An architect should not be a mere artist; he ought to have some tincture both of literature and science, and also some knowledge of history. Not to draw from it irrelevant fables, as Vitruvius tells us, but to enrich the mind and strengthen the understanding. In every work of art, and I may be forgiven for repeating the sentiment, the highest value is in the impression of the mind of the artist; and how can that deserve admiration which is the product of feebleness or fatuity?
These previous reflections, on what a student ought to know before he travels, will pretty well point out to us what he has to do while in foreign countries. I shall not attempt to indicate the particular edifices which deserve his attention; but I would rather recommend him to study whatever strikes him most. He will get on faster, and probably farther, by carefully improving his natural taste, than in endeavouring to form to himself another. And let him never forget that the object of his study is to trace out beauties, not to enumerate defects, and congratulate himself on his own superiority, or on that of his country: he is to hunt out what is excellent, and to separate the gold from the dross; and if in buildings generally praised, he cannot find any thing to admire, he may be pretty confident that there is some defect in himself. Their merits perhaps may consist in particulars to which he is less sensible than many other people, and he may think such particulars more highly valued than they deserve, and he may possibly be right in so thinking; yet if he be not capable of seeing those merits, it must be attributed to his want of eyesight.
Many students in architecture seem to employ themselves wholly in measuring different buildings, ancient or modern, and imagine that while so doing, their time is necessarily well employed. To a certain degree this is a desirable occupation, and it fills the portfolio, and makes a great display of industry; yet it is possible to be more industrious, and more usefully so, and have less to shew. No artist has the notion of ever following any of these buildings minutely in his own productions. Who would ever think of copying the Pantheon in its precise dimensions, and in its details, or what employer either public or private could ever require it? and if it were to be done, have we not engravings which would be sufficiently exact? In a length of 144 feet, it is impossible to consider an inch or two more or less, as of any importance. Nor is the wish to return with a great number of laborious drawings a reasonable motive. After the first month or two they are neglected, and as they have little beauty in themselves, and are not wanted for imitation, they sleep perhaps for ever in the portfolio. The real motive for measuring any building is to understand it better. The student’s attention is forced in succession on each individual part; he gets it as it were by heart, and what he possesses on paper is of little value compared with that which he fixes in his mind, and indeed the principal merit of the first is, that it recals the latter, which among so many objects might be forgotten.
What the student has to do then, is to see every ancient building, and every modern building of consequence. To remark whatever pleases him, and to note it on paper, either in writing, or by sketches, or rather by both. To consider what are the circumstances to which the effect which he admires is owing; whether in the general distribution of the masses, in the disposition of the orders, or in the minuter details; and to take such dimensions, and make such drawings, as would enable him upon occasion to produce a similar effect; and this mental process is to be applied, not merely to the beauty, but also to the solidity, convenience, and economy of the edifice. This will form his principal employment; but besides this he will find it advantageous to notice, whatever either in plan, or in ornament, gives character to one edifice, or to one style of architecture; to copy in detail a few of the most beautiful ornaments, whether of friezes or of capitals, or of any other part; and to go completely through, in plans, sections, &c., one or two ancient, and one or two modern buildings, till he makes himself quite master of the feeling of the artist. As for the time employed, it is by no means of consequence that every one should see every thing. One may visit the South of France, which another may neglect. Some may repair to one city of Italy, and others to another. One may pass over slightly, what another studies with the greatest care; but every one should see Rome and Vicenza. I may add Pæstum, and out of Italy, Athens. No person can form a just idea of any style of architecture, without seeing its best examples. Prints may recal what we have seen, but they give a very imperfect notion of the degree of excellence of what we have not seen. We must study the Corinthian at Rome, the Doric, in its more solid and massy form at Pæstum; in its more graceful proportions at Athens; if there were any Ionic building remaining tolerably perfect in Asia Minor, I should send him to that country, but this I am afraid is not the case. Rome will be his head quarters, because it is convenient to fix oneself principally in one place, and Rome, from the multitude of its objects both ancient and modern, and from the society obtained among artists of all nations, who resort thither, is far preferable to any other city. Here, if he stay two years, including one summer at Tivoli and Palestrina, and another at Terni, Assisi, &c., he will not find it too much. Eight months would do for all the North of Italy, and three more for Naples and Pæstum, provided he do not go to Sicily, which I do not consider as necessary; there is no Doric edifice in that island equal to the great temple at Pæstum. Considering the inconvenient travelling, and the quarantine, he ought to allow at least a year for Greece, half of which should be spent at Athens. And these, with the time of going and returning, will occupy somewhat more than four years; and if Sicily or the South of France be added, something may be taken from other objects to bring it within four years and a half: it is probably better that the student should set out with the prospect of an earlier return, for four years and a half seems a long while, both to a young man and to his parents; and the former may perhaps relax in his efforts, when he sees the time before him, more clearly than the employments which are to fill it up.
