GIFT OF MICHAEL REESE THE MISTRESS ART MISTRESS ART BY REGINALD BLOMFIELD, A.R.A., M.A., F.S.A. HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD. PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE IN THE ROYAL ACADEMY. AUTHOR OF *A HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND* * STUDIES IN ARCHITECTURE ' 'THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND' LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1908 [All rtghtt retervetf] 6-t .ROSE l\\ f f PREFACE IN the following lectures, addressed to students in the Royal Academy schools, I have attempted to define the aims and province of architecture, and to establish a standpoint from which it should be studied by those who hope to practise the art. The intention of these lectures is critical rather than archaeological ; they lay no claim to being final and authoritative on points of historical research, and where I have dealt with famous examples, I have done so by way of illustration. In the words of Jacques Franfois Blondel, 'mon intention surtout est d'engager ceux qui veulent professer Tart de batir, a puiser dans Pancienne architecture les premiers elemens de cet art, et que par la on accoutume son genie a connoitre ce qui est veritablement beau, et a eviter tout ce v 175602 PREFACE que les caprices de la nouveaute ont introduit depuis quelques annees.' I have hoped to encourage students to aim at that c noble maniere de penser ' as Blondel calls it, which is lamentably rare in modern architecture. I have to express my obli- gations to Mr. S. H. Butcher, M.P. for Cambridge University, for some valuable suggestions in regard to the lecture on c The Limitations of the Arts/ I should also apologise to the painters and sculptors for occasional raids into their territory, and for claiming again for architecture the role of the Mistress Art. The term is only a paraphrase of the time-honoured title, rexyr) d/o^iTe/crow/of, and may recall attention to the fact that the Cinderella of the arts was once on a time their leader. REGINALD BLOMFIELD. NEW COURT, TEMPLE, Sept. 1908. VI CONTENTS PAGE I. THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE . . 3 II. DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT . . 41 III. ARCHITECTURE AND THE CRAFTSMAN 79 IV. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS . 117 V. THE GRAND MANNER : EGYPT AND GREECE j^r VI. PERGAMOS AND HELLENISTIC ART . 191 VII. ROME . 22Q VIII. THE GRAND MANNER I FRANCE . . 265 297 THE STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE . UNIVERi OK I. THE STUDY OF , .:" ARCHITECTURE IN setting out on a great enterprise it is an essential condition of success that we should be under no illusion as to our aims ; that we should start from a definite standpoint, and direct our efforts to a single end. Architecture, in these latter days, has become so complicated, it has sometimes strayed so far from the narrow track of art into the easier paths of financial enterprise, that its essence and justification as the serious art of building are in danger of being over- looked ; and it is necessary to hark back again to earlier points of view. I need hardly say that it is with the art of archi- tecture only that I am concerned, the art, that is, which beautifies and ennobles building construction, just as poetry, let us say, transfigures the plain realities of life. That is its ultimate end ; but it is an 3 THE MISTRESS ART end not easily to be reached, and we have to consider how we are to start in our journey towards it, what should be the standpoint for our study of architecture. The difficulties in the way are no light ones. Architecture is not an easy art. It may not require the skill of hand, the deftness of finger, necessary to the painter and the sculptor, but it redresses the balance by demanding a power of trained observation not inferior to theirs, and a faculty of sheer hard thinking not im- posed on our colleagues in their happier arts. For the painter and the sculptor the visible forms, colours, and lights of nature constitute the means of expression, but the architect has not only to master the practical conditions of his problem but he has to make his aesthetic appeal by methods not easily apprehended by the layman and more severely limited than those of any of the arts, and while he is tied, in the sense that only certain forms will do certain work, and that the typical elements of architectural expres- sion, the column, the lintel, the arch and the dome are in their main features now fixed for us, he has also to realise to the 4 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE uttermost the full logical intention of those forms, that is their controlling influence in every part of his structure. There is no such thing as * impressionism' in architec- ture. Our art does not allow us to leave our conception sketched out in masonry or brickwork. The idea must be thought out to the uttermost. The incomplete phrase, in our case, is no phrase at all, and as far as it goes, our expression must be at least equal to our thought. An art in which such logical thought and such exact precision of form is essential, clearly requires the most searching study ; no merely imitative faculty will supply its place. Not only must you familiarise yourself with the methods of architec- tural expression but you must understand them in all their bearings, how they have developed from constructional and other needs, what meaning they have for us now, how they can have a real use in our own design. It is not enough to shuffle through your apprenticeship and your student days, content with picking up an approximate version of the fashion- able manner of the time. The result of that method will be that you will never 5 THE MISTRESS ART really master architecture ; you will not grasp its purpose, its peculiar methods of appeal to the imagination, its strange fascination for those who care for it. You will not get beyond the a pen pres, that deadly half success that is worse than failure. Moreover, such a method would be immensely dull ; for one of the chief attractions of our art is that it provides constantly changing problems for attack and conquest, and an architect is shut out of this fairy world of intellectual adven- ture if he is content merely to copy other people's work. I feel convinced that from the first you desire to approach the study of architecture as artists, and that your effort will be to master the tech- nique of your art for yourselves. You will see round you architecture that you admire, and you will wish in your turn to see noble buildings rising from your designs. To realise that high ambition you must face a laborious apprentice- ship, you must learn by observation and analysis what are the resources of archi- tecture, how you are to use them and how not to use them. 6 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE The first point, to be clear about, is the temper in which to approach the study of architecture. Most of you intend to be architects, that is, your concern with the art in the first instance is not literary or historical. You study it to perfect yourselves as practical artists ; in order, for example, that when you have a given space to span, or weight to carry, you will have some sort of an idea how these things are to be done, and done, not merely as an engineer would do them, but in such a manner as will translate the plain facts of construction into forms that appeal to the imagination by their beauty. You will of course consult the text- books of construction and history, but you must visualise theories, and in order to realise in imagination what you find in books your principal study will be buildings themselves. It is essential that you should address yourselves to that study in a very practical spirit. To let the mind drift in awe-struck contempla- tion, or dream of past romance, is pleasant enough but it will not teach you architecture. Your effort must be 7 THE MISTRESS ART to understand how and why the building was built. You must not be led astray by the glamour of historical associations from the hard and persistent effort to penetrate to the heart of the matter. Now the resources on which you can draw must be learned from actual build- ings ; and in the search for knowledge it is essential that you keep the practical end in view and are on your guard against the glamour of associations and irrelevant sentiment. In the Life School the sculptor student concentrates his attention on the anatomy of the model, he masters the bones, muscles and tendons, in order that he may understand their meaning on the surface, he notes their relations, he studies the interpene- tration of their planes without regard to the moral character or personal history of the model. Nor, again, in making studies from the life is he particularly concerned with ideal improvements in the model before him. A certain objective attitude of mind is best for his purpose, that is, it is sufficient for him to make a study of what is in front of him in order that he may perfect him- 8 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE self in the knowledge of form and in his own power of expressing it. A similar method should be followed in the study of architecture, your concern will be with buildings. It may be a matter of historical or sentimental interest that the founders of the church were pious men, or the builder of the fortress a stout man of his hands, but the fact is not im- mediately relevant to the study of architecture for your present purpose. The 'prentice pillar in Rosslyn Chapel is not the less a crude piece of work because it was carved by an apprentice. It is essential, in your training as artists, to avoid waste of time on matters of accidental interest. For example, you will sometimes find importance attached to buildings of great antiquity or of his- torical interest, but of no architectural value. You should leave these to the historian and the archaeologist. Your immediate concern is with the beauty of a beautiful building and the means by which that beauty is attained. In studying King's College Chapel, for instance, it will be immaterial to you whether or not ' all possible shades 9 THE MISTRESS ART of human folly and licentiousness meet in late Gothic and Renaissance architec- ture/ as was once alleged by a famous writer. If the building had failed to stand up, it would undoubtedly have been a bad building ; but the seven deadly sins themselves would leave any building as innocent of offence as the rock itself from which its stone was quarried. The point of interest for the student is how the space is spanned by the vaults, how the thrusts are met, the actual dimensions of the masonry, the proportions of wall to window, in short the actual details of building. He need not concern himself with dogmatic theories of the relation of art and morality in studying architecture. In- deed, in the absence of exact information even of the names of the builders it is imprudent to speculate on their spiritual state. The business of the architectural student is not with these things. He should concentrate his attention on the facts of building, that is, he should endeavour to understand the meaning of the architecture that he sees, how and 10 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE why it has grown to be what it is, how the effects that he admires are obtained. He should study the anatomical structure of the building, the disposition of its planes and masses, the proportion of its parts, the materials and their treatment, and all from the point of view of the artist, who some day may be called upon to solve a similar problem. That we should any of us arrive at the full understanding of the work of some great architect is not to be expected. We cannot know all his reasons and the circumstances of the case, or all those subtle workings of the mind backwards and forwards" and round his problem by which he arrived at its final solution. There will always be an element of mystery in great buildings, some quality that defies analysis and can only be felt, such as is found in great music for example. But this does not exempt you from the effort to understand so far as you can the meaning and intention of these buildings. There is a reason for all architecture, even for its follies, and it is to these reasons that you must attempt to penetrate. The first thing 1 1 THE MISTRESS ART then for the student to do is to set aside what is irrelevant to the study of archi- tecture as a practical art, and to select subjects of study which will directly help him in the search for the means of architectural expression, whether they are old or new, whether their record is eventful or uneventful. His endeavour is to qualify not as an archaeologist but as an artist in building. We have next to consider the spirit in which to undertake your studies. That you should be alert, observant, and criti- cal, goes without saying, but criticism to be of any value must be sympathetic. It should study the artist from his point of view, it should take account of what he set out to do, what limitations were imposed on him by circumstance or by his materials, it should extend to him some measure of confidence where the motives of his designs are not obvious. It is useless, for example, to criticise Gothic architecture by the standards of Classic, or Classic by those of Gothic ; and I mention this because the enthusi- asm of the earlier Gothic revivalists led them into a vehement abuse of 12 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE Classic architecture, an art which they understood as little as they did the Gothic by which they proposed to judge it. The tendency is perhaps the in- evitable penalty of enthusiasm, but it is one against which you must be very much on your guard. For example, in Gothic architecture, the construction is, as a rule, very frankly expressed ; and when you grasp this as a general principle of mediaeval architecture, you will not be unduly critical of the some- what artless results which occasionally followed. The flying buttress, for in- stance, was a favourite device of the mediaeval builder. Now, from one point of view, it might be said that there is something restless and irritating in these stacks of pinnacles, this intricate pro- fusion of struts and stays in stone, crowding round the building, as for instance in the Cathedral of Beauvais. Yet it would be unsound and uncandid criticism to condemn them on this ground, because the builder did not con- cern himself with these effects, his object was to counteract certain thrusts, and the tests to which he would fairly 13 THE MISTRESS ART appeal would be whether or not his buttresses answered their purposes, whether he had skilfully adjusted his weights and masses, whether and it is this that would bring his construction into the region of aesthetics his but- tresses satisfied the eye as visibly adequate. On the other hand, the men of the Renaissance approached archi- tecture from a different point of view. They were quite as profoundly interested in the problems of construction as the most daring of mediaeval builders. I recollect a circular church by San Michele, a mile or two out of Verona, in which a dome of sixty-four feet span is raised some seventy-five feet from the ground without external buttress or counterpoise, yet held solid in its place by a dexterous disposition of the weight and mass on the wall of the drum. But such men as San Michele did not con- sider themselves in any way bound to show their construction in its naked integrity. They recognised considera- tions of abstract form as of first-rate importance, and concerned themselves with questions of mass and outline, the STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE deliberate study and selection of the larger forms of architecture rather than with the exact logic of expression. Another familiar instance of this arbitrary and, as it seems to me, quite superficial criticism, is the habit of denouncing the double dome of St. Paul's and the screen walls above the aisles, because they conceal or at any rate give a misleading impression of the actual construction of the building. Had the critics of this school been more familiar with neo-Classic archi- tecture they would not have been so misled; but the basis of such criticism is wrong, it assumes that any given work of art must proceed on one motive and one motive only. It takes no account either of the complexity of motives that have to be dealt with in great archi- tecture, of the selection and sacrifices necessary to give unity to a great con- ception, and lastly of the central fact that the appeal of architecture is made through the eye and to the aesthetic emotions in the first instance. If a building, however pedantically logical, is hideous to the eye, there is no more 15 THE MISTRESS ART to be said about it, so far as architecture is concerned. It is therefore, bad criti- cism to censure these men for not having shown their construction on the surface, having regard to the fact that they never accepted this as an inviolable principle of architectural design, and criticism, which assumes an intention which never existed in the designer's mind, is meaningless. Your business as students is to deal with buildings on their merits ; and I think it necessary to suggest this caution, because few things form a more serious obstacle to the right understanding of architecture, than those first principles which are laid down for us with a dogmatism only equalled by its ignorance of the architect's standpoint, and of the actual problems with which as an artist he has to deal. There is only one first principle which an architect fails to observe at his peril, and that is that his building must at all costs be structurally sound, and must answer the purpose for which it is built. Few things have done more to retard the intelligent appreciation of archi- tecture in this country than that rhetorical 16 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE method which dealt with architecture in terms of morality, and for the last fifty years of the last century led the layman to suppose that Classical archi- tecture was morally deplorable, and that excellence of intention atoned to any extent for incompetent art. I will not detain you with further re- flections on this method of dealing with architecture, because I am convinced that as practical students of the art you will soon find out for yourselves its paralysing influence, and its barrenness in results which will be of value to you as artists. In the conditions under which we live and in the present state of the arts, it is of the first importance that you should approach the study of architecture with an open mind, that is, without pre- conceived ideas as to the superiority of one style over another; and above all things, without any inclination to find religious or moral sanction for the method of design which appeals most to your individual temperament. Pugin once wrote a book called An apology for the Revival of Christian architecture in England. His title was historically wrong ; in- B 17 THE MISTRESS ART asmuch as the architecture to which he referred scarcely existed till twelve hundred years after the founding of Christianity, but that was of less impor- tance than the want of candour which assumed a question-begging name, in order to discredit methods of design which he himself disliked. You should be on your guard when you find writers talking of corrupt and decadent styles. I do not deny that art is more vital in some ages than others ; but an observant student will find something to admire even in the depth of decadence ; the plans and sections, for example, of the great seventeenth-century churches in Italy, the outline of the Salute at Venice, work done, if we are to believe some of our late teachers, long after the light of architecture had burnt to its ashes. The point is, of course, that both good and bad architecture is to be found in every manner that has been practised within the range of civilisation. The sinister monotony of Egyptian architecture may not appeal to you, yet you may learn from it the lesson of gigantic scale. Roman architecture may seem to you a 18 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE coarse affair compared with Greek, but behind its detail you will find an art of construction, worthy in its audacity of the rulers of the world. In Renaissance architecture you will find feats of build- ing greater than any attempted by the mediaeval builders, and in mediaeval art you will find a finesse and subtlety of detail not inferior to the most accom- plished art of the Renaissance. The open mind and the sympathetic mind are the first conditions of the profitable study of architecture. I have one more caution to add before offering you certain suggestions as to your methods of practical study. It is perhaps inevitable to enthusiasm, to violently identify itself with one habit of thought and expression, to the exclusion of others. Forty or fifty years ago, the young men of movement were violent in their devo- tion to revivalist Gothic architecture and treated neo-Classic as beneath contempt. Of recent years we have seen somewhat similar developments in the arts of paint- ing and sculpture. In the one art, the qualities of drawing, of painting, of com- position, that other generations have 19 THE MISTRESS ART valued, have been set aside in the relent- less study of the phenomena of light. In the other art, the sense of form has been ignored in the intense search for sym- bolism. I am not underrating the value of these movements. Out of any genuine conviction and enthusiasm art must gain, given the requisite technical skill to make the enthusiasm vital. But the point to which I would call your attention, as students, is the danger of throwing your- self neck and crop into any one boat before you have some idea what other boats are starting on the voyage, and what other navigators have sailed these seas before. In other words (and this is only a corollary of the open mind), you must acquire some knowledge of the history of your own art before you are in a position to indulge your enthusiasm. Under modern conditions this is pecu- liarly necessary. Two hundred years ago there was one clear and unmistakable tradition of architecture, the student knew exactly what he had to learn, and the architect was in no sort of doubt as to the manner of his design. Wren, Gibbs and Hawksmoor had no sort of hesitation as 20 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE to formal methods of expression. When they had satisfied the practical conditions of their problem, had planned the palace or the church on general lines that met the requirements of the case, their thoughts ran in familiar channels, it clothed itself as it went with the forms of neo-Classic. A note on a drawing was almost sufficient indication to their ad- mirable workmen of what was required for doorways and the details of building. These architects had behind them the full resources of a well-established tradi- tion, in which these matters settled them- selves. They varied in their work to the full extent of their widely varying individualities, but they had not to choose for example between neo-Gothic and neo-Classic. With us it is different. Since those days the old tradition has faded out of sight, and the photographer has made confusion worse with his in- numerable presentations of buildings of every date and style, and the whole range of known architecture seems equally pos- sible or impossible. The position is, I admit, bewildering ; but you must face it with a clear head, and an enthusiastic readi- 21 THE MISTRESS ART ness to learn from all architecture and not from one particular phase of it only. You must, moreover, bear in mind that in architecture the forms are not arbitrary and a matter of fashion. If your design is a real conception and not a piece of patchwork, that conception will compel and carry with it the forms in which it is to be clothed. I assume, then, that you will enter on your studies with a mind free from pre- conceptions, indifferent for the purpose of study to irrelevant considerations, and with a single eye to the mastery of the technique of architecture, that is of build- ing processes, of the solution of construc- tional problems, and of the conversion of this solution into motives of architectural beauty. I assume, also, that you have to some little extent qualified yourselves in general knowledge of your art, and that you have acquainted yourselves with the progression of history, so far as to realise, for example, how the architecture of the East grew from that of Egypt, how it moved westward again through Greece to Rome, how again it split up into Byzantine and Lombardic on the 22 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE break-up of the Roman Empire, how Byzantine architecture died, yet left its traces on the mediaeval architecture of the west, how that, too, died, and left its mark on neo-Classic, how neo- Classic in its turn yielded reluctantly to the Gothic revival of the nineteenth century, and how that in turn has gone its way, and the last thin thread of tradi- tion that remains to us is that of neo- Classic. Some such ground-work of knowledge is necessary to the under- standing of any historical building, and the greater your knowledge of history and the keener your sense of the con- tinuity of architecture, the more clearly intelligible will these buildings become. As an admirable example of the interpre- tation of architecture on the historical method, you will recollect the four lectures that Mr. Jackson delivered here on c Reason in Architecture.' The reading of books, however, will not make an architect ; his proper study must always be buildings. He must work at first-hand himself, and as the sculptor studies his model and the land- scape painter the features of nature, so 27 THE O'-rvr THE MISTRESS ART the student of architecture must apply himself to the analysis of buildings, he must saturate himself with what has actually been done, not with the idea of imitation or reproduction, but in order to perfect himself in the power of architec- tural expression. You may recollect a remark in the 12th Discourse of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; ' The habit of con- templating and brooding over the ideas of great geniuses till you find yourself warmed by the contact, is the sure method of an artist-like mind/ The eminent Mr. Lancelot Brown, on the other hand, held that ' knowledge hampers originality,' and landscape gardening was the result. A process of thought not unlike that of Capability Brown has in these latter days led to the portentous aberrations of U Art Nouveau. It is one of the great advantages of our art that it can be studied anywhere except in the wilderness and the solitary place. The village church, the manor house, the tithe barn, the old farm-house in the country, the citizen's house in the market town, are still to be found in 24 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE almost every part of England, and in London you can find instances of nearly every phase of architecture that has existed in the country for the last seven hundred years. You have your material ready to hand, how will you deal with it? ' Now, your object, as I have en- deavoured to insist throughout this lecture, is to get at some practical under- standing of architecture, and you can only do this by using your brains. There is a natural temptation, to which I sup- pose we have all of us yielded, especially those who are ready with their pencil, to rush at the first piece of ornament that attracts our attention, and immortalise it in our sketch-books. That, undoubtedly, makes the sketch-book attractive to the layman, but if I may use the term it is not business. You might sketch every bit of carving in St. Paul's, and yet leave the building perfectly ignorant of its architectural meaning. There are other things to be done before you can allow yourself the luxury of a pretty sketch. It was said of a distinguished modern architect that he never made sketches, 25 THE MISTRESS ART but would sit in a church and absorb its architecture. This is a somewhat severe process of intellectual abstraction ; I only mention it as a suggestion of the right architectural standpoint in the study of buildings, and you will find it help you to keep your note-book going while you are at work on a building. You have to get into your head the general plan and construction of the building, by a process of analysis ; and the results in your sketch-book will probably be much writ- ing and a few sketch plans and sections, little to show, but priceless to yourself as a training in architectural thought. ' Sketch-book architecture,' the habit of collecting merely attractive details of carving and the like, is one of the most disastrous legacies of the Gothic revival. It was perhaps unfortunate that the most famous mediaeval sketch-book, contains very little but detail. Villard de Hone- court gives a rough plan or two, but most of his considerable ability as a draughtsman was devoted to figures and carving. It is difficult to say whether De Honecourt's sketch-book should be taken as typical of the point of view of the 26 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE mediaeval artist, or whether De Hone- court himself was an architect or a figure man ; unfortunately the Gothic revival- ists did not pause to consider this point, but took his sketch-book as sanctioning any and every extravagance, and as absolute confirmation of their own habit of treating architecture as an affair of detail. The methods of the sixteenth century were different. In the days of the Renaissance architects were never tired of analysing the buildings of ancient Rome. In the various editions of Vitruvius, in the works of Serlio and Palladio, plans, sections and elevations are given, not - always with scrupulous accuracy, yet with a technical precision sufficient to make the idea intelligible to an architect. Even in De I'Orme, whose curious temperament could not resist an occasional fancy drawing, you find the same habit of methodical analysis of buildings. In Worcester College Library there are preserved the original MSS. notes made by Inigo Jones during his travels in Italy. Now there is no doubt whatever of that architect's powers as a draughtsman. They were famous in his 27 THE MISTRESS ART time, and are fully established by his drawings for the Royal Masques ; yet, to the best of my recollection, in these notes of his Italian travels there are few drawings and the notes consist mainly of reflections in writing on the theory and practice of architecture, taken from actual