AY SS as? 
 
 
 

 
 PRESENTED BY 
 Miss Ethel Ricker 
 
 from the 
 Library of her Father 
 Nathan Clifford Ricker 
 Head of the Department of 
 Architecture, 1875-191h 
 
 
 
 720 
 
 L_S56a 
 SC 
 
 
 

 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2021 with funding from 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 httos://archive.org/details/architectureintrOOleth_1 
 
HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 No. 38 
 
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 HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 
 
 ProF, GILBERT MURRAY, LiTT.D., 
 LL.D., F.B.A. 
 
 Pror. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
 
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 LITERATURES oi tls Na ees! eo DY Glue TRACHIEY, 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF ARCHI- 
 
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ARCHITECTURE 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION 
 TO 
 
 THE HISTORY AND THEORY OF THE 
 ART OF BUILDING 
 
 BY 
 
 Wirok. LE Li ABY 
 
 *¢ Man makes beauty of that which he loves.’ — Renan 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
aha \ 
 
 
 

 
 A 
 P <Lnef ) % 
 
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 v4 
 
 os SY GarS7 7, 
 
 o5 thhtar, Y 
 
 CHAP, 
 
 II 
 III 
 IV 
 
 VI 
 
 VII 
 
 VIII 
 Ix 
 
 xI 
 XII 
 
 XIII 
 XIV 
 
 xV 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 ARCHZOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNA- 
 
 MENT ° . . e se . 
 ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE . , : 
 EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS . ! ‘ j 
 EGYPTIAN BUILDING——-METHODS AND IDEAS 
 BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN 
 
 ASIA AND EUROPE . ’ : d 
 BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT 
 
 AFTER PERFECTION... : q 
 HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEER- 
 
 ING BUILDING . é ; / , 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS 
 THE EASTERN CYCLE \ , ; ‘ 
 ROMANESQUE ART—-NEW BLOOD IN ARCHI- 
 
 TECTURE es e ° s ° ° 
 SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS : } 
 FRENCH GOTHIC—THE ARCHITECTURE OF 
 
 ENERGY . ° ° ° ° . 
 ENGLISH GOTHIC . ° ° ° ° 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF 
 RHETORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF 
 FIRST PRINCIPLES. ° ° ° 
 
 THE MODERN POSITION——-CONCLUSION ° 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY ° ° ° ° ° 
 INDEX . ° ° ° ° ° ° 
 
 PAGE 
 
 18 
 34 
 D3 
 
 67 
 
 380 
 
 107 
 132 
 157 
 
 169 
 183 
 
 200 
 211 
 
 229 
 237 
 253 
 255 
 

 
 BYZANTINE CAPITAL 
 
 This capital is a work of the sixth century, and bears 
 the monogram of the Emperor Justinian on the abacus. 
 In the eleventh century it was brought to Venice and 
 re-used in the church of St. Mark. 
 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 ARCHEOLOGY, ARCHITECTURE, AND ORNAMENT 
 
 Two arts have changed the surface of the 
 world, Agriculture and Architecture. Perhaps 
 the scale of architectural activity is not 
 generally realized. The art of building is 
 concerned not only with single structures but 
 with cities, and hence with whole countries, 
 for Egypt, Greece, and Italy were groups of 
 cities rather than geographical spaces empty 
 of men and dwellings. Architecture is the 
 matrix of civilization. In this small volume I 
 wish, while outlining the larger facts of the 
 history of architecture, especially to bring out 
 its origins and to call attention to the great 
 contributions which from time to time have 
 been made to its powers by divers schools. 
 A history of architecture might be written 
 according to several schemes; it might be 
 a chronology and description of individual 
 works—a collection oe biographies of build- 
 
8 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ings; it might treat of the rise, fall and 
 interaction of different schools; or it could 
 trace out when and how each new thing 
 of value was brought into architecture, con- 
 sidered as a whole. In an exhaustive history 
 the great facts may be hidden by the detail, 
 so that one may not see the city for the houses. 
 A small book, which does not permit of dealing 
 with individual buildings, might better suggest 
 the onrush of perpetually changing art which, 
 while we try to grasp it, has already put on 
 another form. Although it may be convenient 
 to study the art historically, it must be remem- 
 bered that archeology is not architecture, any 
 more than the history of painting is art; 
 archeology is history, architecture is the 
 practical art of building, not only in the past, 
 but now and in the future. Yet even in a 
 history the general scope and powers of 
 architecture might be suggested. 
 
 On the other hand, the wall, the pier, the 
 arch, the vault, are elements which should 
 be investigated like the lever and the screw. 
 Modern builders need a classification of archi- 
 tectural factors irrespective of time and 
 country, a classification by essential variation. 
 Some day we shall get a morphology of the 
 art by some architectural Linnzus or Darwin, 
 who will start from the simple cell and relate 
 to it the most complex structures. In archi- 
 tecture more than anywhere we are the slaves 
 
ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT.. 9 
 
 of names and categories, and so long as the 
 whole field of past architectural experiment 
 is presented to us accidentally only under 
 historical schedules, designing architecture is 
 likely to be conceived as scholarship rather 
 than as the adaptation of its accumulated 
 powers to immediate needs—the_ disposition 
 of its elements, walls, piers and arches, for 
 maximum efficiency relative to a given pur- 
 pose. The lack of such a true classification 
 is in part the reason why modern architects 
 swing from playing at Greek to playing at 
 Gothic, and then back again to Greek, with 
 pathetically ineffectual enthusiasm. 
 
 Even in an historical narrative it may be 
 possible to bring out principles and ideas 
 rather than to describe examples, and the 
 writer would, above all, like to suggest a 
 general theory of architecture as a result of 
 the survey of the past. To anticipate, it may 
 be said here that great art is not a question 
 of shapes and appearances which may be 
 copied, it is fine response to noble require- 
 ment; a living architecture is always being 
 hurled forward from change to change. 
 
 * % % % ¥ 
 
 In the introduction to the great History of 
 Art in Antiquity by Perrot and Chipiez we are 
 told that ‘‘ no satisfactory definition has ever 
 been given of the word architecture, and yet 
 when we use it every one knows what we 
 
10 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 mean.” That is rather a dangerous assump- 
 tion. The difficulty of defining the word 
 comes from the feeling that architecture is a 
 high and poetic word, while the mass of 
 building in our cities is not highly poetic. 
 Therefore there is a tendency to think that 
 architecture is only decorated or romantic 
 building. But what is a decorated building ? 
 A gin-palace at the next corner drips with 
 much decoration, while the pyramids had none. 
 What is a noble and romantic building ? Is 
 not an old cottage of cob and thatch, which 
 seems to have risen self-built out of the 
 ground, nobler and infinitely more touching 
 than the last new and expensive villa is likely 
 to be? Some inquirers, not satisfied with 
 such a test as size and ornament—that is, of 
 cost—say that architecture should have an 
 expression over and above the mere essentials 
 of building. But here, again, a difficulty 
 arises— What is mere building ? Every build- 
 ing carries some sort of expression, some 
 essential appeal to the imagination. The 
 first definition of architecture which satisfied 
 me for a time—it was struck off in conversation 
 with a friend—was that architecture was 
 building touched with emotion. But what is 
 usually understood by such claims is that some 
 expressional content should be consciously 
 embodied in a building. Yet we cannot think 
 that old works of architecture thus had their 
 
ARCHZOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 11 
 
 expression given to them arbitrarily. The 
 cottage, the bridge, the castle,—were they 
 intended to look pathetic, bold, romantic,— 
 or is the due expression inherent in the thing 
 itself, so far as it is right and true? It would 
 be difficult to prove that the most superb 
 castle was designed to look romantic, it was 
 designed to be strong. The plough, the hay- 
 rick, the ship, are all highly poetic, but their 
 makers do not think of poetry. The more 
 real such a thing is, the closer to need and 
 nature, the more romantic it will be also. A 
 self-conscious esthetic “ appeal ”’ is likely to 
 become a disease of art, the true appeal is 
 a fact. Barns, wagons and lighthouses do 
 not appeal, they are, or I should say, were, 
 for I saw a lighthouse some months since on 
 which no expense had been spared to make 
 it esthetic, and it illuminated the whole 
 problem. 
 
 We cannot reach any satisfactory defini- 
 tion of architecture on the principle that 
 architecture is good building, and _ build- 
 ing itself is bad building—it embodies an 
 absurdity. 
 
 On the other side it is said, “* Much building 
 is mean and poor, is that architecture ?” 
 Not that, either. Every art must be judged 
 on its positive side, by its strength, not by its 
 weakness and defects. Yet to be real is not 
 all; there is evidently a scale of realities. 
 
12 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 All architecture is not great architecture. 
 The other day I passed a large group of well- 
 built factory chimneys—tall, daring struc- 
 tures that were real enough, and exemplified to 
 perfection the principle of balance. I should 
 have known them as beautiful if they had 
 been minarets in Persia, but here, it must be 
 confessed, they did not fill my mind with 
 unmixed joy; the malign effect of their smoke 
 on the landscape was evidently a serious set- 
 off against their unaffected reality. The mind 
 unconsciously pierces far beyond mere shape 
 to the soul of a building. 
 
 We possess in Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of 
 Architecture a most stimulating treatise on 
 modes of beauty in architecture, but with all 
 its power and insight it is only a fragment. 
 It is not concerned with building, the art of 
 making chambered structures, the rearing of 
 walls and balancing of vaults, but with the 
 added interests of painted and sculptured 
 stories. It is a treatise on the temper and 
 conditions from which noble architectural 
 ornamentation will spring. At the back of it 
 was an idea only clearly stated in a little note 
 added to a later edition of the work—“ The 
 founding of all beautiful design on natural 
 form was the principle I had during the 
 arrangement of this volume most prominently 
 in mind ... there is too much stress laid 
 throughout this volume on probity in pictur- 
 
ARCHEOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 138 
 
 esque treatment, and not enough on probity 
 in material construction.”? His concern being 
 with the decorative matter in architecture, he 
 identified this matter with architecture itself. 
 If, he says in effect, we isolate architecture 
 from mere building, however noble the mere 
 building may be, it is only sculpture with other 
 forms of story and decoration. This, of course, 
 is true, and if we are to approach architecture 
 as a whole it is plain it must not be so isolated 
 from the most of its very self. 
 
 It is impossible to differentiate architecture 
 from building, and probably we shall not find 
 any need for so doing if we realize how truly 
 interesting are building and buildings, and 
 that it is in all buildings throughout the ages, 
 not in a picked few, that we find the impress 
 of man and his aspirations. For us, in this 
 volume, architecture is the art of building and 
 of disposing buildings. Good architecture is 
 masterly structure with adequate workman- 
 ship; the highest architecture is likely to 
 have fit sculpture and painting integrally 
 bound up with it. 
 
 * x ea x tt 
 
 If architecture was born of need it soon 
 showed some magic quality, and all true 
 building touches depths of feeling and opens 
 the gates of wonder. 
 
 The men who first balanced one stone over 
 two others must have looked with astonish- 
 
14 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ment at the work of their hands, and have 
 worshipped the stones they had setup. Any 
 primitive work of man was more than his 
 own, it was something found out; and who 
 can say how much wonder at the magic 
 of art was associated with the “‘ worship of 
 images’?? In becoming -fit every work 
 attains some form and enshrines some mys- 
 tery; to the shipwright his work was a 
 creature. If Stonehenge is so amazing to 
 us, what a wonder-work must it have been to 
 the men of our islands who reared up the 
 mighty stones. This element of wonder lasted 
 long through the ages, and it will persist 
 while work is done in the old way by keeping 
 close to nature and necessity. But there are 
 some elements which seem to have disappeared 
 for ever; such are: ideas of sacredness and 
 sacrifice, of ritual rightness, of magic sta- 
 bility and correspondence with the universe, 
 of perfection of form and proportion. Wren, 
 philosopher as he was, decided that man’s 
 delight in setting up columns was acquired 
 through worshipping in the groves of the 
 forest, and modern research has come to 
 much the same view, for Sir Arthur Evans 
 shows that in the first European age columns 
 were gods. All over Europe the early morning 
 of architecture was spent in the worship of 
 great stones. 
 i ds x * ¥ 
 
ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 15. 
 
 No recipes can be given for producing fine 
 architecture. In a noble living school, size, 
 splendour of material, accuracy of workman- 
 ship are graces, but the less there is of these 
 in an essentially mean building the better. 
 When we are going in the wrong direction the 
 right things are on the left. It is all a question 
 of the quality of the effort over a long period 
 of time. 
 
 The powers of all architecture are limited by 
 the materials in general use. If it be forest 
 country, wood would be the chief material; 
 if it be rocky, stone buildings would be early 
 developed; if these materials are difficult to 
 obtain, there is yet another to fall back on— 
 this is clay, the importance of which in forming 
 architectural elements is often overlooked, 
 although in the shape of burnt brick it is still 
 to-day our chief material. These different 
 forms of matter give rise to three types of 
 construction: wooden, by beams jointed 
 together into framing; stone, by blocks 
 assembled together, either balanced only, or 
 linked by cramps or by cementing; clay, by 
 continuous aggregation. 
 
 Ancient bricks were not burnt, they were 
 dry mud and they were bedded in wet mud, so 
 that the whole became one mass; in modern 
 brickwork the cementing should be as strong 
 as the brick, so that the wall becomes con- 
 tinuous. 
 
16 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Kven when wrought stone has been generally 
 used for ceremonial architecture, wood and 
 clay have remained in the background 
 as valuable materials useful for secondary 
 purposes. 
 
 The decorative elements of architecture find 
 their origin in delight in finish, colour and 
 variety; in survivals from an earlier type of 
 building, as wooden details copied in stone; 
 or they were more or less pictorial. Such 
 decoration itself had a utili- 
 =: tarian purpose, generally 
 bees that of carrying over the 
 4 virtues of the things imitated 
 } to the things made. As 
 Capart says, the recent dis- 
 coveries of prehistoric art 
 in Egypt “enable us to 
 establish the utilitarian 
 origin of the manifestations which we group 
 together under the name of esthetic. This 
 utilitarian purpose is in almost. every case 
 confused with a religious or rather with a 
 magical purpose.”’ 
 
 The earliest pottery carries forward either 
 the forms of gourds or of baskets. Even such 
 a rudimentary “‘ pattern ”’ as the spiral seems 
 to have originated as an imitation on clay 
 pots of the shells in the handsomer hard stone 
 vases. Generally speaking, a “ pattern ”’ is 
 a simplified or repeated “ picture.”? Fig. 1 
 
 
 
ARCHAOLOGY AND ORNAMENT 17 
 
 shows the decoration on a prehistoric pot from 
 Nagada restored from some fragments of 
 mine. The ornament consists of flamingoes 
 between two rows of mountains. The whole 
 may be a shorthand picture of the Nile. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ONLY by searching out origins can we 
 discover the initial force which carried art 
 forward. In the main we find two great fac- 
 tors, response to need—the basis in utility— 
 and, secondly, a magical and mystical element. 
 The need, of course, may go far beyond the 
 provision of daily bread and shelter; the 
 Egyptians, for instance, wanted an indestruct- 
 ible resting-place, and so made the pyramids. 
 The magical instinct, in seeking to re-create 
 types and to set up sympathetic relations, led 
 to imitation, to ideas of proportion, and to a 
 search after perfection. 
 
 The first great need of all architecture is 
 need itself, honest response to high necessity. 
 Taste, caprice, pomposity and make-believe 
 are no true art-masters. All formulas, codes 
 and grammars are diseases which only show. 
 themselves in a time of impaired vitality. 
 
 Before the historical period made known to 
 us by chronicles and inscriptions long ages 
 shade off into the gulf of time; ages which in 
 some degree may be ace mada S from the 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 19 
 
 remnants of man’s art. For Europe the 
 opening of the historical period may be put 
 at about 1000 B.c. The earliest examples of 
 prehistoric art known in Europe are the 
 drawings of animals made by the cave-men 
 at a time that must so long have preceded 
 writing that we must look on drawing as an 
 outcome of a desire to imitate and a natural 
 aptitude. Drawing, indeed, was the parent 
 of writing. 
 
 In the year 1832 the Danish scholar 
 Thomsen made a great generalization as to 
 the early history of the arts in determining 
 three periods which followed one another: 
 the stone age, the bronze age, and the iron 
 age. Iron only came into general use at a 
 time about coincident with the beginnings 
 of European history. Before this there was 
 a long period when tools and weapons were 
 made of bronze, and still earlier they were of 
 flints and stones. The farther we go back in 
 time the greater, we may assume, was the 
 relative importance of the arts. Here, as else- 
 where, there is a law of diminishing returns. 
 Early inventions must have seemed like revela- 
 tions, and skilled craftsmen were looked upon 
 as magicians. The art of building seems first 
 to have gathered power and to have arrived 
 at what we may call self-consciousness in the 
 valleys of the Nile and of the Tigris. The 
 relations between the arts of these great 
 
20 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 river valleys has not yet been fully worked 
 out. It is certain that they resemble one 
 another closely in many respects; possibly 
 the art of Mesopotamia preceded that of 
 Egypt; but by the Nile a large class of pre- 
 historic works has been discovered which has 
 as yet no parallel in western Asia. Perhaps 
 the mud of the great rivers has been the most 
 precious of Nature’s gifts to man. By the 
 Nile, as a result of its miraculous fertility, he 
 may first have learned agriculture and the 
 art of casting his bread upon the waters. 
 Herodotus says of the Egyptians, “ They 
 gather the fruits of the earth with less labour 
 than any other people.” With agriculture 
 and settled life came trade and the stored-up 
 energy which might essay by erections on the 
 face of the earth to improve on caves and pits 
 and other primitive dwellings. By the Nile, 
 perhaps, the people first aimed to overpass 
 the routine satisfaction of the barest need. 
 Long before dynastic Egypt was in being 
 a strong people inhabited the land who 
 developed many arts which they handed on 
 to the pyramid-builders. They formed a 
 wonderfully artistic stock, although they were 
 only semi-naked “ savages,”’ using flint instru- 
 ments and painting their pottery and build- 
 ings in a style a good deal like bushman art. 
 They wrought most beautiful vases of fine 
 marbles “‘ quite modern ”? in form; and they 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 21 
 
 appear to have invented square building. At 
 the British Museum and the Ashmolean are 
 excellent collections of this pre-dynastic art. 
 It will be necessary to give a disproportion- 
 ate space in this little book to early days in 
 Egypt, for here we shall best find the origins 
 of architecture as a whole, and origins are of 
 great importance for framing a theory of art. 
 As Prof. Petrie says, ‘‘ We know more details 
 of the origins of the arts in Egypt than in 
 any otherland. To-day we can show how every 
 feature arose, and we can date, to a single 
 generation, the adoption of stone for building.”” 
 A few years ago it was thought that nothing 
 Egyptian existed earlier than the Great 
 Pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty; now many 
 works of art of the first three dynasties have 
 been identified, as well as large classes of 
 pre-dynastic and primitive art. The question 
 of Egyptian chronology is as yet troubled by 
 controversy. It is founded on ancient lists 
 of the kings with the terms of their reigns. 
 The sequence of the names is becoming sure, 
 but the length of the reigns is very uncertain. 
 Estimates vary from about 3000 to 5500 B.c. 
 for the beginning of the First Dynasty. The 
 system of Brugsch, adopted with modifica- 
 tions at the British Museum, opens the First 
 Dynasty at 4400. It has been found possible 
 to check the dates as far back as the beginning 
 of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the result 
 
22 ARCHITECTURE ; 
 
 that this has been reduced from about 1700 
 B.c. to about 1580 B.c. Again, German 
 scholars have brought to bear some astro- 
 nomical facts, and as a result they place the 
 beginning of the dynasties at 3315. This 
 estimate is known as the Berlin system. I 
 am incompetent to appreciate many of the 
 highly technical arguments involved, but 
 such rough tests as I have been able to apply 
 incline me to the view that the Berlin system 
 is likely to be right. Thus, taking the kings 
 as given by Dr. Budge in the official publica- 
 tion of the British Museum, we have eighty- 
 three kings in the 1260 years from 1600 (or 
 1580) to 340 B.c., giving an average of a little 
 over fifteen years. Now, the reigns given 
 for the early dynasties average much longer. 
 Prof. Petrie names twenty-seven kings as hav- 
 ing reigned during a period of 779 years—that 
 is, for the first three dynasties. This results in 
 an average of about thirty-three years, and it 
 looks as if the estimate had been framed on the 
 supposition that three kings filled a century, 
 the ordinary rough rule of the succession of 
 generations ; whereas, for the better-known 
 period they average less than half this. 
 American scholars adopt the German sys- 
 tem without question, and there are signs that 
 this chronology is being accepted by English 
 writers. In a volume published about four 
 years ago by Mr. King, of the British Museum, 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 23 
 
 although he avoids any set discussion of the 
 question, he incidentally dates works of the 
 early dynastic period as “ about 4000,” while 
 Mr. Griffiths, in the new Encyclopedia Britan- 
 nica, approves with some small reservations 
 the shortened scheme. Prof. Petrie, on the 
 other hand, still adheres to the longer chron- 
 ology, but, with this great exception, we 
 may say the general view at the present time 
 is that the first dynasties fell in the period 
 4000-3000 B.C. 
 
 For Egyptian art, therefore, it: will be neces- 
 sary to speak of dynasties, not of years. In 
 general terms it is usual to call the first three 
 dynasties the Archaic Period, dynasties four 
 to six the Old Kingdom, dynasties eleven and 
 twelve the Middle Kingdom, and the dynasties 
 later than the eighteenth the New Kingdom. 
 The history of the two intervals is extremely 
 uncertain. 
 
 The great era in Egyptian art, the time 
 when it was in its first maturity but still 
 eager and experimenting, covered the last 
 years of the pre-dynastic period and the first 
 four or five dynasties. All that is fresh and 
 vital was discovered before the Old Kingdom 
 cametoanend. This was a time of passionate 
 activity, a period of unparalleled significance 
 in the development of culture. Writing was 
 introduced, the state was consolidated, the 
 arts flourished. 
 
24 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The most primitive works of man found 
 in Egypt are flint weapons, rude pottery, 
 and some graves. The first dwellings were 
 probably round huts covered by a cone of 
 reeds. Although the circular form passed 
 out of use in more formal works, it always 
 remained in the background for granaries. 
 Pottery was made round long before it was 
 thrown on the wheel, and it is as natural that 
 the hut for holding people should be 
 round as it is for pots, baskets, and 
 nests. 
 
 The materials most ready to hand 
 for the construction of primitive 
 dwellings were reeds, river-mud, and 
 palm-branches. Huts built of reeds 
 seem to be represented on some early 
 relief carvings, as, for instance, on a slate 
 palette in the British Museum (fig. 2). The 
 earliest structure actually discovered, a pre- 
 dynastic tomb found in the sands at Hiera- 
 conpolis, is already right-angled. Modern 
 people take squareness very much for granted 
 as being a self-evident form, but the discovery 
 of the square was a very great step in geometry. 
 The square hieroglyph of a later time repre- 
 sents a mat, or other woven thing, and doubt- 
 less the square arose in weaving. May we not 
 suggest that at first square rooms were built 
 for mats ? 
 
 The tomb at Hieraconpolis is sunk in a pit, 
 
 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 25 
 
 and the walls lean outwards against the sand. 
 Many early tombs of about the First Dynasty 
 have been explored at Abydos, and the 
 earliest of these were of much the same form as 
 the tomb at Hieraconpolis. From the First 
 Dynasty onwards it became more customary 
 for the tombs to be built above the ground as 
 almost solid masses of crude brick. These 
 bricks were only dried in the sun, their use was 
 a developed form of mud building. In these 
 *“mastabas,’? as such tombs are called, the 
 walls also lean against the mass of material, 
 which in this case, of course, is within— 
 and very reasonably—for they are practically 
 ‘retaining walls.” This battered wall later 
 passed into stone structures and became 
 typical in Egyptian architecture. Some im- 
 mediately pre-dynastic tombs had their 
 chambers neatly lined with wooden planks, 
 or, rather, a chamber of wood was first built, 
 and it was then enclosed with brickwork; 
 these crude brick walls around the pit “* were 
 only a protective shell around the wooden 
 chamber which contained the body.’”? Doubt- 
 less houses for the living as well as those for 
 the dead were at this time constructed of 
 wrought timber. Some representations of 
 shrines and buildings on early objects appear 
 to show wooden structures, and it seems in 
 the nature of things that woodwork would be 
 accurately wrought long before any buildings 
 
26 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 were made of cut stone. In these representa- 
 tions we already find posts which are the 
 prototypes of later stone columns, having 
 swelling projections at the top like capitals. 
 On inscriptions from 
 the First Dynasty we 
 often find a sign (read 
 ‘tent ’’) like Mexcept 
 that the horizontal 
 bar is curved. The 
 same symbol on many 
 monuments of the 
 Fourth Dynasty shows 
 that the central up- 
 right was a slender 
 pillar and that the 
 side walls and curved roof were made of bundles 
 of reeds bound together in rolls, and such a 
 construction would well explain the curved 
 roofs (fig. 8). Compare a shrine on the late 
 
 papyrus of Ani at the British 
 i Museum. The walls and roof 
 \ would have been embedded in 
 
 fig. 4. § 
 
 a daubing of clay. In any 
 case, the central upright was a wooden post, 
 and in some carefully executed hieroglyphs 
 it is shown with the shaft shaped into a 
 baluster form and having a slightly projecting 
 capital. Such a wooden tent pole was the first 
 column; except, of course, the mere rough 
 post (fig. 3). They were circular, and the 
 
 
 
 a Fia. 3. 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 27 
 
 ** capital ”’ was not a separate member but 
 only a projection on the post, probably to 
 prevent the horizontal reed bundles from 
 slipping. These early indications of the 
 forms of the first Egyptian pillars have been 
 very fully studied by Foucart, who shows that 
 the later stone columns derive from such 
 wooden originals. 
 
 Decoration, as we have seen, is frequently a 
 survival of what had a function which has 
 been forgotten. The beautiful 
 archaic carved mace-head in the , 
 British Museum (fig. 5) obvi- f4\ 
 ously imitates the way in which \js 
 earlier clubs were made. The 
 pattern carved upon it later 
 became well known as the guil- 
 loche. Even before the dynasties 
 it was usual to construct rich 
 furniture with legs like those of bulls, of 
 carved ivory, a fashion which has persisted 
 ever since. A class of archaic rock-hewn 
 tombs at Gizeh and Sakkara had their ceilings 
 cut “to resemble small palm trunks,” that 
 is, I suppose, into a series of half-rounds 
 like a fragment in the British Museum. This 
 fragment seems to be a projecting eaves, or 
 cornice; if so, it is the prototype of all dentilled 
 cornices. 
 
 A very curious type of wall ornamentation 
 characterized the first architectural style 
 
 
 
28 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 This is the recessing of the wall-surfaces in a 
 succession of vertical channels. This tradi- 
 tion was constant during the first five or six 
 dynasties, and left its mark in long subsequent 
 time. It was elaborated and fixed in struc- 
 tures built of crude brick, but the idea of 
 vertical division may have been taken over 
 from reeds or timber; in any case this method 
 of building is likely to be used in dealing with 
 fixed units of material such as brick, as, for 
 instance, old English chimneys. Fig. 6 
 gives the plan of the exterior of a fine first- 
 dynasty mastaba at Gizeh. Later, in the 
 } . Fourth Dynasty, these 
 Z~ walls got copied into 
 stone on the exterior of 
 other mastabas, also on 
 the walls of the chamber in the Third Pyramid, 
 and even to miniature scale on sarcophagi. 
 One reason for the popularity of the treat- 
 ment may have been that each recess became 
 a *“‘ false door,’’ and false doors seem to have 
 had an important significance in tombs. Each 
 recess of this kind in the Third Pyramid is 
 crossed by a roller-like member near the top, 
 which appears to represent a pole to which 
 a curtain would be attached in a real doorway. 
 The series of recessed fascize of the classical 
 door-jamb possibly derives from the Egyptian 
 ** false doors.”’ 
 The earliest-known moulding is a “roll” 
 
 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 29 
 
 used horizontally, or up the angles of struc- 
 tures. It is usually crossed by lines like 
 binding-cords, and it must derive from the 
 stiffening rails and angle pieces to which reeds 
 were bound. This original source seems to be 
 represented on the small relief of a hut on 
 the slate palette in the British Museum (fig. 2). 
 In the Fourth Dynasty the typical Egyptian 
 *‘ gorge ’’ cornice appears, which is the oldest 
 of all moulded cornices. The lid of the 
 sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid 
 was of this form (fig. 7). Accord- 
 
 ing to Prof. Petrie, this gorge 
 
 derives from the nodding crest of 
 
 a palm-branch hedge, but this (7 ~~ 
 explanation hardly seems to ac- (JANIS 
 count for the fact that works of SY | 
 the Fourth Dynasty are usually /4 
 finished along the top bya bands Big, 7, 
 
 of vertical “‘reeding’’ with an 
 
 XXX pattern beneath it. This may be traced 
 back on the representation of buildings on 
 objects of the first dynasties, and when we 
 find on the earliest example known of the 
 gorge that the vertical divisions do not suggest 
 leaves, but are rounded like the “‘ reeding,”’ it 
 seems that the only new feature is the pro- 
 jecting curve in place of the vertical band. 
 Perhaps the vertical strip of “‘ reeding”’ was 
 a perspective representation of an eaves of 
 pole-ends, and that the gorge is a com- 
 
 
 
80 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 promise between the horizontal and the 
 vertical. 
 
