Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 2

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The difficulty is to explain how, in a country where a distinctly stone architecture (stone not only in fact but in idea) had for ages existed, it could be suddenly changed for an architecture evidently based upon a timber ideal. Were it only the Cyclopian walls of the old cities which remained, the perplexity would be less. Such walls exist also in Etruria; yet we gather from Vitruvius that the Etruscan temples had a construction founded upon timber. It is that little scrap of actual columnar architecture at Mycenæ which defies explanation, but which is thought to point to an Assyrian original.

The Dorians, however, were a different (how different is not known) and an invading race. It may be that their former seat had been in a specially timber country, and their former architecture actually of wood; and that, on migrating into a stone country, they translated their architecture into its prevailing material.

The intrinsic marvel, however, is their power to invest an art, so homely in its origin and so simple in its character, with such sublimity of aspect and such refined beauty of detail. But why should we wonder at this? Look for a moment at their figure-sculpture even in its first archaic simplicity, and we need not wonder at what such men could do. But, oh! look at it again, after the desolating Persian had been driven from their shores, when the shattered institutions of Greece had been re-established, and her ruined temples restored; when national glory, self-gratulation, and thankfulness had given a new and generous impulse to every feeling of the great mind and soul of Greece; and see then what art they produced (you know it right well in the Elgin-room at our own museum), and you need not wonder at any other miracles of art that they performed!

I am not going to drag you through all the changes in ancient architecture: you will see for yourselves how the majesty of the Doric Temple was succeeded by the greater refinement and elegance of the Ionic, and the richness of the Corinthian, though their developments were not exclusive of one another like those of Mediæval art, but cumulative and practised side by side.

I confess that, so far as capitals are concerned, I agree with Mr. Ruskin in thinking the first and the last each more reasonable than the second. The moulded capital and the foliated capital are things of all time. The voluted capital was an accidental introduction from the East, and has no permanent meaning, wonderful though it be.

The special features, however, for artistic study in Grecian architecture, of whatever order, are the exquisiteness of its proportions, the purity of its lines, the refinement of its mouldings and enrichments, and the superhuman instinct it evinces for delicacy and almost spirituality in the refinement and perfection of every line; but above all these is the manner in which it welcomes, indeed presses, into its service—or rather devotes itself to the service of—the all-glorious sculpture of which it was at once the dutiful handmaid and the loving mistress. Nor need we doubt that it treated the painter’s art one whit less lovingly.

As a style, the sentiment of Greek architecture may be said to be a quiet, calm solidity and repose, free from all question as to its stability, because it admits of no pressure but what is vertical. This quality, however, it shares with the Egyptian; but the Greek unites with it the most studied symmetry of proportion, the greatest purity of line, the most refined detail, and the noblest allied art.

When the Greek orders were adopted by the Romans—a most natural alliance, seeing that the Greeks built within a comparatively short distance from Rome on the south, and that the Etruscans in the north borrowed Greek decorative art—we find that they united with it an element in itself discordant with the simple static principle which gave such calm dignity to the Greek. It is, as I have heard, a saying among the Moslem builders in India that the arch “never sleeps;” it is always night and day pushing outward. Thus, purely trabeated architecture sleeps in safety, while arcuated architecture never ceases to exert force. The one is a static, the other a dynamic style—only becoming static when its abutments are of undoubted sufficiency. Thus, repose belongs of a right to one, but has to be purposely secured in the other.

We know next to nothing of the early architecture of the Romans. Recent excavations show the walls of the time of the kings to have been pretty much like those of Etruscan cities; and it is probable that, like the Etruscans, they early introduced the arch as a leading principle of construction. When they superadded to their own architecture (whatever it was) that of Greece, the latter became in many cases an artistic veil, concealing more or less the actual construction; and even where the artistic effect was purely trabeated, we find arches used behind it to aid the apparent construction. The two systems were thus used together and side by side, gradually uniting themselves into one. In purely engineering works the arch became boldly predominant. In purely architectural works it was often wholly concealed; while in works of an intermediate kind the two were used together, naturally and with perfect freedom. Nor were these or the purely arcuated structures open to the objection of presenting any apparent instability, for their massiveness was such as to defy all suspicion of want of strength.

It is true that the Romans, from a want of that delicacy of taste and eye which characterised the Greeks, failed to treat their details with the same refinement, though this was not always the case; but, in spite of this defect, the Roman style greatly amplified and extended the capabilities of classic architecture, rendering it capable of meeting every possible emergency and demand, whether of material or of construction, and giving it a cosmopolitan character suited to a people which had conquered the world, and which, if itself a race of iron, united under its world-wide sway the brass, the silver, and the gold of the older rulers of mankind.