architectural composition. Now, indeed, the moderns possess the advantage of a principle then unknown—the principle of association, which both limits the field of choice, and increases the beauty of a just selection.

Of the Ionic order, few remains are extant in Greece or her colonies—few, we mean, as compared with the amazing structures just considered. The Temple of Juno, in the Isle of Samos, raised about the first Olympiad by Ræchus and Theodorus, already noticed as the founders of the Samian School of Sculpture, supplies the earliest specimen. This, in the age of Herodotus, was the grandest building in Greece. How rapidly the order must have improved! Many archaisms, not to say barbarous inventions, occur. Next in age has been placed the singular but not ungraceful monument at Agrigentum, called the Tomb of Theron. Here we discover, indeed, Ionic columns, but everything else is Doric—proofs, first, of the antiquity of the monument; and secondly, of the truth of our opinion, more than once hinted in these pages, that the Dorian colonies in Sicily were original settlements from the East, little or no intermediate connexion having taken place between them and the Dorians of the Peloponnesus, who affected to be considered as the mother country. If pursued to the full extent of its consequences, this position would go far to explain several doubts, in regard to the early power and arts of the Sicilian and Lucanian cities. The earliest example of the true Ionic, is the Temple of Bacchus at Teos, erected, most probably, soon after the Persian invasion, or not later than fifty years after, or about 440 B. C. At Athens, however, in the temples of Minerva, Polias, and Erectheus, is to be found the most perfect remain of this order, but of what precise date is uncertain,—probably about the era of the Peloponnesian war. Near Miletus, the Temple of Apollo, erected by the architects Peonius and Daphnis, brings us down to that of Minerva at Priene, by Pitheas, in the age of Alexander; after which no specimens are to be found more ancient than the Roman conquest, with the exception of some in different parts of Asia Minor, whose dates cannot be ascertained.

In these two orders, now described, almost every beauty of composition had been attained, except facility of arrangement, with that extreme simplicity in which the taste of 'early Greece' seems to have placed the very perfection of the art. In the Doric, the triglyphs broke in upon the unity of the entablature viewed in perspective, producing also complexity in the intervals, or difficulty of managing them. The Ionic, by removing the divisions of the zoophorus, left the guiding lines of the horizontal members of the order unbroken, and with greater aptitude for the introduction of ornament; still the capital deviated from the simple harmony—the object contemplated by the artist, as it presented different aspects viewed in front or in flank, and also was not equally adapted to all situations in the same range. By the invention of the Corinthian, the beauties of the former orders were combined, while their defects were also obviated; the removal of the triglyphs left the arrangement unembarrassed, while the circular capital presented always the same outline, and adapted itself equally to all positions. The system of Greek architecture, the most perfect combination of the necessities of science with forms most pleasing to the eye, that ever did, or, we may venture to say, will exist, was completed. When this perfection was attained is doubtful, as we have elsewhere shown;[E] but the question is of less importance, since it is known that the Corinthian order was employed by Scopas in the magnificent temple of Minerva at Tegea, erected between the 94th and 104th Olympiad, or nearly 400 years before the Christian era.

Of the remaining monuments of this order, few can be ascribed to the best ages of Grecian taste. It became the favorite style after Alexander, and especially of the Romans, to whom is to be attributed by far the greater part of the Corinthian remains now in Greece. The circular erection of Lysicrates, commonly termed, from the occasion commemorated, the Choragic Monument, built 342 B. C.; the octagonal edifice of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, apparently not much later; most probably the magnificent remains of the temple of the Olympian Jupiter; and, according to Stuart, another ruin, which he calls the Poikele Stoa, or painted portico, compose the sole remains of the order prior to the Roman conquest. The first is one of the most exquisite and perfect gems of architectural taste, and the purest specimen of the order, that has reached our time, whose minuteness and unobtrusive beauty have preserved it almost entire amid the ruins of the mightiest piles of Athenian art. The second is curious in its contrivance to supply ignorance of the arch. The fourth is of doubtful antiquity; but of the third, the columns, at least, are of the best age of Greece. These, composed of the finest white marble, and of the most perfect workmanship, with an elevation of nearly sixty feet, and belonging to an edifice four hundred long, awaken emotions of regret, of magnificence, and of beauty, difficult to comprehend or to impart.

In thus briefly following out the history of the orders, as far as researches can be authenticated by remaining examples, the narrative has conducted us to the death of Alexander, A. C. 324, while it has included the consideration of every essential principle, for the Greeks never widely deviated from their established modes. The caryatic supports of the Temples of the Nymph Pandrosos, still almost perfect at Athens, and the Persian portico said to have been at Sparta, form the only exceptions to this observation. These, however, were never imitated—they were suffered as individual fantasies—not allowed as models. The period just considered, comprehending a space of about 113 years from Pericles to Alexander, was occupied almost exclusively with the perfecting and application of the Ionic and Corinthian orders. The art had now attained, in all its modes, the highest character of purity and magnificence.