 In the pre-dynastic age hard stone had been 
 cut with wonderful precision into vases of 
 various forms. In building wrought stone 
 seems to have been first used during the First 
 Dynasty; a pavement of fair stone slabs has 
 been found of this age. During the Second 
 Dynasty the erection of buildings throughout 
 of hewn stone began. This was a 
 \yg* remarkable innovation. 
 nH Representations of columns have 
 been found on objects which date 
 from the first dynasties. In the early 
 tombs of Abydos models of fluted and 
 reeded circular pillars were found, and 
 the hieroglyphs of the third and fourth 
 dynasties show fluted posts and other 
 columns of a tent-pole type having 
 
 Fia.8, 2 Swelling profile something like a 
 baluster (fig. 3). Amongst the hiero- 
 
 glyphs at Meydum—third or fourth dynasties 
 —is one of a column-like object having the 
 baluster form, a spreading capital, and the 
 lower part of the shaft wrapped with triangular 
 leaves. It is the “‘ papyrus sceptre,”’ and it is 
 so exactly like later columns, and so fit to be 
 adopted as a column, that we may hardly 
 doubt that even at this early time the tent- 
 pole columns were completed by painting in a 
 similar way (fig. 8). Indeed, is it not probable 
 
 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 31 
 
 that the papyrus sceptre is a model of a tent- 
 pole column? The German excavations at 
 Abousir have recently brought to light several 
 stone columns of the Fifth Dynasty which 
 have swelling profiles, their lower ends 
 wrapped with leaves, and papyrus- 47% 
 blossom capitals which are stone 
 renderings of the same type. Many 
 fifth-dynasty capitals, somewhat similar 
 to these last, but formed of groups of 
 lotus-buds, have recently been dis- ©» 
 covered. Prof. Petrie brought one back fig, 9, 
 two years ago which is now at Man- 
 chester (fig. 10). A very simple capital of 
 this type now at Dresden is shown in fig. 9. 
 Another form of stone column, also of the 
 Fifth Dynasty, was in general use. The cir- 
 cular shaft of this diminished up- 
 wards to the upper quarter, which 
 spread again in a graceful curve 
 which was carved into palm leaves. 
 Several capitals of this kind have 
 been found at Abousir, and there is 
 an example of this type of column _ f 
 from the pyramid of Unas in the 
 British Museum (fig. 11). The whole 
 is a monolith, the capital not being yet divided 
 from the shaft except by a carved band repre- 
 senting a binding of rope, the prototype of the 
 necking moulding under later capitals. This 
 binding-cord suggests an ultimate source for 
 
 
 
 
 
32 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 such capitals in a fashion of tying flowers to 
 the posts of huts and shrines, or at least 
 of painting flowers and bindings on the 
 ‘‘capitals’’ of the wooden columns. Stone 
 columns required no bases, but wooden posts 
 rested on low, round, stone blocks, and these 
 were later brought into stone-building. 
 
 In the Fourth Dynasty the Egyptian archi- 
 tectural style was fully formed. Works of 
 
 this time are more intelligible 
 and more universal than later 
 ones, 1n which the _hieratic 
 quality—the especial Egyptian 
 flavour—is more in evidence. 
 Sculpture was an advanced art 
 in the first dynasties. At the 
 British Museum is a fine ivory 
 of a first-dynasty king. As 
 Prof. Petrie says, “‘ the civiliza- 
 
 
 
 fia ae tion that we find before us 
 in the earliest-known history 
 appears elaborate and perfect. ... Few 
 
 discoveries of importance were made during 
 thousands of years which ensued.” The 
 hieroglyphs at Meydum showed that at the 
 beginning of the Fourth Dynasty “ nearly 
 all the conventions were already perfected.” 
 Representations of the Urxus and the Winged 
 Disc, which became so characteristic in later 
 days, are found on works of the early dynas- 
 ties. From prehistoric days buildings were 
 
ORIGINS OF ARCHITECTURE 33 
 
 whitened and painted. The interior of the 
 tomb at Hieraconpolis had its walls painted 
 with ships on the river, and with hunting 
 scenes on its banks. The exteriors of crude 
 brick buildings were plastered and coloured 
 in bands. Such colouring appears on a 
 fourth-dynasty ‘‘ false door”? in the British 
 Museum. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS—TOMBS, PYRAMIDS, 
 OBELISKS, TEMPLES, HOUSES, TOWNS 
 
 As Egyptian architecture matured, the 
 people, or rather their rulers, more and more 
 magnified the tombs where they were to lie 
 and to be worshipped after their death. The 
 art which had been developed joyously 
 was too soon imprisoned by ritual rigidity 
 and frozen by a dead hand. I remember 
 a drawing of an archeologist turning away 
 from the Great Pyramid with the remark, 
 “It’s too late,’”’ and, indeed, these colossal 
 works seem to have crushed the fresh life 
 out of the people. Before the pyramids were 
 built the tombs had become large and 
 splendid. Each contained a strongly con- 
 structed tomb-chamber, hidden in the midst 
 of a great mass of brickwork, often upwards 
 of 200 feet long, sometimes 300 feet long and 
 150 feet wide. 
 
 The finest tombs of this—the mastaba—type 
 were explored at Meydum, first by Mariette, 
 and then, more carefully, by Prof. Petrie. 
 
 The tomb of Nefermatt had its walls covered 
 34 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 35 
 
 with scenes and hieroglyphics, which were 
 carved into the stones and then filled level 
 with coloured mastics, so that all the detail 
 appears as in a painting. One of the stones, 
 on which a flying duck is wonderfully ren- 
 dered, is in the British Museum, and at 
 South Kensington are fragments of paintings, 
 also a full-sized copy of six geese, which are 
 strangely like a fine Japanese drawing. (See 
 the woodcut in Loftie’s A Ride in Egypt.) 
 Near by, in another mastaba of the same age, 
 the end of the Third or early years of the 
 Fourth Dynasty, were found the two marvel- 
 lously life-like statues of Ra-Hotep and his 
 wife Nefert, works wonderfully bright and 
 sweet which retain the dew of art’s morning. 
 It had been the custom to enlarge these 
 mastabas by successive thick coatings of 
 brickwork, each sloping at a steep angle, 
 usually of 4 to 1. It is now well understood 
 that the pyramids are practically great 
 mastabas, and it is held that the actual stages 
 of transformation are left for our instruction 
 in the “‘ Stepped Pyramid ” at Sakkara, and 
 the curiously built pyramid at Meydum. 
 Although a whole library of books on the 
 Great Pyramid exists there is no good com- 
 plete study of the entire subject, and as these 
 are the earliest great architectural monuments 
 it will be well to discuss them at some length. 
 In the Third Dynasty two or more neighbour- 
 
36 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ing mastabas at Sakkara had been buried 
 in a great mass which not only enclosed but 
 surmounted them, falling back by degrees in 
 a series of terraces. This is known as the 
 Stepped Pyramid. It is not even square on 
 plan, being upwards of forty feet longer in 
 one direction than the other. It is a colossal 
 mastaba rather than a pyramid, although 
 obviously it was the parent of pyramids. 
 There is no doubt that it is of earlier date 
 than the other pyramids. It is the only one 
 which does not face the cardinal points accu- 
 rately, being about four and a half degrees out 
 in its lines. It was built by a king of the 
 Third Dynasty, whose name was many times 
 repeated on the jamb and lintel of a doorway 
 in the inner chamber. The walls of this 
 chamber were covered by small green glazed 
 tiles about 2 x 3 inches slightly convex on the 
 face. A few of these tiles are in the British 
 Museum, and many others, with the stonework 
 of the doorway, are in the Berlin Museum. 
 The soffit of the doorway is carved into a 
 representation of stars; and other fragments 
 found suggested that the ceiling of the chamber 
 had had similar decoration. This scheme of 
 making the ceiling a sky has persisted ever 
 since. Similar green tiles have been found 
 at early sites, and it is not now doubted that 
 this remarkably beautiful chamber really 
 belongs to the Third Dynasty. Of similar 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 37 
 
 tiles found at Hieraconpolis, Mr. Quibell 
 remarks that “ their position showed beyond 
 doubt that they were not later than the Old 
 Kingdom.” 
 
 The exterior of this pyramid is built of 
 roughly squared stones “ set to the angle of 
 the face,” that is, declining inwards. The 
 mass is of rubble masonry in a series of coat- 
 ings contained by walls nine feet thick of 
 the better masonry, which lean inwards at the 
 mastaba angle (here 73° 30’). These walls rise 
 from the foundation, but each one decreases 
 in height the farther it is from the central 
 core, so that the several terraces are succes- 
 sively about thirty-four feet lower each than 
 the other. It is 351°2 feet from east to west, 
 and 398°9 from north to south. Perring says, 
 ‘“‘ the breadth from north to south has appar- 
 ently been increased by an additional wall 
 on those sides,’? but no evidence for this 
 appears. It is now generally agreed that it 
 was not designed as a true pyramid. 
 
 A ruined structure at Meydum seems to 
 have been the first pyramid proper; it was 
 built at the end of the Third Dynasty or by 
 the first king of the Fourth. It also was 
 built in inclined layers, but it was square and 
 was completed by a continuous casing sloping 
 from the base to a point. Prof. Petrie in 
 his latest study of the subject considers that 
 he has found sufficient evidence to show that 
 
38 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 it was only after several coatings had been 
 completed in preparation for finishing: it as 
 a stepped structure that a change of scheme 
 was made with a view of completing’it as a 
 pointed pyramid. Thus the faces of the several 
 terrace walls are finely dressed masonry. 
 Prof. Petrie discovered: the external sloping 
 casing of fine masonry several years ago. In 
 his recent re-examination of the base of this 
 pyramid he found several of these stones 
 marked with a rough sketch of a stepped 
 pyramid. This suggests that even when 
 these stones for the casing of a true pyramid 
 were prepared, the monument where they 
 were to be used was known by an ideogram 
 representing a ‘‘ stepped pyramid.” 
 
 The method followed at Sakkara and 
 Meydum of building in inclined coatings 
 seems to be a reasonable one for the erection 
 of pyramids proper, for it was followed at 
 Abousir and Lisht. The angle made by the 
 easing of the completed pyramid of Meydum 
 resulted in giving a ratio, between the sum of 
 the four sides and the height, of 44 to 7—that 
 is, the ratio between the radius and the 
 circumference of a circle. The Great Pyramid 
 of Gizeh, which followed that of Meydum, 
 has exactly the same angle, and Prof. Petrie 
 considers that the coincidence with the ratio 
 of the radius to the circumference of a circle 
 is intentional. That the Great Pyramid has 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 39 
 
 exactly the same angle shows that it was 
 copied from the finished work at Meydum, 
 but it does not show that there was any 
 meaning attached to the ratio of height to 
 base. 
 
 The simplest supposition would be that 
 the angle was given by considering the 
 general slope which would include the several 
 terraces with just a little adjustment to allow 
 of the use of whole numbers, as seven of height 
 to eleven of base. The tendency of pyramid 
 design seems to have been to attain height, to 
 build a structure that should reach to heaven. 
 At Sakkara terrace was piled on terrace, at 
 Meydum and the Great Pyramid the finished 
 angle was nearly 52°. The ideal pyramid, 
 as depicted in the hieroglyphs, was very 
 acute from the earliest time. Obviously, in 
 a progression from the pyramid of Sakkara 
 to the Second Pyramid at Gizeh, which rises 
 at an angle of over 53°, the angle giving 
 the ratio of the radius to the circumference 
 of a circle was reached accidentally. The 
 general angle of the Sakkara pyramid, which 
 would include the terraces, is about 49°; 
 Meydum and the Great Pyramid, 51° 52’; 
 the Second Pyramid, 53° 10’; Dahsur, steep 
 part at bottom, 55°, flatter part at top, 45°. 
 
 Again, it would have been curious to make 
 this particular ratio subsist between the 
 height and the square measure round about 
 
40 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the base; it would have been a more striking 
 coincidence if the correspondence had been 
 with the inscribed or circumscribed circles of 
 the base—that is, there are three chances for 
 those who would find just this ratio in the 
 pyramid. If we consider all the chances of 
 relation between the half base, the base, the 
 diagonal base, the vertical height, the slope 
 height, the diagonal height, we should prob- 
 ably be justified in assuming that this 
 particular ratio is fortuitous. 
 
 Given the two conditions of desine for great 
 size and for the utmost durability, the pyra- 
 mid form was the most perfect solution - 
 possible. 
 
 The Great Pyramid at Gizeh, named ‘“ the 
 glory of Khufu,” “the greatest and most 
 accurate structure ever built,” is about 480 feet 
 high and seems more like a hill of stone, rising 
 as it does from a base of over thirteen acres, 
 than like an architectural work. When it 
 was new and sharp it must have gleamed 
 cold and white like the peak of an alp rising 
 above the burning golden sand. Some casing 
 stones were found around the base by Howard 
 Vyse. They were large blocks, the one of 
 which he gives the dimensions being 4 feet 
 11 inches high, 8 feet 3 inches on the bed, 
 and 4 feet 3 inches on the top from back. to 
 front, showing 6 feet 3 inches on the slanting 
 face. Ofthese stones there are some fragments 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 41 
 
 at the British Museum. The pyramids stood 
 within large square paved courts, surrounded 
 by walls, and each one had a temple attached 
 to it on the east side, where offerings were 
 made to the dead Pharaoh. 
 
 The effort required for the erection of such 
 works seems incredible. According to Hero- 
 dotus an inscription on the Great Pyramid 
 told that 16,000 talents had been spent on the 
 radishes, onions and garlic eaten by the work- 
 men. This must be an example of the 
 myth of cost, and is, indeed, explained by his 
 own comment, ‘“‘If this be so, how much 
 besides,” ete. A similar story is told of Rome: 
 Heliogabalus, it is said, gathered and weighed 
 all the cobwebs in the city, so that its size 
 might thus be inferred. 
 
 Another myth concerning construction is 
 accepted by many writers, including Perrot 
 and Maspero. The sloping casing, they say, 
 was begun by setting the apex stone and con- 
 tinuing thence downwards. It surely would 
 be a useless miracle to handle such big stones 
 in such a way. Choisy minimizes the story 
 to mean that the casing was fixed as square 
 blocks, and dressed to the slope afterwards, 
 but Howard Vyse long ago pointed out that 
 the casing was fixed “‘roughly cut to the 
 proper angle,”’ and that the fine dressing only 
 was executed in place, as cleaning-off; and 
 this view has been confirmed by Prof. Petrie. 
 
A2 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 It would have served just as well for con- 
 venience to leave the casing blocks square 
 on one side only, or, indeed, to have left such 
 a step-way, say twenty feet wide, up one side. 
 We may suppose, then, that one or two per 
 cent. of the casing was left up in steps 
 temporarily on the side facing the road by 
 which the casing-stones arrived. 
 
 The final dressing to a fair plane surface 
 seems to have been done with the assistance 
 of some scaffolding. Perring says that at 
 Dahsur there were “ puttock holes” in the 
 casing-stones for supports used when the 
 dressing-off was done, and the holes had been 
 very neatly filled up with inserted blocks. 
 Many of the lower stones in this pyramid 
 were, he found, joined together by stone 
 dovetails. The analysis of pyramid con- 
 struction as given by Choisy is most suggestive. 
 Although it is only a sketch, it indicates how 
 these man-made hills had to be built. 
 
 At the north pyramid at Dahsur Perring 
 found the apex stone (the slope was 45°). It 
 was of one block 4 feet 9 inches high. The 
 course beneath was of four stones of the same 
 height, the other courses were less. 
 
 A pyramid was not a solitary monument— 
 it was supported, like a cathedral, by many 
 subsidiary buildings and rose within a paved 
 enclosure; round about was a whole necro- 
 polis of mastabas_ A college of priests was 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 43 
 
 attached to its service, supported by an endow- 
 ment of lands. The Great Pyramid and its 
 two companions at Gizeh were built within 
 a century and probably by one family— 
 a father, son, and the latter’s grandson. 
 According to Maspero, the lower rock-hewn 
 chamber below the Great Pyramid belongs 
 to an earlier tomb which is embedded in the 
 superstructure. It has been much discussed 
 whether this pyramid was built according to 
 a first design or whether it was enlarged by 
 successive works. Dr. Borchardt, the archi- 
 tect to the German mission, gives evidence 
 to show that it was altered and enlarged. 
 “A recent campaign of excavation by Ger- 
 mans, Americans and Italians at the pyramid 
 area has resulted in showing that besides the 
 temples directly to the east of the several 
 pyramids there were others in the valley near 
 the causeways leading up to the pyramids. 
 The granite temple close to the Sphinx 
 belonged to the pyramid of Chephren. Prof. 
 Petrie long ago showed that it was built in 
 connection with the causeway, and was the 
 work of Chephren. The interior was lined 
 with red granite. The exterior was a square 
 mass, the walls channelled into * false doors ”’ 
 and with a paved terrace roof. The Third 
 Pyramid had a similar second temple, which 
 had never been completed. In its ruins were 
 found magnificent statues of Mycerinus. It 
 
AA, ARCHITECTURE 
 
 is most probable that the Great Sphinx, which 
 is close to the lower temple of the Second 
 Pyramid, at the side of the causeway leading 
 to it, was sculptured out of the rock as the 
 guardian of the sacred precinct. It is a lion 
 with the head of King Chephren. The road- 
 way has paving which is cut into the rock; 
 it doubtless continued to a water-gate on the 
 bank of the Nile. 
 
 At Abousir a German expedition has 
 recently carefully explored a group of fifth- 
 dynasty pyramids. They are of great im- 
 portance, for the temples and_ subsidiary 
 buildings were well preserved, together with 
 long covered passages which led up from 
 water-gates. In the Berlin Museum there is 
 an admirable restored model of these. The 
 water-gates were noble works with columnar 
 fronts like Greek propylea. 
 
 A long series of discoveries has demon- 
 strated how the primitive grave developed 
 into the mastaba, how the mastaba grew 
 very large and became transformed into a 
 step-pyramid, and how that passed almost 
 accidentally yet inevitably into the true 
 pyramid, a perfect final form. Such acciden- 
 tal development leading to such an ordered 
 end has ever been the law of architectural 
 growth; nothing of true worth has ever been 
 invented of malice prepense. Evolution was 
 along the line of increasing bulk and the 
 
P) 
 
 EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 45 
 
 effort after durability ; these produced the 
 yramid. 
 
 Within these enormous masses were only 
 one or two small chambers, one of which con- 
 tained the sarcophagus. They were reached 
 by passages planned in a strange way and 
 defended, so that the sepulchral chamber 
 should be inaccessible. The pyramid of 
 Meydum was penetrated by a passage sloping 
 down from the north side; beneath the centre 
 of the work it reached the bottom of a vertical 
 shaft, which thence ascended to the floor of 
 the tomb. The external opening in the side 
 of the pyramid was probably closed by wedged 
 stones. 
 
 At the Great Pyramid the entrance was in 
 the eighteenth course on the north side. From 
 it a passage descended into a chamber cut 
 in the rock. That seemed to be all, except 
 that about sixty feet from the entrance there 
 was a great block of granite showing in the 
 ceiling of the passage. It was too hard to be 
 cut through, but the old pyramid-breakers 
 mined a way by the side of it into an ascending 
 passage. At the upper end other obstructions 
 barred the way, for the tomb-chamber was 
 cut off from the passage by four heavy blocks 
 which had been suspended in suitable cavities. 
 When the original workmen withdrew they 
 removed the props and the blocks fell like 
 portcullises. Choisy suggests that in so 
 
46 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 dealing with great stones the craftmasters 
 used sandbags, which, slowly giving out their 
 contents, allowed the stones to fall into their 
 _place gently. In the pyramid of Dahsur the 
 cavity for the portcullis rose obliquely at the 
 side, so that the massive sealing stone slid 
 down the incline and closed the passage, as 
 was clearly explained by Perring in the 
 standard English work on the pyramids. 
 Here the outer end of the passage was closed 
 by a block adjusted on pivots. The entrance 
 was so well concealed on the exterior “ as to 
 have escaped the closest examination.” 
 
 One of the mysteries of these buildings 
 is why there was all this complexity of con- 
 trivance, why the passages were not merely 
 regarded as temporary ways to be built up 
 solid. Prof. Petrie has suggested that the 
 passages remained accessible to the priests, 
 but if so, why was the fine ascending passage 
 of the Great Pyramid cut off? Is it not 
 probable that the endeavour was to confuse 
 evil spirits? In any case the problem is 
 one which is inherently fascinating, especially 
 to young minds—the mystery of the secret 
 chamber. Such _ preoccupations probably 
 gave birth to the idea of the labyrinth, which 
 as a device appears on Egyptian scarabs. 
 Prof. Petrie has lately published a small 
 ivory tablet of the Twelfth Dynasty on which 
 a labyrinth is rudely incised. 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS AT 
 
 The twelfth-dynasty pyramid of Ilahun 
 had its entrance in a well forty feet deep, from 
 which a passage hewn in the rock led to a 
 chamber from which access was gained to 
 another chamber of red granite, from the 
 north wall of which “a strange passage is 
 cut in the rock, first northward, then west, 
 then south, then east, and lastly northwards 
 again, opening into the limestone chamber.” 
 It passed right round the granite chamber 
 and looked as if it were intended to prove that 
 there was no other passage. 
 
 The interior of the pyramid of Hawara 
 (Twelfth Dynasty) is described as elaborately 
 arranged so as to deceive and weary the 
 spoiler. The mouth was on the ground level 
 on the south side, a quarter of the length from 
 the south-west corner. ‘‘ The original ex- 
 plorers descended a passage with steps to a 
 chamber from which apparently there was no 
 exit. The way consisted of a sliding trap-door, 
 however, and breaking through this, another 
 chamber was reached at a higher level. Then 
 a passage opened to the east closed only with 
 a wooden door, and leading to another chamber 
 with a trap-door roof. But in front of the 
 explorers was a passage carefully plugged up 
 solid with stone; this they thought would 
 lead to the prize, and so all the stones were 
 mined through, only to lead to nothing. 
 From the second trap-door chamber a passage 
 
48 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 led northward to yet a third such chamber. 
 From that a passage led west to a chamber 
 ’ with two wells, which seemed as though they 
 led to the tomb, but both were false. This 
 chamber also was almost filled with masonry, 
 which all concealed nothing, but had given 
 plenty of occupation to the spoilers who 
 removed it in vain. A filled-up trench in the 
 floor really led to the sepulchre; but arriving 
 there no door was to be found, as the entrance 
 had been by the roof, an enormous block of 
 which had been let down into place to close 
 the chamber. So at last the way had been 
 forced by breaking away a hole in the edge 
 of the glass-hard sandstone roofing-block 
 and thus reaching the chamber and _ its 
 sarcophagi.”’ Prof. Petrie exhibited this year 
 (1911) a model of a tomb with such small 
 winding passages, and traps, that he had 
 indicated the true way by a thread, taking 
 a hint from the story of Ariadne. 
 
 Obelisks are almost as mysterious as 
 pyramids. The early shrines shown on objects 
 of the first dynasties often have pairs of masts 
 or posts standing before their fronts, and the 
 proper function of obelisks is to stand in 
 pairs before the great eastern gates of the 
 temples. Small obelisks have been found in 
 tombs of the Old Kingdom, but the earliest 
 of the existing great obelisks belongs to the 
 Twelfth Dynasty. In the design of the typical 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 49 
 
 obelisk there has evidently been some borrow- 
 ing from the pyramid; it is an immensely 
 tall, double-angled pyramid of one stone. 
 In the obelisk is embodied another structural 
 ideal, the delight in balance. The noble 
 materials which the Egyptian architects con- 
 trolled made it possible to set up obelisks 
 over 100 feet high. Their apices were fre- 
 quently covered with gilt copper, or they were 
 entirely gilt so as to flash in the sun. They 
 may have been boundary stones in origin, 
 but they came to have some symbolic relation 
 with the sun. They are perfected monoliths, 
 in part the outcome of an _ ineradicable 
 tendency to worship big stones which has 
 always been one of the forces at work in 
 Architecture. 
 
 In Egypt from the’earliest time it had been 
 customary to bury gifts with the dead and 
 to make offerings at their tombs. In the 
 pyramid age the service of the royal tombs 
 was regularly endowed and each pyramid had 
 a temple attached to it. The gods had 
 shrines from the first dynasties or even earlier. 
 In the British Museum is the inscribed part 
 of the fourth-dynasty tomb of a priest of the 
 gods Seker and Tet and overseer of the works 
 in the palaces and temples. Foundations of 
 a temple of the first dynasties have been 
 discovered at Abydos. 
 
 The remains recently explored at Hiera- 
 D 
 
50 ARCHITECTURE — 
 
 conpolis of a temple built over an earlier 
 stone-faced mound suggests that the primitive 
 holy places were shrines set on platforms 
 in enclosures. The fifth-dynasty temple of 
 the sun at Abousir had a huge stunted obelisk 
 set on the top of an almost cubical platform, 
 the whole enclosed in a court. The fifth- 
 dynasty pyramid temples at Abousir are 
 highly developed with courts and colonnades. 
 A column from the fifth-dynasty temple of 
 Unas .is in the British Museum (fig. 11). 
 Considerable remains of the temple built by 
 Pepi in the Sixth Dynasty show that it was 
 about 50 x 40 feet, with colonnades and stone 
 gateways. Thus the temple proper had been 
 developed under the Old Kingdom. 
 
 Temples of the Eleventh Dynasty have 
 lately been explored at Thebes and Deir-el- 
 Bahri. 
 
 The better-known temples belong to the 
 Eighteenth Dynasty; they were usually of 
 great size and complexity, and consisted of a 
 far withdrawn holy place, small and obscure, 
 approached through a succession of large 
 courts and columned halls, some open and 
 others covered by platform ceilings of stone 
 slabs, all arranged on a central axis which 
 pointed to the sunrise. Before the outer gates 
 were Obelisks and avenues of statues. 
 
 Within all the wall-surfaces were covered 
 by relief sculptures and paintings, which 
 
EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS 51 
 
 followed a traditional arrangement suggesting 
 a correspondence between the local habitation 
 of the deity and the universe of which it was 
 in some way the image. 
 
 The temple, says Maspero (1907), ‘‘ was 
 built in the image of the earth such as the 
 Egyptians had imagined. The earth was for 
 them a sort of flat slab more long than wide, 
 the sky was a ceiling or vault supported by 
 four great pillars. The pavement of the 
 temples represented the earth, the four 
 angles stood for the pillars, the ceiling, 
 vaulted at Abydos, or more often flat, corre- 
 sponded to the sky.”’ 
 
 Each point received an appropriate decora- 
 tion; from the pavement grew vegetation, 
 and water plants emerged from _ water. 
 Thothmes III had carved the herbs and beasts 
 of the foreign lands which he had conquered. 
 The ceiling, painted in dark blue, was strewn 
 with stars of five points. Sometimes, the sun 
 and moon were seen floating on the heavenly 
 ocean escorted by the constellations, and the 
 months and days. “ The ornamentation was 
 restricted to a small number of subjects, 
 always the same.” 
 
 The palaces were much lighter structures 
 than the temples, and for the most part were 
 built of brick and wood. With their courts, 
 gardens, ponds, and dependent buildings they 
 were enclosed within strong walls. The 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
52 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ceilings, walls, and plastered floors were gaily 
 painted with patterns or scenes. ‘The houses 
 had frequently two or three stories of rooms 
 having windows of quite modern form. See 
 a model of a house in the British Museum 
 with a window divided by a little column, 
 and another with two-light windows divided 
 by transoms. 
 
 From pre-dynastic time Egyptian towns 
 were built within strong walls, forming a 
 square or parallelogram with defensive walk 
 and battlements above. At Ilahun, Prof. 
 Petrie excavated “an unaltered town of the 
 Twelfth Dynasty.’’ It was square and walled 
 and with regular streets. The larger houses 
 had a court surrounded by columns with a 
 water-tank in the middle, 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 EGYPTIAN BUILDING—METHODS AND IDEAS 
 
 BEsIpDES the better-known pyramids aiid 
 temples built of large blocks of stone, the 
 larger number of common buildings in Egypt 
 were constructed of mud brick and some 
 poor and scarce timber. Vaults and arches 
 are found in Egypt dating from the beginnings 
 of dynastic rule, and rudimentary domes are 
 probably as old. They are both primitive. 
 The arch, as described in books, 1s an assem- 
 blage of large stone wedges put together 
 without cement, remaining stable by the 
 balance of parts. The arch was not so intro- 
 duced into architecture. At the simplest, an 
 arch is the upper part of a horizontal excava- 
 tion in a mass of clay or gravel—a swift’s hole 
 in a sand bank, for instance.- If the opening 
 be gradually diminished upwards by slanting 
 or rounding, and if the material is fairly com- 
 pact, quite a big hole may be made without 
 the mass falling in. In the simplest building, 
 a vault is a convex shell of dried clay span- 
 ning an open space, by gradually bringing 
 together a rounded continuation of the walls. 
 
 53 
 
54 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 In building by an aggregation of material like 
 mud, it seems to be quite natural to bring the 
 side-walls together into the form of vaults. 
 Such an “ arch ”’ has the properties of a bent 
 beam—it is strong until it breaks up into 
 sections; and every modern arch, so far as it 
 is made homogeneous by cement is in a sense 
 a bent beam—that is, the wedges do not act 
 separately. 
 
 About ten years ago there was an interesting 
 paper on primitive mud architecture in the 
 Journal of the Geographical Society. Even 
 the Prairie dogs build little domed structures 
 and the Esquimaux construct domes of ice. 
 When the use of mud-walling gave place to 
 building with sun-dried bricks—that is, to mud 
 which had been divided up into sections—it 
 was easily seen that the continuous clay shell- 
 vault might be successfully imitated in bricks. 
 A man beginning a clay shell would do so 
 against an end wall to which his first hand- 
 fuls would be made to adhere while gradually 
 rising from the sides. So the builder of 
 brick vaults in Egypt and Assyria began at 
 the end by slanting courses up from the sides 
 so that they leaned against the end wall; 
 each brick was laid flatwise on the slanting 
 face left by the last course; it was stuck to 
 it, as it were, by its broad surface. Thus the 
 vault was brought along from the end without 
 
 any ‘“‘centring’”’ by making each thin cake © 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 55 
 
 of mud adhere to and rest against the slanting 
 course last done. There was no thought of 
 wedges, the vault was thought of as a con- 
 tinuous convex shell, although it was executed 
 by assembling cakes of mud of a uniform size. 
 The Romans developed this idea of the homo- 
 geneous vault in their magnificent concrete 
 construction. 
 
 The wedge arch might have had an inde- 
 pendent origin, for children playing with 
 stones seem naturally to make experiments in 
 bridging over voids; === 
 but the true arch 
 of masonry appears 
 late, and it seems to 
 have been evolved in 
 Kgypt after the brick 
 vault had been built for some two thousand 
 years. 
 
 Prof. Flinders Petrie describes a tomb de- 
 pendent on a fine first-dynasty mastaba at 
 Gizeh as vaulted, and Prof. Garstang has 
 excavated a number of vaulted tombs at 
 Reququah which he assigns to the Third 
 Dynasty. These tombs were small oblongs, 
 sunk in the ground; the sides had walls, and 
 they were covered by vaults in which the 
 bricks were placed edgeways and leaning 
 back at an angle against the end wall of the 
 tomb. Sometimes the bricks were roughly 
 cut to more or less of a wedge shape, and some 
 
 
 
56 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of the arches are rudely pointed (fig. 12). 
 Stone-roofed passages of the Fourth Dynasty 
 were at times hollowed out into the arch form, 
 which shows how deeply by this time it must 
 have got into consciousness. 
 