buildings studied in Rome and elsewhere. It is this habit of observation and analysis which you as students of architecture should endeavour to acquire, and whatever skill in draughtsmanship you possess should be kept in its place as the handmaid of your studies. I do not, for a moment, intend to underrate the value and indeed the neces- sity to an architect of good draughtsman- ship, but we have to define our position. To a painter, draughtsmanship is not only an essential, but it is so intimately con- nected with his expression, it is so vital to his technique, that it becomes an actual and very important part of his art. The technique of an architect is in his mani- pulation of building materials ; in order to make clear his intentions he prepares his drawings, and, strictly speaking, that is the only raison d'etre of his draughtsman- 28 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE ship. But fine draughtsmanship, with us at least, comes largely of knowledge. The thing clearly seen and realised is clearly drawn. Clumsy design is the result of clumsy drawing, but that in turn is the result of careless and imperfect vision, of want of sensibility to fine line, just proportion, exquisite form. You must therefore study your draughtsman- ship too, bearing in mind that with the architect it is but a means to an end, first the clear expression of the intention of your design, secondly a training in the acquirement of a just and sensitive eye. Behind it will lie the process of thought and analysis, .which in this respect differ- entiates architecture from the other arts, and the student's object in drawing a building should be to master the organic conception of that building, not to turn out a pretty drawing. Take, for example, the Church of St. Stephen's, Walbrook. The first impres- sion made by the interior of this church is that of a large dome and a multitude of columns ; but if you roughly plot out the plan and longitudinal and transverse sections, this multiplicity resolves itself 29 THE MISTRESS ART into a simple parallelogram room about 82.6 by 59.6 divided by rows of columns into five aisles of unequal width ; but after proceeding with two bays from west to east you find that Wren omitted the columns to the three bays of the three central aisles and covered in the space with a large dome, a delightful example of what may be done by the right archi- tectural handling of the simplest possible elements. Probably no architect ever possessed a clearer brain or more ready resource than Wren, and I recommend to you the analytical study of the interior of his churches as an excellent training in simple architectural form. The same methods of breaking up a building into its component parts should be applied to larger buildings. Take, for example, St. Paul's Cathedral ; and I suggest this building, in preference to others not less interesting, because, being built at one effort and under one impulse, it is more logically intelligible than buildings which represent the accretions of centuries. Your first impression of St. Paul's will be one of a vast building on an intricate 3 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE plan. In order to understand it you must set to work on a methodical analysis. The problem with which the architect had to deal was to provide an immense church to take in, let us say, six thou- sand people, and in addition to this, to comply with the liturgical arrangements in use in the English Church. With the latter, the student would not immediately concern himself, except so far as may be necessary to understand their effect in determining a certain traditional arrange- ment of plan. The point to which your study and analysis will be directed will be the manner in which Wren covered in a space some 500 feet long by some 240 feet wide. The materials available were bricks and stones and timber, and no short cuts were possible, such as steel construction now provides for the pro- digies of modern building. Notwith- standing, Wren was able to cover in his space, and to poise aloft a stone cupola with a mighty ball and cross some 365 feet above the pavement. The central conception, from which the rest of the construction logically followed, is that of the great dome, rising from a circular 3 1 THE MISTRESS ART drum, carried by eight arches which bring down the weight on to the piers. These arches themselves set up a thrust which is met by the four arms of the choir, the transepts, and the nave. These arms are covered in by vaulting on arches and transverse arches, and the thrust of the latter is dealt with in the aisles. When you have mastered this general concep- tion, the next step is to follow it out in detail, to see how the architect dealt with the transition from the square to the octagon, and thence to the round, what area he considered necessary for the piers, how by re-duplicating these lines with pilasters and the like he drove home their function as supporting masses, the mould- ings and features by which he emphasised his forms coming last of all to the orna- ment, and not till a general grasp of the building as a whole has enabled you to consider this ornament in relation to the entire composition. There are other points which you would haVe to consider at St. Paul's ; for example, the double dome, the brick cone carrying the cupola, the screen walls of the aisles, the general proportions of the building, the relations 3 2 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE of voids and solids ; and the rudimentary programme which I have sketched above is only given for the purpose of showing the necessity of proceeding systematically in the study and analysis of buildings. There are, of course, many other points of view from which a building has to be studied before its full intention can be grasped. So far I have said little about the study of the history of architecture. My object has been rather to call your attention to that study of architectural form which must be for you what study from the life and the study of nature is to the sculptor and the painter, but this is not the only study necessary. Archi- tecture stands on rather a different footing from the other arts, in that its development is largely determined by considerations external to the art itself. The plan of the Western Christian Church has in the main grown out of the Basilica, but the connection between the two was, from the point of view of art, accidental, and from that point of view it is matter for regret that the great halls of the Roman baths were not taken as its prototype. The Byzantine Church c 33 THE MISTRESS ART followed a different model, showing that there was no inherent connection be- tween the Basilica plan and the plan of the modern church ; but some know- ledge of history is necessary to disentangle this fact, and to enable you to discriminate between the accidental and the permanent and essential qualities of buildings. For example, Wren did not evolve his dome out of his own consciousness. There still remains the far-reaching question of its relation to the dome of St. Peter's, of that to Brunelleschi's dome, and of the latter and the multitudinous domes of the Renaissance to their great forerunner, the Pantheon at Rome. Not least of all, too, there is Wren himself to be con- sidered, the effect, that is, of his personal temperament on his design ; for archi- tecture is not a lifeless mechanical art, but in its own way responds as readily to individual impulse as any of the graphic or plastic arts. Into these further aspects of architecture I cannot now pursue our subject. They form in themselves a delightful and fascinating study ; but for our immediate purpose I prefer to dwell on what is of the first necessity to 34 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE the architectural student, the rule that he should endeavour by systematic analysis to master the constructional intention of the buildings he studies. I have drawn my instances from Wren's London churches because these are easily accessible. But the method I suggest to you applies to any building, to Westminster Abbey as well as to St. Paul's, and you should study the one as freely as the other, always with the end before you of strengthening and deepening your power of architectural thought. I do not say that one building is as good as another for this purpose, but the old-fashioned question of styles is no longer at issue ; and the wider your studies of archi- tecture the more common ground you will find in all good architecture. The massive breadth of Norman work, of the walls of the south transept of Winchester or of Tewkesbury, will find its counter- part in the reticence of Peruzzi, the scale of San Michele or of our own Hawks- moor. As you advance in your studies, individual temperament will play an ever- growing part in your choice of subject. Certain qualities of architecture will 35 THE MISTRESS ART appeal to you more than others, and if you are artists you will almost insensibly form your own personal method of design ; but throughout and from the first you should learn to study buildings on their merits. You should resolutely clear your mind of all that is not rele- vant to the art of architecture ; you should build up your judgment by the unbiassed study of good work under whatever guise you find it, Gothic, Classic, or anything else. In this way only can you arrive at a standpoint of your own and gain the power of personal expression in your art. There are men of genius who have leapt at once into the full possession of their kingdom. Keats, in his extraordinary sense of Greek art, is an instance. But for men of less endowment, much reading and study are necessary, before they handle their language freely and with any mastery. Moreover, how delightful are these suggestions and half-conscious reminis- cences of the thought of bygone days that sometimes meet us as old friends in art and literature. How utterly repellent is work, such as that of a 36 STUDY OF ARCHITECTURE famous American poet, which ignores the past. It is a lesson which you students of architecture should take to heart. Perhaps in our anxiety to reach im- mediate results and directly convertible information, we do not pay sufficient attention to those reservoirs of know- ledge, which accumulate behind our consciousness. No one can measure the extent to which our life is governed and transformed by our imitative instincts. ' Imitation ' I quote from Walter Pater ( it enters the very fastnesses of Char- acter; and we our souls ourselves are for ever imitating what we see and hear, the forms, the sounds which haunt our memories, our imagination. We imitate not only if we play a part on the stage, but when we sit as spectators, while our thoughts follow the acting of another, when we read Homer, and put ourselves lightly, fluently, into the place of those he describes ; we imi- tate unconsciously the line and colour of the walls around us, the trees by the wayside, the animals we pet or make use of, the very dress we wear.' If Pater's description is true of the ordinary habits 37 THE MISTRESS ART of life, how vitally important it must be in your special training, that you should seek the best models to feed this imitative instinct, that you should absorb, as it were , the architectural habit of mind from unceasing study of the masterpieces of the art. The thin unfurnished mind will fail from sheer inanition. This at least you can avoid, for no art affords such constant oppor- tunities of study as architecture, and it will be your own fault if you do not saturate your minds with its creations. In after years and in unexpected ways the knowledge that you so acquire will come again with joy and bring its sheaves with it. DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT II. DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT IN my last lecture I endeavoured to suggest to you the point of view from which you should approach the study of architecture. I urged you to throw overboard literary prejudices and preconceptions, and to be prepared to find good architecture in many different forms, and to keep your eye firmly fixed on the object at which your first studies should aim, namely, practical mastery of the technique of architecture, without concerning yourselves about dogmatic principles which have no relation to the art. I endeavoured to impress upon you the necessity of analysing the buildings you study, of breaking them up into their abstract elements, and of searching for the principles of their design and construction, in order that you may clearly understand what the architect sets out to do, and what the problems THE MISTRESS ART are with which you in your turn will have to deal in actual practice. This, how- ever, by no means completes the critical study of buildings. So far, you have only gathered what will be of immediate use to you personally as working artists ; not only is there the infinite field of history but there is the other side of the case, that is, the right appreciation of the artist himself whose work you are study- ing. It is ungrateful not to attempt to discharge that debt ; but, apart from that, it is only by this wider study of architec- ture under all its varied aspects that you can understand how great and vital an art it is, and the extent of its resources as a means of expressing thought and emotion. It is a mistake to dwell exclu- sively on the technical side of architecture, that must of course be mastered before you can hope to design ; but architecture is something greater and more profound than merely technical excellence. Though its appeal is more abstract and less readily understood than that of the other arts, it is, like them, in the last resort ad- dressed to the emotions. Reason and the dry light of the intellect will not explain 42 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT everything in this art ; unless, indeed, Reason can penetrate beyond the obvious facts to those mysterious causes which lead two men of equal knowledge and capacity to deal with the same set of conditions in totally different ways. Temperament, no less than imagination and intelligence, is an essential element in all good architecture ; and by Tempera- ment I mean some force and passion within a man which drives him out to do certain things in a certain way and no other ; for example, one cannot imagine Michael Angelo thinking in Raphael's manner, or Bellini treating a portrait like. Franz Hals, or Vanbrugh translated into terms of Robert Adam. The differentiation does not appear, or does not appear in a way that need be considered, until the stage of technical struggle is past ; that is, I am not now referring to divergencies that arise from circumstance or from varying degrees of knowledge and ability, but, given complete artistic ability, to the differ- ences that can only be set down to varia- tions in the personal equation. I propose therefore, this evening, to leave 43 THE MISTRESS ART the beaten track of technical discourse, and to make an excursion into the obscure and ill-defined region of artistic temperament ; and I shall make the venture with the double object of arriv- ing at a clearer understanding of the work of the artists I refer to, and also of showing that the art of architecture is not the cold abstraction it is sometimes supposed to be, but that lofty aims and a strong personality will leave their mark on architecture not less than on the other arts. In regard to sculpture and paint- ing this has been shown, and often admirably shown. The literary imagina- tion has never tired of reading itself into the works of famous artists ; indeed, if Michael Angelo, Raphael, Claude, or Turner, could return again to this world they might have something to say to their zealous interpreters. By tacit consent, however, architecture has been left severely alone, Ruskin, indeed, made the attempt to prove that moral virtue was the essential element of good architecture, but he spoilt his case by uncharitably denying moral virtue to those architects whose work he disliked. 44 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT More candid critics have dealt with architecture in a somewhat perfunctory manner, and generally it has been treated as irresponsive to the warm emotions of humanity, so much so indeed that where- as at some periods of history it has been annexed by the virtuoso as something revealed only to himself and not to be handled by the vulgar crowd, at others it has simply dropped out of recognition as an art, and has been treated by the public as a mere business affair. The former was the state of things in the middle of the eighteenth century, the latter is to some extent the prevalent view to-day. Neither of these views is pos- sible unless we are to ignore the history of the past. Architecture is assuredly one of the greatest of the arts, and if this is so, it must be a much more serious affair than mere virtuosity. It must spring from deeper roots in human nature, it must proceed from personal thought, emotion and temperament, if it is to justify its place among the arts, if it is to fill the role that it may claim as its own of translating actual needs into visible forms of beauty. I think you 45 THE MISTRESS ART will find, if you consider the life and work of typical architects, that in their work design and temperament are inti- mately connected, that through all vital art there runs more or less strongly the man's peculiar personality. In many cases our want of personal knowledge of the artist prevents a full understanding of his work ; we can only read back from the work to the man, and here we are met at once by certain historical limitations. The sympathetic study of individual work which I am suggesting to you is scarcely possible before the days of the Renaissance. The buildings of Egypt are indeed instinct with character, but it is not personal character. They are the expression of an immense relentless power working by myriads of slaves, and simply dis- regarding human life and suffering, monuments of an enormous power that has passed out of existence as completely as those creatures that fought and trampled on each other in the twilight of the world. Such buildings have their lesson for the student, but he will search in vain among them for any trace of the DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT personal motive which is one of the chief differentiations between ancient and modern art. Neither will he find it in the architecture of the Greeks. Artists, as is well known, were regarded with singular contempt by the Greeks. They were treated as /Scu/avcrot, servile and con- temptible persons of no consideration to a self-respecting Greek, inasmuch as they worked not for themselves but to please others, and so far, as Mr. Butcher has put it, 'fell short of a gentlemanly leisure.' The names of Mnesicles and Ictinus, for example, are left to us, and the ruins of their buildings, but their art was too impersonal to reveal their tem- perament. In Athens, in Sicily, in Asia Minor, there are splendid monuments of Greek architecture, but the varieties between them are not the varieties of individual minds. We find the Doric order in one place, and the Ionic in another, but we have not the least idea how the manner of Callicrates differed from that of Hippodamus of Miletus. We cannot find the individual here, nor does he appear in the architecture of Rome till that great empire was on the 47 THE MISTRESS ART way to its dissolution, till the date when a Dalmatian freedman of genius became the master of the world and re-organised the Roman Empire. When Diocletian built his palace at Spalatro, his architect brought his arches down direct on to his capitals, and broke with the time- honoured tradition of entablature and column. How far this was a happy accident, the result of ignorance rather than of originality, it is difficult to say, but the older traditions of Imperial Rome were breaking up all round, and this modest invention was an early manifesta- tion of that individualism which was to bring about such tremendous develop- ments in modern architecture ; for mean- while, in provinces such as Syria, far away from the capital, a new vitality was being brought into the art from the East, and it is quite certain that an infinite amount of solvent thought must have been at work on the old tradition, before such an astounding masterpiece as Santa Sophia could be even possible ; for the group of buildings of which that Church is typical was something new, not merely in the details which can be traced to DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT their sources here, there, and elsewhere, but in the synthesis of these different parts in a new and organic conception of the building as a whole. In the case of Santa Sophia we come on the names of the architects, Athemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, Greeks of Asia Minor, but what manner of men they were we have no idea except that they were lurfxavoiroioi, men of invention and resource. Our own conditions of life are so remote from those of Justinian's capital that we cannot now read back- ward from the building to the men who designed it ; and we have still to wait for the necessary conditions for the study of the individual artist. When that splendid civilisation of Byzantium died, there was a throw-back, at any rate in the West, to a state of things not far removed from barbarism. The indi- vidual disappeared in a chaos of incessant fighting. Earlier mediaeval architecture grew by collective effort, rather than through individual initiative, and of the few men whose names have reached us, practically nothing, to any purpose, is known. William of Sens, William the D 49 THE MISTRESS ART Englishman, Robert of Luzarches, Hugo Libergiers, are still only names to us. They may represent men of genius, they may represent mere accidents of survival. In any case they have passed beyond the possibility of intimate interpretation. Yet the slow development of history can be clearly traced in the steady emergence of the individual from the unnumbered crowd. Whereas the archi- tecture of the ancient, perhaps I should say of the archaic, world was consecrated to the expression of its gods, or its rulers, in other words was hieratic, scarcely recognising humanity, in the middle ages the idiosyncrasy first of peoples, then of provinces, then of places, then of indi- viduals, is steadily making its way to the front. Even the Norman varied in his moods. The grim strength of Durham speaks of a different temperament to that which prompted the kindly, and, if one can say it of a Norman, almost genial architecture of Romsey. English Gothic is different from French, the churches of Kent from those of Lincolnshire, or the churches of Devonshire from those of Sussex. Even in the same county 5 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT most remarkable contrasts appear, as, for example, the great tower of Lavenham Church on the one hand, and the grace- ful spire of Snettisham on the other; the one four-square, and running sheer up for 140 feet, the other soaring sky- ward with its slender tapering lines, there is here the whole difference of tem- perament that exists between the fighter and the poet, yet the two churches are not fifty miles apart, and were built within fifty years of each other. The individuality of later Gothic is as remarkable as its uniformity, but it is in- dividuality of detail rather than of archi- tecture. The sculptor carved whatever took his fancy in his home or in the fields around him, and so the range of his detail- was infinite ; but the building, as a whole, attached itself to some well- defined type, and can hardly be regarded as an individual expression. So too, in the earlier years of the sixteenth century in France and England, the last days of the master-builder, we find detail of every kind, but nothing as yet to show the im- press of the master mind. It is not till the maturity of the Renaissance that the 5' THE MISTRESS ART long struggle of the individual towards self-realisation ends triumphantly, that the architect becomes henceforward an individual artist, conscious of his own technique and ideals, as the painter and the sculptor of theirs. It is only then that the materials are available for what one may call the psychological study of architecture, that is, the interpretation of an artist's work by his personal tempera- ment. Let us take Alberti, for example. Leon Battista Alberti belonged to a noble Florentine family, and was born at Venice in 1404. He was a gentleman and scholar, perfectly educated according to the standard of his time, a man of admir- able attainment, mental and physical. At the age of twenty he wrote a fable in Latin, which a hundred and fifty years afterwards was accepted by the astute Aldus, publisher and printer, as the work of a late Latin author. He was the friend of Lorenzo de Medici and Marsilio Ficino, the Platonist. Raphael du Fresne tells a story of a meeting of famous men, gathered together by Lorenzo de Medici in the groves of Camaldola, where high DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT discussions were held to wile away the heat of summer, but 'none gained so much admiration as Alberti, who, in several brilliant discourses, full of the most exalted learning clearly showed that in the JEneid under the veil of a great many beautiful pictures there lay concealed the highest secrets of philosophy.' Alberti wrote multifarious pamphlets, a treatise on immortality called Momus, books on painting and sculpture, and the famous De Re Edificatoria^ the first and in some ways the most remarkable of the long series of works on architecture which has continued ever since. Vasari says that Alberti was " c a man of most humane and laudable manners, the friend of the virtuous, liberal and courteous to all ; and he lived an honourable life, like the gentleman that he was/ In the Bologna edition of Vasari, 1 647, the woodblock at the head of the chapter suggests the athlete quite as much as the scholar, for Alberti as a true Humanist aimed at perfect accomplishment both of mind and body. Wonderful stories are told of his personal powers. He could jump his own height, throw an apple over the 53 THE MISTRESS ART Duomo at Florence, pierce an iron breast- plate with a mere half shot, sit unbroken horses, a man of complete skill in all the exercises that became a Florentine gentleman. Nor are these stories to be brushed aside as idle legends. Alberti was one of those rare natures that can find their pleasure in life in all its multi- farious forms. He pursued sport, as he pursued literature and art, for the intrinsic pleasure he found in its pursuit, and in the realisation of his own energies. The results of this unusual combination of qualities are traceable in his architecture. There were two sides to his character : the austere reserve of the scholar some- times lapsing into preciosity, and the fastidious taste of the fine gentleman on the one hand, and on the other, the adventurous instincts and robust judg- ment of the sportsman, the impatience which such a man would feel with any- thing mean and trivial. It was a ques- tion which side should predominate, but in the end Alberti's innate force of char- acter won the day. The Renaissance in its first inspiration was a movement of scholarship, and so far as architecture was 54 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT concerned it began at the wrong end, that is to say, it worked deductively from the writings of such authors as Vitruvius, instead of inductively from the facts of construction. It was, therefore, only to be expected that in the first instance Alberti should approach the art from the point of view of the scholar rather than from that of the architect. He was exercised about the exact purity of design according to the classical models as he had come across them, and his enthusiasm for the antique led him into difficulties from which a more intimate study of building might have saved him. Vasari, indeed, makes his opinion perfectly clear that Alberti with all his accomplishment was only an amateur after all, and somewhat unkindly calls attention to the trouble he got into with his arches in the Rotunda of the choir in the Church of the Nunziata at Florence, and with certain problems of vaulting in a loggia opposite the Rucellai Palace. In the choir of the Nunziata Alberti had the original idea of making a circular temple surrounded by nine chapels, each having the shape of a ' niche ' as Vasari describes it. The 55 THE MISTRESS ART openings were spanned by semi-circular arches springing from pilasters, with the result that owing to the circular plan all the arches were in winding. As indeed was to be expected from Alberti's train- ing, his practical knowledge could not keep pace with his theory, and probably no one was more disappointed with the result than he himself. With all his enthusiasm for the antique, he had not as yet fully grasped its meaning, and a certain timidity is apparent in some of his designs, as in the mean pilasters and entablatures of the Rucellai Palace, a building which, in spite of its details, is further from the true spirit of Roman architecture than the Riccardi Palace with its plain walls and magnificent cornice. In common with all the earlier men of the Renaissance he found it hard to escape the fascination of the fragments of the antique that scholars were de- ciphering with feverish enthusiasm. But Alberti was an alert and many-sided man. It seems probable that he outgrew his early subjection to the antique, and became interested in the forms and methods of architecture for their own 56 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT sake ; for with all their professed venera- tion for the teaching of the ancients, the earlier Italian artists used their own judgment with the utmost freedom. The instincts of the explorer were not less strong than those of the scholar ; the enthusiasm for experiment and dis- covery which possessed Lionardo da Vinci, existed also in Alberti, and the fact that he should have attacked these problems of construction is characteristic of the man, of his determination to go beyond the beaten track. His distinction of mind is visible in his architecture. It is not always pleasing, but there is no pettiness about it, and at least it was a serious attempt at individual expression. The qualities that he aimed at are not to be mistaken in his work, and they are shown in that heroic fragment at Rimini. The church of San Francesco was a Gothic building, of brick, and gave no pleasure to Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, a man who summed up more or less completely the virtues and vices of the