LETTER XLII.
SPECULATIONS AT ROME.
Rome, August, 1817.
Suetonius, in the life of Augustus, tells us, that that emperor boasted that he had found Rome of brick, and left it of marble. We must, I conceive, not take this expression too literally, but merely as a description of increased magnificence. The words attributed to him by Dion, that he had found it of earth, and left it of stone, are nearer the truth, if we suppose the term stone to be applied to all materials of a durable nature, as that of earth would certainly imply what was soft and easily perishing. I have frequently heard the expression of Suetonius contended for as the literal description of a fact; but of the monuments remaining, known to be prior to the time of Augustus, not one is of brick: while on the contrary, from his time downwards, brick was evidently used in the greatest abundance. Vitruvius, who certainly did not publish his work before the time of Augustus, is diffuse in his account of unburnt bricks, but says nothing about the formation of burnt bricks, which seems to prove that they were not then in common use at Rome. He proceeds to state, that very good and durable buildings may be made of burnt bricks, and cites as examples, several buildings in old Greece, and in Magna Græcia. Another circumstance, which indicates that bricks were little used at that period, is found in his account of pozzolana, pulvis puteolana, which he describes as an excellent material for building, and as found about Baia and mount Vesuvius, while in fact this substance is very abundant about Rome, and nearly, if not quite universal, in the ancient brick and rubble-work there.
If however there are no brick monuments remaining, which date certainly before the time of Augustus, there are many such, which have been supposed to be of republican times. The Circus maximus is attributed to Romulus, and some brickwork may be observed among the trifling fragments which are shewn as its ruins, but as no one can believe that these are of the time of Romulus, we may as well suppose them after, as before, that of Augustus; especially as the work is of the same nature as that of the palace of the Cæsars just behind it. The earliest aqueducts were of the time of the republic, but these form a curious lesson against the early use of brickwork; although sometimes quoted in its favour. The temple of Saturn is also said to be ancient; but whether the lofty brick wall, just by the arch of Constantine, be a part of the temple, and whether if it be so, the temple was not rebuilt under the emperors, are both disputable points. It exhibits an abuse of the use of arches, which in this example occur in the solid of the wall, when there are no openings below, or none which at all correspond with the upper arches. Such an abuse does not seem likely to have been introduced very early, yet we find something of it in the Pantheon, as has been already noticed. Another edifice which pretends to an early date, is that usually called the temple of Rediculus, built to commemorate the retreat of Hannibal. But Hannibal, according to the antiquaries, approached Rome, not in this quarter, but in the neighbourhood of the Porta Salaria, and such a temple would probably have been built near the spot where he advanced nearest to the walls. The present building is in a valley far from the old circuit of the city, and not at all suited to a reconnoitring position, and the character of the work does not announce an early period of the art of building or of brickmaking.
The stone buildings supposed to be prior to the time of Augustus are, the Cloaca maxima, and some portions of the aqueducts, of which as much use has not been made in the history of architecture as might be. Without them, the Cloaca maxima stands the single example of the use of the arch, from the foundation of Rome to the government of the Cæsars; these at least form stepping-stones in that long interval, though still few and far apart. Some portions of the bridges also are considered as republican, but I think only of the piers; and there are vestiges of the temple of Æsculapius, and of the temple of Filial Piety. We may add to these the Tabularium, and a few other fragments about the Capitol, the Mamertine prisons, the sepulchre of Caius Poplicus Bibulus, the temple of Fortuna virilis, seven columns of the temple of Pudicitia patricia, and the temple of Vesta, or, if you like it better, the temple of Hercules vincitor, for I have a book to demonstrate that this latter is the true appellation. A circular temple of this name was built somewhere hereabouts in the year 480 of Rome, but the author of the book is willing to suppose that it was rebuilt by some of the first emperors. I have before stated some reasons which incline me to think this edifice earlier than the emperors, though it may perhaps have been considerably repaired and restored by them; but I am not at all willing to believe it so early as 480 A. U. C. In fact, whether it be the temple of Vesta, of Hercules vincitor, or of any other god or goddess, we have only supposition as to the date of its existing remains. The tomb of the Scipios is of peperino; the brickwork found in it is of posterior erection. The fragment called the temple of Concord is placed by Milizia among the edifices of the republic, but it has no claim to such antiquity.
Of the time of the Emperors, we have six or eight fragments of temples, entirely of stone; but all the great ruins, the baths, the Coliseum, the temple of Peace, are in great measure of brick. In the temple of Jupiter Stator, the foundations which supported the walls and columns were of stone, but all the intermediate spaces were filled with rubble, so as to form a solid mass of masonry. The rubble and brick were perhaps cased with marble, or the exposed parts were of travertine; and perhaps both this and peperino would come under the term marmor, among the Latins, as they are now frequently included in the marmi of the Italians.