 At the twelfth-dynasty town of the builders 
 of the pyramid of Ilahun, Prof. Petrie found 
 many arched roofs of brickwork, and the 
 doorways were always arched. 
 
 Small circular ‘‘ domed ”’ structures of mud 
 were probably known from the earliest time 
 in Egypt. At Hieraconpolis several ‘‘ shuna,” 
 or store-pits, of about six feet in diameter 
 have been found which seemed to have be- 
 longed to houses of the pre-pyramid age. 
 Some foundations of isolated circular buildings, 
 probably granaries, were also discovered. In 
 the Twelfth Dynasty domes were formed 
 over the circular chambers within the small 
 pyramids of this age. They are built of hori- 
 zontal layers of brickwork, each course being 
 of less diameter than the one below. They 
 resemble the beehive tomb at Mycene, and, 
 as Choisy remarked, “‘ their likeness to pre- 
 Hellenic domes cannot be fortuitous.” The 
 same author, judging from the paintings, 
 thought it probable that the Egyptians 
 covered square chambers with mud domes, 
 which showed externally. This view is con- 
 firmed by some models of houses of the 
 Tenth Dynasty found at Rifeh, which show 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 57 
 
 several varieties of vaulting; in some “the 
 domed roofs are obvious.’”? One model shows 
 a terrace-roof with three little rounded cupolas 
 just emerging through it, like a modern 
 Kastern house (fig. 13). 
 
 The use of rude little domes for granaries 
 was quite general. According to Perrot and 
 Chipiez, “‘the granaries and store-houses were 
 almost always dome-shaped ... asketch made 
 in a tomb at Sakkara shows another form of 
 granary shaped like a stone bottle ”—that 
 is, it had a sort of knob above the “* dome”’; 
 these knobs are prob- 
 ably the far-off 
 originals of lanterns 
 on domes. It should 
 be noticed that these 
 granary domes were not spherical, but semi- 
 eggshaped. 
 
 At Daphne Prof. Petrie explored the ruins 
 of a fortress-palace built about 660 B.c. All 
 that remained was a square mass of brickwork 
 about 160 feet square; the interior was an 
 irregular “‘ gridiron ”’ of thick walls, forming 
 cells about ten to sixteen feet wide. Many 
 were square, others were oblong; the latter 
 formed ‘“‘ deep domed chambers or cells, which 
 were opened from the top.”’ They were much 
 ruined, but several cells “‘ in the best-preserved 
 parts showed signs of the springing of domes 
 in their corners; the corners are rounded and 
 
 
 
58 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 gather in towards the vaulting.” In answer 
 to an inquiry, Prof. Petrie was kind enough 
 to tell me further : “‘ Egyptian doming of con- 
 struction chambers is irregular, the sides 
 contracting inwards while the corner increas- 
 ingly rounds. For open chambers, I think 
 the angles in each case are truncated by 
 placing bricks across them.’’ We have here 
 the application of domes to square chambers 
 systematically by means of gradually re- 
 ducing the angles. However imperfectly 
 they may have been executed, this is the 
 system of the “ pendentive.” 
 
 Structures of crude brick were mud- 
 plastered to protect them from the weather, 
 and whitewashed and painted in stripes and 
 simple patterns from the earliest days. Even 
 some of the pyramids are built of mud brick 
 eased in stone, that at Illahun has a frame- 
 work of stone walling filled in with crude 
 brick. In the Nineteenth Dynasty some. 
 works were executed in baked brick, but it 
 was not in common use till Hellenistic days. 
 The baking of clay was, of course, taken 
 over from pottery. Some bricks enamelled a 
 lovely blue have been found. 
 
 Masonry of all kinds, from rubble to fine 
 ashlar in large blocks, was in use. It was 
 bedded in plaster, or in a mortar of plaster, 
 sand, and pounded brick. The masonry of 
 the third-dynasty pyramid at Sakkara is set 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 59 
 
 in mortar. Fine masonry blocks from about 
 the Twelfth Dynasty were linked by dove- 
 tailed cramps of stone or wood, or by metal 
 cramps. 
 
 A curious manner of bedding masonry and 
 brickwork in undulating courses is frequently 
 found. The masonry at the pyramid of 
 Sakkara rises towards the angles. Doubtless, 
 the custom arose, as explained by Choisy, 
 through building walls with strongly battered 
 faces the beds of which sloped inwards; this 
 made a difficulty of bonding at the corners 
 which the tilting of the angles went far to 
 obviate. 
 
 Other applications of the method are hard 
 to understand. It was the custom in the 
 Twelfth Dynasty to build walls in a corrugated 
 form; thus they got elasticity and stiffness. 
 The walls of the fortress of El] Kab were built 
 in this way on the west and north sides; on the 
 east and south the walls were built in sectional 
 lengths with vertical “straight joints” at 
 intervals. These sections were bedded hori- 
 zontally and in concave curves alternately. 
 The breaking of the wall into sections allowed 
 of contraction and expansion under the violent 
 changes of temperature, and possibly the 
 undulations contributed to the same end; 
 where a wall was built on a slope, it was a 
 provision against sliding. 
 
 Egyptian masonry was wrought at times 
 
60 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 with astonishing technical ability. Hard stones 
 like granite, basalt, and diorite were cut by 
 means of long saws. Howard Vyse noticed 
 that the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyra- 
 mid had been cut by a saw. The tubular 
 drill was also much used, and dishes and bowls 
 of diorite were turned. 
 
 One ideal of the builders was the use of 
 fine material, and the conquering of intractable 
 substances; another was accuracy of work- 
 manship. 
 
 Already when the pyramid of Meydum was 
 built, the idea of accuracy had been carried 
 so far that the bedding of the stones around 
 the base varied in level only about a quar- 
 ter of an inch in the 2000 feet; the joints 
 are “‘ under ;3,th of aninch.’”’ The stones were 
 finished by the strokes of a small adze. ‘“* The 
 laying out of the base of the pyramid of Khufu 
 is a triumph of skill; its errors both in length 
 and in its angles could be covered by placing 
 one’s thumb on them—the casing stones are 
 so truly square that the film of mortar left 
 between them is on an average not thicker 
 than one’s thumb-nail.”” The sepulchral 
 chamber, of the twelfth-dynasty pyramid of 
 Hawara was ‘“‘a marvellous work ’’; it re- 
 sembled a huge tank cut out of a single block 
 of a hard quartzite sandstone, the internal size 
 was 22 x 8 feet, and 3 feet of stone were left 
 all round. The corners were so sharply cut that 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 61 
 
 at first it seemed that they must have been 
 jointed; the whole “glassy hard ’’ surface 
 was polished. It was covered in by separate 
 blocks. 
 
 Prof. Petrie considers that plane surfaces 
 were tested by bringing them into contact 
 withatrue plane. Of the pyramid of Meydum 
 he says: “On the stones may be seen the red 
 spots of paint left from the testing by a red- 
 dened trial-plate as on the stones of Khufu, 
 at Gizeh.”? This became the Greek method 
 of “the red canon.”’ Such accuracy of work- 
 manship is astonishing, and it must depend 
 on some underlying idea which the builders 
 sought to realize. 
 
 A further development in ideas of per- 
 fection is found in orientation—the feeling 
 that the earthly building should be put into 
 relation with its heavenly prototype the 
 world-temple. The pyramid at Meydum 
 fairly corresponds with the four aspects, and 
 the Great Pyramids of Gizeh are almost per- 
 fectly adjusted. 
 
 In later Egyptian inscriptions relating to 
 buildings, phrases often occur like “it is 
 such as the heaven in all its quarters ”’; “* firm 
 as the heavens.’ The idea must have been 
 that as the heavens were stable, not to be 
 moved, so the building put into proper rela- 
 tion with the universe would acquire a magical 
 stability. It is recorded that when Akhnaton 
 
62 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 founded his new city, four boundary stones 
 were accurately placed, so that it should be 
 exactly square. 
 
 Minutely careful measurements have demon- 
 strated that the Egyptians worked according 
 to schemes of proportion, as part of these 
 ideas for perfect building. A mastaba of the 
 Third or Fourth Dynasty at Meydum has a 
 breadth of 100 and a length of 200 cubits. 
 Here lines 20°6 inches apart showed exactly 
 what the cubit was. The slope was an angle 
 of 4 to 1. Accuracy of form was so much 
 desired that walls of L form were built out- 
 side each corner and on these the slope of the 
 tomb was carefully marked with a red line. 
 Both the pyramid at Meydum and the 
 Great Pyramids at Gizeh had such a form 
 that the vertical height compared with the 
 measute round about the four sides was, as 
 we have seen, as 7 to 44. 
 
 Here and elsewhere, the several dimensions 
 of a work were set out with a big standard of 
 measure so as to avoid fractional parts. This, 
 indeed, seems to have been the substance of 
 the idea: the parts were to be of known 
 dimensions; there were to be no accidental 
 quantities. “The dimensions of the pyra- 
 mid of Meydum are 7 and 44 times a length 
 of 25 cubits. Those of Khufu are 7 and 44 
 times a length of 40 cubits.”” That is, one 
 was set out so that all the dimensions were 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 63 
 
 multiples of 25 cubits, and the other so 
 that all were multiples of 40 cubits. At 
 Dahsur the pyramid was designed on an even 
 number of cubits, the base being 360 cubits, 
 and the height 200, while the space walled 
 in around it was 100 cubits wide. Another 
 smaller pyramid near by had a base 100 cubits 
 square. 
 
 In the twelfth-dynasty pyramid at Ilahun 
 was a beautifully worked granite sarcopha- 
 gus of great “‘ accuracy of proportion,” each 
 dimension being a whole number of palms, 
 with an error of not more than one part in a 
 thousand. 
 
 These results, worked out by actual 
 measurement, coincide exactly with what is 
 reported to us of Greek ideas of proportion— 
 ideas based on the feeling that an object to be 
 perfect must have all its dimensions related 
 according to some scheme of simple measure- 
 ment which avoids fractional parts. The 
 - builders, it is clear, had before them some 
 idea of perfection, and endeavoured to realize 
 a type which should rise above the accidental. 
 In the Old Testament we find other examples 
 of a similar mode of thought, both in the 
 descriptions of the Tabernacle and of Ezekiel’s 
 temple. Modern Indian craftsmen seem to 
 work according to the same tradition. 
 
 Perrot gives an interesting example of a 
 builder’s adjustment to disguise irregularity. 
 
64 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The two obelisks before the temple at Luxor 
 were of different heights owing to some acci- 
 dent; one is 85 feet high, the other 78 feet. 
 ‘To hide this difference they were set upon 
 unequal bases, and the shorter obelisk was 
 placed slightly in advance of the other.” 
 Such simple modifications show great mastery 
 over effects which modern people find it 
 very difficult to apply. A little humouring 
 of this sort would have made Watts’ fine 
 statue in Kensington Gardens seem to stand 
 at the centre of the radiating paths, but the 
 problem was beyond our powers. 
 
 It is said that some of the obelisks have 
 slightly curved instead of plane surfaces, 
 and that lines in the plans of some of the 
 temples are laid out in a just perceptible 
 curve. | 
 
 This pursuit of the ideal and the typical 
 must have been related to the dominating 
 desire for permanence. The inscriptions of the 
 Pharaohs boast of their having founded 
 ‘‘ everlasting stone monuments,”’ in honour of 
 the gods. 
 
 Egyptian sculpture early matured, the 
 most perfect age was at the end of the Third 
 Dynasty and the beginning of the Fourth. 
 The famous scribe and the more beautiful 
 portraits of Rahotep and the lady Nefert are 
 of this time. Quite recently some magnifi- 
 cent portrait statues of the pyramid age have 
 
EGYPTIAN BUILDING 65 
 
 been found in the temple of the Third Pyramid. 
 Some wonderful bronze statues of the Old 
 Kingdom have been discovered at Hiera- 
 conpolis. Besides sculptures in the round, 
 the Egyptians practised relief sculpture of 
 exquisite delicacy, and the method of intaglio 
 relief which was so suitable under the devour- 
 ing sunshine. 
 
 Architectural painting did not consist only 
 of the well-known friezes of battles and 
 offerings, but many are of domestic and 
 pastoral scenes, dancing and hunting pieces, 
 animals and, birds. The most remarkable 
 are the well-known friezes of ducks of the 
 pyramid age; the painted plaster pavement 
 from Tel el Amarna of calves skipping amongst 
 vegetation; and the ceiling from the palace 
 of Amenhotep III (c. 1400 B.c.) of grey doves 
 and red butterflies, flying across a pale-blue 
 sky. 
 
 Besides painting and sculpture, many sorts 
 of surface decoration were practised, such as 
 polishing, gilding, the inlaying of wood with 
 ivory, and of stone with bright-coloured 
 faience. Casings of bright-green tiles were 
 applied to walls in the first dynasties. At 
 Abydos some tiles with figures in relief have 
 been found which probably adorned a chamber 
 of the time of Menes. 
 
 It is a part of my intention to try to point 
 
 out what contributions were made to uni- 
 E 
 
66 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 yersal architecture by the several civilizations 
 as they arose and passed away, but to do so 
 of Egypt would be to practically re-write 
 what has been said: to a large degree 
 Architecture is an Egyptian art. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 BABYLONIA AND CRETE—EARLY ART IN 
 ASIA AND EUROPE 
 
 Two other schools of architecture—the 
 earliest Asiatic style and the earliest European 
 style—must also be considered, although less 
 fully. Egypt, Babylonia and Crete were 
 three centres of early civilization, representing 
 Africa, Asia and Europe, which from an 
 early period and for long acted upon one 
 another. 
 
 Little or nothing is known of a primitive 
 age in Mesopotamia. At a remote time the 
 art of Babylonia was that of a civilized 
 people. As has been said, there is great 
 similarity between this art and that of early 
 dynastic times in Egypt. Yet it appears 
 that Egypt borrowed of Asia, rather than the 
 reverse. If the origins of art in Babylonia were 
 as fully known as those in Egypt, the story 
 of architecture might have to begin in Asia 
 instead of Egypt. The best general account 
 of Babylonian art has been written by Perrot 
 and Chipiez. A good English account of 
 
 recent discoveries in western Asia was given 
 67 
 
68 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 by Messrs. King and Hall in 1907. Written 
 records seem to take us back to about 4000 B.c. 
 Some writers think that metal tools were first 
 used in Elam; if this was so it would give 
 western Asia a strong claim to be the mother- 
 land of the arts. 
 
 A record of great interest only lately de- 
 ciphered describes how King Gudea (c. 2700) 
 rebuilt the temple of a high god and trans- 
 lated his image to it from a yet older temple. 
 The new building is described as being like 
 a mountain, terrible and strong as a bull. 
 The doors were guarded by statues of heroes 
 and monsters, and facing the rising sun the 
 emblem of the Sun-god was set up. Within 
 was a stone tank for water. The temple was 
 surrounded by dependent buildings in an en- 
 closed paradise, where trees and flowers grew 
 around a large lead-lined tank. Here the 
 birds flew unmolested. The plan of the temple 
 had been drawn by one of the gods on a tablet 
 of lapis-lazuli and revealed to the king. On 
 the appointed day, at the first sight of dawn, 
 the great god and goddess entered their new 
 temple, “* like a whirlwind, like the rising sun.” 
 Messrs. King and Hall speak of it as having 
 been an immense building with numerous 
 shrines and courts, and a high giggsurat, or 
 temple tower, of several stories, each de- 
 creasing, one above the other. The little 
 light that entered the interior through the 
 
 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE 69 
 
 doorway would have been reflected in the 
 basin of sacred water sunk level with the 
 floor. The area covered by the buildings 
 ‘* must have been enormous.” They included 
 dwellings for the priests, shelters for the 
 sacrificial animals, treasuries, and store-houses 
 for the produce of the temple lands. It was 
 evidently a great establishment; a temple of 
 cathedral rank, not a mere shrine or chamber 
 of offerings. The emblem of the Sun facing 
 the east, and the entry of the god to his temple 
 like the rising sun at dawn, shows that already 
 this temple was built in correspondence with 
 the greater world-temple. 
 
 If temples were thus highly developed at 
 this early time in Babylonia, it seems possible 
 that temples of the gods first appeared in 
 western Asia, and from thence spread to Egypt 
 and other countries. 
 
 At Nippur remains of an altar and of a 
 massive brick building in which was an arch 
 have been found which belong to an age 
 earlier than the reign of Sargon I,. which is 
 put at about 3800 B.c. Aninscribed tablet of 
 this early age lately found at Telloh records 
 the capture of a city and the burning of several 
 temples, “‘ carrying away the silver and preci- 
 ous stones therefrom,’ and destroying the 
 statues. It would appear that Babylonia 
 was a land of temples when Egypt was a land 
 of tombs. 
 
70 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The results of the excavations carried on 
 for a dozen years by a German expedition at 
 the mounds of Babylon have just been pub- 
 lished by Prof. R. Koldewey. Four temples 
 were explored. They were of brick, and 
 consisted of a number of chambers sur- 
 rounding a great court which was entered 
 through towered gateways. The gates had 
 bronze pivots turning in stone sockets. The 
 courts were paved with brick covered with 
 asphalt. The chief chamber or cella gave 
 evidence that here had been an image of the 
 goddess. In another temple there were three 
 parallel halls opening to the courtyard, the 
 central one being that of the god, while another 
 one was occupied by his consort. 
 
 The temple of Marduk (Baal), attached 
 to the Tower of Babel, was of great size. 
 The enclosing wall had a number of towers 
 channelled into vertical grooves, which were 
 as characteristic of Babylonian architecture as 
 of early Egyptian. The chief chamber here 
 contained a figure of the god seated on a 
 throne. The great tower was a solid brick 
 mass, square in places, but there was no evi- 
 dence to show how the upper part had been 
 formed. 
 
 The Germans have also excavated Assur, 
 the oldest city of Assyria. Enormous walls, 
 city-gates and palaces were explored, as well 
 as the Temple of Assur, which dated from 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE 71 
 
 the ninth century B.c. The results have 
 been published by Dr. Andrae. Here again 
 the temple consisted of a court surrounded by 
 a row of many chambers, combined into one 
 enclosing wall. It was entered by a great 
 gate, and opposite were large cells between 
 two stepped towers or ziggurats. 
 
 The palace of Nebuchadnezzar (sixth 
 century) has also been recently uncovered. 
 It was a huge “castle” with innumerable 
 courts, halls and chambers. The side walls 
 of the paved way which led up to it were 
 decorated with big and splendid figures of 
 lions made up of coloured glazed tiles. 
 
 The chambers in the temples and palaces 
 were all probably covered by vaults. Layard 
 found one vaulted chamber entire in the thick- 
 ness of a great wall. Arched drains and 
 evidence for barrel-vaulted gateways have 
 been discovered, and Loftus describes many 
 graves covered by vaults where the thin bricks 
 were set “‘on edge,”’ and leaned back at an 
 angle in the typical Eastern manner. Flandin 
 and Loftus thought that there was sufficient 
 evidence to show that the apartments of the 
 palaces had also been vaulted. Arches fre- 
 quently appear on the Assyrian slabs; on one 
 of the slabs is represented a group of domes, 
 some tall and conical and others rounded ; they 
 have little “ lanterns” on their tops. Domes 
 must have been indigenous by the great 
 
72 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 rivers of the East from a very early time; 
 according to Miss Lowthian Bell, the houses 
 of the modern mud-built villages of north 
 Syria and northern Mesopotamia are covered 
 with conical dome-like roofs like those shown 
 on the Assyrian slab; see also the remarks of 
 Perrot and Chipiez and Choisy on this subject. 
 The church at Bosra, built in 512, has a tall 
 dome of a semi-elliptical form; if it is of the 
 same age as the church it is an interesting 
 link in the tradition of 
 dome-building in west- 
 ern Asia. Fig. 14 is 
 from Sarre and Herz- 
 feld’s recent volume 
 on Mesopotamia. 
 
 The lower part of 
 palace walls were 
 covered by the large 
 sculptured slabs _ of 
 alabaster, a fine collection of which are housed 
 at the British Museum. Layard says that 
 they were painted in colours, and many traces 
 of this are still to be seen on them. 
 
 To Mesopotamia we probably owe the 
 development of cities, great irrigation schemes, 
 ordered gardens, water supply, the use of 
 lead and asphalt, drainage and fortress-build- 
 ing. Bricks may have been made _ here 
 earlier than in Egypt; here the arch may have 
 been invented. The vault seems first to have 
 
 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE 73 
 
 been systematically used in the monumental 
 structures of Mesopotamia, and here the dome 
 became prominent. 
 
 At Susa an early temple has been found by 
 De Morgan, built of burnt brick and enamelled 
 tiles. According to Strzygowski, the original 
 home of burnt brick vaulted construction and 
 of the method of balancing big vaults by 
 smaller ones, was Mesopotamia. The casing 
 of important external parts of buildings with 
 enamelled bricks forming figures, was a 
 striking feature; it culminated in the magni- 
 ficent frieze of archers now at the Louvre. 
 In Egypt, as we have seen, coloured faience 
 was used internally. Fine works of sculpture 
 have been discovered which date from about 
 3000 B.c. 
 
 On the Assyrian slabs columns are repre- 
 sented standing on cushion-like bases. Either 
 these are the originals of the Ionic base or 
 vice versa. Other bases are _ sculptured 
 sphinxes or lions. Possibly by the media- 
 tion of Roman architecture this was the 
 source for the beasts carrying columns at the 
 porches of Romanesque Italian churches. 
 
 In the later art of western Asia, Greek 
 influence strong and constant may be de- 
 tected. The columns at Persepolis are modi- 
 fications of the Greek Ionic order, the tomb 
 of Cyrus is almost pure Greek work, and the 
 influence of later Hellenistic art spread over 
 
TA ARCHITECTURE 
 
 all the Orient. At an earlier time the Assyrian 
 art of the eight and ninth centuries shows 
 many resemblances to archaic Greek and 
 JEgean art. Small columnar erections of 
 Greek fashion are shown on the slabs at the 
 British Museum. Even the slabs themselves 
 probably had a Cretan source, as will appear 
 below. Again, the rosette decoration, so 
 common in Assyrian decoration, is the typical 
 AXgean ornament. These rosettes seem to 
 have been a decorators’ memory of the ends 
 of round timbers which were built into the 
 walls as bond. 
 
 A third early civilization arose on the 
 northern shores of the Mediterranean, and in 
 the islands of the Augean. Its chief centre 
 in the second millennium B.c. was Crete. 
 The pottery and other remnants indicate an 
 age going back to the time of the early 
 Egyptian dynasties. Then, as later, there 
 was communication between the Egyptians 
 and the people of the Augean who produced 
 the first European architecture. 
 
 About a century since, drawings made 
 known in the west some remarkable monu- 
 ments at Mycenz, which it was seen must be 
 those which Greek authors had described as 
 belonging to the heroic age. One was a gate- 
 way of huge stones in a city wall. Above the 
 lintel of the gateway a triangular void had 
 been left to relieve it of the weight and the 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE 75 
 
 space was filled by a sculptured slab. This 
 was the Lion Gate of Mycenz. Another 
 famous monument was a large circular tomb- 
 chamber, roofed in beehive form by gathering 
 the courses of the masonry inwards like a 
 tall dome set on the ground; the exterior was 
 buried in a mound of earth; a passage to the 
 door of the chamber was formed in the outer 
 part of the mound, walled on each side, like 
 an inlet in the side of a railway embank- 
 ment. On each side of this door, which again 
 had a triangular relieving space above it, 
 were highly-decorated shafts, of which many 
 fragments were found. The largest pieces 
 were brought away and, after having been 
 forgotten in an Irish garden, they were re- 
 discovered and given to the British Museum, 
 where a restoration of the gateway is now set 
 up. The decoration is of very refined work- 
 manship, consisting of spirals, some of which 
 have circular sunk centres which were made by 
 a tubular drill. 
 
 At Tiryns a beautiful frieze-like band of 
 similar work still, when discovered, retained 
 blue glass inlays in such sinkings. It was soon 
 seen that this blue glass must be the cyanus 
 of Homer. The interior of the dome, which 
 was nearly fifty feet in diameter, was covered. 
 at intervals with holes, and some large bronze 
 pins were found which show that it must 
 have been studded with rosettes or stars, 
 
76 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 doubtless of gilt bronze. The general idea 
 thus resembles in some degree the sprinkling 
 of stars over an Egyptian ceiling, but the lavish 
 use of bronze, here and elsewhere in art of 
 this type, was a new gift to architecture of 
 which the classical Greeks made great use. 
 At Orchomenos a part of a beautiful ceiling 
 wrought all over with spiral patterns on 
 alabaster slabs was found in a similar tomb. 
 
 Comparison with Egypt and other methods . 
 of inquiry led to assigning an era to this art 
 which we may best remember as following on 
 the year 1500 B.c. Dr. Schliemann discovered 
 works of asimilar type, and others still earlier, 
 in the citadel of Troy. 
 
 Greek legend seemed to point to Crete as 
 being an important centre in the pre-Homeric 
 age. In 1900 Sir Arthur Evans bought land 
 on the site of Knossos, where he soon ex- 
 cavated a great complex of buildings which 
 has proved to be a vast palace—almost 
 certainly the “Labyrinth of Minos.” Here 
 were halls with columns of wood larger above 
 than below (a quite reasonable thing in 
 framed construction, like the “legs” of a 
 modern table), a portico with a double 
 row of six pillars, wide stairs rising in many 
 flights, and bathrooms. The chambers had 
 plastered walls painted with scenes or orna- 
 ment, and sometimes modelled in low relief 
 before painting, and many of the walls had 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE “T 
 
 dadoes of gypsum (alabaster) slabs. Evi- 
 dence was found for windows. ‘There was 
 walling of fine masonry and of rubble set in 
 clay, also of crude bricks, and some burnt 
 brick has been found. The floors were paved 
 or covered with hard plaster. (That of a hall 
 at Tiryns was painted with fish on a blue 
 ground.) The streets were paved and had 
 built drains, and socketed pipes for drain- 
 age or water supply have also been found. 
 Pottery, ivory carvings and gold-work were 
 all very beautiful. 
 
 One characteristic of this A%gean architec- 
 ture was the use of casing-slabs of alabaster 
 or stone as dadoes to walls built of inferior 
 materials. These slabs were frequently put 
 against the wall alternating with a thicker 
 stone rebated so as to cover the joints of two 
 adjoining slabs, a method of construction which 
 was taken over into the Doric frieze. The 
 beautiful band found at ‘Tiryns, usually called 
 the frieze, was of this type, and probably 
 it was a dado. At Knossos, Sir A. Evans 
 uncovered the base of a wall which had thick 
 slabs on both sides linked together through 
 the wall by short timbers dovetailed into the 
 slabs. The fine fragments of slabs sculptured 
 with oxen in the British Museum have similar 
 indentations for fixing, and these too were 
 probably part of a dado. Thin slabs of 
 marble were also used for casing, and even at 
 
78 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 this early time some of the painted decora- 
 tion imitated marble slabs. 
 
 Round tombs like that at Mycenz have also 
 been found in Crete. These beehive domes 
 closely resemble, as has been mentioned, the 
 chambers in the Egyptian pyramids of the 
 Twelfth Dynasty, and very much in the art 
 witnesses to the closest contact with Egypt. 
 While this Augean art gathered from, and 
 perhaps gave to, Egypt, it passed on its ideals 
 to the north and west of Europe, where the 
 productions of the bronze age clearly show 
 its influence. - 
 
 A recent visit to the chambered mounds 
 of Brittany, which have their great stones 
 crudely ornamented with spirals, has con- 
 vinced me that they belong to the same 
 cycle; and if they, then also our own dolmens, 
 and New Grange in Ireland. Stonehenge, 
 which is built of wrought stones, having the 
 uprights tenoned into the lintels, has in it 
 something of style; it isnot savage. On this 
 line of thought we might date it nearer 1000 
 than 2000 s.c. When, about twelve years 
 ago, one of the great lintel stones fell, it was 
 easy to see on the newly exposed surface, 
 which had rested on the upright stones, that 
 the shape had been obtained by bruising 
 off the excess of material, leaving a pitted 
 surface. The first wave of civilized art in 
 Kurope flowed from the Avgean. 
 
BABYLONIA AND CRETE 79 
 
 The permanent gifts of this art to the 
 repertoire of universal architecture appear to 
 have been important. The following may be 
 suggested : the moulded capital (the germ of 
 the Dorie order), attached ornamentation of 
 bronze, the staircase with returning flights, slab 
 wall-linings, the architrave doorway, rosette 
 and meander decoration, and naturalism in 
 ornamentation—in Egypt the wonderfully 
 natural birds and beasts were not so much 
 ornament as an attempt to make in the 
 tombs substitutes of the living creatures. 
 
s 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 BUILDING ART IN GREECE—THE EFFORT 
 AFTER PERFECTION 
 
 WE have seen that in the islands of the 
 Afigean and in what became the Greek lands 
 around its shore there early flourished the first 
 European style of Architecture. This type 
 of art has been found in Asia Minor and in 
 Italy, as well as at Mycene, Sparta, Athens 
 itself, and many another Greek site. This is 
 the art of the heroic age with which the 
 Homeric poems deal; it is the background of 
 Greek art proper. About 1800 B.c. there 
 were great upheavals and invasions which 
 almost entirely subverted the Aigean civiliza- 
 tion, so much so that except for remains of 
 pottery there still exists hardly any direct 
 link between Aigean and Greek art. Indeed, 
 we are not sure as yet whether the Augean art 
 was merely an underlying stratum which 
 influenced Greek art, or whether it is to be 
 considered as a first phase of Greek art itself. 
 But it is clear that, whatever change of 
 population and Bait aortas may have been, 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 81 
 
 Greek art is rather the resumption of the old 
 traditions than a new departure. 
 
 If it be asked whether there is any evidence 
 for continuity other than likeness, the answer 
 must be yes. In the Homeric poems this 
 parent art is described with great fidelity, and 
 to the Greeks of the early historic period it was 
 evidently a very real ideal. Again, Homer’s 
 ideals are in much the ideals of mature 
 Greek art. Stonework was to be polished, and 
 much bronze, gold, and ivory were to be 
 used. Shining, glistening, well jointed, are the 
 favourite epithets. 
 