Renaissance. Sigismondo determined to transform it into a temple worthy of his friends and himself, and of Isotta, the 57 THE MISTRESS ART lady of his choice. He found the man for his purpose in Alberti, who filled the inside with marbles and sculpture of the heathen gods and goddesses, of children, of fruit and flowers, and all that told of the new delight in life; and who began a fafade with triple arches and a mighty pediment which was to rival the temples of ancient Rome. The Pope might call it a Pagan temple and so indeed it was, for Malatesta robbed the churches of Ravenna for his marbles, and dedicated his church to Isotta but few buildings are more characteristic of the earlier Renaissance, and of Malatesta himself and his architect. It was a sheer attempt to translate modern thought into terms of Paganism ; and it seems that, to some extent, this was always at the back of Alberti's mind. The same instinct for larger and more liberal forms is seen in the great church of St. Andrea at Mantua, which, in spite of later additions and its painted simulations of architecture, is still one of the finest churches of the Renaissance. The church in its present state is by no means as Alberti designed it, and must not be taken as typical of 58 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT his work in detail. Alberti's design was not made till 1472, the year of his death, and the church was not begun till after that date. The choir was not completed till 1600, and the dome was not built till 1782. But Alberti's model was followed and there is little doubt that the general conception was his, and it is very characteristic of the man in its simplicity and directness of thought. The plan is very able, both from the point of view of construction and of architectural effect. The dome is carried by four massive-looking piers, which are in fact hollow, but by reason of the re- cessed chapels between them in the north and south transepts, the full value of their apparent massiveness is obtained without any forcing of the note. The same simple but most effective method is used in the nave, where bold arched recesses alternated with the solid piers. The west entrance fafade has been so much modernised that it is difficult to say how far it now represents Alberti's original design, but I think the general scheme may be taken to be his, and it is one of a 59 THE MISTRESS ART good deal of interest, because the motive of the central triumphal arch, running up from the ground to the under side of the main entablature, merely recognising the side bays at the level of the springing, is, I think, peculiar to Alberti. Palladio made some attempt at it on the west front of the Redentore at Venice, but he stultified his design by inserting a pedi- ment over the arch and under the entab- lature. The only other architect of the Renaissance who deliberately adopted this motive was Jean Bullant, the archi- tect for years of Anne de Montmorenci, constable of France. Bullant too was an able architect, but there must also have been something congenial in his person- ality that maintained him in the favour and confidence of that grim old warrior for half a life-time. He must have pos- sessed some element of the man-of-action, even of the man of his hands, a tempera- ment akin to that of Alberti, the scholar, the artist the athlete ; the man who could maintain an honoured place in the affection of a Malatesta. In Alberti we are brought face to face with a new type. In Greek and Roman 60 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT civilisation the architect was an inferior, little more than a slave. In medieval times, if he excelled he was lost in the crowd. But in Alberti, for the first time, we come across a man of high position and complete education who devoted himself to architecture from simple love of the art, and who was able to show in his own works the qualities of reserve, personal dignity and contempt for trivialities which marked him out among other men. In estimat- ing the value of his work as an artist, it is important to bear in mind what was being done by other men at the same time. Alberti may have been unduly dominated by the forms of Classic, but while they were wholly occupied with the details of surface ornament, Alberti almost alone among the men of his time was thinking in terms of architecture, he was aiming at getting out of architec- ture its own peculiar qualities, at making his appeal by form and rhythm, and the subtle beauty of scale. More than this, he had as an artist the supreme merit of seeing life whole. We are familiar, too familiar, with the profes- 61 THE MISTRESS ART sional gladiator, the man whose whole soul is occupied with success in his profession, to the starvation of his other faculties. That was not the ideal of the finer spirits of the Renaissance. It is not the type at which you artists will aim. It is one of the peculiar attractions of the study of Renaissance architecture that here and there strong men rise up among their fellows, and fascinate our attention by the brilliant independence of their careers. For good or for bad the age of collective art has been left behind. We are face to face with the individual ; and in Italy more especially, the chaotic relations of the Italian States intensified the purely personal character of architec- ture. The only common bond between these men was their passion for the antique, but each man thought out his method for himself according to his own idiosyncrasy. I have called your atten- tion to this quality in Alberti ; it is even more remarkable in the case of Baldassare Peruzzi, an artist whom Alfred Stevens, with the instinctive sympathy of genius held to be one of the 62 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT giants of the Renaissance. Peruzzi was the son of a Florentine of good family, and was born at Sienna about 1480. From the first he was an extraordinarily unlucky man. He had none of the good fortune of Raphael or Bramante. His beautiful design for St. Peter's was never carried out. In the sack of Rome in 1527, he was mistaken by the Spaniards for some eminent church dignitary, and seriously injured. Escaping from Rome, he was again set upon and plundered, and reached Sienna in his shirt. Within ten years of this he died in poverty, not without sinister suggestions of his having been poisoned by a rival who desired his place. Vasari says that in spite of his great abilities his numerous works availed him little, however useful they may have been to others, and this he attributes to a certain simplicity and faint-heartedness in Peruzzi. But Vasari supplies his own answer. In the un- usually florid and devout reflections with which Vasari introduces the life of this architect, he comments on the extreme beauty of the inward calm and elevation of soul which Peruzzi possessed in an 63 THE MISTRESS ART exceptional degree. This quality might have suggested to Vasari that Peruzzi's heart was set not on the good things of this world, but on the realisation of himself as an artist. Indeed it is evident, both from the estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries and successors, and from the character of his own work, that Baldassare Peruzzi was an artist of a rare type, a man of single-minded devotion to his art, ever searching for fresh combinations of beautiful forms, ever refining on his own inventions without losing touch of the essential elements of great design. Peruzzi's introduction to architecture was a matter of accident rather than of deliberate intention. He began, as usual at that time, in the goldsmith's shops, settled down to the study of paint- ing at an early age, and speedily obtained employment in the decoration of build- ings. But the true artist of the Renais- sance never rested, each fresh attainment was merely a stepping-stone to further victories. Peruzzi made the acquaint- ance of Agostino Chigi of Sienna, one of those wise and munificent patrons to 64 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT whom the artists of the Renaissance owed so much. With his encourage- ment Peruzzi devoted himself to the study of perspective and the antiquities of Rome, and thus almost drifted, as it were, into the practice of architecture. His work as a decorative painter, his pro- found study of the remains of classical architecture, his skill in perspective, his keen eye for spectacular effect, and his quite remarkable originality in the design of scenery and the staging of plays, all combined to fill his mind with infinite visions of architecture. You may re- collect a similar transference from the staging and writing of plays to architec- ture in the case of Vanbrugh. No two men could be more remote from each other in artistic method, but in both of them there must have existed a strong instinct for spectacular effect. Vasari speaks of an extraordinary drawing by Peruzzi, in his possession, representing a piazza filled with arches of triumph, colossal statues, theatres, pyramids, obel- isks, temples, colonnades, porticoes, and every conceivable kind of building. In the centre, on a pedestal, was a figure of E 65 THE MISTRESS ART Mercury, surrounded by innumerable alchemists engaged in curious operations with alembics and crucibles and the rest of their paraphernalia. It must have been a queer piece of symbolism, to some extent representing the ferment of Peruzzi's restless brain, but it was the peculiar quality of the man that from this farrago of ideas his actual archi- tecture should emerge pure and serene, with an exquisite accomplishment sug- gestive not of Roman but of Greek art. It is evident from his work that Peruzzi carried his researches into the antique to a much more intimate point of analysis than Alberti. Indeed, few things are more surprising in Peruzzi's work than the way in which, with the inexact archaeological equipment of the Renaissance, he arrived, almost per saltum^ at a refinement of detail and austere selection of form which have more of the true Greek spirit than the neo-Greek revival of much later times and greater knowledge. In this regard Peruzzi stands almost by himself among the architects of the Renaissance. He, alone among them, saw the possibilities 66 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT of Greek detail under the brilliant sky of Italy. You will find an example of this in the great doorway that he designed for the Church of St. Michele in Bosco, near Bologna. The doorway is of con- siderable size, measuring 1 5' 6" x 7' j" in the opening. There are all sorts of nuances and refinements in the detail. The architrave, which is of an unusual section, batters inward as it ascends ; but the hollowed border of stone in which it is set is kept parallel in its outer face with the pilaster. The enrich- ments of the cornice are Greek rather than Roman, and in many details, both here and elsewhere, evidence will be found of an idiosyncrasy quite different from that of other architects of his time. Peruzzi dealt with the traditional forms of Classic architecture with the confident freedom of a master ; and you will find this not only in his details, but in his whole attitude to architecture. Detail with him was only a means to an end, that of reinforcing the central intention of his design, and of driving home in his building the sense of scale. THE MISTRESS ART Few buildings of the Renaissance are more admirable in this regard than the Palazzo Albergati at Bologna. Here the problem was to build a long street front in a rather narrow street. A series of breaks and projections would have reduced the effect of size, because it was impossible to get far enough back to take account of them all. Peruzzi, without the least hesitation, threw over- board the system of flat engaged pilasters that Bramante had rendered fashionable and which he himself had used success- fully in the Farnesina at Rome, and trusted to his plain wall surface and a carefully considered system of propor- tion to give the effect of size that he aimed at. A battered plinth, a beauti- fully designed Doric entablature below the principal windows, a great pilaster of channelled quoins at the angle, and an entablature of heroic size running with- out interruption along the entire fa9ade, these were his materials, and with these, incomplete though the building is, he produced the most impressive front of any of the Italian palaces. To produce the effect of great size is one of the first 68 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT qualities of architecture and I know no building that has been more successful in this, except perhaps San Michele's gate- ways at Verona, or, in a totally different manner, the walls of Old Newgate. The dimensions of the Albergati fafade are considerable, about 175 by 63 feet high, and the top entablature measures some 8.0 high ; but much bigger build- ings, Buckingham Palace for example, entirely fail to give the same impression of size. It was not by mere brute size that Peruzzi got his effect, but by fas- tidious selection and reserve. He was equally successful in much smaller buildings, such as the Casa Pollini at Sienna ; or in that most able design, the Palazzo Massimi alle Colonne at Rome, with its admirably simple colonnade of double columns on a curved front against the deep shadow of the entrance Loggia. The Cortile inside is handled in detail with a masterful freedom which proves once for all that the talk of the tyranny of Classic is either the result of ignorance or the confession of incompetence. Peruzzi's design for the completion of St. Peter's is given in Serlio's Third Book THE MISTRESS ART of Architecture (folio 38). Generally, it consisted of a central dome with four smaller domes at the angles of the diagonal lines, and beyond these, at the four angles of the square in which the design was contained, four towers with bold segmental projections on the four sides. The design undoubtedly affected the subsequent plans of St. Peter's, but it is one of the great archi- tectural losses in history that it was never carried out ; for the result in Peruzzi's hands would have been a building of massive strength, offering occasion for those vistas of domes and arches, and for all the mysterious play of light and shade, which seem to have been ever present in his imagination. It is a curious coincidence that Wren's favourite design for St. Paul's, which may have been suggested by this design, was equally ill-fated. Peruzzi had no better fortune with his design for the completion of St. Petronio at Bologna, a problem which has occupied the Bolognese for some four centuries. His design is preserved in the sacristy of St. Petronio with those of many other archi- 70 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT tects, including Vignola, Palladio and Giulio Romano. He appears to have been somewhat uncertain whether he should follow the Gothic of the existing building, or break right away from it. In one of his drawings he shows a rose window, in another a five-light window with tracery. But, in his principal drawing, a large longitudinal section in partial perspective, he shows a gigantic central dome, with a cupola some fifty feet high, starting from the dome some three hundred and twenty feet above the floor. Over the choir he shows a smaller dome with a cupola and most curious buttresses. These start under the springing of the cupola as pilasters with Corinthian capitals; as they descend, they spread outwards in a hollow curve which rests on the hind leg of an animal standing clear out from the lower part of the buttress. I incline to think that for once in a way Peruzzi let his draughts- manship take charge of the design. He allowed a motive which would hardly be tolerable in cabinet-making to find a place in architecture. It is unlike him, and one can only attribute this lapse to 7' THE MISTRESS ART the cropping up of some buried stratum of his earlier work as a draughtsman and scene-painter. Vasari says of him : c He may truly be said never to have had his equal in architecture, principally because he combined with his know- ledge of that art so beautiful a manner of painting and decoration.' This seems to me bad criticism. Vasari has laid his finger on the source not of his strength but of his weakness. The skill which Peruzzi possessed as a painter, sometimes, though it was but rarely, betrayed him into confusing the functions of archi- tecture with those of painting. It was not till his later years, when he practi- cally devoted himself to architecture, that he shook himself free from the snares and pitfalls of the sister art. In his mature work he avoided that theatri- cality which has always been the danger of Italian architecture, and which you may see in all its disastrous vulgarity in such buildings as Giulio Romano's house or in the Palazzo del Te at Mantua. Peruzzi was indeed the real artist at work in architecture. That art, to him, was no affair of technicalities, no mechan- 72 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT ical system of rules and precedents such as it afterwards became in the hands of inferior men, but a living vital art, capable of expressing to the full his own likes and dislikes, the qualities that ap- pealed to him in form and combination of forms. It became the true revelation of his own character, in its strength and subtlety, its delicate refinement, its con- stant instinct to press forward in the path of architectural discovery. The life and work of both Alberti and Peruzzi show how intimately connected, in an artist, are his temperament and his art, the intellectual aloofness of Alberti with his severe design ; the passionate search for fresh methods of expression, and the sensitive refinement of Peruzzi, with his intensely individual vision of neo-Classic architecture. And these instances might be multi- plied indefinitely. Each great architect in turn has written his signature on his work. Vitruvius Cerdo might have his name carved on a Roman triumphal arch ; but there was no need of inscrip- tions for the masters of the Renaissance. All these men aimed, as they thought, at 73 THE MISTRESS ART reviving literally and entirely the classical architecture of Rome, yet they are as divergent and individual in their manner as any of the painters of their time ; Bramante in his intellectual aridity, San Michele with his splendid feeling for scale, Raphael with his easy accomplish- ment, Michael Angelo in his sensitive horror of the banalities of design and his passion for personal expression. One need not limit the theory to these giants in their generation. The personal note is quite as unmistakable in the work of Palladio, a fine architect, entangled in his own pedantry, or in Borromini with his shameless audacity, or the wild exuber- ance of Bernini. Architecture, at any rate in the modern world, if it is to be an art at all must be a personal art, in which difference of temperament as well as difference of ability will surely assert themselves. If it were not for this, our art nowadays would sink to the level of a trade, or a manufacture, of no more interest than photography as compared with painting. It is refreshing to turn back now and again to times when art for art's sake meant something very 74 DESIGN AND TEMPERAMENT different from what it has meant in recent days ; a time when a man of great ability and position could find in architecture the work of his life, when an artist of the all-round ability of Peruzzi could persevere through evil fortune, in his ever-growing enthusiasm for the least popular of the arts. Peruzzi was essen- tially an esprit d'elite, and I have selected him as a type of the artist who stands aloof from worldly success, and whose aim is steadily set on the finer qualities of life. It is your privilege as artists to follow him in this. In whatever circum- stances you find yourselves, among your kind, in the presence of nature, in work, in play, in all human activities, you are there as artists to watch for and realise the finer and rarer qualities of life, to see the unobvious, to play the part of the interpreter to those who from circum- stances of life or character would pass these matters by. It is the function of the tradesman to-satisfy fashion, it is your business to see further ahead, to disen- tangle the permanent interest even if only in our own small corner of existence, and to endeavour to render it vital for all 75 THE MISTRESS ART kindred spirits. This it is that gives dis- tinction to the artist's calling. Tricks and dexterities leave us untouched. It is the personal contribution of the thing once keenly felt, the individual passion, the rare moment of illumination, that differentiate the artist and justify his existence, if not now, at least in the future. It is to this point that we as artists should direct our strenuous en- deavour, and it is to show that the effort is not impossible that to-day I have talked to you of two great Italians, one an aristocrat by birth and circumstance, the other a prince in the aristocracy of brains men who may have failed of complete attainment, yet ever memorable because their intellectual horizon lay far away among the great spaces of the ideal. ARCHITECTURE AND THE CRAFTSMAN III. ARCHITECTURE AND THE CRAFTSMAN IN recent years we have heard a good deal of a theory which would do away with the architect, least popular of men, and take us back to the days of the mediaeval guilds, when the architect, if such a person existed, was a craftsman working on the building himself, in the midst of his .artistic brethren, and the very idea of a professional architect as distinct from the craftsman was out of the question. The theory is not without its fascination in these days of keen pro- fessionalism, or its justification in the divorce that has come about in the practice of architecture between design and materials. Moreover, this theory appeals to an instinct which an architect may share with other artists, namely the desire to get his ideas out at the end of his fingers, to translate them with his 79 THE MISTRESS ART own hands into concrete forms. That instinct, that irresistible feeling towards material, that genuine pleasure in build- ing, are essential elements in good archi- tecture ; and yet I shall maintain, this evening, that good craftsmanship, in the sense of the actual manipulation of bricks and stone, woods and metals, does not necessarily mean good architecture, that it is but an element in it and not the whole ; and I shall endeavour to clear up our ideas on this question by sketching the development of the theory in modern thought, and by a considera- tion of the actual function of architecture in regard to the arts. The architect, as we now know him, is of course a comparatively modern creation. It is pretty certain that he did not exist in the Middle Ages. His multi- farious functions were then parcelled out among the various trades, who supplied their own details. The master mason was almost invariably the foreman, and such general control as may have been exercised appears to have been given by the building owner, the bishop, the merchant, or the noble lord. This state 80 THE CRAFTSMAN of things continued down to the time of the Renaissance in northern Europe. In France, for example, when the King desired a palace or a hunting-box at Fontainebleau or St. Germain, he gave his own directions through his valet de chambre, and separate contracts were made with the masons, carpenters, joiners, and the various building trades ; but the whole initiation of the work came from the King. Much the same state of affairs existed in England ; and as long as the builders were able to adhere to the' tradition of their fathers, they were still capable of excellent work. Somehow in Italy this strong tradition did not exist to anything like the same extent. Quite early in the Renaissance the individual artist disentangles himself from the crowd of craftsmen and makes his mark in one of the arts, more often in several, for in those days the arts were really sister arts, and not merely dis- tant cousins barely on speaking terms. Raphael, Bramante, Michael Angelo and Peruzzi are familiar examples. It was not till the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury that the architect detached himself F 81 THE MISTRESS ART from the general body of artists and specialised in architecture, as for example Serlio, Palladio, and Vignola in Italy, Bullant and De TOrme in France. For a time the balance as between architecture, painting and sculpture was maintained, or if architecture had to yield, at least the painters and sculptors were so consum- mate, Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese in the ducal Palace, that one cannot but acquiesce in the effacement of architec- ture in the presence of such glorious work ; but the inevitable result was the specialisation of architecture, and we are henceforward face to face with a con- dition of things altered not wholly for the better. Not only did architecture lose a certain freedom of initiative, but it allowed the control of the decorative arts to slip into the hands of second-rate men, such as Giulio Romano, or of accomplished improvvissatori such as Primaticcio, men who, instead of sympathising with archi- tecture, treated it merely as the vehicle of their ornamentation. Architecture, in fact, had abdicated its position as Mistress of the Arts. Here and there a man of 82 THE CRAFTSMAN genius, Inigo Jones for example or Bernini, might hope to follow the masters of the sixteenth century ; but by the end of the seventeenth century the process of specialising in architecture, and indeed in all the arts, was complete. The architect designed his building and called in the painter for his frescoes, and the sculptor for his figures all three men professors in their own art, none of them capable of executing the work of the other two. It would be quite impossible within the limits of this paper, even to suggest to you the complex causes that led to this state of things. They lay far down in social and political conditions, and I think we may accept them as historical facts, not now to be disputed or altered. Nor again is the change altogether a matter for regret. Archi- tects may have lost the all-round crafts- manship of the mediaeval artist, but on the other hand they had greatly advanced in technical skill, and gained a deeper and wider conception of architecture as an art in itself, touching the other arts, it is true, at many points, yet having definite functions of its own to fulfil 83 THE MISTRESS ART which lie outside the province of those arts. If you compare the work of the latter part of the seventeenth century with that of the earlier, Wren's mature work, for example, with that of Inigo Jones, the designs of J. H. Mansard or Boffrand with those of Lescot andDe I'Orme or even their able successors early in the seven- teenth century, you will find an immense advance in technique ; and the result of this was that both in France and England there accumulated an admirable tradition of workmanship, which lasted through- out the eighteenth century and indeed distinguishes that century above all others in the history of modern art. Such a tradition could only grow up from a long-continued common practice. It existed in mediaeval times to an extent that it is difficult for us to realise. The aberrations of the earlier Renaissance were due to the fact that as yet no tradi- tion had formed itself to guide the designer in the new manner, as you will see in the strange caprices of French six- teenth-century design. The architects were uncertain of themselves, but as they settled into their stride the irrelevant and THE CRAFTSMAN unessential was dropped, the end in view became clearer to each generation, and architecture again built up its own tradi- tion. I think one would be justified in saying that at no time in the history of modern architecture has there existed such a perfect tradition in the art of building as existed in France and Eng- land at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to overrate the importance of such a tradition. When an architect can depend on his men, he is spared the necessity of spend- ing half his time in explaining to builders details which ought to be matters of common knowledge, he has leisure to devote his energy to his real business of thinking out the central con- ception of his design. The entangle- ment of modern architecture in details is partly due to the loss of our building tradition. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however, a somewhat momen- tous change occurred. The great inherit- ance of neo-Classic was breaking up, the dilettante appeared on the scene and 85 THE MISTRESS ART began to lay down the law in architec- ture, and for the second time in its history that art became a matter of literary fashion. But the literary fashion in this case was a very different thing from that passion of scholarship which had inspired the Renaissance of the arts. It is true that in the Italian Renaissance superlative importance was at first attached to the very words of the Classics, that in architecture for example, the authority of Vitruvius was treated as almost inspired, but the men who held these views were alert and keen-witted Italians, they were entirely in earnest; their enthusiasm and brilliant ability con- verted what might have been a mere phase of scholarship into one of the great intellectual movements of the world. The literary fashion which was to under- mine neo-Classic in the eighteenth century was directed by amateurs such as Horace Walpole, and translated into practice by Batty Langley and Capability Brown. You may judge of the depth of the disaster when Strawberry Hill Gothic became the fashionable method, and the landscape gardener superseded Lenotre. 