For more than two successive centuries, the history of the art would conduct to consideration of the labours of the Greek princes in the East, when Asia received back the early information given to Europe. How vast the interval of obligation! But of all the labours of those times, great as they must have been, when one alone of the Seleucidan dynasty founded forty cities, only a few remains in Ionia, with one or two in Greece, are known, or have been explored. To this period are doubtless to be referred ruins in the Greek style, said to exist in Syria and Persia, while, as already noticed, the Romans justly claim those more commonly visited; but over all these hangs an obscurity perhaps now impenetrable. Innovations upon the severe purity of ancient taste were now certainly introduced; still the art had not suffered any lapse; the essential principles appear to have been fully understood, and sufficiently respected. This, indeed, is the case, to a degree of veneration not generally supposed, at least in the remains of Asia Minor, while now, in complete possession of a new and mighty element of design—the arch; never before had architecture exhibited so great capabilities, or powers adequate to the most gigantic works, whether of use or magnificence.

In this state the art passed into the hands of the Romans, when universal conquest had left them masters of the world. Thence commences a new era in the history of architecture, distinguished, however, rather by new applications than by fresh inventions. The art continued essentially Greek, for, though to the Etruscans, and subsequently to the early Romans, an order has been ascribed, no specimen of this Tuscan capital has come down to our times, and consequently there exist no means of tracing the narrative or descriptions of Vitruvius. But by the account even of this native writer, the public buildings of the regal and consular times were rude enough, exhibiting a state of the science as already described among the early nations of the East—vertical supports of stone, with wooden bearers. This continued to be their style of design and practice, till extending empire brought the Romans acquainted with the arts of the Dorian settlements on the east and southern shores of Italy. The situation of the capital, however, distant from accessible materials, the simplicity—not to say homeliness of manners—and the constant bent of the national genius towards foreign conquest, at first denied power to profit by accession of science, or subsequently diverted attention away from its pleasures and its advantages. Down to the conquest of Asia and the termination of the republic, Rome continued a 'city of wood and brick.' Only with the establishment of the empire and the reign of Augustus, with the wealth of the world at command, and the skill of Greece to direct the application, commences the valuable history of architecture among the Romans.

This, the last period of Classic Art, comprehends a space of about 350 years, terminating with the transference of the seat of empire by Constantine, A. D. 306. Of this interval, however, only the smaller portion must be given to a taste even comparatively pure; for, great as were its resources, symptoms of the decay of art, continually increasing, are detected even from the first years of the imperial government. Without entering minutely into these gradations, the death of Hadrian, A. D. 138, may be assumed as including both the noblest erections and the better taste of the empire. That to this date, the essential characteristics of elegance and purity continued in a degree untainted, there is evidence in the works of Hadrian at Athens. Thus, during an interval of not less than 574 years, from Pericles to the last mentioned emperor, architecture, in this respect more fortunate than either sculpture or painting, flourished in splendor and excellence not greatly impaired.

Of all the fine arts—poetry not excepted—architecture is the only one into which the Roman mind entered with the real enthusiasm of natural and national feeling. Success corresponded with the exalted sentiment whence it arose; here have been left for the admiration of future ages, the most magnificent proofs of original genius. This originality, however, depends not upon invention so much as upon application of modes. To the architectonic system, indeed, the Romans claim to have added two novel elements in their own Doric, or Tuscan, and Composite orders. But in the restless spirit of innovation which these betray, the alleged invention discovers a total want of the true feeling and understanding of the science of Grecian design. In this very desire of novelty, and in the principles upon which it was pursued, are to be traced the immediate causes of ruin to the art, while yet its resources were unimpaired. The Romans unfortunately viewed the constituents of the Greek orders, and even the orders themselves, as so many conventional ornaments, which might be changed or superseded on the laws of association, in the same manner as they were supposed to have been framed. This it is of importance to mark, for the very same have been the sources, and are still the operating causes, of inferiority in modern architecture. But the very opposite of all this is the case. Of this system, the Greeks, in the course of centuries, had founded what was conventional upon what is necessary; they had united beauty with science, by combinations the most pleasing to taste—because of this very union of effect and principle. Architecture, with them, was thus not more conventional than is every part of knowledge not immediately derived from sense—not more, for instance, than geometry; and its modes, therefore, as constituting one whole, became immutable, being only conventional, as expressions or representatives of truth.