 Many of the early monuments remained in 
 later days. Thus the great beehive tomb of 
 Orchomenos was perfect in the time of Pau- 
 sanias, who speaks of it as the most wonder- 
 ful building in Greece. In remote districts 
 AXigean types long persisted. Thus in Phrygia 
 several roughly sculptured pairs of affronted 
 lions have been found which evidently follow 
 the same tradition as the Lion Gate at Mycene, 
 but they must be relatively of late date. 
 Again, on the Phaistos Disc appears a symbol 
 that is a picture of a little wooden building 
 such as mightbe drawn from the fourth-century 
 Lycian tomb in the British Museum, which 
 represents a wooden, ark-like structure that 
 itself was evidently copied from the type 
 of primitive buildings well known in the 
 country. 
 
 EB 
 
82 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 When Greece entered on her period of high- 
 strung life the time of first invention in the 
 arts was over—the heroes of Craft, like Tubal 
 Cain and Deedalus, necessarily belong to the 
 infancy of culture. The phenomenon of 
 Egypt could not occur again; the mission of 
 Greece was rather to settle down to a task 
 of gathering, interpreting and bringing to per- 
 fection Egypt’s gifts. The arts of civilization 
 were never developed in water-tight compart- 
 ments, as is shown by the uniformity of custom 
 all over the modern world. Further, if any 
 new nation enters into the circle of culture it 
 seems that, like Japan, it must “ borrow the 
 capital.”” The art of Greece could hardly 
 have been more self-originated than is the 
 science of Japan. Ideas of the temple and 
 of the fortified town must have spread from 
 the East, the square-roomed house, columnar 
 orders, fine masonry, were all Egyptian, as 
 were many methods of workmanship and ideals 
 of proportion. Besides this external source 
 in a living higher culture, the Greeks found 
 on their own soil the splendid monuments 
 of the heroic age. Not only is this true of 
 architecture, but Greek coins and gems show 
 close study of primitive prototypes. Even 
 after the Dorian invasion the craftsmen would 
 have continued to belong to the old races. 
 If blood is thicker than water, the land is 
 thicker than blood. There was yet a third 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE — 83 
 
 element which was contributed by the tradi- 
 tions brought in by the invasions which over- 
 turned the Agean civilization: a barbaric strain 
 which was only controlled and transcended 
 a few generations before the age of perfec- 
 tion. About the tenth century B.c. the arts 
 of Greece began to emerge, in the fifth they 
 blossomed, and by the end of the millennium 
 the impulse seems to have been exhausted. 
 One of the marvels of Greek art history 
 is the rapidity of the movement through 
 maturity. Its progress was like a comet’s 
 at the perihelion. After centuries of artistic 
 rudeness there was a couple of generations of 
 intense training, then attainment by another 
 generation, and the beginning of decay at 
 once followed. The barbaric element gave 
 vigour—a hard, gem-like quality which is so 
 marked in all phases of the art. It has been 
 well said that no art can be classic which has 
 not been barbaric. The movement of every 
 great school of art seems to be through a 
 regular curve. 
 
 Many important sculptured works of Doric 
 architecture erected about 600 B.c. have been 
 made known to us by excavation. The older 
 Parthenon at Athens, with its sculptured 
 pediment, the temple at Assos in Asia 
 Minor, the temple at Selinus in Sicily, with 
 sculptural metopes, and the temple recently 
 discovered at Corcyra in Corfu, are the most 
 
84 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 remarkable examples. The last was a large 
 structure about 150 feet long by 65 feet broad. 
 The Pediment group was extremely rude, the 
 principal features being a huge Gorgon in the 
 middle supported by crouching lions on either 
 hand. Still earlier works have been found at 
 Olympia, Sparta, Thermon, and other sites. 
 At first the temples were built of crude brick 
 strengthened by timbering; the columns were 
 of wood, and the walls had a stone basis to 
 lift them above the ground. This method of 
 crude brick construction, it must be remem- 
 bered, persisted right through antiquity, and 
 into modern times for secondary purposes, 
 that is, for the great bulk of building work. 
 Some at least of these early temples had slop- 
 ing roofs covered with tiles; others had the 
 Egyptian and Augean roof of close-set timber- 
 ing supporting a thick bed of clay. It has 
 been suggested by Prof. Ridgeway that 
 the ‘span roof,’? which gave pediments to 
 the Greek temple, was brought in by the 
 northern tribes. He quotes Pindar as saying 
 that the Corinthians were the first to put 
 gables to their temples. Both types of roof 
 seem to be mentioned in Homer. A building 
 with a span roof is shown on the Phaistos 
 Disc, this is probably the earliest evidence for 
 it which exists. i 
 
 As long ago as 1884 Dérpfeld showed the 
 close connection between the Doric temples. 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE = 85 
 
 and the structures of Atgean times. In 
 later temple construction the base course of 
 the walls is made double the height of the 
 other courses. This plinth is derived from 
 the stone basis under the crude brick walls. 
 Behind a Greek portico the side walls of the 
 cella project and are finished with pilaster-like 
 members called aniw. The peculiarity of the 
 Greek anta is that its return on the flanks 
 is very narrow as compared to its width in 
 front. This was a memory of the plank-like 
 timbers which anciently formed the termina- 
 tion of the mud-brick walls. The external 
 colonnade of columns, which is such a magnifi- 
 cent and characteristic feature of the Greek 
 temple, seems to have originated in a sort of 
 verandah added around the cella of primitive 
 temples to protect its walls. Evidence was 
 found at Olympia which showed that the 
 peristyle and the beam above had been of 
 wood. When we consider types of planning 
 we again find that the Greeks closely followed 
 Aigean precedent. At Troy, Tiryns and 
 Knossos halls with columns have been found 
 from which the temple plan was easily de- 
 veloped. The simplest form of columnar hall 
 is that in which the space is divided in two 
 by a central row of columns. It is uncertain 
 whether a building of this type at Troy was 
 a hall or a temple. The recently excavated 
 primitive temple at Sparta had such a row of 
 
86 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 wooden columns down the centre correspond- 
 ing to wooden uprights which strengthened 
 the crude brick walls. At Thermon an archaic 
 Doric temple has been excavated which was 
 also of wood and crude brick built in this 
 form. The great temple at Pestum, which 
 used to be called the Basilica, is the best- 
 known example of this type. Here the 
 longitudinal division is very striking because 
 a second row of columns was superimposed 
 on the lower story. Early Ionic temples with 
 central rows of columns have been found at 
 Neandria in Asia Minor and at Locri in south- 
 ern Italy. The latter plainly showed that the 
 external peristyle was a later addition around 
 the cella. The Propyleum, a roofed porch 
 with pillars in front, is of Augean and Egyptian 
 origin. 
 
 As has been said, the circular plan of the 
 Mycenzan tombs was probably not an iso- 
 lated phenomenon. The circular hut must 
 have been built for many humbler purposes. In 
 the shrines over the sacred vestal fires of the 
 Latins the tradition of the hut with the hearth 
 in the midst was continued. An early Tholos 
 has recently been excavated at Delphi. It 
 was about twenty-two feet in diameter and 
 was surrounded by a ring of thirteen Doric 
 columns only about eight feet high. It seems 
 to have been built in the sixth century. The 
 Skias, which was erected about the same time 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 87 
 
 at Sparta, by Theodorus of Samos, must have 
 been of the same form. The tradition was 
 continued in the fourth century in the beautiful 
 Tholos at Epidaurus, of which large remains 
 have been discovered. 
 
 Mature Greek architecture had two modes— 
 the Dorie and the Ionic, names which corre- 
 spond to native and colonial, or to old and new. 
 The typical plan of a Doric temple with a cella 
 having a portico of two columns between 
 ante is derived from architecture of the 
 Aigean age. The Doric capital was obviously 
 developed from the same parent style, as may 
 be seen by examining the capital from Mycenze 
 in the British Museum. The curious Doric 
 frieze of metopes and triglyphs follows the 
 ancient type of slab and bondstone construc- 
 tion used for dadoes, the cornice is an eaves- 
 course of projecting rafter-ends copied into 
 stone. 
 
 In the rich colonies of Asia Minor a compan- 
 ion type of building to the Doric sprang up 
 in the Ionian style. It was more slender and 
 elegant than the masculine Doric order. Its 
 principal characteristic was a capital which 
 was not cut from a square block, but from a 
 block longer one way than the other, the ends 
 being carved into spirals. The column was 
 also planted on a base, and did not rise 
 directly from the pavement as did the Dorie. 
 This base, in origin, was a stone block set under 
 
88 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 a wooden post. The Ionic cornice with its 
 dentils is a translation into stone of the over- 
 hanging part of a flat roof; in some early 
 examples the dentils are rounded and close 
 together, representing the ends of the poles 
 which supported the flat terrace roof; in this 
 form it goes back to Augean time and to Egypt. 
 Until a late time the Ionic entablature had 
 no frieze, but the cornice rested directly on 
 the architrave. This was the case even in 
 the fourth-century temple of Ephesus and at 
 the Mausoleum. The British Museum restora- 
 tion of the order of the later monument is 
 wrong in giving a frieze to the entablature. 
 The Ionic capital, as has been conclusively 
 shown, is an adaptation of the Egyptian 
 Papyrus capital. As a feature of wooden 
 architecture it may go back to the AXgean 
 period, but it does not seem to have been 
 brought into stone temple architecture until 
 the sixth century. The Ionic column was 
 frequently used as an isolated support to a 
 griffin, a statue, or some other object. It 
 was set up also asa goal post (see the paintings 
 on the Clazomene sarcophagus in the British 
 Museum). The high piled-up base, usually 
 consisting of three spreading courses, suggests 
 that it was developed as the foundation of a 
 free standing pillar. The three fascize of the 
 Tonic architrave, the fluting and reeding of 
 columns, and the door architrave set with 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE = 89 
 
 rosettes, are all Augean and most of them are 
 Egyptian. Vitruvius says that the temple 
 built by the architect Chersiphron, about the 
 middle of the sixth century B.c., was the first 
 in which the Ionic order was adopted, and 
 nothing has been discovered which certainly 
 conflicts with this statement, although an 
 early Ionic temple at Naucratis has some- 
 times been thought to be earlier. Large 
 fragments from the Ephesus temple are in the 
 British Museum, and a full and interesting 
 account of it has recently been published. 
 The restoration set forth in this work is not 
 altogether satisfactory—for instance, a frag- 
 ment of a member with an enormous egg and 
 tongue moulding about sixteen inches deep, 
 now in the Museum basement, has traces of 
 a volute at one end which shows that it was 
 the anta capital, but it does not appear in 
 the restoration ; it is a pity that such valuable 
 fragments should be inaccessible. Another 
 valuable Ionic fragment in the british Museum 
 is the upper drum of a column from Halicar- 
 nassus, which is decorated with a band of 
 palmette ornamentation. This, compared with 
 the order of the Erechtheum, the early column 
 from Naucratis, and another early column 
 found at Locri, shows that this characteristie 
 was well known from an early time. 
 
 A Greek temple, Doric or Ionic, had one 
 stately chamber (the cella) which was usually 
 
90 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 surrounded on the outside by a row, or two 
 rows, of pillars forming a continuous colonnade 
 (the peristyle), the simple roof slanted back 
 from the cornice over the side pillars forming 
 low pitched gables at the ends (the pediments), 
 ‘in which were arranged magnificent groups 
 of sculpture. The materials and workman- 
 ship were often of the fairest and most perfect 
 kinds, the walls and columns were of marble, 
 the blocks of which were wrought so level 
 that they seem to adhere by contact. No 
 cement was used, but the stones were linked 
 together by metal cramps. The stones were 
 worked flat and square by means of being 
 tested against a plane surface smeared with 
 paint, the “red canon” of Euripides. The 
 roof was laid with marble “tiles” cut thin, 
 having raised edges and covering pieces. On 
 the points of the gables were acroteria. The 
 accessories of the sculptures, such as shields 
 and spears, were of gilt bronze, the doors of 
 the same material or of wood inlaid with 
 ivory. The dazzling surface of the marble 
 was softened and adorned with delicate 
 pattern-works in bright paint. The altar of 
 the temple was outside the eastern door, the 
 cella was the dwelling of the god by this 
 altar, around was a sacred precinct con- 
 taining many smaller buildings, statues and 
 trees. 
 
 Greek architecture at the summit of its 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 91 
 
 course is represented by the Parthenon at 
 Athens, erected from c. 447 to 485. It isa 
 large Dorie work built of fine marble, fitted 
 together with such extreme accuracy that the 
 joints are hardly visible. A peristyle sur- 
 rounds the exterior, and there are additional 
 columns forming deep porticoes at the ends, 
 The famous frieze, representing a festival pro- 
 cession of horsemen and others to the temple 
 itself, was a band along the top of the cella 
 wall all around under the shelter of the peri- 
 style. The ceiling of the space between the 
 cella and the outer columns was of marble 
 slabs cut into coffers and painted in bright 
 colours. The roof was of marble tiles. The 
 metopes of the frieze above the columns were 
 sculptured with two or three figures in high 
 relief on each panel. The subjects of these 
 metopes were the battles of the gods and 
 giants, the legendary battles of the Greek and 
 Centaurs, and the war of Troy, making up a 
 sort of stone Book of Genesis. The pediments 
 were filled with great compositions of many 
 figures, one end showing the birth of the 
 goddess Athene, the special protector of the 
 city, and the other the story of how she first 
 took the city under her own protection. In 
 the first she and her father Zeus appeared in 
 the middle of a group of the gods; to the left 
 Dionysos and an exquisite group of a mother 
 and daughter— Demeter and Persephone. 
 
92 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 To the right are seated the famous three, 
 usually called the Fates, by general consent 
 the most beautiful group of sculpture in the 
 world. One of the figures, the most perfect 
 of all, is so luxuriously exquisite, and reposes 
 so languidly, that some foreign critics have 
 come to think that she must be Aphrodite. 
 Drill holes on her arm and neck show that 
 she was richly adorned with a necklace and 
 bracelets; this and the soft raiment would 
 seem to confirm the view; moreover, the figure 
 corresponds closely to a reclining goddess 
 sculptured in relief on the frieze which is 
 known to be Aphrodite. In the interior of 
 the cella there were rows of columns on either 
 side supporting the roof, and in the farther 
 half of the central space rose a colossal figure 
 of Athene herself. This amazing statue, the 
 masterwork of Phidias, was formed of casings 
 of gold and ivory over a wooden core; spark- 
 ling precious stones were set as eyes into the 
 ivory face, and tresses of wrought gold fell 
 on the shoulders from under a superb helmet. 
 The goddess stood with her left hand on the 
 edge of her round shield, carrying on her 
 extended right hand a winged figure of 
 Victory. She was the protector of the city 
 who bestowed victory on the Athenians. 
 No light entered the temple save from the 
 great door opposite the figure, which must 
 have been brightly iluminated by many lamps 
 
 ee Ee —_ 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 93 
 
 suspended about it. With its blazing eyes, 
 delicate curls of hair, ivory flesh, shining rai- 
 ment and added adornment of jewellery and 
 painted details, it went far beyond what we 
 conceive as sculpture: it must have seemed 
 a “double” of the goddess herself, really 
 dwelling in her temple. A sight of Athene 
 must have been a tremendous experience. 
 Even to the modern Renan a visit to the 
 Acropolis seemed like a revelation of the divine: 
 ‘‘The whole world seemed barbaric, the 
 Orient shocked me by its ostentatious pomp 
 and its impostures, while the majesty of the 
 best Roman seemed only a pose compared 
 to the ease and simple nobility of the citizen 
 who could comprehend what made the beauty 
 of the Parthenon.” 
 
 In the great period of the fifth century the 
 aim after a perfect type led to standardizing 
 arrangements and forms and endeavouring to 
 perfect them along a very straight line. But 
 before the fifth century there are very wide 
 variations in even the simple Doric type. A 
 beautiful variety of the Doric capital was 
 popular in Sicily and southern Italy, which 
 had a hollow throat under the echinus. One 
 of the temples at Pestum had a panelled 
 soffit to the pediment cornice; one of those 
 at Selinus had big and small cornice blocks 
 alternately in the lateral cornices. The great 
 temple at Agrigentum had enormous half- 
 
94 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 columns attached to closed elevations; the 
 scale was too big for it to be built in the 
 ordinary form. A treasury at Olympia had 
 columns which had beads between the flutes. 
 Some temples had all the metopes sculptured, 
 some only those at the ends. In planning 
 and proportion there was constant change, 
 but all was the change of ascending effort, it 
 was not change to tickle tired eyes. 
 
 These are varieties of type, but in the 
 architecture of Ionia variation of detail was 
 allowed in the same building. In the sixth- 
 century temple of Diana at Ephesus all the 
 base profiles are separately designed, the 
 shafts have different numbers of flutes, some 
 even being narrow and wide alternately, and 
 the Ionic capitals are varied like those in a 
 Gothic church. Notwithstanding this free- 
 dom in workmanship, up to about the 
 time of the completion of the Parthenon, 
 say 430 B.c., Greek temple architecture 
 had been a highly conservative—indeed, 
 a sacred art. Greater perfection and in- 
 tensity in the working out of a few ancient 
 forms, rather than variety, was the artistic 
 ideal. They aimed at perfect form, not at 
 amusement for the eye. As Morris well said, 
 there was a reason for everything, even though 
 that reason might be superstition. The Par- 
 thenon marked the close of anepoch. Phidias 
 was the Michael Angelo of the Doric dispensa- 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 95 
 
 tion. Directly after this culmination a move- 
 ment set in towards capricious variation 
 and luxuriant decoration. Ornament which 
 before had been painted on plain mouldings 
 was now carved. The S curve, or cyma 
 recta, was now first introduced as a moulding 
 in the gutter front of the Propylea. At this 
 time the Corinthian capital was evolved as 
 a highly enriched form of Ionic. The usual 
 type of tombstone (stele) had been carved 
 at the top into a fine palmette-like composi- 
 tion of scrolls springing from tufts of acanthus ; 
 and the designer of the Corinthian capital 
 applied this kind of foliage to the Ionic type 
 of capital. It was an outcome of the general 
 tendency towards redundant ornamentation, 
 and further fed that tendency, so that hence- 
 forward there was a third form of column, 
 the Corinthian, or luxurious, order. The 
 earliest-known example, dating probably from 
 about 420 B.c., was discovered at Basse, 
 exactly a century ago. Others hardly later 
 have been found at Epidaurus, and _ still 
 others formed parts of the Philippion at 
 Olympia, and the monument of Lyiscrates at 
 Athens. 
 
 According to Vitruvius, the Greeks pro- 
 portioned their buildings so that all the parts 
 were related to one another; the plan might 
 be twice as long as broad, the height of the 
 columns would be likely to have a simple 
 
96 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 relation to the diameter, and so on; this, as 
 we have seen, had been an Egyptian idea, and 
 is quite natural at an early time, although there 
 is no reason if a column may be eight or nine 
 diameters high, why it should not be anything 
 between the two. ‘The real proportions of a 
 structure were, of course, determined by tra- 
 dition, purpose, cost, situation, and materials; 
 the rest was a slight modification superimposed 
 afterwards—a, getting rid of the half-inches, as 
 it were. 
 
 Much time has been spent in trying to 
 elucidate Greek proportions, for the most part 
 time wasted. The idea of looking for such 
 proportions has been a most disturbing factor 
 in the study of Greek buildings, and we hardly 
 have accurate dimensions of any one in feet 
 and inches, because the student was set on 
 evolving some scheme of measures in the 
 modulus of the diameter. If it didn’t fit he 
 added on a foot or two and said it must be so. 
 Simplicity, clearness, accuracy, repetition, the 
 eye can estimate, but it takes no heed of the 
 accuracy of the relation of eight to one, or the 
 same with two inches added or taken away. 
 It is quite an assumption that eight to one 
 is good for a column; it depends on many 
 things; the addition or subtraction of two 
 inches might improve it. 
 
 It is quite different with modifications by 
 curvature and other adjustments made by 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 97 
 
 Greek masons; here we have something tan- 
 gible, if subtle. These modifications may be 
 used to bring about unity. If, for instance, 
 the eight columns of a portico incline towards 
 the axis and there is some adjustment in the 
 spacing, you do not have one factor repeated 
 eight times, but together they make up one 
 whole thing—a, portico. 
 
 Curvature of lines again furnishes an inter- 
 mediate between the straight and the rounded, 
 between cornices, columns, and sculptures. 
 It takes off the hardness, as we should say. 
 It will correct any look of sagging in horizontal 
 lines, and it varies the lighting on surfaces. 
 Such adjustments are most natural in a highly 
 refined school of architecture and need no 
 explanation. 
 
 It is so usual to consider Greek architecture 
 from the point of view of the evolution of 
 the temple and of the orders that it may be 
 well to give a general, if summary, account of 
 it as building procedure even at the risk of 
 some repetition. Early walling of crude brick 
 or rubble was strengthened by beams and posts 
 of wood. Fine ashlar masonry was built in 
 Crete at least 2000 years B.c. The early type 
 of masonry, usually called polygonal, was 
 occasionally continued in later times, very 
 accurately executed. The walls of the little 
 temple at Rhamnus were of this kind, and the 
 
 thick marble slabs of the pavement of the 
 G 
 
98 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sixth-century temple at Ephesus made quite 
 a crazy patchwork. In fine squared ashlar 
 the bedding and jointing were very accurate, 
 and all such masonry was put together with- 
 out any cement, but the stones were linked 
 together by metal cramps and dowels. Later 
 cramps are of the form of a rolled iron girder 
 H, earlier ones resemble the letter Z if it is 
 bent a little so that the turns are at right 
 angles. 
 
 Walls were completely dressed down after 
 erection, and the fluting of columns was then 
 done. This was probably a late custom, for 
 the walling stones of the sixth-century 
 temple at Ephesus are slightly chamfered all 
 round, evidently for the same purpose of pre- 
 serving the edges of the blocks. Stones were 
 frequently hollowed out at their back so as 
 to reduce their weight. In this way ceiling 
 beams and lacunars were considerably light- 
 ened. A cornice stone from Xanthos in the 
 British Museum is anexample. The lacunaria 
 or masonry ceilings were formed of thick 
 slabs, with a series of square coffers dug out 
 of them. In the Theseum and other places 
 the squares were pierced right through, and 
 little covering pieces like tiles were set in 
 rebates. At Basse the coffers are not square, 
 but in various proportions of lozenges. At 
 Priene and the Mausoleum there was only 
 one big coffer to a columniation, and it was 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 99 
 
 reduced by a series of over-sailing margins to 
 a panel of fair size. 
 
 If temples were not built of marble, and 
 comparatively few were, the masonry was 
 covered by a thin coating of very fine plaster 
 rubbed down to a smooth face to take the 
 painting and gilding. More than a hundred 
 years ago Goethe observed that the temple of 
 Agrigentum had “ been covered with a thin 
 coating which would please the eye and pre- 
 serve the stone.’ The last clause has an 
 importance which modern builders have for- 
 gotten. All stonework in our climate ought to 
 be covered by paint or lime or some protecting 
 skin, and without it it looks quite raw and 
 makes one shiver. Plastered temples were 
 fully coloured with washes and ornamentation. 
 Marble temples were coloured in part and 
 picked out with gilding—illuminated as it 
 were. The triglyphs were usually a bright 
 blue, also the cornice blocks above; the spaces 
 between the latter and the bands were full 
 red; ceiling panels were usually blue, with a 
 gold star, and so on. The margins and 
 mouldings had delicate little frets and honey- 
 suckle patterns. Even the figure sculpture 
 was brightened with gilt bronze and painting. 
 
 Greek mouldings were very few. There is the 
 ovolo or echinus of the capital, and a similar 
 roll or cushion which seems to be an essential 
 part of a base. The ‘‘ Egyptian cavetto”’ 
 
100 ARCHITECTURE © 
 
 is found in terra-cotta roof casings of an 
 early date. The most curious moulding when 
 seen unadorned is the ‘“‘ hawk’s beak,’’ but it 
 was always painted into a series of petals; the 
 beak part is formed by the turned-over tips 
 of the petals. The carved egg and tongue 
 moulding had its origin in the same idea: 
 it represents a series of petals turned out 
 and down. Then there is the elegant reversed 
 cyma moulding, always painted or carved 
 with a row of leaves, and finally the cyma 
 recta. | 
 
 The Greeks restricted themselves in the 
 main to two types of columns, but there was 
 much freedom in the use of them. In the 
 Propylea, built in the fifth century, directly 
 after the Parthenon, both kinds were used. 
 Only a few years ago it was thought that the 
 caryatid supports at the Erechtheum were 
 a freak of design, but they were in use in the 
 sixth century, and probably had even then a 
 history, for the farther we go back the nearer 
 we get to a time when statues and pillars 
 coalesce, and when the pillar was itself a 
 sacred thing. The sixth-century caryatides 
 found at Delphi are remarkably like those at 
 the Erechtheum, so there is no doubt of a 
 continuity of tradition from the sixth century 
 onwards. A few years ago a caryatid figure 
 was discovered at Tralles, of an early manner, 
 although it was itself late. It was compared 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 101 
 
 by Collignon with the others of the same type, 
 and it was seen that it must have derived from 
 an original work of about 470 B.c. It has 
 several divergencies from the Erechtheum 
 type, the most striking of which is that the left 
 arm was raised and evidently touched the 
 architrave. On the other hand, there were 
 many points of resemblance to the “* maidens ” 
 of the Erechtheum, and it is clear that all 
 must have followed one general tradition. 
 Another very curious architectural member 
 is the acroterion, which was set on the gables, 
 sometimes one, and sometimes three. These 
 were not late ornamental additions, but they 
 appear to have been essential and important 
 features from an early age. Primitive builders 
 seem to have made much of the point of 
 the gable by crossing the rafters, or by setting 
 there some animal’s head. The developed 
 form is usually much in the shape of a lyre, 
 with two strong, horn-like branches, one on 
 either hand, turning into scrolls and palmettes. 
 It seems possible that they may derive from 
 horns of consecration. Cockerell’s restora- 
 tion of that on the temple of Avgina is well 
 known. The recent excavations have brought 
 to light other fragments, and as now restored 
 in the Munich Museum it must be six or seven 
 feet high. Following on this a restoration 
 has been made of the great acroteria of the 
 Parthenon, similar compositions of open 
 
102 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 scrolls and acanthus foliage of great size. The 
 late Ionic temple at Magnesia had similar 
 acroteria about seven feet high, and others 
 have been found at Pergamon, having pierced 
 scroll-work of quite remarkable beauty. The 
 pairs of acroteria at the lower angles of the 
 pediments were at times griffins or other 
 beasts. In later times, large groups of 
 sculpture formed the central ones. At Delos 
 these were composed of four or five figures 
 each. Frequently a Victory was set in this 
 position. 
 
 Roofs were either covered with tiles—that 
 is, large pantiles with covering rolls—or by 
 marble copies of the same, ‘wrought and 
 adjusted with amazing precision. They 
 either dripped along the eaves, or they were 
 turned up at the bottom into a sort of low 
 parapet (later the cymation), having at inter- 
 vals jutting spouts like toy cannon, or lion’s 
 heads with open mouths. There were hip 
 roofs at the Propylea. 
 
 Besides the main line of development into 
 the mature marble architecture of the fifth 
 and sixth centuries, there must have been 
 several collateral traditions arising out of 
 wood and mud-brick construction. At Sparta 
 there was a shrine plated over with bronze 
 plates, doubtless on a wooden framework. 
 
 The use of a material not impervious to 
 rain seems to have led to the sheltering of the 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 103 
 
 side walls by spreading the roof on to an 
 external colonnade, originally a row of wooden 
 posts. The walls were also plastered. A 
 further step with this type of building was to 
 extend the use of casings like the burnt tiles 
 of the roof. The early temple at Thermon 
 had its metopes of painted squares of tiles; 
 and painted tile casings for the cornices and 
 pediments had an enormous vogue in Greece, 
 Sicily, and Italy. The tile-cased type of 
 building found in Italy and usually called 
 Etruscan is only a distant wave of the Greek 
 impulse. A very fine example may be seen, 
 in the terra-cotta gallery in the British 
 Museum, of casings which were evidently 
 nailed over timbers. The use of these terra- 
 cottas covered with elaborate painted patterns 
 was later taken over as an adjunct to stone 
 architecture, and remnants of them have been 
 found on many sites, at Olympia, at Athens, 
 at Selinus, at Pestum, and most recently, at 
 Bassze, where they evidently belonged to an 
 earlier temple than that built in the fifth 
 century. 
 
 The staircase in the palace of Knossos rises 
 in five returning flights. At Selinus the temple 
 has a spiral turret-stair. Careful drainage 
 works were executed at Knossos with socketed 
 pipes; and excellent inspection traps of the 
 fourth century have been found at Priene. 
 Ample evidence for large windows divided 
 
104 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 by mullions has been found in Crete. There 
 are windows of the fifth century in the Pro- 
 pylea at Athens, and some delicately orna- 
 mented fragments of window architraves from 
 the Erechtheum are in the British Museum, 
 The Tholos at Epidaurus also had windows. 
 A late relief at the British Museum shows a 
 two-light window divided by a mullion. 
 Screens of metal or lattices pierced in slabs of 
 marble were largely used. The spaces be- 
 tween the columns of temples were frequently 
 enclosed in this way. Greek doors were of 
 wood, bronze, or stone. The wooden doors 
 seem to have been panelled and of quite a 
 modern type; they were studded with bronze 
 nails and inlaid with ivory and ebony, or had 
 panels of carved ivory and gold. The marble 
 doors must have been delightful things; at 
 the heel they were wrought with a globular 
 pivot which worked accurately in a cavity. 
 This part of a door of the fifth century has 
 lately been found at Argos. There are some 
 good fragments of later tomb doors in the 
 Leeds Museum. Heavy doors were made to 
 open over metal quadrants inlaid in the pave- 
 ment; such quadrants were used in the sixth- 
 century temple at Ephesus, at the Parthenon, 
 and several other places. At Selinus there 
 were double quadrants on each side. This and 
 other indications showed that the open door 
 had folded flat against the wall, with a little 
 
BUILDING ART IN GREECE 105 
 
 flap to cover the ends—exactly like good 
 modern drawing-room shutters. 
 