86 THE CRAFTSMAN It meant nothing less than the loss of that tradition which had kept the art of this country sane and sober for nearly two hundred years. The more enter- prising architects let themselves go in multifarious designs. Kent, for example, invented a lady's dress with decorations of the orders. Robert Adam devoted his inexhaustible fertility to the design of anything from a castle to a candlestick. In France, the reaction against the frivolities of the old regime led to a pedantic affectation of purity ; and in 1812 Percier and Fontaine produced their collection of designs for decoration and furniture, all in the severest classical manner of the first Napoleon, and all more or less unsuitable for their purpose. The admirable skill of the French work- men will always give value to the art of that period ; but design of this kind, design that is to say, which was always in the air, and took no account of the limitations of use and material, could have no real vitality ; accordingly it died the death, and left the way open for the fads and revivalisms of the nineteenth century. By this time, matters were far gone in THE MISTRESS ART England. The romantic movement was well under way, and architecture went plunging down the slope of the new medievalism, with Augustus Welby Pugin, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leading the way. A few architects still clung to tradition, scarcely venturing out- side the limits of a somewhat frigid scholarship, as if paralysed by the exuber- ance of the Gothic revival. The classical tradition had indeed become anaemic, yet the debt that we owe to such men as Decimus Burton and Cockerell should not be forgotten. In an age of rapidly-growing sentimentalism they maintained the thin tradition of architecture in this country, and it is to this last stand of the Old Guard that we owe such fragments of a standard as we still possess in architecture. Now that the fury of neo-Gothic has spent itself we are turning back to the study of work such as theirs, which relied for its appeal on simplicity, dignity, refinement and proportion. But sixty years ago that appeal was made in vain, and English art sank to the lowest depths of degradation it is ever likely to reach, at a date fixed THE CRAFTSMAN for us with curious irony by the great Exhibition of 1 8 5 1 . Pugin died in 1852. Whether it was his enthusiasm and ability, or the sight of so much accumu- lated ineptitude at the Exhibition that stirred some latent feeling for better things, it is now difficult to say, but the Exhibition marked a turning point, and about this time there appeared on the scene that most interesting group of men, the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. With the significance of that movement in regard to painting, I am not here con- cerned. The aspect of it to which I would call your attention is one that has received less notice, but is not less im- portant, and that is its influence on current ideas of architecture and crafts- manship. The movement you must recollect, was not exclusively artistic. It began among artists, but at a very early date it was taken over by the literary man, and its inspiration and impact on opinion became literary, ethical, politico- philosophical, with a corresponding loss of effective strength in its effort at artistic reform. The more one reads of THE MISTRESS ART the early days of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the more convinced one is that these artists were very much in earnest; but the precise shape of their aspirations seems to have been somewhat vague. On the one hand there was that ardent and half-mystical medievalism which inspired the best of Rossetti's work both in poetry and design, on the other an almost fanatical anxiety to get at what were then conceived to be the actually visible facts of nature, an anxiety not less keen in its own way than the more recent effort of Impressionism at the other extreme. The two ideals, the ideal of medievalism and the ideal of rabid realism, seem to have been like oil and water in immediate juxtaposi- tion, but never in fact in actual fusion with each other. While Rossetti was a poet and a dreamer of strange dreams, other artists of this group were plain revolutionaries, aspiring to do away with conventions of every kind, not merely in painting, but in all the arts. To these reformers the arts of design of their time appeared, not without reason, to be hopelessly vapid and meaningless, and it 90 THE CRAFTSMAN seemed to them that, so long as design remained in the hands of tradesmen, amongst whom without hesitation they appear to have placed the architects of the time, things must go on from bad to worse. The remedy in their opinion was for the painter to take up the busi- ness. His study of the appearances of nature was to furnish him with beautiful forms, and these he was to apply to architecture and the arts of design, and not only was he to transcribe from nature the motives supplied by birds and beasts and flowers, a task for which his training as a painter might well have fitted him, hut he was to learn from nature that is, from the visible facts of nature the principles of construction. How he was to perform this astounding feat was nowhere indicated, and nobody seems to have thought it necessary to inquire, for fifty years ago architecture was not taken seriously as the art of building. It was the plaything of the amateur, the happy hunting-ground of the revivalist, anything rather than the skilful treatment of building ; wild theories of the origin and development 91 THE MISTRESS ART of architecture were started, and ' nature ' was freely invoked to cover all sorts of personal caprice. The cant of nature was supreme. Ruskin in his Seven Lamps urged that it was absurd for an archi- tect to study his art in cities ; ' send him ' he said ' to our hills, and let him study there what nature understands by a buttress, and what by a dome ' ; and so on with many other fancies which make admirable reading but have very little relevance to architecture. Stripped of its rhetoric, this reference to ' nature ' was meaningless. It might be possible to find in nature, in Ruskin's sense, one or other rock, not unlike the shape of a buttress, or in some deep cave more or less the form of a dome. But these forms are accidental and inorganic. They have no sort of affinity to the calculated resistance of a buttress, or to the deliberate disposition of materials involved in the building of a dome. It was not the least disastrous result of the break-up of the neo-Classic tradi- tion, that the amateur was now to reign triumphant. In spite of these heroic aspirations, it 92 THE CRAFTSMAN soon became evident that little was to be done by the Brotherhood in the way of reforming architecture, except in the minor details of decoration, and that its leaders considered architecture only from the point of the ornamentalist. Mean- while Ford Madox Brown had inspired Morris and his friends. The famous firm was founded, and it is at this point that the conception of architecture, to which I referred at the beginning of this paper, first clearly emerged, and was developed into a system of life involving social and political considerations not hitherto regarded by artists as vitally connected with their work. Morris himself, who had tried architecture and thrown it up in disgust, formulated a theory of the art which boldly cut the knot. Architecture he looked upon as the occasion for a great assemblage of the crafts, in which, if one may so put it, none was to be before or after other, and the architect was to content himself with the part of a space-provider for carving and ornament, storied tapestries and beautiful glass. To the realisation of this view Morris devoted half his life, 93 THE MISTRESS ART and he was no half-hearted advocate. In a lecture given in 1893, he stated as an axiom that ' Architecture is the art of ornamental building.' ' A true architec- tural work ' he says ' is a building duly provided with all necessary furniture, decorated with all due ornament.' To the men of this school, a building with- out ornament, but perfect in scale and proportion and fitness for its purpose, would hardly have ranked as architec- ture. Moreover, the ornament itself was strictly limited to Gothic ornament. The classical capital, the egg and tongue, the bead and reel, were held to be meaning- less and irrational, though the uninitiated might find it hard to hold the balance between such devices and the cusp and crocket of the ecclesiastical architect ; and the idea that such details might have their value in emphasising a line or some special part of the design seems not to have occurred to the reformers. Each bit of ornament must tell its individual story, otherwise it was nothing. Morris contrasted the c freedom of Gothic ' with ' the iron rule of Classic ' and, in regard to the latter, spoke of 'the acknowledged 94 THE CRAFTSMAN slavery of every one to the great man.' Why * slavery/ does not appear, unless there is slavery in the fact that some one has to take the lead in every affair of life. But Morris did not approach architecture from the standpoint of an architect. His brief apprenticeship in an architect's office may have disgusted him with the inevitable drudgery of student days ; and to his fervid imagina- tion a short-cut to beauty seemed possible by omitting architecture, or at any rate reducing it to the lowest possible denominator. He dealt with architec- ture from the point of view of the craftsman and the socialist. Gothic architecture was to him the art of arts, and the art of the future, because it was believed to be the work of guilds, because no man was supposed to stand a head and shoulders above the rest, and because it gave liberal and even licentious provision for the handicrafts. Neo- Classic, on the other hand, was hateful and unintelligible, wicked and without a soul. In the lecture referred to, you will find this statement : ' St. Paul's was not built to be beautiful, to be the 95 THE MISTRESS ART home of the citizens in their moments of exaltation, their surprise, grief, and hope, but to be proper, respectable, and there- fore to show the due amount of cultiva- tion.' The writer of this passage can never have witnessed a nation's grief under the dome of St. Paul's, or must have been a singularly unimpressionable man. Morris makes it clear that he dis- liked the building, but his criticism is irrelevant. His mind was so steeped in certain phases of literature and methods of thought, and his eye was so firmly fixed on detail, that he never rose to the concep- tion of an art of architecture which is con- cerned with the rhythm of building, with thought in great spaces, an art in which detail, however beautiful, is merely there to reinforce a dominant idea. I would not be misunderstood in this matter of detail. It goes without saying that an architect cannot afford to be care- less in detail any more than a painter can afford to be slovenly in drawing. Skill and knowledge of details in the sense of the exact phrase, even of the individual word, are clearly necessary, if an archi- tect is to express himself adequately, if THE CRAFTSMAN he is to give his thought its full value. Moreover, these details, these mouldings and ornaments, these precise points of finish, cannot in great architecture be separated from the design itself, the idea and its execution must be taken together, for the ultimate aim is a great thought finely expressed. Therefore you must arm yourself at all points with the know- ledge of necessary details as part of the technique of your art, but it is essential in doing so that you should keep clearly in view the object of this study, namely, to acquire the power of freely embodying your thought, without the checks due to imperfect powers of expression. In other words, you will not study details and ornament for their own sake, but rather as individual instruments in the great concert of architecture. We owe much to William Morris, and though in this I think he mis- led us, I need hardly dwell on the value of his work in the arts which lie round architecture. His strenuous example did away with much that was foolish in design. He taught people again to value good workmanship, good G 97 THE MISTRESS ART material, and good colour, to dislike empty-headed art, and at least to aim high in all that we attempt. But his personal idiosyncrasy and the artistic creed which he had formulated for him- self led him to concentrate his attention on the handicrafts, to the neglect of larger considerations of art. The result has been that the sense of proportion between architecture and the crafts has been lost ; the architectural sense, the power of putting all these beautiful things together and into their right rela- tion, has disappeared, under a prolific growth of cheap accomplishment. Thus, the all-embracing revolution in the arts which was to be the work of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, has, I will not say deliberately, but rather as the result of the personal temperament of one man of genius, narrowed itself down to a half-despairing championship of the handicrafts ; and has left us look- ing each other in the face, with all sorts of pretty things in hand and little idea what to do with them. It has, more- over, greatly intensified a dangerous weakness for the production of such THE CRAFTSMAN things, without any necessity. In other words, the production of what ought to be the occasional and individual work of an artist has again degenerated to a matter of commercial enterprise. We have escaped from the Scylla of early Victorianism only to fall into the Charybdis of Art Nouveau. It is one thing to develop ornament out of actual use and handling, quite another to pro- duce ornament for the sake of ornament, to carve and paint for the sake of doing it without contributing to the total effect of a building. It is impossible to escape the conclu- sion that architecture, as the serious art of building, did not enter into the con- sciousness of the pre-Raphaelites, and of their successors. How else is it possible to account for the idea seriously held, and stated in terms, that it was possible to learn the principles of construction from nature. . The principles of construction can only mean the laws of statics and dynamics and the ascertained facts as to the qualities and weight-resisting proper- ties of building materials ; in other words the data with which it deals are organic 99 THE MISTRESS ART although inanimate. But in the brute inert mass of nature as we see it there are no principles of construction in this sense. To put it another way, Titian or Velasquez themselves might have spent their whole lives in looking at nature, and yet not have discovered the principle of a king-post truss, the fact being, that while on the one hand the painter for his purpose as a painter does not concern him- self with the inner mechanism of the phenomena of nature or with anything but their visible appearances, on the other hand the methods of building have been worked out in many thousands of years by observation, experiment, and thought on the qualities, that is the forces and capaci- ties, of materials. But these ardent re- formers of the arts did not in fact mean architecture, their efforts were limited to ornamentation, they conceived of the whole business of architecture as an affair of decoration ; and we find our- selves face to face with that engrained fallacy that architecture consists in the application of ornament to buildings, a fallacy which was sedulously preached in the nineteenth century, and is at the root 100 THE CRAFTSMAN of half our difficulties at the present day. It cannot too often be insisted on, that architecture is not mere decoration or ornamental building, but something out- side and beyond the various crafts which it calls into play. What it is, exactly, it is by no means easy to define. I can only offer you a few suggestions as to the point of view from which an architect might conceive of his art. We used to be told in our youth that architecture is ' a science and an art.' The phrase has never seemed to me particularly happy, because it seems to divide architecture into two separate parts, as if it were possible for some architects to be scientific men and others to be artists, and as if attainment in one branch of the art or the other was equally possible and equally meritorious. This assuredly is not the case ; for, in the first place, to separate the science of an architect from his practical use and proof of it is much as if one were to separate a painter from his painting. In both cases the artist only exists in and by the actual realisation of his art. And in the second place, architecture is clearly 101 THE MISTRESS ART not a science in the same sense that chemistry is a science, that is a science which is exclusively occupied with the discovery of new facts, their classification and the investigation of the laws that govern them. To a certain extent of course architecture deals with applied science, inasmuch as it is bound to appro- priate for its own practical purposes the discoveries of scientific investigators in such matters as statics and dynamics and the properties of materials. It is bound to recognise the facts and laws of nature just as the sculptor is bound to conform to the facts of anatomy. Architecture has to learn these facts and laws as part of its technique, but that is a very differ- ent thing from studying them from the point of view of science. The real science of architecture is the actual and practical knowledge of the means neces- sary to solve a given problem and to real- ise a definite aim, and the translation of this into beautiful building. It is in this sense that the architects of the Parthenon, of the Pantheon, of Westminster Abbey or St Paul's had science, and this is the science that you, as students, have to aim 102 THE CRAFTSMAN at ; for you must realise that architecture is a plastic force, answering to the in- finite variety of occasions that bring it into play, and that as such it cannot be drilled down into any formal science. The science of the architect is the technique that enables him to express himself freely and faultlessly as an artist in building. For example, when Wren left Oxford, he was probably better equipped in the science of his time than at any other period of his long career. He was a bril- liant mathematician, one of the founders of the Royal Society, and might fairly claim to be a man of science up to the standard of that time. But his early efforts in architecture, the Sheldonian for instance, were by no means successful ; anyhow they were altogether inferior to the work he was doing thirty years later, when, to say the least of it, the scientific knowledge of his early days was probably rusty. But in its place he had learnt the only true science of an architect, knowledge of the effect to be aimed at, and how to get it. And he had learnt that science, not from text-books and treatises, but from long practice in design, and from 103 THE MISTRESS ART countless experiments in building, for the true artist is always learning, perhaps most of all from his own failures. There is a sort of unconscious knowledge which gradually builds itself up in his mind as the result of years of patient study and innumerable observations, so that a skil- ful artist acquires, as it were, a second sense, or instinct, for the right thing, the true method, the just expression. You will note in the work of able and experienced architects a certain complete- ness ; their work may not be equally attractive at all times, but it never falls below a certain level of attainment. No amount of conscious knowledge, of science strictly so called, will ensure this result, the artist himself could not put into terms the instinct that guides him through the pit-falls of design with unerring precision. It is this sub- conscious power, quite as much as realised knowledge, that forms the true science of the architect, and it can only be acquired by the study and observation of actual buildings. For these are our ' nature ' not trees and caves and rocks. The study of buildings and materials is, 104 THE CRAFTSMAN to the architect, what the study of anatomy is to the sculptor. It is only by prolonged and intimate study of buildings, not merely of details, not only of the physical laws which govern their construction and the treatment of their materials, but by analysis of the effects obtained in noble buildings, and by search after the principles that govern their disposition, that we can hope to attain to any mastery in architecture. When enthusiasts and others urge us to study ' nature ' in any sense but this they are only urging us to beat the air. A distinguished French architect, M. Guadet, in his -introduction to the works of Francois Blondel, has said : ' Architec- ture is not an art of pure theory, or of doctrinaire ideas. Its object is to con- struct, its means the knowledge of construction/ As a protest against amateurishness this is excellent, but it hardly covers the whole of the ground. The end of the art of architecture is to produce buildings which not only answer their different purposes as enclosed and covered in spaces, or as more or less suitable arrangements of groups of build- 105 THE MISTRESS ART ing, but which also appeal to the imagination and the aesthetic sense by the beauty and fitness of their forms, by their disciplined design, by rhythmical combinations which appeal to some such instinct within us as is touched by fine orchestral music. Architecture is differ- entiated from craftsmanship or decora- tion, however beautiful, by its greater scope, by the sense it inspires of organic thought moving in orderly sequence through particulars to the total effect. I am driven back again to music to illustrate the point. A song, for example, produces its effect by relatively simple methods, uno ictu as it were, so too an easel picture, or an isolated piece of statuary. But in orchestral music the attack is more complex. It is the result of various motives interwoven and brought into harmony by the composer, and the effect is, as one may say, cumu- lative. Musicians among you will re- collect, for instance, the 3rd Brandenburg Concerto, of J. S. Bach, that triumphant flood of music moving inevitably and irresistibly in one broad stream to its great conclusion. So it is with architec- 106 THE CRAFTSMAN ture. There too, as in classical music, it is the call of c noble numbers.' In both there is the deliberate restraint, the play of motives, the definite and rhythmical scheme in which each detail falls into its appointed place, the masterly combination of all the parts so that they unite in one appeal to the imagination and the emotions. Some such quality as this I believe to be the essential force of architecture, and that which alone justifies its claim to be the most intellectual of the arts. It is a quality which can only be attained by the perfect use of the technique of the art itself; that is, however much architecture may be enhanced by sculp- ture and painting, it should yet rely on itself to produce its peculiar impact on the senses. The proportions of the Parthenon are not dependent on its sculpture. The vast dome of the Pan- theon would not be less impressive if stripped of all its ornament. For the strength of architecture lies in the imaginative power which can find the beauty waiting to be revealed in the wall, the column, the arch, and the dome. The main forms of buildings, 107 THE MISTRESS ART their planes, their spaces, their masses, are its province. Space composition, space music, are artistic aims peculiar to architecture, aims not dealt with by any other art. In claiming this position for archi- tecture, I must not be supposed to argue against the use of sculpture and painting in our buildings. What I contend for is a more rational consideration of the relation of architecture to the sister arts. Instead of wasting his time on arts and handicrafts which he cannot properly master, the architect should limit him- self to the technical contribution which he is peculiarly fitted to supply. It is quite certain that we architects cannot satisfactorily paint frescoes and carve statuary for our buildings ; we could not even make ourselves first-rate plumbers or carpenters, but we can bring the arts into harmony by intimate study of the effect of buildings as a whole, by consider- ing, for example, what effect sculpture will have on the scale of our buildings, and on the general texture of our wall surfaces, or what elimination of archi- tectural detail will be necessary if the 108 THE CRAFTSMAN painter is to help us. This too is the way in which we can best help the painter and the sculptor. Our contri- bution would be, not interference with their technique, but suggestion as to scale and balance, hints as to the effect their work will have on the building as a whole, and how their work itself will be affected by the building. If you compare the work that Tijou, for example, or Grinling Gibbons, did in St. Paul's, with what they did elsewhere, you will realise how effective the control of an architect may be, though he has never forged a leaf or carved a flower in his life. The knowledge necessary for this purpose must be acquired by the study and analysis of buildings; and where I think we architects have failed, and not for the first time in the history of architecture, is in concentrating our attention on details of ornament, instead of on these larger questions of design which are the peculiar province of archi- tecture. Architecture is a great and commanding art, and something very different from mere ornamentation. Now this conception of architecture 109 THE MISTRESS ART seems to have been lost sight of in the last fifty years. It formed no part of the Gothic Revival, a movement which never wholly emerged from its early passion for the knick-knacks and gew- gaws of the antiquary. Nor, as I have ventured to suggest, did it occur to the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their successors. Morris did indeed attack detail in genuine earnest, but the con- ception of architecture as the architec- tonic art, the art that controls and holds the balance between the crafts, was hardly compatible with his ideal of art and life, and it was only the logical result of his ideal that this conception should be repudiated. In its place we have been offered the noble army of craftsmen, full of a laudable zeal for beauty, but hardly adequate in technique. It has been said that c the true root and basis of all arts lies in the handicrafts/ This generalisation would hardly stand analysis, but even if it was true it would not follow that the handicrafts constitute the whole of art. The ideal of unalloyed craftsmanship has been tried, and found wanting. It has shown once 1 10 THE CRAFTSMAN more the disastrous results that follow the divorce of craftsmanship from architecture. I think, then, that you students of architecture may dismiss from your minds the idea that in order to be archi- tects you must qualify yourselves as handicraftsmen. The artistic problems which you will have to solve are more profound, the craftsmanship that you have to aim at in the last resort is that of the conductor who controls his orchestra, or the musician who weaves his themes into one harmonious whole, not the craftsmanship of the mason or the brick- layer. You must of course familiarise yourselves with these crafts, just as the musician has to know the qualities of his different instruments without necessarily being able to play them all. This practical knowledge is indispensable, before you can attempt serious design, but you must bear in mind that all this practical training is only the foundation and groundwork of a higher art which you will some day be called upon to exercise. The path which I propose to you is the more difficult one to follow, in THE MISTRESS ART It is easier to stay at the lower level, to rest content with small accomplishment, with the more facile achievements of the crafts, than to enter on that severe discipline, not only of eye and hand but of thought and temperament, which are necessary to attainment in our most diffi- cult art. A certain mental asceticism will be wanted. In your search for the inner meanings of architecture, for the mysteries of its masses and its voids, its light and shade, for the clue to its organic construction, you will pass by the allurements of the craftsman in detail. You can return to him later ; meanwhile you will follow tenaciously the greater business you have in hand ; and you will have your reward in a deeper understanding of architecture, in the joy that comes from the practice of an art .according to its true intention, and with its own peculiar weapons. The whole effort of noble art is towards simplicity, towards the one absolute and final statement. It proceeds, not by multiplying detail upon detail, but by eliminating the unessential, by a process of hard thought that admits of no excess 112 THE CRAFTSMAN or redundancy. If, for example, you study the careers of the great masters in architecture, you will see how the true architectural instinct draws away from the narrow standpoint of the crafts, and concentrates on the rarer and more subtle qualities to be won from building in itself. We should profit by the experi- ences of those who have gone before us. I have offered you some criticism of the men who in all enthusiasm sought to revive the methods of medievalism. I think they mistook the problems of architecture. They paid their tithe of mint and anise and cummin, but omitted the weighter matters of the Law. It is for us to take to* heart the lesson of their failure. H 113 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS IV. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS THE differentiation of the ends and provinces of the various arts might seem at first sight a simple matter ; yet, in fact, there are few more difficult problems in the theory of art, and none in which it is of greater im- portance to start with clear ideas. The subject, moreover, has been treated with some neglect in modern criticism. The critics of the 1850 school were pre- occupied with the moral qualities of artists, or with the literary possibilities of their work. Their successors have devoted much ability to the minute discrimination of matters of technique and the affiliation of pictures, and un- doubtedly valuable work has been done in this direction, but the connoisseur has profited at the expense of the artist, and there still seems to be room for the old- 117 THE MISTRESS ART fashioned dissertation on first principles, for an attempt to reach the standpoint of the artist himself, and the attitude that he is justified in assuming towards his work ; some such an attempt as Mr. Clausen made, in his admirable lectures on paint- ing, to leave the track of this depressing and even deadly connoisseurship. An effort has been made, on the other hand, to grapple with the scientific study of aesthetics, to ascertain the ultimate grounds on which the aesthetic emotions are based. I would not venture to speak with disrespect of this extremely scientific method ; but I confess, as I imperfectly understand it, the results are not illumina- ting to an artist. The theory is that our aesthetic pleasure in objects is derived from our inveterate habit of imagining ourselves into those objects, and of conceiving of ourselves as fulfilling their functions. For example, our sense of the beauty of a well-proportioned column is said to be the satisfaction that we feel in imagining our- selves as adequately discharging in our own persons the duties of a column, such as that it should be strong and shapely, should stand upright, should carry the 118 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS weight above it without a suspicion of failure ; in short, that this aesthetic sense is only one more phase of the anthro- pomorphic instinct of man. This may be so ; but it would be a somewhat lymphatic temperament that found plea- sure in imagining itself immovably fixed as a tree, or that was satisfied with thinking itself into a daffodil ; yet both the tree and the daffodil may make a pleasurable appeal to our aesthetic sense. As practical artists, at any rate, I do not think we shall find this theory of material value in our work. We may leave it to the industry of German speculation, and start a little further on with the fact that certain human creations do raise in us a certain thrill of feeling. As a French critic puts it, they set ringing within us that little bell of emotion which is capable of vibrating intensely to the touch of genius. The justification of our work as artists is that it does as a fact stir this emotion, and we may take this fact as our datum without further researches into the fact itself. Where a higher criticism criticism, that is, which deals with the broad principles of art will 119 THE MISTRESS ART help us, will be in establishing for work- ing purposes the relations and the differentiations of the various arts ; and I shall attempt this evening to put before you some account of what has been done in this direction by the great thinkers of the past, and to draw some conclusions from their teaching for our practical guidance. You will not expect from me an exhaustive account of aesthetic philo- sophy and I shall limit my venture to a brief sketch of the teaching of the three foremost thinkers on this subject, Plato, Aristotle, and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The most remarkable part in Plato's philosophy is the appearance, at least, of an engrained suspicion of the arts. Art, as apart from poetry and music, was to him an affair of imitation ; and as such was to be eliminated from the training of his ideal state. He does not deal with graphic and plastic Art till the tenth book of the Republic, and here the artist is dismissed with contumely, for, says Plato, there are three versions or methods of existence for any given object ; let us say a bed : (i) there is the idea, the arche- type of the bed, existing somewhere in 1 20 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS immaterial space ; (2) the actual indi- vidual bed, made by the maker ; (3) the bed as represented by the artist, which is only the copy of a copy. Or to put it another way ; an object may be known in three ways : (i) by the user of it, who has knowledge, (2) by the maker of it, who is instructed by the user and thus forms a correct opinion, (3) by the imitator of the object, who has neither knowledge nor correct opinion, but merely a vague notion of what he imitates. Thus the artist is clearly un- safe, and the appeal that he makes is made to the lower elements of our nature. Plato's words are almost savage in their emphasis : ' Imitative art is far from the truth when it discharges its functions, and for no true or healthy pur- pose it attaches and devotes itself to that element in us which is far removed from wisdom.' Such a worthless matter as imitative art was not therefore to be dis- cussed any further. Plato's conclusion has always seemed to me either a piece of superb irony, or, if one may be pardoned for suggesting it of such a man, the result of a too-unyielding logic. At 121 THE MISTRESS ART the time that he wrote these words, he had merely to go out into the sunshine on the Akropolis to see the frieze of the Parthenon, or the great figure of Athene Promachos, almost the last words of the Periclean period. It is difficult to imagine that these masterpieces meant nothing to him, or that he declined to recognise" these visible expressions of idealism. Yet Plato has nowhere taken back his words. It is evident that he subordinated the arts, even music itself, to his overmastering purpose of perfect- ing the Soul. It was not that he found no pleasure in the building, the statue or the picture, but he feared the seductions of the arts as weakening the moral fibre, and so he banished them from his state. The only exception allowed was art that had some ethical value, and this he retained not on its merits but (us /cat eV ol? /cat a). The artist employs visible forms and colours in space, the poet articulates sounds in time. Therefore the right subjects for the painter (and by painter Lessing must be under- stood to mean painters and sculptors) are objects or bodies which co-exist, which are to be seen side by side, and whose impact on the senses must be rendered at one given moment of time. The poet, on the other hand, has to give consecutive impressions, he can only express himself by a succession of sounds or words ; his business, therefore, is to make us realise action, objects which succeed each other in time. For example, if the painter wants to represent the bow of Pandarus, he paints it as it is, a bow of horn gold- tipped and finished in all its details ; but the poet cannot give us an impression of the bow by a mere catalogue of its details, therefore he gives us its history. He tells us how Pandarus, hunting in the moun- 130 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS tains, saw the goat, how he shot it and it fell headlong from the rock, how he took its horns to the worker in horn, who wrought them into a bow and polished them and fitted them with golden tips ; and so by a series of vivid word-pictures we realise the bow as clearly as we should through the more summary methods of the painter. Given the above principle, all sorts of consequences follow. Subjects which are legitimate for the poet are ruled out of court for the artist. For example, the poet can describe the coming of the serpents a and all the successive stages of their attack on Laocoon and his sons. The artist can seize on one moment only, and that must be the one most rich in possibilities for the imagination, that is, one that leaves it to the spectator to supply the next act in the drama. Medea, for example, should not be shown in the act of slaying her children, but in the conflict of emotion before that act. Neither should the artist select a moment of action that is essentially transitory. For example, the artist who painted a portrait of a man as the laughing philosopher made a mis- take, for the more the face was looked at, THE MISTRESS ART the more the laugh would become stereo- typed as a grin. (I may remark in passing that Lessing appears to have overlooked the application of his argument to the Laocoon itself, for the mouths of the figures are set in a spasm of agony.) Then again, it is possible for the poet to make his appeal to the emotions by methods which are not open to the artist. For instance, Homer could describe the warring of the Gods as going on simul- taneously with the battles of the Trojan war, but the artist could not show the fights of the Gods and of the Greeks and Trojans in the same picture if only for reasons of scale ; Ares, for example, covered seven acres when he fell. Or again, for a painter to translate into paint- ing the devices which Homer uses to make his heroes invisible, would be as artless a device as the labels put in the mouths of figures in mediaeval paintings. The fundamental difference is that the poet can deal with consecutive action, whereas the painter must select some definite moment for his art. He has to deliberately forgo much that is possible to the poet. Lessing gives, as an instance, 132 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS the wrath of Apollo in the opening lines of the Iliad. * He strode down the steeps of Olympus, angry at heart, with his bow upon his shoulders, and his close-bound quiver, and the armour clanged on the shoulders of the angry God, for Apollo himself was stirred : Yea, he went like night. Then he sate far off from the ships, and sent forth his arrow, and terrible was the cry of the silver bow. First he attacked the mules, and sleep- less hounds, but then he launched a shaft, shrill screaming as it flew, and smote the host itself, and ever the funeral pyres kept burning/ I have translated the lines literally, but there is a magnificent swing about the Greek that gives the very sound and movement of Apollo's fury, 1 and it is evident in the first place, that all that is 1 BrJ Sf KTjpea re "E/cAay^av 8' ap' otcrroi eir' to/xtor xwo/xe AVTOV KivrjOevros' 6 8' ^tc VVKT! e "E^er* eTretr' d-rrdvevOe vciov, /uera 8' iov l yei/er' dpyvpeoio Aurap ITTCIT' avroicrt ^Se BaAA'' atet 8 Trvpa.1 VCKVUV Kaiovro Ba.fj.eiai. n. i. 44-52. THE MISTRESS ART contained in the nine lines of Homer could only be indicated by a painter in a series of pictures ; and secondly, that those pic- tures could not possibly give the cumu- lative impression of the poetry, its many- sided attack on the emotions. This instance shows in the most signal manner the differentiation both in method and in subject that must always subsist as between poetry, and the arts. Lessing gives many other examples, the gist of his argument being that poetry, or even generally literature, and the plastic and graphic arts are not convertible terms ; that it is wrong to transfer subjects and methods from the one to the other with- out recasting them in your minds, without definitely realising the limits and con- ditions of the art in which you select to express yourself. For example, in a recent prize competition, the Palace of Bacon's Essay on Building was set as the subject of design. This was wrong in principle, for what might be legitimate enough in a prose picture, where the writer only attempted to suggest the idea of a certain building, became unintelligible and un- workable when literally translated into '34 ' LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS the lines of an architectural design. It is for his insistence on this point that Lessing's work is of such permanent value for artists. Lessing himself seems only to have taken a theoretical interest in the arts apart from poetry. You will find, for example, that, following the ancients, he considered landscape painting an alto- gether inferior art, because it was not occupied with men in action, and on one occasion his argument drives him to the extraordinary conclusion, that a painter who paints a landscape from Thomson's description in The Seasons is a better man than one who paints directly from nature. Elsewhere he lays it down that the aim of painting is to express the highest bodily beauty. This is to be found in men and animals, because for these there are ideal forms of beauty, but no such ideals exits in landscapes and flowers, therefore the painter of these subjects is an inferior person, who ' labours only with the eye and hand/ So again, when deal- ing with invention, he maintains that this is shown, not in the discovery of new subjects, but in the arrangement of old, inasmuch as the artist's work should be THE MISTRESS ART intelligible at the first glance, and he therefore condemned Protogenes, the way- ward artist who painted a picture of a satyr and a partridge, but finding that it was the life-like imitation of the partridge which drew everyone's attention, promptly painted out the partridge. To the modern mind, Protogenes was justified in doing so, because the partridge was merely an ac- cessory, and if it was accepted by the spectator as the principal subject the painter had so far failed in his object. But there is a fine old eighteenth-century flavour about Lessing, who had little sympathy with wayward artists, as indeed is shown in his other position, that the end of all art is to give pleasure, a position which leaves out of account the personal equation of the artist himself, whose object in his work may be to realise his own powers, to energise himself. And it is certain that an artist who set out in his career with the sole object of giving pleasure would be as an artist a desperate failure. Behind fine work in all the arts lies passionate emotion, which impels a man to paint a picture, model a figure, design architecture in one way, and one 136 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS way only. The impulse is from within, and as such defies classification. Lessing seems to ignore this, or rather, perhaps, takes up the running at a point lower down the line ; that is to say that, given the initial impulse, which starts the artist on his work, he supplies certain leading principles by which the artist is to work in accordance with the limits of his art, or as Aristotle puts it, ' ou yap Trao-av Sec tflrtiv 7]^ov7]v OLTTO lyxxywSias, dXXa TTJV oi/ceicw.' ' It is not any and every pleasure that should be sought from tragedy, but the pleasure which is peculiar to tragedy.' At this point Aristotle and Lessing leave us to our own devices. What is the oiKeia 17801/77, the peculiar pleasure, of painting, and sculpture, and architecture ? The object of art, the end set before it, is a somewhat complex affair. It is partly, no doubt, to give pleasure, partly the result of an irresistible impulse in the artist himself to render his ideas and emotions articulate and intelligible, partly, at least in architecture, to answer certain definite needs and conditions. Some- where among these objects, at any rate, will be the end of art ; but it is very '37 THE MISTRESS ART material how that object is attained. Pleasure, for example, may be attained from the sense of smell, or from the sense of taste, but this is not the pleasure that is obtained from the arts. That pleasure is obtained in the plastic and graphic arts through the eyes, and one may take it for granted, in the consensus of opinion that has existed ever since there has been conscious and deliberate art in the world, that the pleasure obtained is the pleasure of beauty, beauty of form, of colour, of light and shade, of rhythm and propor- tion ; and the beauty aimed at by the arts is no one standard and unalterable form ; rather one would say there is in the world, in nature, and in life, an inex- haustible reserve of beauty, waiting only to be found by the seeing eye, and made visible and concrete by the skilful hand. Truth may be at the bottom of a well, but beauty lies anywhere for those who can see it. Yet everything is not beauti- ful, or rather, in the existing state of our faculties we can only think of certain things as beautiful. It is possible, of course, that the sense of beauty may shift, that in some future age people might 138 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS find pleasure in contemplating such mon- strous creations as the men from Mars, but it is highly improbable that any such change will take place. Our sense of beauty with all its limitations and imper- fections has been built up by countless generations, and through innumerable associations beyond the reach of any profit- able psychology, and artists may be justified in taking it for granted that certain things will always be considered beautiful and certain things ugly. For example, there may be colour in a butcher's shop, or in the section of a fish, as intense as that of a damask rose, but no one will easily be per- suaded that there is beauty in the one as in the other, and no amount of technical skill will compensate for the initial failure in selection. For this, quality is surely at the root of the matter, this power to see for yourself what lies in a subject for good or for bad. It is an obvious thing to take a poet, and paint to his description, and by thought and ingenuity you may tack on all kinds of symbolism and allegory ; but after all, this is only taking a short- cut to art ; nay, it is hardly art at all. You have not seen the thing for yourself, THE MISTRESS ART but borrowed it from the poet ; you have endeavoured to make your dint on the spectator, not through the peculiar quali- ties of your painting or sculpture, but through associations of poetry or history or whatever it may be, and the extent of the aberration may be measured by the necessity which appears to be felt of adding elaborate explanations of the allegory. But if the allegory as painted does not speak for itself, why paint it ? Why not leave it straight away to the poet, the philosopher, the historian ? The artist should trust to the resources of of his art and not borrow from others, or attempt to combine incompatible things. You may find an analogy in programme music. Here a handful of notes is arbi- trarily selected to express the hero or the heroine, or some incident in their life, in each case a literary motive, and this be- comes the leit-motif. The result is that one's interest is divided between the story and the music, where one would watch for the adventures of a theme weaving its way in and out of the music, the mind is violently thrown back on some literary idea having no sort of relation to the 140 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS art itself, to the oi/ceia rjSovTj of music. Wagner did at least attempt to keep his leit-motif at an heroic level, but his successors seem to think anything good enough, the screams of the baby, or the groans of the dying. It is all so arbitrary, so theatrical and artificial, so unnecessary. Music is fully capable of suggesting dramatic action, but jiot in this way. You may recollect the last movement of the Choral Symphony, how the instru- ments take up the themes of the previous movements, try them and reject them, how at last in a tentative sort of way the 'cellos feel their way to an air, how this, received with diffidence at first, is dealt with in turn *by all the instruments, and finally accepted by the whole orchestra, leading up to the climax of that mag- nificent outburst when the choir itself comes into action. Here you have a consummate effect produced by an art entirely within its own limits, without adventitious help, and so that one cannot imagine it being done in any other way. So, with painting and sculpture, undue stress on the literary side of a subject simply distracts us from the effect aimed 141 THE MISTRESS ART at, and if the subject necessarily involves that stress, it ceases to be legitimate for painting and sculpture. We are always brought back to our initial position, that the range of the arts is not illimitable, or rather that there are certain things which they should not attempt. Watts, for example, sometimes went danger- ously near the debatable ground when he translated abstract ideas into form and colour. I desire to speak with profound respect of that great artist, but I cannot help thinking that when he endeavoured to represent such matters as Evolution in a picture, he sacrificed his art to moral enthusiasm. Yet, on the other hand, when he painted Love and Death, he gave noble expression to a familiar idea, in a manner only possible to a painter. Had a sculptor attempted this in the round, the result would have been too crude, too literal for the idea. I once saw the two principal figures in Meissonier's ' La Rixe ' reproduced as statuettes, the result was simply comic. Again, had a poet handled Watts's subject, he must have approached it from a different point of view ; no description of the figure of 142 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS Death, of the winged boy, of the door, of each detail of the picture, would have given the idea. The peculiar impact made by Watts's picture could only have been made by painting ; and this is, I think, the vital touchstone of any art, that what it does can only be done by that one particular art. This applies to sculpture, even more than to painting, because the range of sculpture is more limited, owing to the materials in which it works. Form is the principal study of sculpture, I would venture to suggest the only study, for its appeal to the emotions is made through form whether in relief or in the round ; and though we have before us the fact that the Greeks did use colour for their sculpture, yet in their mature work they used it, not from any desire for literal realism, but in order to accentuate detail, to get over difficulties of unsuccessful lighting, to make the image of some goddess gleam out of the darkness. Both sculpture and painting rest on a convention, in that without hesitation we accept them as representing the objects that they purport to represent ; but in so H3 THE MISTRESS ART far as they approach direct and literal realism, they endanger their convention, and run the risk of being estimated by standards out of relation to art. Madame Tussaud's figures, for example, are in one way more like the originals than any marble figures could be, they have real hair, real clothes, real boots and so on. Yet they make no appeal to us. The reason is that they have not passed through the fire of an artist's thought, and that in so far as they challenge comparison with reality they are obviously absurd. The difficulty is to know how far realism should go and where it should stop. The full use, at any rate, of colour in sculpture, as you may see it in certain works in the Salons, or in the painted figures of late mediaeval work, seems to me outside the true province of sculpture. It over-reaches itself, because it attempts to do more than can be fairly got out of the art. The work of selection, that is, of rejecting the unsuitable, and of search- ing for the sculptor's quality in subjects, becomes doubly necessary. The method of expression in sculpture is less obvious and more a matter of abstract thought 144 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS than in painting ; and it is also evident, that if the range of painting is less than that of poetry, the range of sculpture is less even than that of painting. For example, an artist would hardly select sculpture as the art in which to tell a story, though I need not say it has been con- stantly done by inferior men, e.g., the elaborate carved scenes round the outsides of the choirs of Amiens and Chartres. Here you have as many as five or six planes of crowded figures, whose action is absolutely unintelligible without care- ful study, and whose value as an integral part of the architecture, that is as surface treatment, is actually less than that of a diaper of ornament, or such familiar devices as a rusticated surface. The actual sculpture is extraordinarily skilful, but the failure in effect is due to a mis- apprehension of the function of sculpture, especially of architectural sculpture. For these men set themselves to do in sculpture what could only be done in painting. When Goujon came he swept away all this poor meticulous stuff, though indeed you will find in French mediaeval sculp- ture work as fine and even finer than his. K 145 THE MISTRESS ART In the west front of Auxerre there are panels in low relief which show an unerr- ing appreciation of the true possibilities of sculpture, that instinct for the right moment of action, for the point at which expression should stop, which is only found in the finest work. It is in this point that the sculpture of the latter days of the Italian Renaissance so often failed. Bernini, for example, was an extremely able artist, yet he never knew when to stop. The famous bust of Louis xiv. at Versailles becomes intolerably restless in the sculptor's search for brilliancy, and the Apollo and Daphne in the Villa Borghese are all but squinting in the intensity of their feelings. Bernini was trying to do more than was possible in his art, and the example of his failure should make a thoughtful artist pause and consider whether he is asking too much of his material, whether he is attempting in sculpture what can only be done in painting, or even in poetry, whether he is not playing false to the art of his choice. I come now to architecture, the art without a public, as it was recently called, 146 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS the art that Aristotle considered, not as a fine but only as a useful art, if an art at all, and that others have only recognised on moral or literary grounds, or have accepted as the mere vehicle of ornament. Architects will not accept this position, yet there is no doubt that architecture to some extent stands apart from the other arts. In the first place, it is in no sense imitative, it does not express itself through representations of natural objects. Fan- tastic theories have been started at times, such as that the ribs of groining were suggested by the boughs of the forest trees, but any one with a rudimentary acquaintance with the history of archi- tecture will know the historical absurdity of such views. Architecture, indeed, follows nature, but only in the sense of Bacon's saying, ' Natura non nisi parendo vincitur,' that is to say, nobody can put up a fine building who has not mastered the ordinary laws of statics and dynamics, and acquainted himself with the proper- ties of the materials he employs. The only attempt ever made to 'imitate nature ' was made by the designers of grottoes in the ijth and i8th centuries, H7 THE MISTRESS ART and their rocks and stalactites are valuable as the reductio ad absurdum of this pre- posterous theory, which indeed would not be worth mentioning, except that it underlies much of the critical cant of the last century. In the second place, an architect does not select his subject, he has not the un- fettered freedom of the painter and the sculptor, but has to work under conditions, the conditions of the problem which he is called upon to solve, and the conditions of the site and the materials of his building. So fenced in, one might suppose that architecture would not go far astray, but look deeper into it, and you will find as many pitfalls awaiting us in our art as await the painter and sculptor in theirs ; and these are due to our not having con- sidered sufficiently what the architect is there to do. He is there to produce an organic composition, not some precious detail, but a whole in which those details combine for a united impact on the emotions. Picturesque details, therefore, which may charm us by the handiwork of time, or by the association of history, have not in themselves any relevance to 148 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS architecture, they are merely the notes which the composer uses. They only reach architectural value by their relation to the other constituent parts of the design, and by the skill with which they are treated in regard to the total effect. For instance, you may see buildings covered with ornament, and the ornament may be good, and yet the building will have little architectural value. The ornament stultifies itself like a string of adjectives, inasmuch as, instead of helping, it actually impedes unity of effect. Architecture is not cabinet-making, neither is it gold- smith's work but a grim intellectual art, moving amid big conceptions, ever brood- ing over them" in the spirit of that strange figure in Diirer's Melancholia. Its pro- vince is the handling of masses of building, not the dexterous manipulation of detail. The point is one of vital importance, and one that has always been overlooked in periods of indifferent architecture. All the elaborate arabesques of the earlier Italian Renaissance, all that profusion of detail which you find in work of the time of Francis i., may tickle your sense of cleverness, but will not stir your emotions 149 THE MISTRESS ART like the gateways of Verona, or the walls of Coucy. I do not for a moment mean that you are to dispense with sculpture, but you are to use it as a note in your scheme, to emphasise those parts of your design which require emphasis, to explain where necessary the story and intention of your building. An architect should always have before him the effect of his building as a whole. All his ability, all his dexterity, the skill of his colleagues, the beauty of his materials, are wasted un- less this end is kept in view ; the whole gamut of notes with which he is to play on the emotions should be devoted to this unity of effect, and it is only in this sense of wise balance and control that architecture is the architectonic art. Another limitation of architecture is to be found in the fact that, in the lapse of ages, there have grown up within us certain instincts or habits of aesthetics which are not to be set aside. For in- stance, a column with a bend in it, or a broken arch, would displease everybody as clearly inadequate to their work. In judging buildings, the eye has to be satisfied at once that the conditions of 150 LIMITATIONS OF THE ARTS stability are complied with ; and this will put out of court the endeavours of the new design to invent forms which have no relation to structural intention. Such forms may be possible in wall papers, but they have simply no meaning in architecture. I need not say more about Art Nouveau except to warn you to be on your guard against these futile attempts at originality. The forms of architecture are, at this period of the world's history, very old, in much the same sense in which the words of a language may be said to be very old. Nobody has yet asserted that the possi- bilities of the English language, for example, are 'exhausted, and it is so with architecture. Your invention and origin- ality will best be shown in the use you make of these accepted forms. It is impossible to lay down rules defining precisely where one art should leave off and another begin. The few suggestions I have offered you this even- ing have not been made with that object, but rather to impress on you the necessity of keeping this question constantly before you. You should endeavour by constant THE MISTRESS ART thought and analysis to acquire a sensitive habit of mind in regard to the arts, so that in time you will almost instinctively learn to reject certain methods and certain subjects as outside the possibilities of your particular art. You will attain, in the end, the rare possession of the seeing eye, the extra sense of the trained and competent artist. In a previous lecture I suggested to you that it is the privilege of the artist to see the finer qualities of life. I now suggest to you that you must specialise this habit of* observation, so that you may learn to see in what is before you the possibilities it offers for your own art, and to disentangle c the peculiar pleasure ' that can be won from it by painting, sculpture or architecture. You must recollect that all movement in the arts, at least in the modern world, comes from within. We cannot expect the public to understand and appreciate our arts until we ourselves have clear ideas as to their limits and possibilities. 