 I have endeavoured to show how this 
 “incredible beauty’? of Greek architecture 
 was arrived at by continuous development 
 from the most humble beginnings. The 
 Greeks endeavoured to perfect a limited 
 subject-matter and to create eternal types. 
 This mysterious Greek architecture was but 
 one customary way of doing buildings, after 
 all; and recent researches have shown that in 
 origin the forms are barbaric and accidental 
 —accidental, that is, in the sense that with 
 other conditions they would have been differ- 
 ent. There is little esthetic mystery about 
 the mud walls and wooden props which be- 
 came a cella and peristyle, or in the over- 
 hanging eaves which became a cornice. The 
 wonderful thing is the Greek spirit, and if we 
 would share that we should concern ourselves 
 with perfecting stock-brick walls, chimneys, 
 and downpipes rather than in designing 
 pseudodipteral peristyles and Doric triglyphs 
 —that is, as builders; as scholars, let us know 
 all that may be known. An attempt to “de- 
 sign ” in architecture outside need and beyond 
 custom is like inventing a strange alphabet 
 which does not correspond to words and 
 meanings. It is quite easy and quite futile. 
 Forms are nothing in themselves, they are 
 only envelopes of the spirit of architecture, 
 
106 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The principal gifts of the Greek builders 
 to architecture are in the main those of the 
 ideal and spirit. To them we owe the civic 
 ideal in architecture. They associated per- 
 fect sculpture with architecture. The “ span 
 roof ’’ seems first to have been perfected by 
 them, and they invented regular tiling of 
 baked clay which afterwards was copied in 
 marble. They gave us three great types of 
 column—with the moulded capital (the Doric), 
 of the bracket type (the Ionic), and with 
 sculptured foliage (the Corinthian). They 
 established regular groupings of mouldings, as 
 in the Ionic cornice; they gave us carved 
 mouldings decorated with palmettes, scroll- 
 patterns, meanders, etec., and also modern 
 types of mosaic floors and panelled doors, 
 embodying the principle of “‘ framing ”’ wood 
 together. The Greeks also turned in a lathe 
 the legs of furniture. To them also we owe 
 theatres, stoz, and the most perfect types of 
 tombs. The spiral staircase seems to have 
 been their invention. The Greeks first freed 
 the spirit of beauty from the hieratic; architec- 
 ture was purged of terror; they aimed at what 
 was gracious and lovely. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS—ENGINEERING 
 BUILDING 
 
 WHEN the great culmination of Greek art 
 was overpast—that is, when the forces which 
 had produced it began to be dissipated and 
 doubt arose—a long lovely evening closed in 
 over the Greek world. At this time the 
 architects turned for satisfaction either to 
 esthetic design, to variety, to the picturesque, 
 and to redundancy of ornament, setting aside 
 the Greek mean and measure in favour of 
 what might astound; or, on the other hand, 
 they sought a basis for their art in science 
 and public utility. It was at this time, as 
 Gompertz points out, that great engineering 
 works were undertaken in the Hellenistic 
 world. Hippodamus, the planner of new 
 cities, and Philo, the architect of the arsenal, 
 were the early leaders in this movement. 
 It has been said of the latter that “‘ he was 
 the apostle of the new practical utilitarianism 
 which heralded the union between architecture 
 and engineering so characteristic of the last 
 
 centuries of Greek art.”’ It was on the wide 
 107 
 
108 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 foundations laid at this time that the mighty 
 engineering of Rome was reared. Greek 
 religious art had restricted itself to fine stone- 
 work and to lintel construction. As Morris 
 has said, a Greek temple was a refined 
 Stonehenge, and a larger range of power 
 might only be obtained by casting back to 
 -‘mud and brick origins or by borrowing from 
 other countries. A great new factor in 
 what I call the “powers” of European 
 architecture was to be obtained by bringing 
 in the arch and the vault. 
 
 After the conquest of Alexander a new 
 situation was created in the world of art. 
 His empire was largely eastern, and his new 
 capital in Egypt—founded in 832 B.c.—had 
 necessarily to be built according to the 
 material conditions present in the country. 
 It was planned on a regular scheme, having 
 four great colonnaded streets leading away 
 from a four-arched structure—a tetrapylon— 
 at the centre. Unfortunately Alexandria has 
 been utterly destroyed, but it may not be 
 doubted that the major part of the building 
 there was of brick, vaulted and domed. We 
 have seen that such building was general in 
 the valley of the Nile from time immemorial, 
 and the modern houses of the Delta are still 
 domed. They have at the top small thimble- 
 shaped additions which, Prof. Petrie tells 
 me, are “hoods of bricks to act as cowls, 
 
<¢ 
 
 HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 109 
 
 backing to the strong winds so as to get a 
 draught and keeping out rain.” (Fig. 15.) 
 On the famous silver casket of Projecta 
 in the British Museum, which, it is held, 
 was probably made in Alexandria about 
 A.D. 850, a large house is represented which 
 is roofed with domes rising 
 from a terrace, and _ these 
 domes are of the same form 
 and have similar cowls to the 
 modern ones just described 
 (fig. 16). The domes represented on the 
 Assyrian slabs, about 1000 years earlier, are 
 again identical except that they rise higher 
 and are of greater importance. Alexandria 
 was built over so many water cisterns that 
 old travellers tell us that there was a sub- 
 terranean city beneath the other 
 one. These cisterns must for 
 the most part have been vaulted, 
 like the great cisterns of the 
 fourth and later centuries at 
 Constantinople. Prof. Baldwin 
 Brown, some years ago, called 
 attention to a passage in a Latin 
 author, written about 50 B.c., to the following 
 effect: “‘ Alexandria is almost entirely safe 
 from conflagration, because the houses are put 
 together without any floorings or timber, 
 and are constructed with vaults, and covered 
 over with concrete or stone slabs. . . 
 
 
 
 Fig. 15. 
 
 
 
110 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Alexandria is almost completely hollowed 
 out below ground, and is built over cisterns 
 communicating with the Nile.”? Still another 
 proof of the use of the dome in Hellenistic 
 times is furnished by the fact that the earliest 
 cupola known in Europe, the remains of which 
 exist over a bath at Pompeii, is of the tall, 
 conical form which seems to have been 
 traditional in the East, and Pompeii was a 
 non-Roman city which derived its artistic 
 impulses from Alexandria. 
 
 The perfect arch of masonry, made up of 
 separate wedges of stone, had been known 
 in Egypt as early as the Twenty-sixth 
 Dynasty (sixth century), and doubtless Egypt 
 was the centre of its distribution. At Per- 
 gamon, in Asia Minor, evidence of an early 
 stone vault of Hellenistic time has been 
 found. Arches have lately been discovered 
 at the Pireeus, and it seems certain that 
 they were in general use in the Hellenistic 
 world before they were introduced to Italy. 
 In the Ashmolean Museum there is the model 
 of a late Greek tomb at Cuma which has an 
 arched doorway (c. 400). Even the pointed 
 form of arch seems to have been taken over 
 from early brick construction. Fig. 17 shows 
 a gateway in the walls of Masada, a strong- 
 hold by the Dead Sea built by Herod. 
 
 The forms of vaults and domes furnish 
 some indications of architectural heredity. 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 111 
 
 The early Eastern arch of brick was a tall 
 semi-ellipse rising gradually from the walls 
 and turning rapidly at the top. This is a 
 much more stable form than the semicircular 
 arch, and could, in many cases at least, be 
 constructed without any centering. When 
 we become accustomed to it, it is seen to 
 be the most beautiful form of arch, for it is 
 the most perfect and scientific. A difficulty 
 must have arisen in trans- 
 lating this form into wrought 
 stone, for every stone would 
 have to be cut into a different 
 form for its place in the 
 curve. If, however, the curve sLN 
 is made circular the stone 
 wedges may all be made 
 alike. The same is true of 
 the pointed arch (which arose 
 as another solution of the 
 same problem), except that a special stone or 
 stones have to be worked for the apex. 
 
 The arch form at first introduced and long 
 used in Italy must have been the semi- 
 circular arch of cut masonry. So it was that 
 the semicircular became the standard form 
 even for concrete and brick arches when a 
 new method of construction was brought in. 
 Roman domes were also built of this profile, 
 and the tall egg-shaped dome of the East, 
 which shows prominently on the exterior, 
 
 
 
112 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 was never adopted in Rome. The dome was 
 brought to the West as a factor of bath-build- 
 ing. The hot bath was built as a sort of kiln 
 or oven, and the only domes mentioned by 
 Vitruvius (who wrote near the beginning of 
 the first century) are those required for the 
 hot chambers of the baths. The ruined 
 cupola of the bath at Pompeii, mentioned 
 above, was a concreted shell of rubble, very 
 conical, just the shape of modern domes in 
 western Asia. (See Miss Jebb’s Desert Ways 
 to Baghdad for a group at Harran which con- 
 tinue to this day the form of those shown 
 on the Assyrian monuments. ) 
 
 Rising from a circular chamber, there was 
 no difficulty in springing the bath dome from 
 the walls, but complications arose at the 
 angles when the dome was applied to a 
 polygon or a square. We have seen that the 
 Egyptians had already dealt with this pro- 
 blem (p. 58). At Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli 
 there are some approximations to “ penden- 
 tives.”” Over the octagonal chambers of 
 the Baths of Caracalla I have seen an inter- 
 esting solution made by gradually approxi- 
 mating the octagon to the circle in successive 
 courses by making the angle more and more 
 blunt and then rounded, and thus a kind of 
 intersecting pendentive is formed which makes 
 the transition easily and is, indeed, a per- 
 fect solution. At the so-called “ Temple of 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 118 
 
 99 
 
 Minerva Medica ”’ it looks (from below) as if 
 the base of the dome proper were set back 
 for some little distance over the sides of the 
 polygon, and thus little projection is required 
 at the angles, and the transition is slurred 
 over in the plastering, Here the cornice was 
 level, and this was probably the case at the 
 Baths of Caracalla, too—that is, the idea of 
 the dome with its surface running on into the 
 angles forming continuous pendentives was 
 not accepted and the transition was disguised. 
 In one or two small tombs of the third or 
 fourth century the dome with regular con- 
 tinuous pendentives seems to have been 
 reached in Rome. These pendentives are 
 the portions of a domical surface which run 
 on continuously into the angles of a square 
 or octagonal chamber, forming four or eight 
 hollowed triangles. 
 
 Besides Alexandria, Ephesus (now being 
 explored by an Austrian expedition), Per- 
 gamon and many other cities were important 
 centres of Hellenistic art. At Seleukeia on 
 the Tigris, built about 300 B.c., the Hellenistic 
 architects must have come in contact with, 
 and have absorbed, many of the structural 
 traditions of Mesopotamia. 
 
 In the Hellenistic cities of the East civic 
 and monumental architecture turned very 
 soon towards the big and the strange, away 
 from the proper classical idea of measured 
 
 H 
 
114 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 perfection. The temple of Ephesus was 
 rebuilt on an enormous scale in the middle ~ 
 of the fourth century B.c. It was raised on 
 a high platform of spreading steps, and the 
 great columns, nineteen feet in circumference, 
 were sculptured around the bottom drums. 
 About the same time the great tomb of Mau- 
 solus was built at Halicarnassus, which was 
 to give the name Mausoleum to a whole class 
 of later structures. Lucian describes it as 
 ‘* a tomb immense, such that never dead had 
 a more splendid.”’ It was about 100 x 80 feet 
 in size. There was a high basement sur- 
 rounded by the beautiful sculptured frieze 
 now in the British Museum, then an Ionic 
 colonnade surmounted above by a pyramid 
 of steps with a great chariot group at the 
 apex. At Pergamon the giant altar of Zeus 
 was erected, the high sculptured basis of which, 
 in an over-ornate style, is now at Berlin. 
 Splendid stone theatres had been built in 
 Greece at the end of the great period. Soon 
 every Hellenistic city of the East had such a 
 theatre. The amphitheatre appears to be 
 a Hellenistic invention. The earliest-known 
 example is at Pompeii. City colonnades, 
 baths, and palaces were all developed in 
 Eastern Hellenistic cities before they appeared 
 in Rome. So also were the methods of decor- 
 ation like the use of coloured marbles and 
 the encrustation of walls with thin slabs. 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 115 
 
 The apse, which became such a favourite 
 power in Roman architecture, must be of 
 Eastern origin, for the half-dome must come 
 from the land of domes. It appears to have 
 been known to the Greeks. Michaelis says 
 that a marble temple of the third century at 
 Samothrace “ anticipates in a singular man- 
 ner, with its raised choir and rounded apse, 
 the ground plan of the Christian basilica.” 
 A temple dating back to the sixth century 
 has been found at Thebes of which “ only the 
 apse remained, recalling the one at Samo- 
 thrace.”” Recently some foundations have 
 been uncovered at Sparta of a very early 
 age which are said to have had “ rude apses,”’ 
 whatever that may mean. 
 
 To the Hellenistic age we also owe the large 
 circular type of buildings like the Philippion 
 at Olympia and the Tholos at Samothrace. 
 
 The Pharos at Alexandria, the great light- 
 house built about 280 B.c., almost appears 
 to have been the parent of all high and iso- 
 lated towers. It rose to a great height, of 
 a square form slightly battered, then there 
 was a tall octagonal stage, and again a round 
 one; on the apex was a statue. ven on the 
 coast of Britain, at Dover, we had a Pharos 
 which was in some degree an imitation of 
 the Alexandrian one. It was a tall octagonal 
 tower. About thirty feet of it still exist. 
 The Pharos at Boulogne was as important 
 
116 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 as any after that at Alexandria. The round 
 towers of Ravenna were doubtless inspired 
 by some of these lighthouses, even if they 
 were not light-towers themselves. The other 
 round towers of Europe, as far away as Ire- 
 land, derive from Ravenna. The Pharos at 
 Alexandria was repaired by Ibn Tulun, and 
 it had as great an effect as the prototype of 
 Eastern minarets as it had for Western 
 towers. 
 
 An aqueduct on arches seems to be indi- 
 cated on one of the Assyrian slabs in the 
 British Museum; from some such source, and 
 from the great cisterns of Alexandria, into 
 which the waters of the Nile were brought 
 at the annual inundation, the Romans 
 doubtless derived the idea for their wonderful 
 system of water-supply. 
 
 Rome entered into the traditions of this 
 
 Hellenistic art; in fact, Roman art was 
 
 one of its branches. A few years ago it was 
 thought that a gulf separated Greek from 
 Roman art and the latter was said to derive 
 in the main from the Etruscans. Now 
 little is left to the Etruscans as originators, 
 although they probably first adopted the 
 Greek traditions and handed them on to the 
 Romans. For this view see Mr. Frothing- 
 ham’s Roman Cities. Prof. Pais, an Italian 
 writer, not only shows the debt of Rome 
 to Greece in art, especially through the 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 117 
 
 influence of Syracuse, which had commer- 
 cial stations at Ischia and elsewhere on the 
 Italian coast, but he attributes so much to 
 early Greek influence in other fields that there 
 is hardly any room left for Etruscan models. 
 In Sicily and the south of the mainland there 
 were magnificent schools of Greek archi- 
 tecture in the rich colonies which had been 
 founded at an early time, and which competed 
 in culture with Athens itself. Pestum, not 
 far from Naples, had a splendid group of 
 Greek temples such as cannot be matched 
 anywhere in the mother-country. At Pompeii 
 the early temple was Greek. In 1896 atemple 
 found at Conca, near Antium, was built 
 in the Greek form about 500 B.c. In the 
 British Museum is a magnificent specimen 
 of the ornamental tilework which cased the 
 temple roof at Lanuvium not far from Rome. 
 It is Greek in style and is obviously an offshoot 
 of the terra-cotta casings such as have been 
 found at Olympia, in Sicily, and in South 
 Italy. The small and late Roman terra-cotta 
 friezes derived from this type of decoration. 
 There must have been native traditions 
 in the background and customs which modified 
 the plans of temples and dwellings, but the 
 ideal of architectural expression in early 
 Italy was Grecian. The Etruscans of Central 
 Italy imported large quantities of Greek 
 vases from early times, so much so that the 
 
4 
 
 118 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 vases, as a whole, came to be called Etruscan 
 by those who first discovered them. A large 
 number of fine Greek bronzes have also 
 been found in Italy. At the same time the 
 early dates once assigned to some examples 
 of masonry with arches in Central Italy, and 
 ealled Etruscan, have had to be withdrawn. 
 The famous vaulted drain, the Cloaca Maxima 
 in Rome, for instance, it has been shown, 
 cannot be earlier than the Republican period. 
 The arch of masonry was probably in general 
 use in Italy from the fourth century B.c. 
 Roman art is a form of Hellenistic art im- 
 posed on a background which was mostly 
 of Greek origin. Observers of a generation 
 ago remarking the conflict in mature Roman 
 architecture between arched construction and 
 a superficial application of columns and 
 entablatures, supposed that the arch was 
 indigenous, and that the orders, taken over 
 from the Greeks, were violently imposed on 
 a native style. Exactly the opposite of this 
 is true. The Greek ideals, as has been shown, 
 had long been traditional when arch, vault, 
 and dome were brought in by the Hellenistic 
 tide. At the time of Roman expansion the 
 current architecture, having great demands 
 made on it, could not throw off the old wrap- 
 pings quickly enough; they were, in fact, 
 burst by the new engineering spirit, but 
 vestiges of the old features remained as super- 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 119 
 
 ficial adornments. This newer and_ truer 
 view goes very far to relieve Roman archi- 
 tecture of the unfavourable criticism which 
 has been passed upon it. It was not, that is, 
 primarily a system of arched construction 
 which at a later time smothered itself under 
 borrowed bedizenments; but it was a phase 
 of Hellenistic art, the result of a transition 
 from the more primitive to the later type 
 of building. 
 
 What may have been Rome’s own contri- 
 bution to architecture, either in forms or 
 methods of construction, is almost impossible 
 to determine. It must, however, be certain 
 that from the first or second century 4.D., 
 Rome, having absorbed all that she required, 
 distanced other competitors. In her monu- 
 ments, as in her power, she became the mis- 
 tress city of the world, and drew all famous 
 artists to her service. I can here only en- 
 deavour to give some idea of the methods of 
 Roman construction, of schemes of planning, 
 and of processes of decoration, aS we are 
 concerned with principles rather than with 
 individual monuments. 
 
 Sun-dried bricks had been the common 
 building material in Rome from an early 
 time. The bricks described by Vitruvius are 
 of this sort. Burnt bricks did not come into 
 general use until about the second century. 
 They had been used by the Greeks at the 
 
120 ARCHITECTURE — 
 
 palace of Mausolus at Halicarnassus and at 
 the Philippion at Olympia. This material 
 was probably an importation from the East. 
 
 Stone, of course, had always been em- 
 ployed, both in rubble work and fair wrought 
 masonry. Inthe mature Roman style wrought 
 masonry seems to have been demanded 
 only for the great monuments, triumphal 
 arches, theatres, temples, and above all 
 for the Coliseum. Even the largest domestic 
 and civil buildings were of plastered brick- 
 work. It may come as a shock to many 
 that the greatest buildings of Rome, the 
 vast Therme, the palaces of the Palatine, 
 and even the Pantheon itself, were plastered 
 externally. In this class of building there 
 were usually simple stone cornices consisting 
 of a moulded capping-course on projecting 
 blocks, the angle one being set in diagonally ; 
 and the plastered walls were finished with 
 sunk grooves at intervals dividing the surface 
 into blocks. At the Pantheon one of the 
 tiers had pilasters of very slight projection, 
 which seem all to have been wrought in the 
 plaster. Portions of the external surfaces 
 of the baths were finished with mosaics, and 
 frequently a high plinth, or external dado, 
 was cased with marble slabs. 
 
 The most typical Roman construction was 
 in concrete, or concreted rubble. It was either 
 cast into a mould between timbering, or it 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 121 
 
 was aggregated more like rubble masonry. 
 In the latter case the stones were still quite 
 small, so that they were thoroughly drowned 
 in the cement. To retain this fluid mass 
 thin surfaces of stone or of brickwork were 
 raised on each face of the walls, which were 
 usually of great thickness. It has been said 
 that such skins would not resist the fluid 
 pressure of the internal concrete, but it is 
 easy to answer that they could have been 
 aided by backing-up gradually on the inside 
 of the external surfaces (which would be only 
 raised a foot or two at a time) before the rest 
 of the wet mass was put in. The Pozzolana 
 cement used by the Romans had a high bind- 
 ing power and made a perfect concrete. In 
 the finer, earlier work of this class the 
 surfaces of the walls, or rather their skins, 
 were formed of little squares of stones 
 roughly about four inches on the face, and 
 diminishing at the back, so that they held 
 like nails in the concrete of the mass which 
 ran into the interspaces. ‘These stones were 
 set diagonally, the joints forming a network. 
 It must have been thought that it was easier 
 to keep the lines in this way, or that the stones 
 settled down better. In any case there was 
 no idea of bond, it was simply the application 
 of a coat of mail to the concrete. When 
 burnt brick came to be used with concrete 
 construction, some layers of large, flat tiles— 
 
122 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 they were about eighteen inches square—were 
 bedded through the walls at every three or 
 four feet. These layers not only bound the 
 external and internal skins together, but they 
 locked up the moisture in the concrete stage 
 by stage. For if it were too quickly absorbed 
 into the part already built, or dried out by 
 the hot sun, the mass would not set properly. 
 
 When, still later, the vertical casings were 
 also of brick it was the custom to form these 
 in what seems at first a very curious way; but 
 it was one which a little examination shows 
 to have been most simple and practical. 
 The flat bricks, or tiles, were broken diagonally 
 into four triangles, and these were set with 
 the long sides outwards and the points 
 towards the centre of the wall. Thus the 
 indented, bricks adhered perfectly to the 
 concrete, which ran into all the interstices, and 
 there was no need for any other bond. The 
 triangular bricks were evidently an adapta- 
 tion of the pointed stones. Vaults and domes 
 were formed as continuous shells, and were 
 built in rubble work, in level courses finished 
 with tiled layers, but without the skins. 
 They were erected on boarded centrings, but 
 as the mass brought up from the walls was 
 homogeneous with them, and as each stratum 
 must have been set before the next was put 
 in, the centres did not require to be of great 
 strength, they were rather a mould than a 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 123 
 
 support. Sometimes this centring was paved 
 all over, as it were, with flat: tiles which 
 adhered to the finished vault. Beside the 
 horizontal layers of brick in these vaults, 
 roughly built strips of brick running in the 
 opposite direction usually appear in the vault 
 surfaces, breaking them up into compart- 
 ments. They are usually too slight and too 
 irregular to have much value per se, and 
 Choisy is, I think, mistaken in regarding 
 them as ribs. Rather, it seems likely, they 
 were introduced as hard cores around which 
 the concrete might set. In any case they 
 broke up the great viscid mass, and the whole 
 formed a sort of “ armoured concrete.”? The 
 great dome of the Pantheon is wholly, or 
 largely, built of large flat bricks set in level 
 courses. In some of the large vaults of the 
 baths rough pottery vases—old wine-jars— 
 are embedded. Being round they are very 
 strong, and, building with such hollow cells, 
 of course, lightened the structure. 
 
 At a late time, probably the third or fourth 
 century, some vaults were formed of parallel 
 rows of socketed drain-pipes set up end to 
 end in the arch form. This custom is found 
 in North Africa, and the apse vault of the 
 ancient cathedral of Ravenna was built so 
 in the fourth or fifth century; while the dome 
 of San Vitale, built in the same city in the 
 sixth century, is formed of layers of pipes 
 
124 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 passing in continuous spirals from the base 
 to the crown of the dome, which shows, as 
 Rivoira has pointed out, a continuity of the 
 Roman system. The pipes were embedded 
 in concrete into one uniform mass. 
 
 Roman vaults and domes were banked up 
 very much at the springing, so that they 
 showed little to the exterior. The vaults 
 were usually covered with additional tiled 
 roofing. Our first idea of the dome is likely 
 to be that it was invented as a magnificent 
 architectural feature for the sake of external 
 dignity, and that it was constructed as a 
 hollow half-globe of fitted masonry. This 
 was not the case. Such domes as have been 
 built of masonry are but playthings. The 
 great domes were shells of concrete or brick, 
 covered outside by a sheeting of copper or 
 lead, or they were plastered over, or protected 
 by an additional tiled roof. The dome during 
 the Roman age seems hardly to have been 
 thought of as a form appearing externally. It 
 had originated in mud coverings to granaries, 
 and such humble structures; and when it was 
 found convenient to construct it over large 
 circular buildings only the internal hollow 
 was considered. The outside was banked up 
 with abutment to resist spreading to such 
 a degree that only a flat segment of the 
 dome showed even at the Pantheon, and 
 not that in any near view. The construction 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 125 
 
 of higher cupolas which should dominate 
 the exteriors of buildings was developed in 
 Byzantine and Eastern schools, and then 
 taken over into the Renaissance. The Roman 
 builders were great and daring constructors, 
 who applied vaulting under all sorts of con- 
 ditions in a perfectly free way. One of the 
 most curious applications was the use of big 
 conches, or half-domes, over external hemi- 
 cycles. The builders supported vaults above 
 colonnades and bent them around circular 
 ambulatories; they inclined 
 
 them at an angle, and inter- 
 
 penetrated two vaults at 
 
 right angles, forming thus | 9? € 
 the groined vault—a form 
 
 that appeared as early as pr wy 
 c. 75 B.c. in the Tabularium Fic. 18, 
 
 in Rome. Domes and conches 
 
 were hollowed into gores forming vaults of 
 a melon shape; others sprang in quadrant 
 conoids from the four corners of a chamber 
 something like the general form of the late 
 English fan-vaulting. 
 
 Timber-work was highly developed in roof 
 trusses of wide span, and the military bridge 
 represented on the Trajan Column had 
 big laminated arched-beams. The principle 
 of trussing seems to have been a Roman 
 invention. 
 
 In their ambitious and complicated struc- 
 
126 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tures the Roman architects seem to have 
 exhausted all the resources of the art of 
 planning. It became absolutely emancipated 
 from precedent, and was pursued as research 
 into the possibilities of form and combination. 
 The most accomplished modern French 
 masters of arrangement can do no more than 
 recombine Roman elements. All sorts of 
 types were explored as well for the single 
 cells as for complex aggregations. Squares, 
 oblongs, crosses, circles, ellipses, polygons, 
 sigmas, hemicycles and foiled forms were taken 
 ~, 2S bases; they were modi- 
 fied by annexes, recesses, 
 niches, apses. These ele- 
 ments were then co-ordin- 
 w ated axially, bi-laterally, 
 and radiating from a 
 centre. Fig. 18 is the plan of a building in 
 Rome known as the Temple of Minerva 
 Medica; Fig. 19 shows two tombs. 
 
 All kinds of expedients were adopted for 
 continuing vistas, suggesting symmetry and 
 masking irregularities, both in single build- 
 ings and in the laying out of cities. An 
 admirable example of this power is shown 
 in the laying out of the great colonnaded 
 street of the city of Gerash. The conditions 
 of the problem necessitated a decided change 
 of angle in its course. At the elbow a vast 
 circular place was constructed around which 
 
 ‘mim os 
 
 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 127 
 
 the colonnade was continued in a circle, thus 
 gaining an additional beauty while veiling 
 the deflection. The architectural display in 
 the imperial fora in Rome is too magnificent — 
 and complicated to suggest by descriptions. — 
 The best view of this wonderful subject will 
 be gained by a study of Lanciani’s restored 
 plan of Ancient Rome, Forma Urbis Romae. 
 
 Along with their ability to organize groups 
 of complicated structures the Roman planners 
 had the power of rising to a great simplicity. 
 The Pantheon and the 
 Basilica of Constantine 
 are the greatest single 
 cells ever erected. The 
 Pantheon, built by Had- 
 rian, is a superb domed 
 rotunda about 140 feet 
 in diameter and as high. 
 It is surrounded by a wall mass 20 feet 
 in thickness in which a series of square 
 and apsidal recesses are, as it were, ex- 
 cavated, thus considerably increasing the 
 total diameter. Light is only admitted by an 
 opening 80 feet across at the zenith of the 
 dome into this immense reservoir of air, 
 through which the broad shaft of sunlight 
 pours and the rain falls upon the porphyry 
 and marble of the floor (fig. 20). The walls 
 are encrusted with fine marbles. It is the last 
 word in the development from the primitive 
 
 
 
128 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 hut into which light entered by the same 
 opening from which the smoke escaped. 
 Probably at the Pantheon also there was 
 an altar of incense at the centre from which 
 a wavering column of smoke arose. 
 
 The Basilica of Constantine is a mighty 
 hall of three vaulted bays. It is possible 
 to group three units together without mere 
 repetition, for there is a central bay with two 
 lateral supports. The high vault is borne 
 by very large piers, the spaces between which 
 are open to the central area like aisles to a nave. 
 Above the aisle vaults these dividing piers are 
 continued up as buttresses sloping towards 
 the main space. It is 266 feet long and 192 
 feet wide exclusive of apses. The central span 
 is 82 feet wide, and the vault rose to a height 
 of 114 feet. The vault was coffered, and the 
 floor was largely of red and green porphyry. 
 The ruin is a tremendous thing. With this 
 great monument, built early in the fourth 
 century, must be mentioned the vast vaulted 
 hall of the Palatine palace, and many vaulted 
 temples like the temple of Venus and Rome. 
 The vaulted halls of the baths are better 
 known. With the buttresses spoken of above 
 may be mentioned a series of far-projecting 
 buttresses which support the high terrace 
 in front of Santa Costanza, Rome. 
 