152 THE GRAND MANNER: EGYPT AND GREECE V. THE GRAND MANNER : EGYPT AND GREECE I HAVE so far endeavoured to clear away some of the misconceptions of architecture, which have had their origin in prejudice, and an arbitrary stand- point of criticism, misconceptions which seem to me to have formed a serious obstacle to the right development of the art in recent years. Let us assume that we have' prepared our tabula rasa. What are we going to write on it ? I may say at once that I have no rules and recipes to offer you for the crea- tion of beautiful architecture. I have no style to insist on ; even the famous orders as handed down to us are not an infallible guide. We shall get no help from archaeology, still less shall we get it from the reckless anarchy that ignores all tradition. We shall have to work out our own salvation ; but though copying '55 THE MISTRESS ART will not help us, we shall find an in- valuable training in the study and analysis of the work of the past, in a search for the spirit to which the masterpieces of architecture owe their great and perma- nent qualities. Those qualities are, I think, summed up in my title, c The Grand Manner/ at least in the sense in which I am venturing to interpret the term. For there have not been wanting writers who have treated 'The Grand Manner ' as a by-word of reproach for dulness and pomposity. It has been assumed that it is all show and vain affectation, the fit accompaniment of court swords and periwigs, something inseparable from French Royalties and noblemen of the i8th century. But in the study of art, it is well to watch warily the phrase, and the trenchant epigram. We owe them too often to writers who see in art materials for the exercise of literary skill, rather than a baffling and inscrutable problem which must be thought out on its own ground, and in accordance with its own conditions ; and so, in spite of brilliant sarcasms, we archi- tects continue to find, in the grand 156 THE GRAND MANNER manner of architecture, not only much that can help our modern practice, but actually the highest ideals of our art. To admit that it has failed at times is only to admit human fallibility. There have been times when architecture has overleaped itself in its ambition to amaze the spectator by its magnificence, in its disregard of the elementary and serious purpose of the art. Yet these lapses are but the failures in the attain- ment of a very difficult ideal. They do not affect the general principle which lies behind all that is worthy of being treated as in 'The Grand Manner/ namely, that the greater efforts of archi- tecture are "obtained through scale, through orderly distribution, through a certain abstract and impersonal simplicity of treatment, which relies for its success on its fidelity to large conceptions, rather than on wealth and intricacy of detail. I shall attempt by means of some ex- amples from the past to put this idea more clearly before you. Such a problem would never have presented itself two hundred years ago. There was plenty of bad design about, such as Evelyn 157 THE MISTRESS ART called ' busie and Gotic triflings/ and a French writer on gardens, the ' mauvaise maniere mesquine.' But it would never have occurred to Fran9ois Blondel, that it was necessary to urge his students to aim at largeness of thought, or a noble manner of expression. He, and they, would have taken this for granted, because they were saturated with the French tradition of classical design. With us it is different. We have lost our artistic traditions in the vast expansion of scientific thought and commercial enterprise, which have filled the last half century. We have before us the difficult task of recovering whole regions of thought which seem to have fallen out of modern consciousness, of endeavouring to get into touch with habits of mind, and intellectual stand- points that have now dropped into oblivion. The task is difficult, yet with patient study it should not be impossible, because architecture is a very old and slow moving art. Habits of thought that have taken centuries to form are not utterly lost. Perhaps these older tradi- tions are only latent, and waiting for the magic touch of genius to draw them from 158 THE GRAND MANNER their sleep. The efforts of the last hun- dred years, even the Gothic Revival itself, by the reductlo ad absurdum of hobby after hobby, may have done their work in steadying art, and in showing that there is no royal road to excellence. We are in the transition stage, and perhaps architecture may yet emerge, from this form of experiment, into the calmer atmosphere of an art that is understood by those who practise it, and is valued as it should be by those for whom it exists. Moreover, if we have lost touch of tradi- tion, we have abundant opportunities of knowledge. Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, and Roman architecture, Gothic and Byzantine, these are all before us for the comparative study of architecture. We have no excuse if we do not search among the monuments of their architecture for the qualities that made them great. We may be justified in holding these qualities to be essentials of the art, and in setting these before us as our ideal. In a former lecture I pointed out to you how closely art is connected with temperament, and how the history of architecture in one of its aspects is mainly 159 THE MISTRESS ART the history of the emergence of the individual artist and of personal modes of expression, from the hieratic methods of the ancient world. But as you trace architecture back to its sources, the individual is lost in the multitude, he is as a grain of sand in the myriads of the desert. On the other hand, a certain colossal intensity of purpose gradually gathers shape, the whole effort of a great body of men set on the noblest expression of a given idea, such as the religion of their gods, or the glory of their kings. One or two overpowering conceptions filled the whole of their life, and stamped their art with a splendid and monumental simplicity, the true grand manner, the very sense of which has almost disappeared in the complexity of modern life. In order to get at the point of view from which such work was undertaken, we must divest ourselves of modern associa- tions, we must conceive of the architecture of such a period of history as a link only in a vast sequence, stretching far back into the past, and built up by generation after generation, so that, as it were, any given building was predestined in its form, 1 60 THE GRAND MANNER and foreordained hundreds of years before it was built. The temple of Egypt can only be understood from this point of view. No modern designer would ever sit down in cold blood to design their enormous series of buildings and monu- ments. But to the Egyptian builders, their plan and construction were inevit- able ; they were the result of causes that worked with the unconsciousness of natural forces. The general idea of the Egyptian temple was simple enough. Take Karnak, for instance. At the fur- ther end of the rectangular enclosure was the shrine, with chambers on either side for the service of the temple. In front of this was the hall or nave for the use of the initiated only, and beyond was the outer court for the crowd, entered through a gateway between pylons. This was the normal type, and the shrine always remained intact, but constant additions were made by successive dynasties, court was added to court, and pylon to pylon, until the stupendous aggregate of Karnak was reached, the largest temple that has ever been built. Six courts, entered through pylons, had to be crossed, before the L 161 THE MISTRESS ART nave or hall of worshippers was reached ; between the second and third pylons, be- yond the open entrance court, there was a hall of columns, some 333 feet wide by 1 66 across, with a flat roof carried on columns, 72 feet high, M. Choisy says. * as large as the column in the Place Ven- dome.' On either side, flanking the way across the court, were six great columns carried above the rest to admit of clerestory lights to this covered-in court. The pylons, solid masses cased with masonry, with sides sloping inward as they rose, towered high above the level roofs ; their hori- zontal outline only broken in the centre over the entrance. Nor did the scope of the design stop at the entrance. The intention was to produce a cumulative effect, which began its first attack on the spectator far away from the Temple. The approach to the outer pylons was flanked on either side by sphinxes and obelisks set out on a regular plan. One such avenue, two kilometres long, joined the Temple of Karnak to that of Luxor. The effect of these buildings must have been stupendous. You will form some idea of it from the dimensions of the columns, 162 THE GRAND MANNER and from the fact that from the pylon at the entrance to the Inner Shrine the dis- tance was something like 1150 feet in direct vista, across the open court, through the hall of columns and through a succes- sion of pylons and courts, all arranged on one central axis line ; all, too, arranged in accordance with a carefully considered scheme of lighting, the object of which was to intensify the gloom almost to utter darkness as the worshippers approached the innermost shrine. Architecturally, the means employed were the simplest possible : column and lintel, symmetrical planning, level horizontal outlines above walls on whose face the idea of immuta- ble power fourid its final expression. The whole effort of the design was set on giving the impression of eternal strength and of some tremendous and even terrific mystery ; and in criticising this archi- tecture it is useless to apply the canons of northern art. You must study it on its merits. It has been urged, for instance, that the columns of the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Karnak are so close to each other that they miss their effect. Yet much of the effect is due to this very THE MISTRESS ART closeness, to this re-duplication of gigantic strength. There is always present the element of the terrific, sometimes in direct expression, as in the veiled colossi of the Ramesseum, or the columns of the Temple of Hathor at Denderah, some- times latent as in the profound shadows of the colonnaded Halls. Moreover, there must have been something almost terrifying in this changeless type of temple, handed down intact from periods beyond the memory of man, and carry- ing with it an overpowering sense of the mysterious past. For the Egyptians never changed. The Temple of Edfou is a late example built under the Ptolemies. There are indications here and there that it comes far down the stream of Egyptian art ; but it is an astonishing thought that such a type should have persisted for, say, 5000 years, practically unaltered, and that, too, among a people of profound artistic instincts. The Egyptians were a people of great in- telligence and highly developed civilisa- tion ; and yet this method of design maintained itself through thirty dynasties, and even persisted under the alien rule of 164 THE GRAND MANNER the Ptolemies, well after the time when Greek architecture had reached its highest level. That it was consecrated by the religion of the State, and that the Egyptians were used to no other forms of architecture, were no doubt powerful reasons, but they were not the only ones. This monumental method of design, with its abstract simplicity, its subordination of detail to the central idea, is the genuine expression of an instinct for the grand manner which has been denied to races less happily endowed. For not the least remarkable characteristic of Egyptian art is the stringent logic that governed it in every detail. Elaborate mouldings, carving in high relief, the deep cutting through which other methods of architecture find expression, have no place here ; the mouldings are mere surface lines, little more than drawn on the surface, the carving is of admirable low relief, firm in outline and consummate in drawing, but reduced to the most abstract expression in modelling. The beautiful examples in the Temple of Karnak, or in the Hall of the Temple of Seti i. at Abydos, show how closely these 165 THE MISTRESS ART sculptors considered their surfaces in relation to the effect of the building as a whole. Such skill was only possible to artists steeped in an immemorial tradition of art, and intent on the expression of a great monumental theme. It is in this fine reserve and selection that their work is on the highest level of architectural attainment. It has sometimes been suggested that whereas the Semitic races show an in- stinctive and exclusive sense for what is great, the Aryan races alone have the sense of the beautiful. In regard to architecture at any rate the distinction is misleading. Great size, or I should say the power of producing the effect of great size in orderly distribution, is one of the essential qualities of architecture. Short of that power I do not think any archi- tecture can be called beautiful at least it falls below the highest excellence of the art. Nowhere is the majesty of simple size more evident than in the monuments of Egypt, and I call your attention to this tremendous architecture, not with v any idea of your copying its details and building Egyptian halls, such 166 - THE GRAND MANNER as formed part of the regular practice of the 1 8th century, but in order that you may learn the lessons it teaches of finely considered mass, and of the effect to be got by the simplest forms of construction properly handled. Here then, in this monumental simplicity, in this reliance on great scale and the cumulative effect of a series of buildings set out on an ordered plan, we find one of the elements of the c grand manner.' The central idea is predominant everywhere, it is never sacrificed to detail, but serenely maintains its sway, undisputed and irresistible. Amid much that is utterly different, this architectonic quality, this perfect instinct for organic design, is found in a very noble form in Greek architecture. In Greece it was realised under different conditions, both of ideals and of natural resources. In Egyptian architecture the principle of symmetry finds its fullest expression. Their cities were set in the valley of the Nile, and except for the course of that river there were no physical obstacles to a perfectly regular plan, no rock or citadel, no Akropolis^or Akro- Corinthus, which dominated the laying THE MISTRESS ART out of the city. Moreover, the power of the Egyptian Pharaohs provided the only possible machinery for the execution of their stupendous architecture. Neither of these conditions existed in Greece, a rocky country divided among small and relatively inconsiderable States ; but among its peoples were to be found men of incomparable individuality and genius. Perhaps no example shows more clearly their versatility, than the laying out of the Akropolis in the time of Pericles. The Akropolis is a long narrow rock in the centre of the city, and here from time immemorial there had existed temples to the tutelary gods of Athens, shrines of unalterable sanctity, so that after the rock had been swept by fire and sword, their sites were religiously preserved, and the new temples, with one notable exception, had to be built on the original sites. Moreover, the area was bounded by walls of great antiquity, and the levels varied considerably, so that the task set by Pericles to his architects was one of extraordinary difficulty, for they had to deal with a number of heterogeneous buildings, at different levels, and with 168 THE GRAND MANNER different axis lines. Moreover, only one entrance was possible, viz., by the narrow way at the west end, and the rocks on either side of this were already occupied by older buildings on the north by that called the Pinakotheca, on the south by the Temple of Nike Apteros. But in the cleft in the rock between these two buildings, Mnesicles saw his chance, and here he placed the Propylaea, that superb entrance which crowned the ascent of the Akropolis with its stately Doric order. Here, for the first time, appears a subtlety of design which was a new thing in the architecture of the world. The Propylaea had inevitably to be placed square to the ascent, but the small Temple of Nike Apteros was already there, standing in advance of the Propylaea, and at an acute angle to its transverse axis line. The problem was, to balance this on the northern side. The architect solved it by treating the Temple as an independent monument standing clear against the sky- line ; and on the opposite side of the ascent he formed a platform, afterwards used by the Romans for a statue of Agrippa, and probably from the first for 169 THE MISTRESS ART sculpture ; so that though there was no exact symmetry, there was a relative equivalence and balance of sky-line, as between the two sides of the approach. Inside the entrance, the ground rose along the hill ; at some distance along the south side was the site of the older Parthenon, and nearly parallel to the latter on its northern side was the site of the old Erechtheion, almost on the longi- tudinal axis line of the Propylaea as rebuilt by Mnesicles. After the burning by the Persians, the Temple of Erechtheus was not rebuilt on the original site, a deviation from almost invariable custom for which some extraordinary reasons must have existed. What they were is nowhere stated, and we must look for them among the motives which inspired the whole scheme of the new Akropolis. That scheme was the glorification of the goddess Athene ; and the chief features of the Akropolis were to be, the Parthenon rebuilt on a scale of greatly increased magnificence, and the statue of Athene Promachos. Had the Erechtheion been placed on its old site it would either have competed with the Parthenon or 170 THE GRAND MANNER been dwarfed by it. Moreover, it would have been concealed by the Parthenon on the south side, and would have stood too far back from the north edge of the rock to be visible on the north side. Therefore, advantage was taken of the sacred spot on which was shown the mark of the trident of the god, and here the new Erechtheion was built, well away from the Parthenon, and so that it was visible from below on the north side. For Pericles' architects had before them a wider horizon than the parapets of the Akropolis. That rock symbolised all that the Athenian held most sacred, and the architects so placed their monuments that the white houses of the gods were visible from below ; so that from far away, on the plains of Attica or on the jEgean sea, might be seen the glittering helm of the goddess that watched over the city of the violet crown. M. Choisy has pointed out the curiously skilful placing of the statue on the Akropolis itself. It was the first object that met the eye of the visitor after passing through the Propylaea, masking in a manner the Erechtheion, leaving the 171 THE MISTRESS ART Parthenon freely in view on the right as the great predominant building, and so concealing the ' arrephoroi ' of the Erechtheion as to prevent any conflict of scale. This, no doubt, was contemplated by the architects, but I think their prin- cipal reason for placing the figure where they did was that, from either side of the Akropolis, and from far away, this figure should be seen towering aloft against the sky, midway between the Propylasa and the Parthenon on the south, and the Propylaea and the Erechtheion on the north : in other words, in dealing with a peculiar problem, they realised the possi- bilities and necessities of the site, not only inside the Akropolis itself, but from beyond it, and below. This alone was a great advance in architectural intelligence. Instead of the hieratic art of Egypt, almost stationary in its submission to regular and unchang- ing laws, architecture was emerging into the region of conscious and deliberate selection. The architects of the Akro- polis thought for themselves, in complying with the political conditions set them by Pericles. M. Choisy has a theory that 172 THE GRAND MANNER exact symmetry was intentionally set aside by the Periclean architects, and that they aimed rather at equivalence of mass and outline in an aggregate of buildings. He lays great stress on what he calls their sense of ponderation, and argues that, as the Parthenon was the most perfect expression of Greek art, and the architects of the Parthenon did not consider exact symmetry, the instinct and search for that symmetry which followed is a sign of decadence in Greek art. In spite of the great ability with which M. Choisy works out his thesis, I cannot help thinking that he has here mistaken an accident of develop- ment for a real and essential principle of architecture. In the first place, Greek architecture, with all its exquisite beauty, is not the last word in architecture perfect as it was, so far as it went, it will be found that with the extension of man's social and political horizon, other con- siderations will come into play, other problems will present themselves, to which no answer is to be found in Greek art. Instead, therefore, of the conclusion that symmetrical planning is a sign of 173 THE MISTRESS ART decadence, because it is not found in the architecture of the time of Pericles, it is surely more reasonable, in view of the im- mense importance that was to be attached to the principle in later architecture, to conclude that, instead of eschewing this principle, the Greek architects had not yet arrived at it. We are so much in love with the beautiful civilisation of the Greeks, with its humanity, its exquisite sensibility, its perfect accomplishment, that we are often tempted to consider it as an ideal type of civilisation. Yet, it was not half so firmly fixed on a long tradition as contemporary Egyptian civili- sation, nor was it absolutely superior to the latter in accomplishment. After all, it only marked a stage, a most extraordinary stage, it is true, in the development of the race. Nor again can one entirely accept M. Choisy's reading of the evidence. He points out that the Peri- clean planning of the Akropolis was by no means symmetrical, whereas in later work, as in the instance of Halicarnassus, given by Vitruvius, the Greek architects aimed at symmetry. I do not think that this is a correct statement of the case. *74 THE GRAND MANNER Halicarnassus, as described by Vitruvius, was not rigidly symmetrical. The site was a natural theatre of rock, facing the sea, and for this reason Mausolus, King of Caria, selected it for his city. Next the harbour was placed the market-place, above it and half way up the hill was a large square in which stood the Mausoleum, and on the centre line on the top of the hill above was the temple of Ares, with its colossal statue. On the crest of the right horn of the theatre was the Temple of Hermes and Aphrodite, and on the crest of the opposite horn of the hill the Royal Palace, placed there of set purpose because to the left of it lay a secret harbour. The plan was generally but not exactly symmetrical. Instead of two temples balancing each other, we have a temple balanced by a royal palace ; and the royal palace was there because it commanded the city on the one hand, and the secret harbour on the other. In other words, the exact requirements of architecture were subordinated to political considerations. Vitruvius expressly says that the object of this arrangement was that the king could, without any one being '75 THE MISTRESS ART conscious of it, send orders to his soldiers and sailors ; and so excellent was the arrangement, that on a memorable occa- sion, Artemisia, having inveigled the Rhodian fleet into the larger harbour of the town, sallied out with her fleet from the secret harbour, burnt the ships, and destroyed the Rhodians to a man. So on the Akropolis, it was an essential part of the policy of Pericles to keep ever present in the imagination of the citizens the sense of the divine importance of the State, and to this end he called in the art of Pheidias, the skill of the architects of the Parthenon. Where his achievement was so memorable was in its grasp of a large ulterior purpose, namely, that the Akropolis, as a whole^ should present itself to every point of view, as the visible symbol of the State. The problem of the Akropolis lay outside its walls as well as within them, and it was an effort of genius to rise to this great conception. Symmetry in large planning had not yet established itself as an important element of design, but the Greek had an extra- ordinary eye for ground, for the placing of his buildings so that they told their THE GRAND MANNER story seen from afar, and the lesson of the Akropolis lies not only in the beauty of its monuments, but in the flexibility of mind with which the Greek architects adapted their design to its conditions. Critics and writers who have had little sympathy with classical art have talked of it as an art of cast-iron rigidity. This is simply ignorance of the facts. I have shown you how, in the Akropolis, the general plan was, in fact, governed by considerations of high policy in regard to the conduct of the State. Another instance of this occurs at Segesta. It was customary in the Sicilian temples to make the entrance fafade face west. At Segesta the entrance front of the great temple faces east. The reason for this was the physical peculiarity of the site. The temple stood on an isolated spur at the west end of the hill on which the city stood. No access, therefore, was possible at the west end. Moreover, even if it had been, it would have been invisible from the city, owing to the intervening mass of the building. As in the case of the Erechtheion, an old tradi- tion was abandoned in order to meet the M 177 THE MISTRESS ART practical conditions of the problem. For, to the Greek mind, life presented itself as a whole, in which every part of a reasonable existence took its appointed place. Art with them was but one element in a highly organised civil and religious life, and architecture had to adapt itself, as it always has and must, to circumstances and considerations imposed from without. Again and again one finds these deviations from general prac- tice, due to some special circumstance, which show that classic art was some- thing vital and plastic, responding readily to varying conditions. At the same time, it is useless to strain the evidence in order to find qualities of design which were not yet realised. I cannot help thinking that accident, the accident of site, and a happy instinct for effect, had as much to do with the placing of Greek temples as conscious and deliberate plan- ning. The Sicilian temples are a remark- able instance of this. That the Greeks had a fine eye for a site is certain ; they set their temples high against the sky-line, temple after temple along the ridge ; but there is no evidence that they made any THE GRAND MANNER attempt to bring these temples into relation to each other in a consecutive scheme. 