 Roman methods of decoration and surface 
 finish were as frank, and yet splendid, as their 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 129 
 
 methods of construction. Casings of marble 
 were much used either in large slabs arranged 
 in panels, or in opus sectile, where morsels 
 of coloured material are cut to shapes and 
 fitted together in patterns. There were also 
 mosaics of marble and glass. Gold mosaic 
 had already been introduced into late Roman 
 art. Evelyn describes the grotto of the 
 Sybil which he saw near Baie as ‘“ about 
 ten paces long; the side walls and roof retain 
 still the golden mosaic, though now exceed- 
 ingly decayed by time.’’ Bronze was largely 
 used. The roof trusses of the portico of 
 the Pantheon were bronze, as well as its great 
 doors, and the exterior of the dome was covered 
 with gilt bronze plates. Ornamental plaster- 
 ing was brought to an exquisite delicacy 
 of over-refinement. Wall-paintings of the 
 brightest colours were executed with the most 
 dexterous skill in a medium that has never 
 been surpassed for this purpose. But neither 
 the sculpture nor the painting were inspired 
 by any high meaning; they weary one as 
 mere routine decoration. All that we owe 
 to the Romans in architecture may hardly 
 be recounted. They absorbed all the tradi- 
 tions of antiquity and renewed them into 
 modern shape. ‘Their ideal of construction 
 was the most perfect and generally applicable 
 that may be imagined. A typical Roman 
 
 building was of one piece, an artificial mono- 
 I 
 
130 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 lith; walls, vaults, floors, are all aggregated 
 together in the same continuous material, 
 whether it contained one or many cells. This 
 is the method of Nature, and it is an idea 
 which modern architects would do well to 
 consider. The great architectural question 
 of to-day is how to build common damp- 
 proof walls; simple, solid floors; and, above 
 all, roofs better than the thin slate lids we 
 are accustomed to. We need neither Greek 
 nor Gothic, but an efficient method, and all 
 our preoccupations about “ styles ”’ block the 
 way not only to high utility but to high 
 expression. Much may be gathered from 
 the experience of Roman builders: methods 
 of vaulting in concrete, of building with 
 pots and pipes, the lining of walls with hollow 
 tiles, and even such humble devices as the 
 use of crushed brick in mortar. Vitruvius, 
 the vague theorist on esthetics, gives many 
 valuable hints for the modern builder, as 
 when he tells us that plastering may be 
 made to adhere to brickwork which is first 
 coated over with limewash. 
 
 In Roman architecture the engineering 
 element is paramount. It was this which 
 broke the moulds of tradition and recast 
 construction into modern form, and made 
 it free once more. It is worthy of note that 
 most of the famous Roman architects were 
 engineers, even military engineers. Vitruvius, 
 
HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ARTS 1381 
 
 who was keeper of war engines, says that 
 to design them fell within the province of 
 an architect. Trajan’s favourite architect 
 built the great military bridge over the 
 Danube. In Rome architects were called 
 machinatores, structores, and magistri. ‘* Archi- 
 tect? was a more general term which included 
 workmen. We have to learn from Rome to 
 re-identify the architect and the engineer. 
 With all this mechanical perfection it must 
 be confessed that there remains in the archi- 
 tectural expression of Roman works some- 
 thing which is not truly fine. They stand 
 for force, expansion, splendour, the art was 
 official, self-satisfied, oppressive. It gives 
 a voice to matter as Greece had expressed 
 mind. Rome was lacking in the things of 
 the spirit. There is little wonder—the first 
 early wonder at mysteries—left in -Roman 
 art; the dew of, the morning is dried up; it 
 is the great Philistine style. The architec- 
 ture as ever mirrors the soul of the nation. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 EARLY CHRISTIAN AND BYZANTINE SCHOOLS— 
 A NEW DEPARTURE 
 
 CHRISTIAN thought must have criticized 
 current classical art long before any edifices 
 arose which can be called Christian archi- 
 tecture. At first the art customs would be 
 modified by way of simplification, and by 
 change of spirit, and only slowly would a new 
 corpus of secondary forms and a fresh 
 alphabet of ornamentation arise. In the 
 British Museum is an interesting sarcophagus 
 of the early fourth century, on which is 
 sculptured the story of Cupid and Psyche. It 
 has been counted with the late Roman 
 antiquities, but it is more probably early 
 Christian. The silver casket of Projecta be- 
 fore mentioned has only a few minor marks of 
 Christian association. 
 
 The Christians first met together in houses 
 and burial chapels; and special buildings for 
 assembly were probably built in the East 
 during the second century, certainly early 
 in the third century. The origin of the 
 
 church plan has been endlessly discussed. 
 132 
 
 a 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 133 
 
 Some, like one of the latest writers, Professor 
 Lemaire, would derive it entirely from the 
 atrium and reception-hall of the Roman 
 house. Some would see other elements taken 
 over from the temple and the synagogue. 
 The most typical early church plan consisted 
 of a forecourt, a nave with pillars, and an 
 apse. This is the basilican plan. A Roman 
 basilica, or justice-hall, approximated to this 
 form, and the word Basilica 
 seems to have had a general 
 meaning much like our word 
 Hall. The civil basilica was 
 anciently the public portico 
 where the chief magistrates ad- | 
 ministered justice. It was after- 4 , 
 wards enclosed like a temple, 
 
 and adapted to various uses. “" "py "97" 
 One custom which is certainly 
 
 derived from temple architecture is that of 
 orientation, or planning the building on an 
 east-to-west axis. In the isle of Samothrace 
 a temple has been found which some writers 
 have called “ the real prototype of the Chris- 
 tian basilica.”’ Rectangular in plan, it had a 
 portico with an atrium in front only, and 
 one principal facade. The interior had three 
 aisles, and it was closed at the end by a 
 regular apse, or semicircular niche. The small 
 temple at Baalbec had a raised “ choir” 
 above a crypt. Again, the early synagogues 
 
 
 
134 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of Palestine were divided into aisles by 
 ranges of columns. A second type of church 
 was planned around a central point in a circle, 
 octagon, or cross, and derived from tombs. 
 A third, the cella trichora, probably originated 
 in burial chapels. These had simple naves, 
 and a cluster of three apses at the end. The 
 same form is found in chambers in the palace 
 of Diocletian at Spalato; and a mosaic pave- 
 ment of the same shape was 
 excavated in England at 
 Ramsbury many years ago. 
 Plans of three different types 
 of churches are given in 
 Figs. 21, 22 and 23. Fig. 21 
 is from the foundation of a 
 basilican church discovered, 
 at Gerash in Syria; Fig. 22 
 is a cruciform Byzantine 
 church from Gortyna, Crete ; 
 and Fig. 23 is from a round 
 church at Antepellius in Asia Minor, from a 
 MS. drawing by Texier. All may be of the 
 fourth to sixth century. 
 
 In the fourth century, after the Peace of the 
 Church, Christian edifices were built all over 
 the Empire. The foundations of a small 
 basilican church were not long ago excavated 
 at Silchester, near Reading. In Rome several 
 churches, the chief of which was St. Peter’s, 
 were built during the reign of Constantine, 
 
 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 135 
 
 who erected others at holy sites in Palestine. 
 The most perfect existing early Christian 
 church is that of the Holy Nativity at Bethle- 
 hem, built in the year 327 a.p. This is a noble 
 and impressive building, which stands over a 
 natural cave, later transformed into a crypt. 
 The nave has four rows of marble columns, 
 supporting level lintels, and the transepts, as 
 well as the east end, have 
 apses; that is, it follows 
 the burial-chapel type in 
 this particular. The roofs 
 are of wood. The exterior 
 is of masonry, severely 
 plain and austere. The 
 interior was from the 
 first adorned with marble 
 casings, mosaics, and 
 gilding. In the sixth fie cells 
 century a mosaic of the Fic. 23. 
 Nativity was applied to 
 the west front, above the narthex. As struc- 
 ture, all is direct and simple: as architectural 
 expression, it is serious and sweet. There is 
 nothing in it which is unlike late Roman art 
 except the total expression itself. It is the 
 Roman alphabet in a Christian sentence, it is 
 modern and universal. 
 
 Of the circular type the most perfect 
 example is Santa Costanza, Rome, built 
 c. 854. Above a ring of Ionic columns, set 
 
 
 
136 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 in pairs, rises a central part covered by a 
 dome; this and the vault of the circular aisle 
 were encrusted with mosaics, some of which 
 remain. The walls were sheeted over with 
 thin marble and porphyry, and the drum of 
 the dome was covered with elaborate devices 
 in opus sectile, which at this time-was a 
 favourite method of decoration. The ex- 
 terior of rough brick was plastered; even the 
 cornice was plastered except the blocks 
 (dentils), which were of stone. The 
 dome was protected by a tiled 
 roof. 
 
 The church tower may be traced 
 back to the early Christian age, as 
 R. De Fleury has shown. In the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum there 
 are some ivory tablets from the 
 Werden Casket, which was carved 
 about 400 A.D. On it appears a church, as a 
 symbol of Jerusalem, and this church has two 
 high round towers attached to it; the whole 
 looks like a Romanesque church of the twelfth 
 century (fig. 24). There is a somewhat 
 similar representation on a panel of the beauti- 
 ful doors of Santa Sabina, Rome, carved 
 about 500. 
 
 A great number of ruined churches of the 
 fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries exist in Syria 
 and Asia Minor. In these a return to con- 
 sider again the first needs of construction is 
 
 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 1387 
 
 very marked. All redundance has disap- 
 peared, and yet all is workmanlike and fit. 
 The fronts of some of the houses associated 
 with these churches are made up of a series 
 of square monolith posts to every floor linked 
 by big square beams, all of stone. Not- 
 withstanding the great refusal of ornament 
 the result is civilized, clear, and in a way 
 elegant. 
 
 In the East, under the sun of Syria and 
 Egypt, “‘ detail ’’ had been changing, even in 
 late classical days. At Baalbec and Palmyra 
 there was a LEO for the customary 
 modelled carving to 
 be translated into 
 two planes, so that 
 foliage on one general 
 surface was sharply 
 defined on a dark 
 background. In time this sort of carving 
 became a continuous fretwork, undereut and 
 relieved from the ground except for some 
 attachments here and there. At Bethlehem 
 the Corinthian capitals of the interior are 
 very much simplified from their classical 
 prototypes; they are rather shaped blocks of 
 stone with added carving than sculptures of 
 modelled foliage in high relief. Fig. 25 shows 
 carving of this type from a church in Asia 
 Minor. . 
 
 In the late Roman or Hellenistic buildings 
 
 
 
188 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of the East many characteristics are found 
 which later became general in Byzantine and 
 Romanesque architecture. Arches sprang 
 directly from columns without the intervention 
 of an entablature. Or the entablature was 
 bent over an arch and thus formed the germ of 
 all deeply moulded arches. Windows had 
 arched heads, the ‘‘ horizontal arch” and 
 joggled lintel are known, and the bracket, or 
 console, was frequently used. All or most of 
 these features are found in the vast palace 
 which Diocletian built at Spalato. Here is also 
 a long wall-arcade of small scale and a carved 
 roll-moulding around a door. These new and 
 usually simplified methods were adopted by 
 early Christian builders. 
 
 Soon a further change became apparent 
 which was to transform early Christian into 
 Byzantine art. This name was taken from 
 Byzantium, or Constantinople, the capital of 
 the Eastern Empire from 3380, and in the 
 sixth century the vital centre of the arts. 
 The simplest mark of the Byzantine style is 
 to be found in the substitution of the domed 
 and vaulted church for the wood-roofed 
 basilica. This change probably had its origin 
 .in Christian Egypt, where domical roofing 
 seems to have been indigenous, and where 
 from time to time it would be applied to new 
 purposes. Of late years it has become more 
 and more apparent that much of early Chris- 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 139 
 
 tian art, iconography, symbol and decoration 
 must have come out of Egypt. 
 
 In recent times a large number of carved 
 fragments of Christian churches have been 
 found in Egypt, including many capitals. 
 These so resemble the beautiful marble 
 capitals which are found in Santa Sophia and 
 other great Byzantine churches that there is 
 quite obviously some connection between 
 them. They are of fine white limestone; 
 although they cannot be dated with cer- 
 tainty they are often assigned to the fifth 
 century. In this case they must be the proto- 
 types of the noble Constantinopolitan capitals. 
 This is probably the fact, for, although some 
 are of inferior workmanship, others are of 
 great beauty, and most of them seem to be 
 bright, original work and not degraded copies. 
 Further, this type of capital appears suddenly 
 full-blown at Constantinople. Byzantine 
 capitals fall into several well-defined “ orders.” 
 There is a bowl-capital covered with fretted 
 carving, a poor example of which has recently 
 been brought to the British Museum from 
 Egypt. Another small bowl-capital decorated 
 with palm branches, which seems to be a 
 prototype of those in Santa Sophia, was 
 sent to England by Prof. Petrie in 1911, and 
 is now also in the British Museum. 
 
 A capital has been recently brought from 
 Egypt, and added to the Berlin collection, 
 
140 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 which is of the greatest importance for the 
 history of Byzantine art. It is of the bowl 
 type—of limestone; and quite small. The 
 workmanship is exquisite, sharp and delicate 
 beyond any example to be found in Con- 
 stantinople; it is covered by a network of 
 foliage detached from the ground by under- 
 cutting. This capital must have originated 
 at the centre of inspiration for Byzantine 
 carving. Another limestone capital of the 
 [Meee erst x, DOW! type ab Berlin; 
 
 Wy /// (4p where for long they 
 have earnestly col- 
 lected specimens of 
 Byzantine art, is 
 carved with foliage 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 NRE ANGI di of the kind shown 
 RR RRERREREE NS YH SQy 
 
 ligne ORs in the frontispiece. 
 
 This is a capital at 
 
 St. Mark’s, Venice; it bears the monogram of 
 Justinian, and was probably brought from 
 Constantinople. But the capital at Berlin and 
 several other carved stones show that the 
 curious large-veined leaf was of Coptic origin. 
 Another class is formed by the basket capitals 
 which are carved into interlacing bands (fig. 
 27). The most splendid type of basket 
 capitals is that which has a panel on each 
 side containing a sort of a lily, and hence 
 called the “lily capital’? by Ruskin (fig. 
 26). The lily panel looks more like Coptic 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 141 
 
 work than anything else. Several varieties of 
 basket capital have been found of Egyptian 
 limestone, but this particular kind of capital, 
 although examples are in the Cairo Museum, 
 is always, I believe, of marble. There is an 
 excellent basket capital of limestone in the 
 Turin Museum, and there are two or three 
 small ones in the Berlin Museum. Another 
 variety is the melon form, a variety of the 
 bowl class, which, _ 
 instead of being cir- f&; 
 cular under the abacus, 
 spreads into an eight- 
 foiled form. <A very 
 fine example of this 
 is now in the Cairo 
 Museum; it has foliage 
 of the fig-leaf kind 
 shown in frontispiece, Fic. 27. 
 
 which, as said above, 
 
 is Coptic, but the material is marble. Alto- 
 gether there is already a great probability 
 that the school of carving which developed 
 the noble Byzantine orders was transferred 
 to Constantinople from Egypt — probably 
 Alexandria—by Justinian. Prototypes for 
 some of the decorative ideas can be found 
 in Hellenistic art—thus the “ wind-blown 
 acanthus,” the decorative unit of another 
 type of capital; basket work on capitals; 
 and animals or birds under the corners of 
 
 
 
 Ke PATE Ai 
 y. Reet 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ikea ges eve 
 ef Pe 
 Mies eysrn 
 
142 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the abacus have been found in Hellenistic 
 works. 
 
 Recently, at El Bagawat in a great oasis, 
 some ruins of a large cemetery have been 
 explored. It is so extensive that it has been 
 called the Christian Pompeii. Probably there 
 are nearly two hundred burial chapels, a 
 large number of which have cupolas, many 
 of which rise from pendentives continuous 
 with the dome surface, the typical early 
 Byzantine form. From what has been said 
 above (p. 108) there is every reason to think 
 that the building of domes on pendentives 
 was an old Egyptian custom. The few details 
 of these chapels show features derived from 
 ancient Egyptian and Hellenistic sourees; 
 they are probably not later than the fifth 
 century. The interiors were decorated by 
 paintings, much in the style of the Cata- 
 combs. Another coneeption of the dome 
 over a square is shown in some Egyptian 
 ruins where the vaulting is brought away 
 from the angles like four half-cones. The 
 Persian squinch is a modification of this 
 treatment. 
 
 It would be a mistake to try to trace back 
 all Christian art-origins to Egypt; but, as 
 the claims of Asia Minor, Syria, and Meso- 
 potamia have been urged, it is well to point 
 out that, so far as extant evidence goes, the 
 claims of the Egyptian school to have led in 
 
 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 148 
 
 the change from Classical to Christian Art 
 greatly preponderate. 
 
 All the remains of Christian buildings in 
 Egypt have never yet been adequately studied. 
 A great number of ruined vaulted structures 
 exist which make it very probable that many 
 of the constructive methods which character- 
 ized Byzantine art were taken over from 
 Egypt. At the Convent of St. Simeon at 
 Assouan there are some fine early brick 
 vaults of a semi-elliptical 
 form, that is, higher than the 
 semicircle. Against themain : 
 span are smaller parallel 2 
 vaults which bring the work 2 
 up to a level terrace. The 
 great vault at Ctesiphon, in Fra. 28. 
 Persia, and others described 
 by Miss Bell, at Ukheithar, are so similar to these 
 Coptic vaults that there must be a common 
 tradition. It is recorded that Justinian sent 
 the Persian king, Chosroes, workmen to build 
 his palace at Ctesiphon; if it be true they 
 may have gone from Egypt. There must 
 have been vaulted basilican churches in 
 Egypt from quite early days. Foundations of 
 basilicas which had vaulted side aisles have 
 been found in North Africa. Byzantine 
 vaults were built in thin bricks set up on edge, 
 that is par tranches stuck to the part already 
 done in inclining courses, like the old Egyptian 
 
 
 
144 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and Assyrian vaults (fig. 12). In this way 
 
 they were built without centring. Covel de- 
 scribes how, about 1670, domes were still built 
 without centring. 
 
 It was said a score of years ago that there 
 were probably three hundred ruined churches 
 in Syria. Some are still nearly complete— 
 “‘ the stone white and clean; the eye instinc- 
 tively looks for workmen, uncertain for a 
 moment whether they are churches in course 
 of construction or ruins.”’ All is of wrought 
 stone, the doors, roofs, and windows of stone 
 slabs. In the buildings of Syria and Asia 
 Minor several new methods and ideas were 
 brought into architecture. Windows with 
 arched heads are gathered in groups and a 
 circular light is at times associated with them. 
 Two round-headed lights with a circular eye 
 just above were often used in the gable end of 
 a church. Moulded courses were frequently 
 set on the walls, especially under rows of 
 windows; they were made to ramp to other 
 levels or to bend over windows—that is, they 
 became string mouldings and edge mouldings. 
 Corbel tables were in use and a scalloped or 
 lobed member was introduced over arches. 
 The ultimate source of this last was the edge 
 of the scallop shell, which so frequently filled 
 the hollowed crowns of niches in late Roman 
 work. This is very important, for through 
 this adaptation the Roman scallop was the 
 
 — 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 145 
 
 origin of Gothic cusping. The lobed arch 
 member is found at Qalb-Louzeh in Syria. It 
 appears on the great front arch of the Persian 
 palace at Ctesiphon. At the palace of 
 Ukheithar the lobed arch becomes quite a 
 Gothic form, as only a few large lobes were 
 applied to a pointed arch (fig. 29, I). Hence 
 the lobed arch passed to the Arabs and Moors, 
 
 
 
 Fic. 30. 
 
 then it was taken up by the Romanesque 
 builders of South France, and became the 
 parent form of the great family of cusped 
 Gothic arches. There is a difference between 
 what I call the lobed arch and the cusped 
 arch: in the former the series of scallops are 
 complete, in the latter there is only a quadrant 
 or half a foil at the bottom. 
 
 The widest difference between ancient and 
 medieval architectures is that one reposes, 
 
 the other strives. In medieval art features 
 K 
 
146 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 are grouped, parts are subordinated one to 
 another, jambs and arches are formed into a 
 series of recesses. Already, in early Byzantine 
 and Syrian works, the new idea is seen in 
 operation, the colonnade of the atrium of 
 Santa Sophia was cast into groups of three 
 pillars between square piers. A very remark- 
 able example of group- 
 ing and subordination 
 is found in the recently 
 discovered church at 
 Sergiopolis built by 
 Justinian (fig.30). The 
 nave is divided from 
 the aisles by three 
 bays formed by big 
 piers of a cross plan, 
 and the spaces between 
 have columns, one in 
 the middle and two set 
 against the piers. From 
 these rise two little 
 arches, under the main arch which passes 
 from pier to pier. It might be a Romanesque 
 work of the twelfth century, but it is of the 
 sixth century (fig. 31). 
 
 Another church in the same city had the 
 remarkable plan shown in Fig. 82. The west 
 front of a church built at Nicea in the first 
 half of the ninth century has doors with a 
 series of recessed jambs and arches. An old 
 
 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 147 
 
 sketch of a church at Daulis, near Panopeia, 
 in Asia Minor, shows a barrel vault supported 
 by a series of transverse arches or ribs rising 
 from wall piers or imposts (see Fig. 38). 
 Ribbed vaulting later became important. 
 The buildings of Syria and Asia Minor are 
 for the most part of stone, yet the arches of 
 important churches of the sixth century have 
 the blunt-pointed form proper to the Egyptian 
 brick arches, from which they must have been 
 
 
 
 Fig. 32. 
 
 derived. A group of churches explored a few 
 years ago at Bin Bir Kilissi in Asia Minor 
 were assigned an early date by Strzygowski, 
 but Sir W. Ramsay showed that they were 
 more probably not earlier than the ninth 
 century. Some of these were basilican 
 churches with barrel vaults. Dr. Dawkins 
 has recently published a vaulted church from 
 Skyros, which is of the same type, and confirms 
 the later estimate of age. 
 
 There were doubtless some Persian gifts in 
 
148 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 early Byzantine art, as silk patterns and clot- 
 sonné enamelling, but the architectural in- 
 fluence was mostly in the opposite direction. 
 As early Christian art matured over a wide 
 area several varieties were formed. The best 
 known was the school of Constantinople in 
 the age of Justinian, but there were other 
 schools in Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, which are 
 gradually being made known to us. It would 
 be well to keep the term ‘“‘ Byzantine ”’ for the 
 school of Constantinople and to use some 
 such word as ‘“ Hellenesque”’ for the whole 
 group. 
 Of recent years an acute Byzantine question 
 has been discussed, which is: What part had 
 the East in the transformation of architecture 
 which led up to the Middle Ages, and what 
 part had Rome? My own impression is that 
 a distinction will have to be made between 
 Byzantine architecture as a method of building 
 and the same as expressing thought and feeling 
 through building. There is not much in the 
 structural system which was not Roman—the 
 wider Rome of the Empire—although the ex- 
 pressional results differed so obviously from 
 that of classical art. Building in brick, the 
 erection of domes, the encrusting of surfaces 
 with marble and gilt glass were all Eastern 
 inventions, but they had all been adopted 
 into ‘Roman ”’ art, which passed them on 
 to Byzantium. In a sense Byzantine art in 
 
 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 149 
 
 Eastern cities inherited such building customs 
 directly, but yet Rome had intervened, and 
 we cannot say what would have become of 
 Hellenistic art without this intervention, or 
 how much had been brought about by Roman 
 organization and been stimulated by Roman 
 patronage. 
 
 Late Hellenistic architecture must be con- 
 sidered Roman to the extent that it had been 
 absorbed into the Empire, and the Byzantine 
 structural system derives in the main from 
 late Hellenistic sources. The spirit, however, 
 was of the East—Christian, Jewish, Egyptian, 
 Persian, Greek. There are certainly some 
 important differences between the building 
 forms used in Rome itself and Byzantine 
 customs; the conception of a roof as a terrace 
 through which groups of domes emerge from 
 the interior, seems to be entirely Oriental, and 
 this was the ruling conception in Byzantine 
 vault systems. One of the first great churches 
 at Constantinople, built during the reign of 
 Justinian, was that dedicated under the invo- 
 cation of the Holy Apostles. It was cruciform 
 and was covered by a group of five domes. 
 Such grouping of domes was unknown in 
 Rome; it derives from sources such as those 
 shown in Figs. 13 and 16. It is said that 
 the Apostles’ church was copied from a church 
 at Ephesus. 
 
 In the glorious Church of Santa Sophia at 
 
150 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Constantinople, built by Justinian from 537, 
 the great central cupola is surrounded by 
 lower semi-domes and domes of various sizes, 
 which heave up one above another like a clus- 
 ter of bubbles. This Church of Santa Sophia 
 is one of the great things of all time. It is 
 very large, yet itis a unit, not an aggregation 
 of many parts. The central area, over one 
 hundred. feet square, is extended to the east 
 and the west by great semicircles, which 
 increase the length of the central hall to over 
 two hundred. From these hemicycles smaller 
 apses break out, and along each side of the 
 central area there are vast aisles supporting 
 galleries. The size is gigantic, the more so as 
 Byzantine churches are small, with this one 
 exception. The scale and main divisions agree 
 so closely with the Basilica of Constantine at 
 Rome, that I think that building must have 
 been taken as a model of size. We are told 
 that the architect Anthemius had a brother in 
 Old Rome. The arches of the interior are 
 supported on magnificent columns of porphyry 
 and verde antico marble, the walls are all 
 plated with a veneering of choice alabaster, 
 porphyry and marble, and the domes and 
 vaults were covered with a vast area of gold- 
 ground mosaics. The window and door frames 
 are of marble, the doors of gilt bronze. The 
 iconostasis and other fittings of the interior 
 were of silver. The altar was enamelled gold. 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 151 
 
 After the age of Justinian, the sixth century, 
 Byzantine art quickly declined in power. The 
 time of the dispute about images (726-842) 
 forms an interval between the primary style 
 and a second age, which began to emerge in 
 the ninth century and culminated from the 
 tenth to the twelfth. It continued to exert 
 itself through the later Middle Ages, and its 
 traditions are not yet wholly forgotten in the 
 lands of the Greek Church. To the classical — 
 age of Byzantine art we may set the limits 
 450 to 850; to the second school 850-1200; 
 late Byzantine art we may date from 1200 
 to, say, 1800. During the early Middle Ages 
 it had great influence on western Europe. 
 Our William of Malmesbury knew of Santa 
 Sophia, as “surpassing every edifice in the 
 world.” The second school of Byzantine art 
 was largely influenced by the Persian; it be- 
 came much more rigid and gloomy; classical 
 liberality and grace were forgotten in a darker 
 expression of Byzantinism, although in the 
 paintings of MSS. an attempt was made to 
 return to earlier ideals. The churches of this 
 time were small, and they mostly conformed 
 to one type of plan. 
 
 If a square space is divided into three in 
 both directions; if at the intersections piers 
 are built and a dome is set over the central 
 square while the other compartments are 
 covered with other domes and vaults variously 
 
152 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 disposed; and if, further, a long porch extend- 
 ing across the front of the square is added—we 
 obtain an approximation to the typical church 
 plan of this time. Usually the central space 
 was larger than the rest, frequently it was 
 made octagonal, the dome rising from eight 
 piers. The small domes of these churches 
 are often raised on “drums” containing 
 windows, they have almost become small 
 octagonal towers. 
 
 The strong Eastern influence at work on 
 later Byzantine architecture is shown by the 
 fashion of carving bands of stone and of setting 
 panels of brickwork to imitate Cufic writing. 
 External brickwork was often arranged in 
 patterns, a custom which seems to have been 
 derived from Persia, where most elaborate 
 arrangements were made in laying the bricks. 
 Even some Persian domes were built with 
 chevron patterns on the exterior. 
 
 Byzantine builders frequently used the 
 pointed arch, even in the classical age of the 
 style. At Kasr ibn Wardan, Asia Minor, 
 built in 564, the arches and vaults are of 
 pointed form. The general evolution of the 
 Byzantine dome was from a hemispherical 
 shape at Santa Sophia to a tower-like form, 
 obtained by lifting the cupola proper above a 
 ‘drum ” pierced with windows. The ques- 
 tion of the association of windows with the 
 dome raises some curious points. 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 153 
 
 The first dome of Santa Sophia, Constanti- 
 nople, fell, and was rebuilt to a higher curve a 
 few years after the church was consecrated; it 
 fell again in 989 and was again rebuilt. Even 
 . the first work must have had a series of windows 
 pierced in it above the pendentives. Proco- 
 pius speaks of the “small openings left at 
 intervals for the light to come through,” and 
 doubtless they were exactly similar to those 
 still existing in the semi-domes over the 
 apses and the hemicycles. In these the 
 domical surface is continuous from the walls; 
 and there is no break in the curve at the 
 window zone as in the present dome—a result 
 of later heightening. The idea of putting a 
 drum to contain windows between the penden- 
 tives and the cupola may have arisen from 
 the break in the spherical surface made at 
 rebuilding the dome of Santa Sophia. At 
 Kasr ibn Wardan, built in the year after 
 the first restoration of the dome at Santa 
 Sophia, a ruined dome exists which has 
 eight windows, which are pierced alternately 
 in the pendentives and in the lunettes of wall 
 between them. The pendentives are of a 
 curious form, they are not continuations 
 of the domical surface, but each horizontal 
 section is a quadrant, so there is no distinct 
 line of penetration with the walls. The dome 
 of Santa Sophia at Salonica follows the same 
 type with modifications; and this becomes 
 
154 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 another reason for dating the church later than 
 the great cathedral of the capital. At St. 
 Clement’s, Ancyra, probably of the seventh 
 century, the dome has twelve great flutings to 
 the interior and may have been melon-shaped 
 outside, but the ruins are not sufficient to 
 make this sure. 
 