1 The town of Selinus, for example, stood on a high plateau pro- jecting into the sea, flanked on either side by valleys, those of the Gonusa on the east, and the Selinus on the west; on the south spur, where the ground fell sharply to the sea, stood the lighthouse, and behind this were ranged four temples of varying sizes irregularly spaced, but all with their axis lines east and west, parallel to each other. Below the walls of the city on the east side lay the harbour, now a marshy valley, beyond which the ground again rose to another plateau, on which were ranged three more temples, more or less but not exactly parallel on the east and west axis line. A slight effort of 1 Since this lecture was written, I have had the oppor- tunity of seeing M. Hulot's admirable drawings of Selinus. M. Hulot shows a straight street running north and south through the city, with cross streets at right angles. This would bring Selinus into relation with the work of Hippodamus of Miletus at the Peirseus, and would anticipate by a hundred years the rectangulated plan of Priene. The date, however, of the cross roads on which M. Hulot founds his restoration is uncertain. HittorflPs Temple of Zeus is called the Temple of Apollo in M. Hulot's drawing. i 79 THE MISTRESS ART imagination will enable you to realise the effect these buildings must have produced as a whole. Facing the city, from the sea, you saw at the foot of the Akropolis the harbour, high up on the left the lighthouse and the four temples of the city, placed on a line running northwards, and following the centre ridge of the rock on which the city stood ; opposite the city and across the valley stood those other three temples, giving, as it were, their last word in the mighty temple of Zeus at the northern end. Magnificent it must have been, yet to a modern student there seems wanting the final touch that should bring these units together. There is something a little artless in this dumping down of temples side by side along a ridge, some failure to realise the full possibilities of site and buildings. That faculty will come later, and so far we note the sense of sky-line, the feeling for the relation of architecture to landscape, already present in the con- sciousness of the Greek architect. It was a happy thought which placed the Temple of Segesta on its lonely spur, with the valley of the river winding sharply round 180 THE GRAND MANNER its foot, and girdling the rock in an almost perfect circle. The ruling principle seems to have been to place the temple well in evidence at all costs. Most of these temples were placed on rocks. At Agri- gentum, a series of six temples was placed along the crest of a ridge, with flights of steps leading up from the city below. In the centre was the colossal Temple of the Olympian Zeus, with columns some seventy feet high, and at one end over a sheer precipice stood the Temple of Hera Lacinia. The Sicilian architects were quick to realise the value of the contrast between the horizontal lines of the build- ings and the vertical fall of the rocks. Their noble simplicity was enhanced by the jagged outlines and stratifications of the cliff face. The tranquil immobility of the build- ing, its main outline unbroken by details, was an essential element in the monu- mental effect at which these artists aimed; and the same feeling for massive dignity governed every part of the design, and inspired that mighty Doric of the Sicilian temples that seemed, like the columns of Karnak, to defy the ravages of time. For 1 81 THE MISTRESS ART this Greek Doric was something very different from the Doric that we use in vernacular practice. For example, in one of the temples at Selinus, the height of the column is about five diameters, in another about four and a half; and instead of those irrational entablatures which you may see about, with a heavy cornice, a frieze of exaggerated depth and a mere slip of an architrave, you find the architrave deeper than the frieze, and both of them deeper than the cornice. The architects still regarded the archi- trave as what alone it is, namely, a lintel, visibly adequate for its work. The same sense of structural fitness for their purpose is shown in the great projection of the echinus of the capitals. These men aimed at giving in their buildings an effect as solid and eternal as the rock itself; and the first step towards doing this was to provide in the supports and lintels of the building an obvious superabundance of strength for all the work it had to do. If you consult the very careful tables of measurements in HittorfF and Xanth's Segesfa and Selinus, you will find many other refinements of design directed to 182 THE GRAND MANNER the same end. The design permeated the entire building, from its conception as a whole to the individual stones that formed it. Here then again we reach the common ground of all great architecture, the power of conceiving an idea organically, that is, as a whole, thought out and realised in all its parts, that large out-look which I have suggested as the true inter- pretation of the grand manner. The vital point, after all, in design, is how a man shapes his problem, whether he starts with a worthy conception of what he has to do, or whether he trusts to piecing out his work detail by detail, without attempting to bind the whole together in a complete synthesis. It is because the Greek architects in Sicily had this worthy conception that they relied for their effect on great scale and proportion. And, indeed, great scale must always be one of the principal weapons of noble architecture. Its effect may be obtained in buildings of moderate size, by skill and restraint, but when the actual dimensions of the building are very great, both the architect's oppor- 183 THE MISTRESS ART tunity and his danger of failure are vastly increased. Faults of proportion are magnified, difficulties of scale are greatly complicated, and to master these difficulties is one of the highest achieve- ments of architecture. The temple of Zeus at Selinus must have been such an achievement. We owe almost the re-discovery of this build- ing to the devotion of two English archi- tects, Harris and Angell, in 1812-23, one of whom died on the spot, of fever, and a little later to the researches of Hittorff and Xanth, far back in the last century. When Hittorff measured the temple, it was a heap of ruins, with one solitary column standing like a tower amid the fragments of entablatures and lintels. From these, and from a very intimate study of Greek architecture, Hittorff evolved his memorable restoration of the temple. The building stood on a platform raised by three steps of unequal height about 6 feet above the ground, the total area of the bottom step being 377 feet long by 178 feet wide, two-fifths larger than the Madeleine and about three- fifths larger than the Parthenon. On 184 THE GRAND MANNER the top step stood a line of mighty columns 8 at the ends, 17 at the sides. The diameter of these columns at the base was about 1 1 '4, diminishing to about 8*2, and their height was about 54*8. The height of the entablatures was about 22-9, and from the ground level to the apex of the pediment about 1 20 feet. Behind the columns, and all round the temple proper, ran the pteroma, an open walk or loggia, 38 feet wide, covered in overhead. The temple proper consisted of a pronaos or outer hall, with four great columns in the front, two at the sides, and a square pier against the wall that enclosed the rest of the space. From this outer hall, three doors led into the cella, 60 feet wide and 150 feet long, divided by rows of ten columns on either side into a nave and aisles with galleries over, carried on the columns supporting the gallery floor and a second order above them to take the roof. Above this again was a third order, supporting the roof over the nave, but open at the sides for the admission of light and air ; the light, by the way, all reflected light from the towering outer THE MISTRESS ART walls of the cella. In the centre of the fifth bay from the entrance was the sacrificial altar, and, behind this, the gigantic chryselephantine figure of the Olympian Zeus filling the whole width and two-thirds of the height of the nave. Behind this figure came the ' opisthodomos ' or treasury, about 27 by 20 feet, with flights of stairs at the back, leading from the aisles to the galleries and the upper parts of the building. Then came the back wall of the cella, and behind this a loggia, 56 feet wide by 30, with solid side walls, and opening between two great columns and the angle piers on to the pteroma. For the details of this building I must refer you to HittorfF and Xanth's work on Segesta and Selinus. HittorfF con- sidered it to be the most complete and perfect religious monument ever raised by Greece or Rome. We have to take this to some extent on faith, but there is evidence for almost every point of HittorfFs restoration except the staircase and certain decorative details ; and that evidence shows clearly the imaginative capacity of these Greek architects in Sicily. 1 86 THE GRAND MANNER Except for that solitary column it is now utterly gone. The fate of Selinus and Segesta was the common fate of the Sicilian cities. After rising to great pros- perity they quarrelled among themselves, and fell in frantic endeavours to over- power their rivals. Selinus was completely destroyed ; as for Segesta, though the ruins of its splendid temple are still stand- ing, the very site of the city was lost to knowledge for some seven hundred years, and only rediscovered by an enthusiastic scholar in the sixteenth century. I have called your attention to these monuments of Egypt and ancient Greece in order to show that the great qualities of architecture are its permanent quali- ties ; to put it in another way, that archi- tecture preserves its place in the memory of mankind in so far as it is based on principles which are independent of styles, and is inspired by a certain grandeur of thought which appeals to humanity now, as it did thousands of years ago. Both in Egypt and in Greece, in the effort after vast scale and eternal stability in the one case, in the monu- mental sense of buildings in the other, THE MISTRESS ART the same intellectual distinction finds its expression. In both we find that the designers worked to ideals which guided their hand from the first beginning to the last detail of ornament ; that is, we find in their work that unity of art, in the sense of its harmony as an organic whole, which is the first and greatest lesson of classical architecture. This indeed is what I would suggest as the true meaning of art in the grand manner, the only manner in which architecture can worthily express itself. There have been times, and they will occur again, when the essence of architecture has been supposed to consist in its details. It was so in the early days of the Renais- sance in countries where its principles were not yet grasped. It is to be found in every merely fashionable phase of architecture. But this is as if one were to say that the essence of a language, its peculiar quality, lay in the individual words of the language. If this were so, Colley Gibber would be as great as Shakespeare, and St. Pancras Church would rival the Erechtheion. It is because it is not so that archi- tecture is a very great and serious art. 188 PERGAMOS AND HELLENISTIC ART VI. PERGAMOS AND HELLENISTIC ART THERE is a tendency in the study of architecture to over-classify, to cut up its history into rigid styles and periods. That tendency re- quires careful watching. It is to some extent inevitable to the clear statement of history ; but it is quite possible for classifications to become so minute and so ultra-scientific that one cannot see the wood for the trees. The true perspective of history is missed, and the student loses sight of the essential intention of architec- ture and of the main lines of its develop- ment, in a maze of merely archaeological details. Great history has never been written in that way. In our own humble corner of history, humble I mean as com- pared with the history of the clash of nations, infinite damage has been done in the last hundred years by over-insistence on the minutiae of styles and periods. 191 J THE MISTRESS ART Those dreary wrestlings with mouldings and traceries, which were still insisted on twenty-five years ago, taught us nothing of the true magnificence of Gothic architecture, of its audacity of construc- tion, of the charm of its caprice on the one hand, of its real strength of purpose and stark architectural quality on the other. It is not that a knowledge of such details is unnecessary, far from it. It is the point of view that is wrong, the tendency to sacrifice the whole to its parts, or rather the inability to see that these parts have no value and no mean- ing except in relation to the whole. Scientific archasology has done much to help us to understand the art of the past, but it sometimes seems to forget that details which are vital to the archaeologist may, on occasion, have no value for the artist. There is always a danger that the essential purpose of an artist's train- ing may be lost in the preciosity of strict connoisseurship. The broad features of historical architecture, its points of attachment to what precedes and what follows it, are of greater importance than minute differentiation of detail. 192 PERGAMOS For example, the contrast between Greek and Roman architecture is some- times unduly emphasised. You are asked to consider them as essentially different without regard to the innumer- able gradations, the slow development under altered conditions of social and political life, through which the one grew out of the other. It is true that between the architecture of the age of Pericles and that of Augustus there is a great gulf fixed. The point of view has altered, the imperial architect no longer aims at the clear-cut ideals of Ictinus, the problem has become more complicated and a certain massive disci- pline has superseded the sensitive intelli- gence of the Greeks. But though this difference has arisen, it would not dis- prove the debt of Rome to Greece at an earlier stage of development, and this, too, would require careful definition. It might be said with truth that Rome learnt its architecture from Greece, but not the whole of it, and not all of it at one lesson. The value of historical study to the student is that it enables him to understand the evolution of N 193 THE MISTRESS ART architecture, to see how one attainment led to another by imperceptible stages, so that between one period and its predecessor there is no very marked change, and yet in the aggregate and after long lapse of years the difference is so great as to appear almost a difference in kind. We find this apparent differ- ence in kind between the architecture of Athens in the fifth century B.C. and the architecture of the Caesars. Where are we to find the connecting link in the chain of development ? It is to this that I shall devote myself this even- ing; and I shall endeavour to show that there was no violent break, no abrupt transition, but that under constant changes and modifications of detail, the spirit of architecture was steadily moving forward. In my last lecture I suggested to you some of the qualities of Egyptian architecture and of the most famous monuments of Hellenic art. I en- deavoured to show how under different conditions of civilisation, and with widely diverse methods of expression, both these peoples attained to the grand manner, in 194 PERGAMOS a certain unity of thought and spacious- ness of imagination which characterises all their architecture. But art is too sensitive to its environment to stand still. In the age of Pericles it reached perhaps the highest level that has ever been attained by architecture and sculpture combined in individual buildings, and yet the Parthenon was, as it were, the swan song of pure Greek art. Within six years of its completion the Peloponnesian war broke out, and before it was over, the Sicilian expedition was undertaken at the request of the Segestans. The re- sults were the downfall of Segesta and Selinus, the rule of Carthage in Sicily and the close of the splendid chapter of Athenian history. It was tragedy played on the largest stage ; prosperity followed by infatuation, followed by disaster. Within the fifth century B.C. Greek art had reached its highest point of attain- ment, but before the end of that century its further progress in the land of its origin was arrested by political catas- trophes as tragic as they were unexpected. For the present, at any rate, no further advance was to be looked for in Greece '95 THE MISTRESS ART or Magna Graecia. And for the next step forward we must move eastward again, we must cross the ^Egean to that bay on the coast of Asia Minor, where the Attalids built their Royal City of Pergamos. We shall find here fresh motives at work, instincts and tendencies leading up to that masterful spirit of order which was to be the Roman's con- tribution to the art of architecture ; this on the one hand, and on the other a certain relaxation in the sure instinct of selection which died with the age of Pericles. For we are to exchange the grave and stately Doric of the Parthenon and the Sicilian temples for the Ionic order with its latent suggestion of the unbalanced fancy of the East. The rise and fall of the Attalid dynasty comes as a brilliant episode in those stormy centuries which intervene between the fall of Hellas and the rise of the Roman Empire. The period that it covers comes about half-way between the age of Pericles and that of Augustus ; and the Attalid princes carried on the tradition of Hellenic art to within sight, as it were, of the mighty architecture of 196 PERGAMOS Imperial Rome. The Pergamene dynasty was founded by Philetairos early in the third century B.C., after the break-up of Alexander's empire ; and it lasted for about a hundred and fifty years, during which it was for a time the foremost power in Asia Minor. Its rulers were strong and sagacious, they beautified their city on the most astonishing scale, they allied themselves to Rome, and yet main- tained their touch with Greece. But the brilliancy of all these monarchies that preceded the rise of the Roman Empire was but a flash in the pan. Their rule was never sufficiently consolidated, it depended on the shuffling of political cards rather than on material and moral power; and the end of the Pergamene dynasty came with Attalus the Third, who after a miserable reign of five years died insane in B.C. 135, leaving his king- dom to Rome. I mention these dates and facts in order to call your attention to the close touch that the Attalids had with Greece in the first instance and with Rome in the last, and to show how, in this city on the East of the ^Egean, Greek, or rather Hellenistic, art rested a 197 THE MISTRESS ART while, and changed its direction and character before it moved on again to inspire the art of Rome. It did not cease to be Greek, and yet it was to move far away from the standpoint of Pheidias and Ictinus. For it was profoundly modified, on the one hand, by the humanism of Hellenistic culture, and by contact with Asia ; and on the other, by a certain restlessness among the nations, which were only to settle down again under the iron heel of Rome. The artistic ideals of the age of Pericles were lost. The gods were not seriously con- sidered, the heroes had become very human, the older Greek ideas were in the melting pot. Attalus the Second, the ally of Rome, was received with enthusiasm in Athens in B.C. 201, and in return for some small benefit the town of Sicyon put up a colossal statue in his honour side by side with the statue of Apollo. It is out of these topsy-turvy antecedents that the architecture of Imperial Rome was to come. And it is necessary to rest for a while at this half- way house in order to understand the gradual transformation of Greek art into 198 PERGAMOS Roman. Pergamos is peculiarly sugges- tive because the affiliation of its art with Greece is quite direct ; and there was not present the overpowering influence of a much older civilisation, as in the Alexandria of the Ptolemies. The city of the Attalids played perhaps the fore- most part in that movement of ideas, which resulted in the conquest of Rome by the civilisation and arts of Greece. Pergamos in this was typical of the cities of Asia Minor. Under their humanising influence, the austere virtue of republican Rome melted away, much as, fifteen hundred years later, the medievalism of France was broken by the Italian ex- peditions. Before discussing the work of the Attalids I shall digress for a moment to acknowledge my obligations to the splendid folio on Pergamos by MM. Pontremoli and Collignon. The ruins of Pergamos were to all intents unnoticed, or at any rate misread, till the year 1869, when a German engineer, Carl Humann, found himself at the modern town of Bergama, while surveying for a road from Constantinople to Smyrna. Some 199 THE MISTRESS ART remarkable fragments of sculpture came into his hands in 1869 and 1870. No- thing was done for the next few years, but in 1 876 Humann sent a fragment of a frieze to M. Conze, the director of the gallery of ancient sculpture in the Museum at Berlin, and the latter identi- fied the frieze with the help of an obscure writer of the third century A.D., a certain Ampelius, who described a great altar of marble at Pergamos forty feet high with very large sculptures, among them a fight of the giants. In 1 879 an Irade was issued authorising the excava- tion of the ruins, and in that year Humann began work. In 1880 he despatched to Berlin 462 cases of sculp- ture as the result. In 1 880-81 he excavated the remains of the temple of Athene Polias, and in 1883-85, the Trajaneum, a Roman building standing on the site of earlier buildings of the Attalid period, MM. Pontremoli and Collignon summarise the results of this memorable work as (i) the discovery of superb sculpture, of a hitherto little known period ; and (2) the discovery of a royal residence, of Greek origin, which 200 PERGAMOS they describe as the Versailles of Asia. Of their own work it is impossible to speak too highly. M. Pontremoli's draw- ings appeared in the Salon of 1897, anc ^ they were a revelation to some of us of the consummate skill of French draughts- manship. In the folio volume prepared by M. Collignon in collaboration with M. Pontremoli they gave the results of their own researches on the spot, with one of those bold conjectural restorations which seem to be the special province of our brilliant colleagues in France. Further details, of discoveries and sug- gested re-arrangements since the date of their work, are to be found in German archaeological publications. Our purpose here, however, is not with archaeology, but with the broad lessons that these monuments may teach us in the practice of architecture. The restorations proposed cannot, of course, be accepted out of hand. The actual evidence now existing, apart from historical references, consists of the well- known fragments of the Gigantomachia, now at Berlin, and on the spot the bare foundations of these buildings dis- 201 THE MISTRESS ART entangled from a heap of ruins ; scarcely more than the . evidence on which MM. Hittorff and Xanth based their restoration of the temples of Segesta and Selinus. But out of these materials MM. Pontremoli and Collignon have built up a magnificent conception of the great altar of Pergamus, which, even if it a little strains the evidence, remains a noble architectural idea ; one, for ex- ample, that might have served the architectural students as a motive in their recent studies for a heroic monument. The book is, of course, familiar to scholars, but I mention it to you this evening in the hope that it may inspire some among you, in the future, to take up some such branch of pure architec- tural scholarship. In the eighteenth century English architects took the lead in the discovery and study of the re- mains of classical architecture. Such books as Wood's Palmyra^ Stuart and Revett's Athenian Antiquities., | Adam's Spalatro may have been inaccurate and superficial, but they speak to a fine tradition and a lofty conception of archi- tecture, which we are apt to lose sight 202 PERGAMOS of in the hurry of modern practice. It is not given to every one to undertake such work or to handle such delicate studies as those of Cockerell or Penrose ; but you ought to have these matters in your consciousness. You will spend your time to more advantage in this region of scholarship than in cramming up dates and styles from examination text-books. The royal city of Pergamos was built on a lofty and isolated hill running from north to south, and curving round a hollow on the west side. On the east side ran the river Ketios, on the west the Seleucis ; and here, as at Segesta, we see the happy instinct for effect, prompted no doubt by the necessities of defence, yet in this case conscious in its purpose, as is evident from the systematic group- ing of the buildings along the crest of the ridge above and at the back of the hollow occupied by the theatre. The highest point of the hill, some thousand feet above the plain, was occupied by the Akropolis. The northern extremity of the hill is supposed to have been the site of the royal gardens and palace of the Attalids, but at a later date this was 203 THE MISTRESS ART occupied by the Trajaneum, and we are left to conjecture for the actual com- pletion of the original scheme. Next the Trajaneum came the temple of Athene Polias, on the high ground immediately above the theatre, which was formed in the natural hollow of the hill, facing westward ; that is, looking out across the plain towards the ./Egean sea. Above the theatre on the high ground and south-east of the temple of Athene Polias was the great altar of Zeus Soter. Below this, and south of it, came the Agora and the temple of Dionysos, and the rest of the city not included in the Akropolis. At the foot of the theatre, that is, continuing the axis line of the stage north and south, ran a long terrace, terminating at its north end in a temple partly built into the rock, and at its south end in a portico. Below this terrace, the ground fell sheer away to the plain. The general result of this disposi- tion was that, as seen from the plain on the west side, the royal gardens, the temple of Athene Polias, and the altar of Zeus Soter formed one immense com- position on the segment of a curve, 204 PERGAMOS lining the ridge and encircling the theatre in the hollow on the breast of the hill below ; and then, to make a firm line of arrest, to check, as it were, the sense of slipping down the hill, and to form the chord of the segment, the archi- tects set this terrace along the face of the hollow. From the angle of the royal gardens to the corresponding angle of the enclosure of the grand altar was about 1050 feet. The terrace was about 730 feet by 78 feet wide. The dimensions are inconsiderable compared with some of the great French terraces ; but they are to be considered, first, in relation to the site, high up on a very steep hill and across its face, and secondly, in relation to the buildings towering above it on vast retaining walls. The evidence of deliberate composition in this design is very remarkable, and is, I think, a factor in architecture appearing here for the first time. I pointed out how, in Sicily, the temples were ranged along the crests of hills without apparently any attempt being made to connect them in the con- secutive design ; how too, in the Akro- polis at Athens, the placing of the 205 THE MISTRESS ART temples was governed by political rather than by architectural considerations. But the architects of Pergamos felt that this was not enough. They felt the necessity of a comprehensive scheme dealing with the work and its buildings as a whole, and so they used to the full the physical features of the site by group- ing their buildings along the crest of the hill. They covered the hollow of the hillside below with the seats of the theatre ; and then, as a firm foundation for the design, they cut the terrace, form- ing as it were the base of a hollow fan radiating upwards to the sky. It was a great effort in civic architecture, memor- able because it was something new in the world and because it was to lead on to the monumental planning of Cassarian Rome. Of the buildings or groups of buildings, the one which seems to me the most extraordinary is that occupying the southern horn of the crescent, the great altar of Zeus Soter : and I select this because, to some extent, it was peculiar even in antiquity. One hears of the great altar at Syracuse, put up by Hiero n., measuring 670 feet by 75 206 PERGAMOS wide, with a stone basement and steps leading up to the terrace of sacrifice, and of others at Parion in the Propontis and at Olympia; but the Pergamene altar was peculiar, not only for its size, but for its astonishing sculpture. It was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Even the obscure Ampelius noted this altar with its tremendous sculpture. I have selected it, too, because its whole concep- tion is so remote from our present point of view. The early Christians regarded it as the especial throne of the Devil, these writhing figures of gods and giants in mortal conflict seemed to them the embodiment of all that was evil. They thought of it much as they might have thought of the altar of the priests of Baal, and they spoke of it only as * the place where Satan dwelleth ' ; but one may doubt if such a monument would be more possible or intelligible to the man in the street to-day than it was to the early Christian. We have lost touch of the intellectual standpoint from which such works were possible, and perhaps the poverty of modern design is due to the rareness of the attempts that are made 207 THE MISTRESS ART to recover lost ground by the study of the past. There is something in the old criticism of a work, that it was bad because it showed no knowledge of an- tiquity ; without that knowledge the designer has to work in a vacuum, because he has no tradition to fall back on, no clue to place him on the track of the mighty men of old. In days of con- stantly changing methods it is more than ever necessary to start from the firm ground of knowledge of the past, to have some standard of judgment by which to estimate what is and is not worth doing in architecture. The ritual that inspired such a monument as the altar of Perga- mos has long disappeared, but there re- mains for the student the lesson of its dramatic fitness for its purpose, the exact adaptation of means to ends, in providing such an appeal to the emotions as must have been made by this great altar on the hill. The altar of Zeus Soter was built under Eumenes n. probably about 183 to 173 B.C. The site lay to the south of the enclosure of the Temple of Athene Polias, on a platform about 500 feet long 208 PERGAMOS east to west by about 300 feet north to south. Along the north side ran the retaining wall of the Akropolis, on the east, west, and south the outlook was open to the valleys ; so that from the city and the surrounding plain the sacrifices on the altar would be visible miles away. I may say at once that the term ' altar ' is a little misleading, for it was rather a huge platform designed for religious cere- monies, which included the altar. Three steps from the level of the Court sur- rounded the substructure. This was a rectangular block measuring 115*0 east and west by 125*6 north and south, of which the principal fa9ade faced west. The substructure was formed by contain- ing walls, with internal cross walls at right angles to each other and to the external walls ; the internal spaces were filled in with earth and stones to carry the altar and its surroundings. The sub- structure was continuous round three sides of the rectangle ; on the fourth or west side the side, that is, facing the sea the north and south walls ended in returns running back the full height of the substructure to the top step of an o 209 THE MISTRESS ART immense flight of twenty-five stairs from the Court, some sixty feet wide between the bases of these two returns. The faade of the substructure was faced with marble. Starting with the three steps above the level of the Court it consisted of a plinth or pedestal course with moulded base and cornice, of a total height of 8*4. On this rested the mould- ings which formed the base of the great frieze of the Gigantomachia, surmounted by a cornice with dentils. Level with the top of this cornice, and at the top of the great staircase, was formed a platform on which stood the altar surrounded by a wall with porticoes or colonnades of the Ionic order on its inner and outer faces. At the back of the altar the enclosing wall was stopped on the east side and eight openings were formed with columns en- gaged on oblong piers. By means of this, a vista through to the altar was obtained from the side opposite the grand stairs. So far MM. Pontremoli and Collignon offer their restoration with confidence. In regard to the altar itself they admit a good deal of conjecture and hypothesis, and it is of some interest to follow their 210 PERGAMOS method. The only documentary evi- dence (wrongly translated, by the way, in M. Pontremoli's book) consists of cer- tain passages in Pausanias, who says that the altar ' was made out of the ashes of the thigh bones of the victims sacrificed to the God, as at Olympia.' To keep such an altar in any shape would be a difficult matter without some retaining wall. Evidence of some such construc- tion in the altar of Hiero at Syracuse was discovered by M. Puchstein, and corrobo- rated by passages in Pausanias, which pointed to a double stage in the altar, (i) a stone platform reached by stairs on either side, on which the victims were sacrificed ; and (2) an upper part on which the victims were burnt after the sacrifice. The restoration of the altar at Pergamos has been worked out on these lines. In the centre of the space enclosed by the colonnade another enclosure is shown, with wide openings, in back and front ; and within this is placed the altar, a rectangular block 1 2'6 high, 46*6 long, and 3 1 '6 wide, with double staircases from the north and south ends, leading to wide landings in the centre of the front and 21 J THE MISTRESS ART back where the victims were sacrificed. Between the landings they show another oblong construction with free way all round it from the landings. This was formed of a low retaining wall