 The most splendid and characteristic art 
 of the Byzantine epoch was that of the mosaic 
 worker, by which the upper part of the walls 
 and the vaults and domes were covered by 
 pictures in bright glittering colour on a golden 
 background, which fills the whole interior with 
 reflected lights, continually changing, accord- 
 ing to the hour and the point of view. Parts 
 of the exterior, like the gable of the west front, 
 were also frequently encrusted with mosaics. 
 At Rome, St. Peter’s had its facade adorned 
 with a mosaic about the year 450. Such an 
 external mosaic exists at the sixth-century 
 basilica of Parenzo, near Trieste; another of 
 the same age, depicting the Nativity, filled the 
 west front of the old basilica at Bethlehem. 
 The fashion was long followed in Rome, and a 
 beautiful late example is the mosaic of the 
 enthroned Madonna with the Holy Child, 
 and the Wise and Foolish Virgins, at S.M. in 
 Trastevere. In the East the Dome of the 
 Rock and the mosque at Damascus were 
 decorated in a similar way. The usual way of 
 finishing an interior was to line the walls with 
 
EARLY CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS 155 
 
 slabs of fine marbles, often the two surfaces 
 revealed by a saw-cut were opened out side 
 by side, so that the panels showed. symmetrical 
 markings like beast-skins. Parts were treated 
 yet more extravagantly with encrustations of 
 sectile work and inlays of mother-of-pearl. 
 The debt of universal architecture to the 
 early Christian and Byzantine schools of 
 builders is very great. They evolved the 
 church types, they carried far the explora- 
 tion of domical construction, and made won- 
 derful balanced compositions of vaults and 
 domes over complex plans. They formed the 
 belfry tower from the Pharos and fortifica- 
 tion towers. We owe to them the idea of the 
 vaulted basilican church, which, spreading 
 westward over Europe, made our great vaulted 
 cathedrals possible. They entirely recast the 
 secondary forms of architecture: “* the column 
 was taught to carry an arch,” the capital was 
 reconsidered as a bearing block and became a 
 feature of extraordinary beauty. The art of 
 building was made free from formulas, and 
 architecture became an adventure in building 
 once more. We owe to them a new type of 
 moulding, the germ of the Gothic system, by 
 the introduction of the roll-moulding and their 
 application of it to “ strings ”’ and the margins 
 of doors. The first arch known to me which 
 has a series of roll-mouldings is in the palace 
 of Mshatta. The tendency to cast windows 
 
156 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 into groups, the ultimate source of tracery, 
 and the foiling of arches, has already been 
 mentioned. We owe to Christian artists the 
 introduction of delightfully fresh ornamenta- 
 tion, crisp foliage, and interlaces, and the whole 
 scheme of Christian iconography, 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 THE EASTERN CYCLE 
 
 UnpER the successors of Alexander the 
 influence of Hellenistic art spread widely 
 over western Asia and even beyond into 
 India. At Gandara, on the north-west frontier, 
 a mixed school of Grzco-Buddhist art was 
 formed, which subsequently reacted to some 
 extent on the west. Recent discoveries of 
 glazed clay images of men and _ horses in China 
 show that about A.p. 500 the Western influ- 
 ence had made itself felt inthe Far East. The 
 Chinese tiled roof doubtless derives from the 
 Greek roof. In the British Museum there is a 
 sculptured fragment from the palace of a king 
 of Armenia built about A.p. 200, which is in 
 a debased Hellenistic style. In the Victoria 
 and Albert Museum is a panel from a mosaic 
 floor of quite ordinary Roman type, brought 
 from Zeugma in Mesopotamia; and a rude form 
 of Roman architecture was used by the 
 Parthians. Fig. 34 shows some carved orna- 
 mentation from Gandara of about the first 
 century. It is very interesting as being one 
 
 of the earliest-known examples of a type of 
 157 
 
158 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 interlacing patterns which later became widely 
 distributed. 
 
 Some early Christian churches were built as 
 far to the east as Nisibis and the Arabian 
 desert, and as far to the south as Khartoum. 
 The terrain which came to be occupied by 
 Saracen conquerors in the seventh century 
 had, for the most part, long been the scene 
 of flourishing schools of Hellenistic, Roman 
 and Hellenesque art. 
 
 Primitive Arabian art 
 itself is quite negligible. 
 When the new strength 
 of the followers of the 
 Prophet was consolidated 
 with great rapidity into 
 a rich and powerful em- 
 pire, it took over the arts 
 and artists of the con- 
 quered lands, extending from North Africa to 
 Persia. In Egypt the Great Christian School 
 of Alexandria was in full activity, and in Syria, 
 Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, other varieties 
 of Byzantine art were flourishing. In Persia 
 the type of art of this period is known as 
 Sassanian; its elements were in part old 
 Persian, mixed with borrowings from late 
 Roman and Byzantine sources. 
 
 The earliest Arab works, like the Dome of 
 the Rock and the Mosque of Aksa, in Jeru- 
 salem, and the Great Mosque at Damascus 
 
 
 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 159 
 
 (c. 710), are almost perfectly Byzantine build- 
 ings except for some touch of added energy. 
 They are the most beautiful works of their 
 age. Some very interesting and beautiful 
 early Arab works in Mesopotamia have re- 
 cently been published by Sarre and Herzfeld. 
 Fig. 29 (II) shows a cusped arch of the eighth 
 century from one of the buildings. 
 
 Arab ornamentation, as it took on a more 
 distinct type, about the eighth century, seems 
 to show some Indian and Chinese influence 
 derived probably from contacts in Persia. 
 Even in the wonderful facade of the palace 
 of Mshatta in Moab, now re-erected in Berlin, 
 there seems to be a slight trace of Chinese 
 feeling in the ornamental carving. What 
 exists is the lower part of the front wall of the 
 palace, including the central doorway. The 
 wall is broken by semi-octagonal bastions, 
 and the whole surface is covered with orna- 
 mentation, intricate as the pattern of an 
 Indian shawl. Much of this carving consists 
 of beasts drinking from vases, or of birds 
 amongst scrolls of vine pecking at grapes. 
 
 Similar designs are found on Christian 
 ivories wrought in Syria and Egypt in the 
 sixth century. The origin of this remarkable 
 building has been much discussed, but the 
 writer is convinced that it is an Arab work 
 not earlier than the seventh century, wrought 
 in the main by Christian artists. In the 
 
160 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Berlin Museum are also some small fragments 
 of similar work from the castles of Juba and 
 Choirane which are assigned to the seventh 
 and eighth centuries; and other palaces of a 
 somewhat similar type are now known. The 
 carvings at the church of Sergiopolis (fig. 30) 
 are very similar also. 
 
 The early mosques were large halls with 
 many slender columns supporting their roofs. 
 These halls ran along one side of a courtyard, 
 and were entered by doors in the long sides. 
 Domes mark tombs rather than mosques; 
 indeed it is said that no mosque that was not 
 at least intended to contain a tomb ever had 
 a dome. This custom must have been taken 
 over from the Roman and Christian tradition 
 of domed tombs. The Cairo domes are of 
 stone, brick or clay. Those of stone are 
 usually carved into chevron patterns or bold 
 arabesque ornamentation. The brick domes 
 are constructed in level courses without shap- 
 ing the bricks, the true form being obtained 
 in the plastering. Some of these are broken 
 on the outside into a series of big rolls, dimin- 
 ishing upwards to the centre. Large mud 
 domes were strengthened by a skeleton of 
 rough timbers. Some few ruined domes at 
 Cairo which seem to be of an early date 
 (probably about 1200) have a lantern on the 
 top pierced with windows and covered by a 
 smaller cupola. Here we get the type of the 
 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 161 
 
 Renaissance dome. Probably the leaded 
 domes of St. Mark’s, Venice, were suggested 
 from Arab domes of this kind. Some of the 
 Cairo domes are built in two shells with webs 
 of wall between the two, like Brunelleschi’s 
 dome in Florence. 
 
 The palace of Ukheithar, explored by 
 Miss Bell, near the Persian frontier, seems to 
 be of the eighth or ninth century (fig. 29). 
 Another similar palace is Kasir-i-Shirin, and 
 yet another is the palace of Amra, built in 
 the eighth century. 
 
 Fragments of mosaics and paintings from 
 Castle Amra are in the Berlin Museum; these 
 were most probably by Byzantine artists. 
 All these works are extremely interesting, as 
 they open up a new field for the study of early 
 Arab art; and in all of them Byzantine and 
 Persian elements are mixed. 
 
 The later mosques and tombs of Cairo and 
 western Asia are wonderfully beautiful. They 
 have a universal quality; nothing f 
 is barbaric, and. little is unintel- | 
 ligible; the architecture is as lovely 
 as the word Arabian. 
 
 Domes in Cairo are pointed at 
 the top; and with a fine instinct for 
 size, the cornice is not at the true 
 springing, but many feet below. A rough 
 approximation to the form of the Cairene 
 
 domes has been given thus: Draw a circle, 
 Li 
 
 
 
 Fie. 35. 
 
162 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 cut off one quarter of the vertical radius 
 at the bottom and draw a level line, drop 
 perpendiculars from the full diameter of the 
 circle to this line; from the angles of this base 
 draw two large arcs tangentially to the circle 
 and meeting above it in a point. 
 
 Persia in the later Middle Ages became the 
 most brilliant centre of Saracen art. The 
 buildings of Tabriz, Ispahan, Samarkand, 
 Sultaniah, and other towns, are many of them 
 miracles of beauty, strange yet natural, like 
 things seen in a dream. They have swelling 
 domes, arched porches, wide and high, tall 
 round minarets curiously like factory chim- 
 neys. All the walls are covered with tile- 
 work painted in boldly drawn patterns. The 
 Blue Mosque at Tabriz is a wonderful 
 example of how the utmost splendour may be 
 controlled into perfect dignity. The lovely 
 dome of the Medresse at Ispahan is also 
 wholly cased with tiles having patterns of 
 bold interlacing curves, throwing off leafage 
 like a big Persian carpet. These Persian 
 domes are the most perfect ever built; in 
 general form they resemble those of Cairo, 
 but from the horizontal band they usually 
 swell slightly outward, and the curve returning 
 passes in almost a straight line to the finial 
 on the apex. The shape is like that of a 
 Persian helmet. The pointed form is, of 
 course, the most easy to construct and the 
 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 163 
 
 most stable. Sometimes, as at Bostam and 
 Koum, they are actual cones—a_ perfect 
 constructive form which, curiously, has been 
 little used. Buddhist communities were ex- 
 isting in western Asia when the Arabs entered 
 the lands in the seventh century. Later 
 again, under the Turkish dynasty (after 
 1250), artists are said to have been obtained 
 from China. There is certainly in the art of 
 Persia and Turkestan an element from the 
 farther Kast. Mohammedan art in India is, 
 of course, a form of the Arabic modified by 
 local influences. Generally, the Arabian may 
 be said to be an eastern offshoot of Byzantine 
 art modified by Persian, Indian and Chinese 
 elements. 
 
 Karly and late the Arabian is a style of 
 great splendour and clearness of expression. 
 Save for its refusal of human interest in 
 sculpture and painting, which were ruled out 
 by the Mohammedan employers, it is one of 
 the most intellectual styles. All is direct 
 structure or frank ornamentation, and there 
 is no survival of misunderstood forms. 
 
 The pointed arch was generally adopted, 
 and often it was much stilted, that is, there 
 were vertical pieces above the capitals before 
 the curve began to spring. This may have 
 arisen from the large use of marble columns, 
 for in this way a bold, fine opening might be 
 obtained when the arch rose from com- 
 
164 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 paratively short columns. Another develop- 
 ment of the stilted arch was made by continu- 
 ing the upper curve below the true spring- 
 ing, which, of course, made the space less 
 directly above the capitals, that is, the arch 
 became of horseshoe form (fig. 36). Nook- 
 shafts seem to have been first used in Arabic 
 architecture. They are small shafts set in an 
 angular recess L at the jambs of doorways 
 and other openings. Such shafts 
 might be of small diameter and 
 very tall, quite different from 
 the normal classical column. 
 Byzantine window slabs were 
 developed into most elaborate 
 and beautiful lattices, like those 
 at the mosque of Damascus. 
 All the lattices of the East, 
 Indian and Chinese must derive 
 from the Arab lattice. Minarets—very tall 
 and slender towers—were built, which compare 
 in beauty with Western spires. Foiled arches 
 were carried further in design and handed 
 to the West by the Moors in Spain. The dome 
 was perfected as an external architectural 
 form. Byzantine domes had been covered 
 with lead, but these were completed in stone 
 and brick, being sometimes cased over with 
 brilliant glazed tiles. 
 
 These glazed tiles, which were largely used 
 as external and internal casings, were doubt- 
 
 
 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 165 
 
 less derived from old Persian enamelled 
 bricks. They were mostly made at Kashan, 
 and similar “ Kashi” decoration has con- 
 tinued in use until modern days. These 
 glittering casings of hard enamelled material 
 are a great architectural invention. There 
 are many fine specimens of such tiles at the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum. Marble casings 
 and mosaics were also extensively used. An 
 adaptation of Greek gold mosaic was obtained 
 by making the gilt glass in little tablets 
 like square biscuits, marked over by deeply 
 indented lines forming half-inch squares. 
 Possibly coloured glazing (not painted) was 
 first made use of to form intricate patterns 
 set in Arab lattices. The jewelled windows in 
 the story of Aladdin were doubtless suggested 
 by brilliant glass. These brightly glazed 
 lattices are most beautiful. The basis of the 
 typical Arab patterns is formed by producing 
 the sides of polygons and stars till they 
 intersect in many different ways. The germ 
 of this system is already found in late Roman 
 works like the ceiling at Baalbec, and many 
 mosaic pavements. 
 
 By the Crusades, by trade, and through 
 constant contact in Venice, Sicily and Spain, 
 the Arab style steadily acted on the West, 
 and its course in the East was parallel to that 
 of the Romanesque and Gothic styles of the 
 West. 
 
166 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 From the first the Arab builder adopted 
 the pointed arch. At Mshatta in Moab, the 
 arches, of brick, were acutely pointed. At 
 the Dome of the Rock (seventh century), the 
 arches are bluntly pointed as finished with 
 marble casings, but they are probably truly 
 pointed in the structure. In the mosque 
 EK] Aksa (c. 690) at Jerusalem, the arches 
 are big and strongly 
 pointed. In the old 
 portion of the mosque 
 of Amr, Cairo (c. 650), 
 there is a row of 
 acutely pointed 
 = arches below and 
 =: pointed windows over 
 = (fig.87). The pointed 
 = arch was used in 
 Fic. 37. Byzantine work, but 
 
 it was typical of the 
 Arabian styles, and by the eleventh century 
 it was widely distributed over Europe and 
 reached England in the twelfth. As early as 
 the ninth century the horseshoe form of arch 
 is common in the painted MSS. of the Christian 
 Visigoths (fig. 36). 
 
 The history of the cusped arch has been 
 sketched on p. 145, so far as it affected the 
 West; it spread also over the farther East. A 
 screen at Ajmere in India, said to have been 
 built from 1200 to 1220, has the arch shown 
 
 
 
 (" \ Hy 
 Ni 
 
 vat 
 {Ly 
 \ 
 Ui 
 \ 
 
 4 
 s 
 i) 
 
 1 
 } 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
THE EASTERN CYCLE 167 
 
 in Fig. 88. Venice seems to have received the 
 cusped arch directly from the Arabs, and not 
 like the West from the Moors. It is very 
 curious that in the late Middle 
 Ages Eastern arches became 
 low with a quick curve at the 
 bottom and the rest nearly 
 straight, like our Tudor arches. “4 
 No doubt is possible as wg, 38, 
 
 to the influence of Eastern 
 
 patterns on Western art. The rich silks, 
 especially, had an enormous influence on 
 wall paintings, on. ornamental sculpture, 
 stained glass, embroideries and other forms of 
 art. Dr. Rock says: “Coming westward 
 among us, these much-coveted stuffs brought 
 with them the several names by which they © 
 were commonly known throughout the Kast, 
 whether Greece, Asia Minor, or Persia. Hence, 
 when we read of Samit, Ciclatoun, Cendal, 
 Baudakin, and such other terms unknown to 
 trade now-a-days, we should bear in mind 
 that we arrive at their derivations and dis- 
 cover in what countries they were wrought.”’ 
 In the 1245 Inventory of the Treasury at 
 St. Paul’s is mentioned a piece of red pannus 
 de aresta embroidered with yellow parrots and 
 trees, given by William Longespee on his 
 return from the Holy Land in 1242. In the 
 Inventory of 1295 three pieces are mentioned 
 as of opere saracenico. The Exeter inventory 
 
 
 
168 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 mentions several pieces of ‘* Antioch.” Ac- 
 cording to William of Malmesbury, Canute 
 gave to Glastonbury Abbey a pall woven with 
 vari-coloured peacocks. The body of St. 
 Cuthbert was found wrapped in Kastern silks. 
 
 For more than a thousand years these 
 precious works of art have been like a vitaliz- 
 ing pollen blown on our shores. If we would 
 set seriously to work in reviving decorative 
 design the best thing we could do would be 
 to bring a hundred craftsmen from India to 
 form a school of practice. Even Renaissance 
 artists were not able to shut their eyes entirely 
 to Eastern art—at Venice there was a strong 
 Arab influence on the minor arts. From 
 Venice a type of ornamentation spread west- 
 ward which we still call Arabesque. It was 
 brought to England by Holbein. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 ROMANESQUE ART—NEW BLOOD IN 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 THe age of Romanesque art was the age 
 of the transition from antiquity to the Middle 
 Ages, from Roman art to Gothic. The 
 turning-point of style, as of history, seems to 
 have been reached when Charlemagne con- 
 solidated his power. Up to this time the arts 
 of civilization in Europe had been derived 
 from the two Romes, but on this side of the 
 watershed the prospect is towards the Gothic. 
 From the Coronation of Charlemagne in 800 
 onwards, to the formation of Gothic art (say 
 about 1150), the history of architecture is 
 fairly clear, and the term Romanesque can 
 be applied without any doubts to this period. 
 It is much more difficult to give an account of 
 architecture within the borders of what had 
 been the Roman Empire, between the early 
 Christian period and the establishment of 
 Charlemaghe’s new empire. 
 
 In the fifth century there was a tremendous 
 upheaval of society and disruption of culture 
 
 caused by the folk-migrations and Teutonic 
 169 
 
170 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 conquests. At this time, Goths and Franks 
 spread from the lands east of the Rhine, 
 through central and western Kurope—that is, 
 over the whole Roman Empire in the West. 
 The Eastern Empire remained almost un- 
 touched, but of course not unaffected by the 
 great change. In the West, Ireland was 
 isolated from the rest of Christendom. 
 
 The Goths, it is true, were already partly 
 Christianized, and in Italy, Provence and 
 Spain there was no break in the continuity 
 of the Church, nor was there in France, for 
 Clovis, the conqueror, at once adopted 
 Christianity. 
 
 In England, however, there was a long 
 interval of chaos and only at the end of the 
 sixth century did the tide of the common 
 civilization return with the Church. The sixth 
 century—a twilight time in the West—had 
 been the most brilliant period of Byzantine 
 art, the age of Justinian. Santa Sophia was 
 being built just at the time that the deeds 
 were wrought, the legends of which form the 
 story of King Arthur. 
 
 In the Eastern Empire there was not only 
 continuity, but an epoch of power under the 
 sway of Justinian who more closely attached 
 Italy to the Byzantine rule. 
 
 As the West settled once more it was 
 natural that Pope Gregory should send his 
 mission to the England which two centuries 
 
ROMANESQUE ART 171 
 
 before had been Britain, a part of the Empire 
 and a province of the Church; thus the Rome 
 of the clergy once more extended to the old 
 limits. 
 
 Architecturally, there were now three strains 
 of style: the Christian Roman _ tradition, 
 sadly broken; Byzantinism, ever more and 
 more powerful in influence from the sixth to 
 the tenth century; and the barbarian element 
 in the blood and likings of the people. 
 
 Until the coronation of Charlemagne the 
 suzerainty of the Eastern emperors was 
 acknowledged in Rome and throughout Italy. 
 Ravenna and the south of the Peninsula 
 remained attached to the East. The Byzan- 
 tine genius at this time, say 500 to 800, so 
 dominated the expression of the arts in Italy 
 and the West that it would be well to call the 
 style Byzanto-Romanesque or even Byzan- 
 tesque. 
 
 Cavaliere Rivoira, however, has gone over 
 the ground with the object of showing that 
 early Romanesque art in Italy derives directly 
 from Rome, and he minimizes the influence 
 of the East. His work has been valuable in 
 bringing out the ‘variety and richness of 
 Roman architecture, and in calling attention 
 to many facts which had been overlooked, 
 by a re-examination of the monuments. As 
 I understand his work, his claim for the 
 direct filiation of Romanesque architecture 
 
172 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 from Roman applies almost entirely to con- 
 struction. That there is a large Eastern ele- 
 ment in the secondary forms, iconography 
 and decoration, is not denied. It should be 
 admitted that he has succeeded in carrying 
 back to Roman days several ideas which had 
 hitherto been thought to be Byzantine, and 
 that he has shown that there was some con- 
 tinuity from the Roman to the Romanesque 
 styles. Still the main question seems to stand 
 very much where it did. That a new spirit 
 came in with the new decoration no one can 
 doubt, nor that both were Oriental. The spirit 
 is the transforming force. 
 
 The Byzantesque, or primary Romanesque, 
 style is only represented in Italy by a few 
 monuments. In Gaul, at such centres as 
 Lyons, Vienne, Poitiers, Tours, the arts 
 would have been practised much as they were 
 in Italy. In the south of France and Spain 
 a school of considerable importance was 
 formed in the Visigothic Kingdom, and there 
 seems to be some evidence that the first 
 vaulted churches built in the West were 
 Visigothic. Another school was formed in 
 England after about 600. 
 
 Mature Romanesque art is Carlovingian— 
 the style of the Holy Roman Empire—Lom- 
 bardie and Frankish. Charlemagne en- 
 deavoured successfully to form a culture 
 centre in the heart of his great empire. The 
 
ROMANESQUE ART — 173 
 
 palace-chapel he built at Aachen has a sixteen- 
 sided outer wall surrounding a high central 
 octagon; it is built of stone, the piers and 
 doorways being of large blocks. Many of 
 the details, especially the large western door, 
 the remnants of which are now fully exposed 
 previous to a restoration, were of late Roman 
 type. The doorway has a wide stone archi- 
 trave with a horizontal lintel of almost 
 normal, late-classical section, and above the 
 lintel is a semicircular relieving arch. The 
 impost mouldings and cornices are classical. 
 The capitals of the shafts are antique ones 
 brought from Italy. The internal domical 
 vault was covered with mosaics, doubtless by 
 artists of the Byzantine school from Rome or 
 Ravenna. There are some fine bronze railings 
 forming the balustrade to the gallery story 
 which surrounds the central area—these seem 
 to be Byzantine, the doors are bronze, so also 
 is a large fountain jet in the form of a pine 
 cone. These last were doubtless made for 
 the church, and are the first-fruits of the great 
 bronze-working school of Germany. 
 
 Ireland, little affected by the Germanic 
 incursions, developed a limited school of art, 
 especially in the decoration of books, with 
 complicated knotted and spiral patterns which 
 was not without effect on the Carlovingian 
 school. On the other hand, the great Arab 
 conquest of the seventh century must have 
 
174 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 forced large numbers of eastern Christian 
 artists from western Asia, Egypt and northern 
 Africa into western Europe. Byzantine 
 artists were easily obtained from Italy or 
 from Constantinople itself. There was thus 
 much crossing of artistic blood at this time. 
 
 After Charlemagne many of the emperors 
 were art patrons, and during the Romanesque 
 period many great Churchmen were also 
 great artists. At the beginning of the eleventh 
 century lived Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim, 
 who formed a school of art in that city, where 
 many of his works in bronze and precious 
 metal remain. The famous bronze font at 
 Liége, made by Ranerius of Huy early in the 
 twelfth century, clearly derives from this 
 school. It is a remarkable work, free, 
 masterly and refined. Dunstan in England 
 was an ecclesiastical artist of the type of 
 Bernward. The monk Theophilus, who was 
 expert in all the artistic crafts of the age and 
 has left us an invaluable treatise on his 
 practice, has been identified with Rugerius 
 of Helmershausen, who was working about 
 1100. 
 
 Painting, ivory-carving, and enamelling were 
 all highly developed in the German school. 
 Mosaic floors were laid down, modelled 
 stucco for figures and ornament was freely 
 used, and the art of glass painting, it seems 
 most likely from such evidence as is known, 
 
ROMANESQUE ART 175 
 
 was invented or adopted from Byzantine art 
 by German monastic craftsmen. 
 
 From the evidence of carved _ ivories, 
 painted books, enamels, and metal work, 
 it appears that the great body of medizval 
 symbolism in sacred imagery must have 
 issued from the monastic workshops of 
 Germany and Lotharingia. We find on these 
 at an early time ideas which later were widely 
 spread over medizval Europe, such as im- 
 personations of the Church and the Synagogue. 
 The Jesse tree also seems to have been in- 
 vented (or handed on from the Eastern Church) 
 by the German monastic artists. On the 
 enamels of Godefried de Claire of Huy, working 
 ec. 1140-70, we find the Crucifixion accom- 
 panied by types out of the Old Testament so 
 exactly like those which are well known in 
 the stained-glass windows made from about 
 the middle of the twelfth century up to about 
 1220 that it is clear there must be some 
 relation one way or the other. The medallion 
 treatment of these windows seems to be 
 derived from the tradition of enamel work, 
 and it appears probable to the present writer 
 that the windows at St. Denis, the earliest 
 stained glass now in France, were designed 
 by an artist of the same school as Godefried 
 de Claire—perhaps by himself, for he was the 
 most famous artist of the age. 
 
 In building great things were done in 
 
176 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 innumerable churches. These usually have 
 their choirs lifted high above the nave, over 
 vaulted crypts and reached by many steps. 
 Frequently the west end as well as the east 
 had an apse with an altar. Behind the high 
 altar, in the centre of the choir, rose a colossal 
 seven-branched candlestick of bronze; in 
 the nave was a large corona of lamps which 
 nearly filled the space from side to side. 
 The walls and vaults were entirely covered 
 with paintings—Christ or the Virgin attended 
 by angels or apostles in the conch of the 
 apse, and Bible stories in many bands on the 
 walls. The exteriors had several towers; 
 usually there was a pair to the east as well 
 as a pair to the west, the space between the 
 western towers was often carried up much 
 higher than the rest of the nave, making with 
 the towers an important Western work which 
 is very characteristic of these churches. In 
 Cologne, a chief centre in the eleventh and 
 twelfth centuries, the Church of St. Mary in 
 the Capitol, dedicated in 1049, has fine apses 
 surrounded by ambulatories to the ends of the 
 transepts as well as the central apse, which 
 is also surrounded by an ambulatory. This 
 is a very noble and impressive interior, the 
 prototype of many medieval churches. The 
 most remarkable German Romanesque chureh 
 is St. Gereon at Cologne. This has a large 
 polygonal body, from each side of which, 
 
ROMANESQUE ART 177 
 
 except to the east and the west, opens a large 
 apsidal niche in the thickness of the wall, and 
 above these is formed a gallery. At the east 
 is a long vaulted presbytery, to the west a 
 big porch, and the central part rises high as a . 
 tower. It is a late Romanesque work, but 
 it has been thought that the body with its 
 niches is probably built over Roman founda- 
 tions; a recent examination has convinced me 
 that it is homogeneous in design. We find 
 similar apsed niches in the Apostles’ Church 
 at Cologne, and the polygonal body with a 
 gallery story seems to be adapted from 
 Charlemagne’s church at Aachen. 
 
 Altogether this building style was magni- 
 ficent and complete; in Germany it competed 
 long with the newer Gothic type of design 
 developed in France at the end of the twelfth 
 century. 
 
 In North Italy a noble school of mature 
 Romanesque architecture flourished at this 
 same time. This ‘ Lombard art ”’ was closely 
 linked with that of Germany, but the Italian 
 element in the population, the example of 
 many antique monuments, contact with the 
 Kast through Venice and Pisa, and the com- 
 mand of marbles as building material, gave 
 it special characteristics. One curious and 
 typical feature in Lombardie architecture is 
 the setting of shafts at doorways on_ lions. 
 
 It is found, I believe, in late Roman work, and 
 M 
 
178 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the fashion would seem to have been brought 
 from Assyria. ‘This base is occasionally found 
 in Germany, as, for instance, the base of the 
 central pillar of the old cathedral porch at 
 Goslar. There is a small and imperfect 
 application of the idea at the south nave door 
 of Ely Cathedral. In Italy and Germany it 
 was usual to group the columns of the nave 
 between square piers. It has been suggested 
 that it was because at first they used old 
 marble columns and that possibly they were 
 scarce; but it fell in with a general tendency 
 to form groups, and seems to have been de- 
 rived from the East (see fig. 30). 
 
 In France and Spain other fine schools of 
 Romanesque art were formed. The condi- 
 tions varied from centre to centre; here the 
 Germanic re-barbarization was less complete, 
 there Roman monuments had greater in- 
 fluence; here, again, the current of Byzantine 
 art flowed more freely, or there was direct 
 contact with the Arabs. 
 
 Nearly everywhere one element in the style 
 is an attempt to imitate the details of Roman 
 monuments—monuments which were often 
 very late and divergent from the classical 
 type. Thus in the museum at Sens there are 
 large fragments of a late Roman work carved 
 redundantly with vine ornamentation, and 
 such prototypes were readily caught up in 
 the advancing style. The important question 
 
ROMANESQUE ART 179 
 
 in the arts is, Are they developing or degrad- 
 ing? If they are expanding, hints from 
 the most diverse sources will be gathered 
 and recast according to the genius of the 
 time. 
 
 In south-east France successful attempts 
 were made to vault churches entirely. The 
 experiments followed two types—continuous 
 barrel vaults, as Notre Dame du Port at 
 Clermont, or a series of domes, as at Peri- 
 gueux. Both these types are ultimately of 
 Eastern origin (see p. 43), but the barrel- 
 vault type may have been taken over from 
 the Visigothic school, while the domical type 
 was more immediately adopted from Con- 
 stantinople and the East. Vaulting with domes 
 spread far north, so that the aisles of the 
 abbey church of Bernay (ec. 1030) are covered 
 with domes; at the small church of St. George, 
 close to Tours, there is a little dome remain- 
 ing, and doubtless Bernay derived its domed 
 vaulting from Tours. There was at one time 
 considerable chance that we should have had 
 a, domed architecture in the North-west. The 
 form finally adopted was the groined vault— 
 that is, one which shows an arch in both 
 directions, so that the windows in the side 
 walls might rise nearly as high as the vault 
 itself. 
 
 In the eleventh century one of the schools 
 of building which rapidly developed was that 
 
180 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 in Normandy; step by step the growing power 
 of the Duchy was reflected in cathedral and 
 abbey churches, and still more in the vast 
 military castle-towers of which the Tower of 
 London is a fine example. It seems to have 
 had its prototype in the “ Tower ” of Rouen. 
 Were these donjon towers contrived by the 
 Conqueror himself? Norman architecture 
 in its advance must have gathered largely 
 from the Southern schools; at St. Nicholas, 
 Caen, the bracketed eaves cornice might be 
 at Issoire or Le Puy. The banding and 
 chequering of two different coloured stones, 
 a favourite device in Norman masonry, 
 is Southern rather than German. The final 
 type of plan in which an ambulatory and 
 chapels surround the apse was derived from 
 Tours. , 
 
 Among the contributions made to archi- 
 tecture in the Romanesque period the first 
 place must be given to the perfecting of the 
 Cathedral plan, and, indeed, of its whole 
 constructive type. The builders of after 
 years had only to refine it to find themselves 
 on the verge of Gothic. The problems of 
 vaulting were worked out to the point where 
 it became the controlling factor in the scheme. 
 Ribbed vaulting, a great architectural power, 
 was either invented by the Romanesque 
 builders or developed from some Eastern 
 source. The disposition of towers was tried 
 
ROMANESQUE ART 181 
 
 in every possible combination, and the stone 
 spire was evolved. Some of the most perfect 
 types were erected in the earliest Gothic 
 days. 
 