of marble within which the ashes were pounded, and on this the remains of the victims were burnt. You have therefore to con- ceive of the great altar as a lofty rectan- gular platform, the three outer sides of which carried the frieze of the Giganto- machia, the fourth side being occupied by the return walls and the great flight of steps from the court to the platform level. On the platform itself was placed the altar surrounded on three sides by the colonnade, and above on the altar itself was the smaller enclosure on which were the ashes of the sacrifices. Such, generally speaking, is the restoration of the great altar of Pergamos, worked out by MM. Pontremoli and Collignon, and shown in the plates of their book. That it should be literally accepted in all its particulars is hardly to be expected ; but it is an admirable example of the methods of French scholarship, and it suggests a monument worthy of the place that 212 PERGAMOS Ampelius assigned to it among the Mira- cula Mundi. The fragments of the frieze at Berlin are still among the most marvellous works of sculpture in the world. The height of the frieze was 7*8, and some idea can be formed of the scale by the fact that these fragments work out to a length of 390 feet, and the estimated length of the frieze in position is put at about 420 feet. I doubt if any more gigantic enterprise in sculpture has ever been undertaken, for this frieze was not broken up by details, such as triglyphs, or returns round architectural members, but was one continuous band running sheer round the building from the steps on one side till it ran out again on the steps on the other. There is something Titanic in the audacity that could venture on such a work. And it is indeed the scale of the whole conception that makes this frieze so memorable. The pan-Athenaic procession that ran round the cella of the Parthenon was a far more beautiful work, in its exquisite rhythm and refinement and in its pro- found instinct for the relation of sculpture 213 THE MISTRESS ART to architecture. But that frieze was on an altogether smaller scale, and although it is evident that the sculptors of Perga- mos were men of coarser fibre than the sculptors of the Parthenon, yet the use they made of their astonishing technique very nearly replaced the genuine inspira- tion of the earlier school. I doubt if, in the whole range of sculpture, it is possible to find such a prodigious tour-de-force ; for Hellenistic art had passed the stage of idealism, it sought passionately for realism, for strong even violent effects of emotion. In the pride of its know- ledge it was not content with the stately dignity of Pheidias, it must needs force the note ; and one cannot imagine a subject more fitted for this purpose than the fight of the gods and the giants ; the gods as the principle of Good, defeating the giants, the embodiment of Evil. The learning of Alexandria was called in to supply the most recondite mythology. The sculptor brought into action the whole army of gods and goddesses, each with their proper attributes, and to quote M. Collignon c the entire Ban and Arriere- ban of giants.' The giants are shown 214 PERGAMOS as half human, half animal, the upper parts of superb muscular development with splendid wings that recall the Victory of Samothrace. The legs below the knee become serpents, which take part in the fight on their own account. The taste of the latter is questionable, but of the decorative value of the wings and serpents in the composition there can be no doubt. The wings form a back- ground to those magnificent torsos, and the serpents fill up the intervening spaces, and give the necessary recurring motive which binds the whole frieze together. The fragments of Athene and Alkyoneus, of Zeus and Porphyrion show the extraordinary technique and power of composition possessed by the Pergamene sculptors. These figures were calculated to be seen at a distance, and indeed in that clear light might almost have told their story to the plain below. It has been suggested that the Gigantomachia itself was intended to symbolise not only the victory of good over evil, but actually the victories of the Attalids over the barbarians of Galatia. There was a real 215 THE MISTRESS ART reason, therefore, for this emphasis of treatment. The altar was the visible symbol of the religion of the State, and a standing lesson to restless neighbours. As in the case of the Akropolis at Athens, a political motive prompted the architectural treatment which brought into fullest prominence the civil and religious monuments of the State, and instead of guarding them behind impene- trable walls revealed them in all their splendour to the whole countryside. Where, however, the advance is made, is in the consecutive placing of these monuments; the very most is made of them, not only individually as in the Temple of the Akropolis, but as units in one great composition. The sub- ordination of details to a dominant idea is not less conspicuous in the monuments individually. In the great altar, for example, the central idea was one of extreme simplicity. Two motives in- spired it ; the external motive of the ceremonial in use, and the artistic motive of the frieze itself. Breaks in the archi- tectural design, its division into bays which might have occurred to the mere 216 PERGAMOS architect out of touch with sculpture, are given up at once. The architecture was reduced to its simplest expression, and it was left to the sculptor to tell the story in a way that no one could mis- take, and yet in a manner which would with the architecture form one noble composition. It is, too, in this obedi- ence to a dominating motive that there lies the justification for the exuberance of the frieze both in relief and move- ment. It is to be recollected that in architectural sculpture on a great scale it is of the first importance to keep the masses broad and simple ; or, to put it in a reverse way, that a design which results in uniform shadows scattered mechanically over the surface will defeat its purpose as architectural decoration, and however beautiful in detail will contribute little more to the total effect than a vermiculated wall. The peculiar quality of the frieze of the Gigantomachia is that by means of the contrast of the torsos with the wings and flying draperies in the lower planes, an admir- ably varied surface was obtained with- out losing the rhythm of the composition. 217 THE MISTRESS ART The bold salient surfaces are as essential as the more delicate sculpture in the background, a point which is sometimes lost sight of in the excessive study of low relief. It is, of course, a question of the position and purpose of the sculpture. When, for example, the object is to produce some precious shrine, something almost of the casket order, delicate low relief may do its work, by means, as it were, of an exquisite embroidery of surface. But this is the work of the goldsmith, or the cabinet- maker, rather than of the architect or the sculptor. It is often shown in a beautiful manner in mediaeval art, and with less success in much of the architecture of the early Renaissance in Italy and France, before architec- ture and sculpture had learnt again the lesson that, if there is to be a right relation between the arts, there must be give and take on either side. It is much easier to cover a building with sculpture than to know where to stay the hand, where the architect should leave off and the sculptor begin. And for the sculptor, the real difficulty 218 PERGAMOS is not merely the production of beautiful detail, but how he is to combine this with the architecture, and give to both their fullest and most perfect expression. It is at this point, and in the co-ordina- tion of the two arts, that the real diffi- culty of monumental sculpture begins. Only the great masters of sculpture are able to work in this higher plane, and between their work and that of the mere ornamentalist there is all the difference that lies between the canons of Palestrina and the symphonies of Beethoven. M. Collignon, in some admirable remarks on the art of Pergamos, calls attention to the curiously modern feeling shown in the work of the Pergamene sculptors, their feeling for the pictur- esque, for dramatic incident, their search for decorative motives, the passionate realism of their technique. For example, in a frieze which existed on the inner side of the wall surrounding the altar, the story of Telephus, the mythical founder of Pergamos, was given with a fullness of episode and a continuity of narrative, such as one would expect to find in sixteenth century sculpture. M. 219 THE MISTRESS ART Collignon finds it but a step onwards and downwards from this to the intricate details of Trajan's column. Elsewhere he compares the court of the Attalids to that of the Medici, and their artists to the Florentines of the earlier Renais- sance. The comparison is hardly borne out by the evidence. The work of the Pergamene sculptors cannot be classed in one category. There is the frieze of Telephus, meticulous in detail, and probably later work. Then there are the statues of Gauls wounded and dying, of which the figure in the Vatican, wrongly called the Dying Gladiator, is the most typical example. Lastly, there are the figures of the Gigantomachia. The first of these is of no great import- tance for our purposes. The second group is of extraordinary interest in its realism and its pathos, and in certain examples for its violence of treatment. If one were to seek for a parallel in modern work, perhaps it would be found in some of Bernini's sculpture, not in the work of Donatello, nor even in that of Cellini. But this is of less value for our purpose than the frieze of the 220 PERGAMOS Gigantomachia. This has the modern spirit, but it is the modern spirit of Michael Angelo, rather than that of the narrative sculptors of later Rome. Given the peculiar conditions of site and purpose, it was a masterpiece of architectural sculp- ture in its most splendid form. It represents, moreover, the high-water mark of Hellenistic art. With the political downfall of ancient Greece there disappeared the intense, if narrow, patriotism of the city states. The old ideals had no place in the new mon- archies, still less under the Empire ; henceforward the Greek was to be the man of no country, but the adventurer, the artist of the world ; and this role he maintained till the fall of the Roman Empire. The result is seen in Hellen- istic art, if one may criticise its con- summate work. Its failure, on occasion, seems to have been due to absence of conviction. These men could do every- thing equally well, but one thing was to them as another, and hence their exaggerated assertion, that forcing of the note which they hoped might take the place of genuine passion. All that skill 221 THE MISTRESS ART of hand, knowledge of technique, learning and scholarship could do, it did, but possibly it lacked that absolute and unconscious sincerity which set its in- delible seal of distinction on the art of ancient Greece. And yet Hellenistic art is of scarcely less importance in history, for it was the precursor of Roman art and through that of the Renaissance. In sculpture it anticipated very nearly the modern feeling, its curiosity, its interest in details, its search for technical quali- ties. In architecture it marks a distinct ad- vance. The architects of ancient Greece, perfect though their buildings were, as far as they went, had not arrived at the conception of groups of buildings linked together into one great architectural de- sign. Explain it as we will, there is no getting away from the fact that the Akro- polis at Athens was not so planned, and there is no evidence to show that their architects were conscious of any necessity for doing so. Greek temples and build- ings were dotted about on rocks and ridges, with an excellent eye for the picturesque, but apparently with little consideration of their effect on each other. 222 PERGAMOS Here there was a chance for some thinker in architecture, and this was the path that was opened up by the Hellenistic architects. The grouping of the build- ings on the ridge of Pergamos was no mere happy accident. It was there to realise an effect foreseen and calculated. The talk of decadence is misleading, because it blinds the eye to the develop- ment of art, to the growth of new quali- ties and altered ideals such as were not possible or even imaginable under earlier conditions. It is an easy matter to pour scorn on methods because they differ from the standards which we have set up for ourselves, but that is not the way to understand architecture or to advance in it. It is more profitable, even if much more difficult, to search out the message that each generation has to offer in its turn, even though the language is strange, and its accent seems unmusical. It has been the vice of much brilliant criticism that it has accepted one mode of expres- sion and passionately condemned every other. Because Greek architecture is beautiful, it has said that Roman is bad ; or because mediaeval art has rilled our 223 THE MISTRESS ART fancy, we are told that the art of the Renaissance is vicious because it does not comply with the standard of Gothic. But at this rate we shall never learn the lesson of the essential continuity of architecture on the one hand, and of the expression of the same spirit under very different forms on the other. It is use- less to expect from any given phase of art more than the artist set out to do, and more than it was possible for him to do under the conditions in which he worked. If Hellenistic art failed in the splendid simplicity of earlier work, on the other hand it drew out all the good latent in the conditions in which it found itself, it was subtle and versatile, skilful in its handling of very difficult problems. The grouping of these monuments on the rock of Pergamos, the faculty of com- position shown both in the whole and in part, the sense of organic treatment, are new and invaluable achievements. They prepared the way for the splendid civic architecture of Imperial Rome, and they have their lesson for us. We practise our arts under complicated conditions, where selection is difficult in the wealth 224 PERGAMOS of choice before us. The first step is to learn what has been done in the past ; and it is that you may recover for your- selves your share in that legacy that I recommend to you the patient study of such long-forgotten monuments as those of the Attalids at Pergamos. You should study them, too, as artists and as scholars ; that is, with a mind alert for all suggestions that may bear on modern practice, and with a keen sense for those underlying strains of thought and feeling by which they attach them- selves to the art that went before and to that which followed. I would not, for a moment, underrate the value of archaeology ; to it we are indebted for all that we know of such monuments as those I have referred to to-day, but I would warn you against unintelligent archaeology, against rigid classification, against all that jargon of styles and periods which divides history into water- tight compartments. That is not the way to study the history of architecture with any profit. Each genuine phase of architecture is indissolubly connected with the architecture before and after it ; p 225 THE MISTRESS ART and it is only from this standpoint that it is possible to arrive at its true significance as a link in a chain of long development, one more course in the building of the Palace of Art. 226 ROME VII. ROME ' Roma quanta fuit) ipsa ruina docet' IT is difficult for any one who is not a trained archaeologist and endowed with a lively imagination to realise the magnificence of Imperial Rome. When Serlio issued his third book, deal- with c all kinds of excellent antiquities of Buildings, of Houses, Temples, Amphi- theatres, Palaces, Thermes, Obelisks, Bridges, Arches triumphant,' and so on, he put on his title-page the line c Roma quanta fuit, ipsa ruina docet' In spite of its two false quantities and bad grammar, the line expressed what was possible in the sixteenth century, when scholars and artists from France and Spain, England, Germany and Holland, journeyed to Rome on horse or foot or any way they could, to study the most famous monuments of antiquity. Yet most of them were destroyed even then. In the 229 THE MISTRESS ART Middle Ages, the great buildings of Rome were used as stone quarries. The columns and capitals were set up again in churches, the marble seats from the Colosseum were turned into thrones for the bishops, and worst of all, a great deal of marble was merely burnt for lime. The theatre of Marcellus was turned into a fortress in 1086. Middleton says that in the twelfth century it was partly destroyed by the Savelli family, and its mutilation completed by the Orsini. In Piranesi's little etching, the tomb of Cecilia Metella is shown with the battlements of a mediaeval tower. Nor were the Popes of the Renais- sance any better. Towards the end of the sixteenth century Sixtus v. destroyed the greater part of the baths of Dio- cletian and carried off the marble linings. Not long afterwards, Maffeo Barberini, (Urban vm.) wanting bronze for the Balda- chino of St. Peter's, and the Canon of St. Angelo, ordered theportico of the Pantheon to be stripped of its bronze ornaments and of all the beams and bolts, amounting, according to a contemporary, to some 326 tons of metal, and I regret to say this was 230 ROME on Bernini's advice. It was noted by Inigo Jones as one of the most scandalous examples of vandalism that he had seen in Rome, and indeed was so regarded by the Roman populace, for it drew that bitter pasquinade, ' Quod nonfecerunt Bar- bar 7, fecere Barber ini ^ an epigram which cost its author his life. The sad thing is, that whereas at the beginning of the seventeenth century the populace of Rome resented this sacrilege, in the twentieth century it approves it. Scarcely a year ago, the municipality of Rome were pulling down that famous wall of Aurelian from which, fourteen hundred years ago, Belisarius drove back the hungry Goths. In Serlio's time, much was standing that is now lost, and students of the sixteenth century must have found in Rome a school of architecture such as will never be seen again. Even in 1751, when Piranesi published his first set of prints of the Magnificence of Rome/ buildings were standing which have since completely disappeared. I have before me Piranesi's etching of the Appian Way, three miles out from the Porta San Sebastiano. On either side are 231 THE MISTRESS ART shown vast ruins of houses and temples, now lost to us, which, even allowing for Piranesi's fervent imagination, must have existed in some form in his time. The Pantheon alone preserves its glorious dome, and we have to take largely on trust the astounding accounts of the wonders of Rome, which are unearthed for us by scholars and archaeologists. It would be quite impossible for me in the limits of one, or even a series of lectures, to give you any adequate account of Roman architecture ; all I can hope to do to-night is to call your atten- tion to certain of its qualities which are sometimes imperfectly appreciated. No people in the world have ever grasped more thoroughly than the Romans the principles of civic architecture, the essentials of that design in the grand manner which seems to have dropped out of consciousness in modern art. When I talk of Roman architecture, it must be understood to be Imperial Roman architecture. The limits and rigid con- servatism of the Republic did not encourage enterprise and magnificence in building ; and it was not till the time of 232 ROME Augustus that the age of great public buildings began. I mention this in order that you may, at this point at any rate, avoid spending much of your time on the study of Vitruvius. Vitruvius probably died before the end of the first century B.C. In any case he did not live to see those stupendous monuments which are the glory of Roman architecture, and it would not be unfair to say that much of the misappreciation of Roman archi- tecture has been due to the fact, first, that the chief technical treatise on the subject was written by Vitruvius, and written by him at the time that he wrote it ; and secondly, that owing to the literary quality of the Renaissance, to the fact, that is, that the initiative in the movement was due to scholars, not to artists, Roman architecture has been studied far too much through Vitruvius. His Architecture has been universally accepted as the text-book of the subject ; indeed, during the Renais- sance it was treated by artists as almost inspired. Yet it is a book of details, details of construction, details of technical classification, ossified, as one might say, 233 THE MISTRESS ART at a comparatively early stage of develop- ment. Of the true vitality and creative power that was latent in Roman archi- tecture, I doubt if any glimpse is to be caught in Vitruvius' treatise. His thoughts turned backward to Greece rather than forward to the immense drama that was beginning to unfold itself under his very eye. In my last lecture I referred to the work of the Attalid dynasty in bridging over the gulf between Hellenic Art and the Art of Rome. Pergamos was the half-way house. When Athens had failed, Pergamos became the rallying point for artists, philosophers and scholars. Its library rivalled that of Alexandria, the wealth of its princes was fabulous, and they spent it royally in the adornment of their city. The heirs of all this accumulated treasure were the Roman people, and the effects of this inherit- ance were direct and remarkable. Pliny says that the conquest of Asia Minor de- moralised the Romans. Whereas, before that era, they had only marvelled at the luxury of foreigners, they now set their hearts on its imitation. The result was a 234 ROME vast expansion of their standards of civilisa- tion on the one hand, and on the other complete inability to find in Italy artists able to deal with those standards, the only thing to do, was to call in the competent and cosmopolitan Greek, much as fifteen hundred years later Francis i. and Henry vm. sent to Italy for artists. It is a curious and somewhat disquiet- ing reflection that nationalities have often attained artistic pre-eminence when they have sunk to political impotence. As to material resources, probably no rulers have ever possessed such boundless wealth and opportunity as the Roman Emperors. For sculpture, pictures, and the like, they had the whole civilised world at their feet. At the beginning of the Christian era, Rome must already have been full of the masterpieces of Greek art. After the sack of Corinth in 146 B.C. the accumulated treasures of centuries were sent to Rome, though many were lost by the way, and some of the best were sold to that fine connoisseur, Attalus n., King of Per- gamos. The treasures of Mithridates, his pictures, his plate, his cups of onyx 235 THE MISTRESS ART set in gold, were so vast that they took thirty days to catalogue. There were works of art, enough and to spare, for the most gigantic buildings, for the wealth of all the monarchies that pre- ceded the Empire fell to Rome. The legacy was to some extent paralys- ing. The Romans, as a nation of con- querors, had little opinion of artists ; their genius did not lie that way. Moreover, Italian artists, if such there were, could hardly hope to compete with an art so mature and so assured in its mastery as that of Greece. The work of sculp- ture and painting seemed to be done once and for all ; architecture alone continued its development. I have pointed out how, at Pergamos, a new factor in architecture appears for the first time, in the consecutive planning of groups of buildings and monuments, the faculty of conceiving of a city as a whole. This must have made its appeal to those far-seeing statesmen who organised the Empire. It was just what was wanted to give form and expression to their political schemes. But the Romans had their own contribution to make to 236 ROME architecture. The Hellenistic Greeks had done nothing to develop the re- sources of building. They adhered to the column and the lintel, to methods in the abstract of almost primitive simplicity. It was reserved for Rome itself to give to the art of building an impulse in an entirely new direction which is not exhausted to this day. Architecture, as handled by the Romans, was to cover a wider field, and to reach a degree of perfection in the art of building beyond the highest efforts of the Greeks. Rome has taught us to revise our conception of architecture. Perfect form, proportion, and workmanship were the lesson of the Greeks. If to such things the Romans were indifferent, they were, on the other hand masterful constructors, Titans throw- ing their vaults over space, wrestling with nature and compelling her to their will. The transformation thus effected is a striking instance of the sensitiveness of architecture to social and political con- ditions. The Romans were probably unconscious of the change, they may have thought that they were perpetuating 2 37 THE MISTRESS ART the traditions of Greek architecture. In point of fact, they used it much as they used all their conquests : they drew from it what they wanted, and then passed on to the realisation of their own ideals, carelessly tolerating the existence of the mere shell of a bygone art. But if the Roman people were unconscious of the change that was taking place, their Emperors were not. It has been the policy of despotic rulers to withdraw the attention of their subjects from the contemplation of their power, by provid- ing them with magnificent buildings and costly entertainments. Augustus was quick to see that the ordinary citizen would forgive him his absolutism if he found that property was safe, that the law was to be depended upon, and that his city was cleaned, swept and garnished. There was thus a direct and immediate motive to monumental building, so far as the chief authority in the state was concerned. Another is to be found in the high degree of civilisation attained under the Roman Emperors. Leaving out of account mechanical science and inventions, that civilisationw as in many 238 ROME ways on a level with our own, and it is impossible to read such writers as Horace, Catullus, Martial, or Pliny's letters, or the romance of Apuleius, or the dia- logues of Lucian, without realising how little divides that pleasant life in the city and the country houses of Imperial Rome from the more intelligent life of to-day. We find ourselves in touch with conditions far more closely akin to our own than those of any other period of history. Thus, then, we find rulers possessed of great resources with whom it was a matter of policy to erect fine buildings, a highly cultivated public opinion which demanded such buildings in order to realise a certain urbanity of life, and lastly an element peculiar to Italy, namely, that passion for great size, for vast effects, which has inspired some of the finest examples of Italian art as well as some of the worst. The causes which I have indicated constitute the external factors in the development of Roman architecture. These gave it its bent and general tendency, but its technique could only grow from within 239 THE MISTRESS ART through the inventions and experiments of architects and builders in their endeavour to meet the problems of their practice. The most formidable of these was the difficulty of covering in the great enclosed spaces required for such build- ings as the Tepidaria of the Baths. A permanent covering was required in order to control the temperature. The methods invented by the Roman builders for deal- ing with this difficulty constitute one of the most notable advances ever made in the history of architecture. They had from earlier times been familiar with the use of the arch and of plain barrel vault- ing. On the other hand, they possessed on the spot the materials for a most admirable concrete. All round Rome, the material known as pozzolana exists in thick strata. It is like a red, sandy earth, and was thrown up ages ago from the dead volcanoes of the Alban Hills. Mixed with lime, obtained by burning the travertine stone, this made a splendid cement, and the Romans habitually employed it with broken stone and brick and even marble to form their concrete ; or where a light vault was wanted tufa 240 ROME was used. In addition to this they possessed in their burnt bricks an absolutely trustworthy material. On the other hand, timber was scarce in Italy, at least for building purposes ; and elaborate centering for great vaults be- came very costly. The practical instinct of the Romans solved the problem by using their brick arches as centering ; indeed, by treating their brick construc- tion almost as one might treat steel or iron construction, that is as a rigid self- supporting framework to be filled in afterwards with concrete. Never, in the whole history of architecture have brick and concrete been used so scientifically, and with such splendid results. The nearest approach in modern times to their methods of building was made by the late Mr. Bentley in the Cathedral at Westminster, where the domes are of concrete without metal ties or reinforcements. There are not many constructors possessed of the skill and courage necessary to follow Bentley's lead. Yet this would have been a small matter to the builders of the prodigious vaults of Rome. The con- Q 241 THE MISTRESS ART struction of those vaults depended largely on the exact composition and manipula- tion of the concrete, and the accurate setting of the bricks ; so that we have here not only profound calculation, but the finest tradesmanship on the part of the workman. It is the builder's art in perfection, this, too, under a ruthless political despotism. In the later days of the Empire, when that iron hand was loosened, the secret of this construction was lost. Thus, all the conditions for magnifi- cent building were present, rulers, whose policy it was to improve the city, a people who expected and appreciated fine building, practically unlimited wealth, and one might almost say, unlimited building ability. Perhaps nothing less than this could have changed Rome from the city of brick to the city of marble, from an insignificant collection of buildings to the greatest city of the world. Most of its monuments are so well-known that there is no necessity to describe them in detail, but I propose to call your attention to certain aspects of their architecture, so that you may 242 ROME realise not only the splendour of Rome, but also to some extent the standpoint of the Imperial architects. The most remarkable example, still extant, is the Pantheon, erected by Hadrian in 120-124 A