 Successful attempts at dome construction 
 were made over Italian baptisteries and some 
 of the churches of France and Spain. On 
 these cupolas the lantern appears which 
 became a regular feature of the Renaissance 
 dome. The cupolas over the baptisteries of 
 Pisa and Florence are remarkable structural 
 triumphs. That at Pisa reverts to the tall 
 conical form of the Eastern cupolas. Wren’s 
 structural cone at St. Paul’s resembles its 
 form so closely that it would seem that in 
 his preliminary studies he had found an 
 account of the Pisan baptistery. The cupola 
 at Florence is strengthened by a series of 
 buttressing walls, which rise at right angles 
 resting on the cupola and support an outer 
 pyramid of masonry which is cased over 
 with marble slabs like paving. It is an 
 admirable and homogeneous piece of con- 
 struction. On the apex the lantern sheltered 
 an open eye in the cupola. This is the proto- 
 type of the lanterns of Renaissance domes, 
 their ultimate source is the hood over the 
 ventilator of early Eastern mud domes (fig. 
 15). 
 
 The general methods of the application 
 of sculpture to structures was worked out 
 
182 ARCHITECTURE | 
 
 and most of the types of images and stories 
 were introduced. Stained glass was _ per- 
 fected. The windows which were wrought in 
 the middle of the twelfth century are more 
 perfect than any others. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 
 
 AutTuoucH the Saxon and Norman styles 
 of architecture were contemporary with the 
 Romanesque art of the Continent it seems 
 desirable to deal with them particularly. The 
 study of both the Saxon and Norman periods 
 of Romanesque art in England has been 
 neglected. If we had a comprehensive and 
 fully illustrated account of our early art, it 
 would be seen that it is for us of extraordinary 
 interest and had much of great beauty. 
 
 The Romans must have left many churches 
 in our country, like the one whose foundations — 
 were uncovered in 1892 at Silchester. After 
 the beginning of the seventh century Christian 
 churches were erected once more all over the 
 land. This was at the time when Byzantine 
 traditions were strong in Rome and through- 
 out western Europe. The churches generally 
 were more or less basilican in type, either with 
 or without aisles according to their size; they 
 would have an apse at the east end and an 
 
 atrium court at the west. At the close of the 
 183 
 
184 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 seventh century St. Wilfrid built at Hexham 
 a church in the form of a round tower with 
 four arms; and at Athelney King Alfred built 
 another in the shape of a cross with rounded 
 ends—that is, a quatrefoilin plan. The abbey 
 church at Abingdon, erected in 675, was 
 120 feet long, and rounded at the west end as 
 well as at the east. The old cathedral of 
 Canterbury also had this form. It has been 
 assumed that this church was at first built 
 with an apse to the west, in the early Roman 
 manner, by St. Augustine, and that the eastern 
 apse was built at a later time “to turn the 
 church around,’’? when the eastern direction 
 had become customary. This type of plan 
 may first have arisen in this way; but many 
 churches of this form existed in an early time 
 in North Africa, and the cathedral of Canter- 
 bury may either have been built at first of this 
 form, or Augustine’s church may have been 
 entirely rebuilt subsequently. In any case 
 Abingdon was erected on this plan, and so 
 was the great church of St. Gall in Switzer- 
 land, and many later ones in Germany and 
 France. 
 
 A plan drawn in the ninth century of the 
 church at St. Gall, which shows this form, 
 is preserved; it has been doubted whether it 
 was actually built like this plan, but Addison, 
 who saw the church before it was destroyed, 
 seems to describe it so. Possibly the type 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 185 
 
 may have been introduced from England by 
 some of the early missionaries to Germany. 
 Up to about 900, Saxon architecture would 
 have been in the main based on early Christian 
 and Byzantine examples, after that time a 
 Carlovingian influence from the empire would 
 set in. Already, during the early period, a form 
 of braided and knotted decoration (fig. 34) 
 was practised in book decoration and in stone 
 carving; the same type of ornamentation is 
 known all over Christendom in the eighth and 
 ninth centuries, and in Rome itself much 
 work of the sort is found. In Saxon England 
 these patterns seem to appear at a very early 
 date, and they were worked out in infinite 
 varieties of complexity. It seems likely that 
 there must be some special cause for this, and 
 as very similar patterns appear in Coptic MSS. 
 it is possible that some special Eastern strain 
 was brought in by early monks, possibly in 
 the time of Theodore the Archbishop, who was 
 an Oriental. Some of the carvings of this 
 type, with which the vine is associated, as on 
 fragments of crosses in the library of Durham 
 Cathedral, are of extraordinary beauty, and 
 cannot be matched, so far as I know, anywhere 
 else in Europe. Another mystery in regard 
 to these crosses is the figure sculpture with 
 which some of them are adorned. The great 
 cross still standing at Bewcastle, and another 
 at Ruthwell, are adorned with figure sculptures 
 
186 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 of Christ standing on the dragon, of the flight 
 into Egypt, and of other biblical scenes, which 
 are most remarkable in the history of medizval 
 sculpture if the crosses are (and there seems to 
 be little room for doubt) as early as they are 
 said to be. Rivoira, without arguing the 
 proofs for an early age, assigns them to the 
 twelfth century, when figure sculpture in stone 
 was becoming common in Europe. It may 
 be remarked that these sculptures a good deal 
 resemble those of early ivories, and I can only 
 suggest that a fashion arose here of carving 
 these crosses like ivories. After the time of 
 Charlemagne the new school of German 
 Romanesque must have strongly influenced 
 our Saxon architecture. The abbey church 
 of Ramsay, built 968-74, was cruciform, with 
 a central tower and a smaller one at the west 
 end. Winchester Cathedral, built in 980, 
 probably had the same form. It had a crypt, 
 a fine tower with a weathercock, and a 
 vestibule. It has been suggested that a 
 view of the church appears in the background 
 of one of the illuminations of the Benedictional 
 of St. Ethelwold, its builder. The churches 
 at Athelney and Hexham, mentioned above, 
 must have been very interesting examples of 
 the central type of plan. 
 
 The noble eleventh-century (?) Church of the 
 Holy Cross at Quimperlé in Brittany is a later 
 and much larger example of the central form, 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 187 
 
 and possibly the last of the type built in 
 western Europe. Of Saxon churches existing 
 wholly or in part, several have apses. That 
 of the church at Wing is seven-sided, not 
 rounded, and is thus Eastern rather than 
 Roman. St. Frideswide, Oxford, had three 
 parallel apses. Many fine towers exist, of 
 which that at Barnack is the most beautiful. 
 This retains a precious little window of an 
 early type, having a braided lattice pierced 
 in a thin slab of stone. 
 
 On the plan of the church of St. Gall the 
 towers are shown as circular in plan, like the 
 earlier towers at Ravenna. The early church 
 at St. Riquier in north France also had circular 
 towers. The church at Abingdon which 
 we have mentioned is described in the tenth 
 century as having a round tower. The 
 well-known round towers of Ireland belong - 
 to the same tradition. The famous leaning 
 tower of Pisa is a late and ornate member of 
 the same family. 
 
 One curious type of plan was that in which, 
 as Mr. Micklethwaite put it, the tower “itself 
 is the body of the church,” a small addition 
 to the east made a chancel; or there might 
 be two extensions, one to the east and the 
 other to the west. The church of Barton-on- 
 Humber, where the large Saxon tower and the 
 western extension remain, was of this type. 
 Several Norman churches (notably Ifiley) 
 
188 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 which have only one span, with a tower cover- 
 ing the space in front of the presbytery, follow 
 the same tradition. In the centrally planned 
 churches the central dome or tower might 
 very well come to represent the church itself. 
 According to Enlart, the central tower of a 
 church was sometimes called domus are in 
 early French texts. It seems possible that 
 when the eleventh-century description of the 
 Confessor’s church at Westminster begins by 
 saying that the domus are was very high it 
 refers to the lantern tower rather than to the 
 presbytery as is usually supposed. 
 
 Several of the Saxon churches which prob- 
 ably belong to the eleventh century have rude 
 little pilaster-strips at intervals; these seem 
 to be derived from the German churches, many 
 of which have such strips at the angles and at 
 intervals, but much more systematically done 
 than the English work. The tower of Somp- 
 ting church has four gables in German fashion. 
 Again, the mid-wall shaft with corbel capital 
 spreading to the thickness of the wall is also 
 a German, and ultimately a Byzantine, feature. 
 Two flying angels carved over the chancel arch 
 of the church at Bradford-on-Avon have their 
 hands veiled in a manner often found in 
 Byzantine art of the eleventh century. To 
 the same age probably belongs the fine stone 
 crucifix at Romsey Abbey. We may suppose 
 that it occupied a place on the west gable of 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 189 
 
 the church similar to the defaced crucifix over 
 the west door of the church of Headbourn- 
 worthy, not far away. 
 
 A very large number of carved stone crosses, 
 grave-slabs and fonts, as well as an endless 
 number of fragments, exist which belong to 
 the Saxon period. The Alfred Jewel, and other 
 examples of goldsmiths’ work, the coins, the 
 embroideries from St. Cuthbert’s coffin at 
 Durham, and many wonderful painted books, 
 all show that in Saxon days ; 
 we had here a fine school of 
 art maintaining close touch 
 with what was done on the 
 Continent. Many carved 
 stones which show a cruder 
 and more savage type of 
 art are largely Danish and 
 Norse, similar types are found in Scandinavia. 
 
 The quatrefoil early appears in Saxon work, 
 and it became such a favourite form that one 
 is tempted to consider it a Saxon contribution 
 to Kuropean art. The quatrefoil was a cross 
 with rounded ends, and the form was used in 
 early Christian fonts. It first appears in the 
 west on the coins of Offa, 757-96. It occurs 
 as a frame for little subjects on the Winchester 
 embroideries, c. 912, now at Durham, and 
 from the tenth century it is frequently found 
 in the decorations of English MSS. By the 
 eleventh century it seems to have been adopted 
 
 
 
190 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 into building, for windows and loopholes of 
 this form appear in the illuminations of MSS., 
 and on the Bayeux tapestry, which is almost 
 certainly an English work (fig.- 89). 
 
 The trefoil arch also makes an early and 
 prominent appearance in Anglo-Saxon works. 
 It occurs on the Missal of Jumiéges, written 
 in nit about 1015 (fig. 40), and, curi- 
 ously, the earliest regular 
 trefoil arches I know of 
 in Norman buildings 
 us| were those over some 
 
 - ‘windows in the destroyed 
 | Salle des Chevaliers at 
 (4 Jumiéeges. Trefoil arches 
 are also represented on 
 44 the Bayeux tapestry 
 (fig. 39). In English 
 ~ buildings the trefoil is 
 
 found on the side door 
 of Ely Cathedral, and over some sculptured 
 panels of the twelfth century at Lincoln. 
 Fig. 41 is a doorway from the east of France. 
 
 A remarkable example is the early Gothic 
 west door of Byland Abbey. The question 
 arises whether the trefoil arch is a variety of 
 the Arab lobed arch discussed above, or 
 whether it originated independently in the 
 West as half a quatrefoil. On Saracenic 
 ivories foiled forms are frequently found, and, 
 on the whole, I am disposed to think that the 
 
 
 
 Bia. 40. 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 191 
 
 foiled arch and the foiled circle are Eastern 
 features. A remarkable example of the tre- 
 foil-arch is found in the thirteenth-century 
 porches of Bourges Cathedral; here the 
 bottom lobes are complete, as in Moorish 
 arches. Still farther north, at Tournay, I 
 have seen two doorways with trefoil arches 
 which are distinctly Saracenic. 
 
 A strong Saracenic element was absorbed 
 into Western art in the early Middle Ages. 
 The bringing over of Arabic numerals is an 
 example of what may have 
 happened in the arts. The 
 most marked instance of Arab 
 influence is furnished by the 
 imitation of Cufic writing as 
 decoration, a fashion which 
 obtained all over Christendom LIGREN 
 in the eleventh and twelfth ~ fF. 4. 
 centuries. The carved wooden 
 doors of Le Puy are famous because of it, and 
 the ornament appears in English twelfth- 
 century decorations of MSS. A sharp, crisp 
 type of carving which spread over the West 
 about the middle of the twelfth century seems 
 to have been imitated from Saracenic ivories. 
 The pointed arch, as already said, was adopted 
 from the East, so also was the building of arches 
 in recessed orders with nook-shafts in the 
 jambs. Interlacing arches, which became 
 such a favourite feature in Norman archi- 
 
 
 
 
 
192 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 tecture, are found ina highly developed form 
 at Cordova in the ninth century. They 
 appear first in the north as ornamentation 
 drawn in Saxon books from about A.p. 800. 
 
 The cusped arch, or rather the lobed arch— 
 for we may have to make a distinction if the 
 bottom lobe is complete, or if it springs as a 
 cusp—certainly originated in the East (fig. 
 29). It was extensively used at Cordova, and 
 was taken up into the Romanesque building 
 of the south-east of France. Then it strongly 
 affected the German school, and passed to 
 Normandy and England. Small lobed arches 
 are found on the facade of Ely Cathedral. 
 Spire design in the West was probably in- 
 fluenced to some degree in its development by 
 the Eastern minaret. The masonry strongly 
 banded together in two colours, which was so 
 popular in Italy, may have had an Eastern 
 origin. Patterns of Eastern stuffs were exten- 
 sively copiedin Western paintings and carvings. 
 The painted ceiling of Peterborough Cathedral 
 looks like an imitation of an Eastern rug. Zig- 
 zag ornamentation is likely to have been first 
 copied from Oriental fabrics. It is almost a 
 general rule that carved decoration imitated 
 painted ornament. Thus the “‘ tabernacle,”’ 
 which became a highly important architectural 
 feature throughout the Middle Ages, first 
 appears in painted books as a frame with an 
 arched top and indications of building above. 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 198 
 
 It showed that the action of the picture was 
 within doors. 
 
 The Norman form of Romanesque was 
 introduced into England when Edward the 
 Confessor rebuilt Westminster Abbey from 
 about 1050 to 1066. Chroniclers say that no 
 church like it had before been seen. Some 
 years ago I suggested that it was probably 
 copied from the Abbey of Jumiéges, and 
 further research has proved this to be the case. 
 It seems probable that the king brought 
 masons from Normandy to build it. The 
 church was cruciform, with aisles to the nave 
 and presbytery, which had two bays, and an 
 apse. The side aisles were also terminated 
 by apses. Over the crossing was a high tower. 
 The aisles, and probably the central span as 
 well, were vaulted. At the west end was a 
 “ vestibule.”? The abbey church at Jumiéges 
 had been begun in 1040. In its turn it had 
 followed the type of the church at Bernay, 
 begun about 1020. This fine early church, in 
 a little decayed town half-way between Rouen 
 and Caen, is now used as a corn store, but it is 
 a most important monument for the history of 
 northern architecture. It is cruciform, and 
 had three apses, which are destroyed. 
 
 _ The three churches just described—Bernay, 
 Jumiéges, Westminster—were planned with 
 parallel apses. A new and splendid type of 
 plan, in which the apse is built on columns, 
 <é | 
 
194 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and thus opened out to a surrounding 
 ambulatory, was brought into England at 
 Canterbury and Winchester about 1075, The 
 early Norman churches frequently had 
 galleries in the transepts supported on vaults 
 at the height of the aisle vaults. This was 
 so at Jumiéges, Westminster, Canterbury, and 
 probably at Lincoln and elsewhere. This 
 scheme brought columns into the spaces be- 
 tween the great crossing piers centrally in 
 front of each transept; that is, the nave 
 arcade was continued across the transepts. 
 This may have given rise to the alternation 
 of piers and columns frequently found in nave 
 arcades, or it may have confirmed the tendency 
 to form groups (see above, p. 146). The 
 transeptal gallery must have been a remarkable 
 feature. Sometimes it was reduced to fill a 
 single bay at the end of each of the transepts. 
 The triforium story was often formed into a 
 gallery having a second vaulted roof, being 
 lighted by a tier of windows above the aisle 
 windows. 
 
 The vestibule at the west front was an 
 important feature at this time. It is men- 
 tioned, as we have seen, in the description 
 of Ethelwold’s church at Winchester, built 
 c. 980, and also at Westminster, built c. 1050. 
 At Ely and Bury St. Edmunds the western 
 bays of the churches were treated separately 
 from the nave. Over the centre stood, in 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 195 
 
 each case, a large western tower, beneath which 
 was the entrance; that is, the base of the tower 
 formed a great porch. This western bay was 
 also extended north and south of the general 
 width of the church, thus giving a very wide 
 and important facade. At Winchester, too, 
 the Norman church, built c. 1080, had a similar 
 central western tower. At Lincoln Cathedral 
 the western bay probably formed a fine 
 vestibule. Tewkesbury Abbey has some indi- 
 cations of a similar disposition. At Peter- 
 borough the cathedral was begun with a 
 vestibule, but before the west front was built 
 the fashion had passed away, and it was 
 modified into an enormous open western 
 porch. Westminster, as built by the Con- 
 fessor, seems to have had two western towers. 
 At Exeter two great towers stand over the 
 transepts. 
 
 Some of these Norman churches were 
 entirely vaulted. The early description of 
 the Confessor’s church at Westminster sug- 
 gested that it may have had high central vaults 
 as well as vaulted aisles. The Conqueror’s 
 small chapel in the White Tower is wholly 
 vaulted. The apse and probably the whole 
 presbytery at St. Albans were covered by 
 vaults. The nave of Lincoln Cathedral was 
 vaulted from 1141. Durham Cathedral, 
 designed about 1090, appears to have been 
 prepared for vaulting throughout, and here 
 
196 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 the aisle vaults, built about 1095, have ribs. 
 These may have been the earliest vaults with 
 regular diagonal ribs ever erected in western 
 Kurope. The type became the characteristic 
 vault of Gothic architecture, and only a few 
 years ago ribbed vaulting was thought to be 
 a special mark of the Gothic style. 
 
 At Quimperlé in Brittany the centre of the 
 round church is sustained by four large piers, 
 and the middle space is covered by a vault 
 having four diagonal arches. It has been 
 rebuilt, but there seems to be little doubt 
 that it follows the old form. At Bayeux 
 Cathedral, dedicated 1077, the space below the 
 north-west tower is vaulted on two arches 
 crossing from the centre of the sides, not from 
 the angles. Both these seem to be earlier 
 than the vaults at Durham; and at Montefias- 
 cone in Italy are some ribbed vaults which 
 Rivoira claims to have been built in 1032. 
 At Zara in Dalmatia is a vault on diagonal 
 ribs which by an inscription is dated 1105. 
 There are columns in the angles and “‘ from the 
 capitals spring two heavy diagonal ribs of 
 plain squared stone underlying a vault which 
 is almost a dome in construction.” 
 
 It is curious that from the first introduction 
 of ribbed vaulting into England, there was a 
 tendency to divide the apse vault into three 
 compartments by two ribs abutting against 
 the centre of the arch. It was so at Durham. 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 197 
 
 The early crypt under the south transept at 
 Christchurch has such ribs in the apse and 
 not elsewhere. So has the old Norman 
 church at Birkin, Yorkshire. This fact, taken 
 together with others, may dispose us to think 
 that the ultimate source for ribbed vaults 
 was from Eastern ribbed domes, although the 
 more general supposition is that they were 
 first used under the intersections of cross- 
 vaults. 
 
 At the end of the eleventh century there 
 was a fashion in church-building to dispose 
 stones of two or more colours in patterns. 
 The dormitory at Westminster, Worcester 
 Cathedral, and Exeter Cathedral had alternate 
 layers in parts of the interior like piers and 
 arches. The tympana of the triforium arches 
 at Chichester have three or more colours 
 arranged in patterns. 
 
 The interiors of the great Norman churches 
 were fully painted with scenes, figures and 
 patterns. At St. Albans, high up on 
 the choir walls, are some big figures, and the 
 arches are covered with bands and zigzags. 
 At Canterbury one crypt chapel still retains 
 its entire scheme, covering walls, vaults and 
 pillars. At Ely, Chichester, Romsey and 
 other places there are fragments from which 
 a general scheme may be imagined. A 
 church was not properly finished, at any time, 
 until it was painted; and these Norman 
 
198 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 churches inherited much of the Byzantine 
 custom of making the interior into a great 
 painted Bible. Doorways and other parts 
 of the exterior were also frequently painted. 
 Figure sculpture was not in general use until 
 the end of the twelfth century. The door- 
 way at Rochester, and the band of sculpture 
 on the west front of Lincoln, can hardly be 
 earlier than about 1170. 
 
 These mighty Norman churches when fresh 
 from the hands of the various artists who built 
 and adorned them must have been very 
 marvellous works of art. 
 
 English Norman building was in the very 
 front of the advance of architecture leading 
 up to the Gothic, although in the actual 
 achievement we fell behind. More great 
 churches were built in England between 1066 
 and 1150 than anywhere else. Ribbed vault- 
 ing, during this time, became much more 
 common in English churches than on the 
 Continent, and several other features were 
 developed here. I may instance the fine 
 circular chapter house at Worcester; at 
 Woodstock there was also a circular chapel, 
 and a small one still exists at Ludlow Castle. 
 This tradition seems to have led up to the 
 characteristic English Chapter house, no 
 parallel to which is to be found abroad. 
 Round churches were built by others than 
 Templars—for example, the round church at 
 
SAXON AND NORMAN SCHOOLS 199 
 
 Cambridge, and St. John’s, Clerkenwell. Inter- 
 lacing arcades were also highly developed here. 
 There is a remarkable example in the wall 
 arcading at Castle Rising, and at Romsey 
 there is a triforium opening filled with inter- 
 lacing arches in which the builders had really 
 anticipated the invention of bar tracery, if 
 they had only known it. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 GOTHIC BUILDING IN FRANCE—THE ARCHI- 
 TECTURE OF ENERGY 
 
 Tuer form of medizval society in Western 
 Christendom was perfected in the thirteenth 
 century. This was the great age of theological 
 philosophy, of monastic expansion, of the 
 organization of town communities, craft- 
 guilds and universities, as well as of artistic 
 fruition. A little earlier society was violent 
 and architecture inchoate, a little later the 
 forces of disruption appeared and romantic 
 Gothic was to give way to merchant Gothic. 
 
 The architecture of the right moment 
 answers in the most extraordinary way to 
 our general ideas regarding the time; it isa 
 crystallization of the Age of Romance. 
 
 The early part of the twelfth century was 
 a time of great architectural ferment when 
 several of the Romanesque schools of art 
 seem to have started out in conscious rivalry 
 to race for the lead. The school of the Ie 
 de France took the first place about 1125, 
 
 and Paris soon became the centre of medizval 
 200 
 
FRENCH GOTHIC 201 
 
 thought and art—the culture capital of Europe. 
 Out of the intense furnace of ideas was to 
 run the pure gold of a new style which is 
 probably the most original of all theories of 
 building. It is impossible to explain in words 
 the content of perfect Gothic art. It is 
 frank, clear, gay; it is passionate, mystical 
 and tender; it is energetic, clear, sharp, 
 strong and healthy. It would be a mistake 
 to try to define it in terms of form alone; 
 it embodied a spirit, an aspiration, an age. 
 The ideals of the time of energy and order 
 produced a manner of building of high in- 
 tensity, all waste tissue was thrown off, and 
 the stonework was gathered up into energetic 
 functional members. These ribs and bars 
 and shafts are all at bowstring tension. A 
 mason will tap a pillar to make its stress 
 audible; we may think of a cathedral as so 
 “high strung” that if struck it would give 
 a musical note. 
 
 The ground plan of a cathedral was slowly 
 developed by ceaseless experiment in adjust- 
 ing the parts so as to obtain maximum eflfici- 
 ency. A large French chevet in which a 
 group of five or seven chapels stand about 
 the central apse is a triumph of art—a 
 perfect thing. A plan is the foundation and 
 -key of the whole construction. The enjoy- 
 ment of a plan is an aptitude which will hardly 
 come without considerable comparative study, 
 
202 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 but the expert finds in it the theme and plot 
 of a whole drama of building. 
 
 Churches of the first class in the thirteenth 
 century were built to be covered by stone 
 vaults, which vaults were membered—that 
 is, made up of stronger supporting ribs and 
 thinner webs filling between them; each 
 ‘bay’? or compartment being a sort of 
 stone pavilion. These radiating ribs gathered 
 up the weight and thrust at given points 
 above tall and slender supports. The plan- 
 ning was thus the resultant of a sum of 
 several exigencies. The site gave one con- 
 dition, the size another, the necessities of 
 _ vaulted construction a third, lighting another, 
 and soon. Now, especially in a stone-covered 
 church, the width may not be increased too 
 recklessly, whereas the addition of length is 
 easy. Yet obviously an interior may not be 
 drawn out into too long a tunnel. Lateral 
 annexes may, however, be added, especially 
 opposite a central point, and such transepts 
 not only increase the volume of the building, 
 but, standing in opposition to the long central 
 vault, they form supports to it. That this 
 constructive expedient should also contain 
 a symbol was a reason for the universality 
 of the great cruciform church type. The 
 long rows of arcades which support the vaults 
 gather up a thrust against the outer end walls. 
 It thus became reasonable to place towers at 
 
FRENCH GOTHIC __208 
 
 the west front, the external termination of 
 the longest ranks. At the east end the wall, 
 turning in an apse, forms a kind of horizontal 
 arch resisting expansion from within. Great 
 churches frequently have towers also at the 
 transept ends. The plan of a church was a 
 thing strictly conditioned. Up to a point in 
 architectural history, the planning of great 
 churches, as has been said, was a matter of 
 experiment, of adjustment and development 
 within narrow boundaries, and the solution 
 found was practical, geometrical and tradi- 
 tional. 
 
 This is true equally of the whole structure; 
 a great church was not an essay in “ design ”’ 
 for the satisfaction of “‘ taste,’’ it had been 
 developed organically, and in the earlier time 
 especially the organism was sound. When 
 we speak of organic architecture, of active 
 stonework and balance of forces, we have 
 most in mind the medizval masons’ daring 
 use of the arch as a means of construction. 
 The arch at its simplest is a wonderful con- 
 trivance; it is a bow always tending to expand. 
 If you bend a piece of cane into an arch be- 
 tween two piles of books, the books have to 
 be heavy enough or they will be pushed 
 asunder by the elastic bow. An arch is 
 perfectly safe, and, indeed, inactive, as long 
 as it is imprisoned, but let the restraining 
 forces be an ounce too little and it will break 
 
 ; 
 
204 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 out like water through too weak a dam, and 
 a moving arch is as terrible as a flood. The 
 medieval builders, when they had found 
 their theory of construction, did not lock 
 up their arches in great masses of masonry, 
 like the Roman architects, but they set arch 
 to fight arch, until two, four, eight or a dozen 
 were balanced on one slender pier. They 
 cross like the jets from a fountain, and spread 
 Jike the branches of great trees so that old 
 writers really thought that the architecture 
 had been suggested by avenues in a wood. 
 
 The branching arches of the high vault 
 were constantly exercising an expanding 
 pressure against the walls of the clerestory, 
 which themselves were suspended above the 
 tall arches of the interior. To counter- 
 balance this other arches were built in the 
 open air, reaching up from the low side walls 
 of the outer aisles and forming props to the 
 central span. These flying buttresses, as 
 they have been well called, were surely an 
 extraordinary invention. In many French 
 churches there are two tiers of these, which 
 spring from tall, heavy pinnacles. 
 
 The design of the superstructure of a great 
 church was conceived as a problem in equili- | 
 brium. The builders made an effort to do all 
 that might be done in stone, and the possi- 
 bilities of rearing stones one upon another 
 were explored to the utmost. The structure, 
 
FRENCH GOTHIC 205 
 
 as Morris has well put it, became organic. 
 This was the law of growth in Gothic archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 The conception of a building as made up 
 of an inert enclosing wall, pierced with holes 
 for light, and with a roof quietly resting on 
 it like a lid, the ruling data for many a noble 
 building of other days, gave place to the 
 thought of a structure which should be con- 
 tinuous throughout, and energetic in every 
 part. The wall gathered itself up into tense 
 shafts and piers, from which branched the 
 ribs of the vault; the windows spread, to 
 occupy the whole curtain of wall between 
 the shafts, and in doing so almost inevitably 
 became many-mullioned and traceried; the 
 body thus became all post and space, a cage 
 of stone. 
 
 From another point of view a Gothic 
 cathedral may be compared to a great cargo- 
 ship which has to attain to a balance between 
 speed and safety. The church and the ship 
 were both designed in the same way by a 
 slow perfecting of parts; all was effort acting 
 on custom, beauty was mastery, fitness, size 
 with economy of material. Originality was 
 insight for the essential and the inevitable. 
 Proportion was the result of effort and train- 
 ing, it was the discovered law of structure, 
 and it may be doubted if there be any other 
 basis for proportion than the vitalizing of 
 
206 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 necessity. Nothing great or true in build- 
 ing seems to have been invented in the sense 
 of wilfully designed. Beauty seems to be 
 to art as happiness to conduct—it should 
 come by the way, it will not yield itself to 
 direct attacks. | | 
 
 A noble building, indeed any work of 
 art, is not the product of an act of design 
 by some individual genius, it is the outcome 
 of ages of experiment. The essence of a 
 Gothic cathedral is its structure, not its 
 adornments, though never so beautiful. A 
 ship, like a cathedral, was decorated, but the 
 ornament is not necessary to either, it is a 
 gift over and above. The great ship had 
 a colossal figurehead, luxuriance of scrolly 
 carving around the poop, extravagance of 
 gilding, and profusion of fluttering flags. 
 The cathedral had much wealth of sculptures, 
 paintings, stained glass, embroideries, gold 
 and silver treasure. These things, it is true, 
 were a part of the means of teaching and of 
 ritual tradition, but they do not make up 
 the essential cathedral. In one sense they 
 were merely superadded, like the music and 
 incense; in another, it is true, they themselves 
 furnished real data to the builders. Thus a 
 cathedral, in one aspect, was a stone shrine 
 made with enamels of storied glass, in another 
 it had to provide great stone avenues for 
 stately processions, in which the whispering 
 
FRENCH GOTHIC 207 
 
 and wailing organ might speak, and the cloud 
 of incense might ascend. The cathedral 
 satisfied all these conditions and others, and the 
 response to noble requirements became a part 
 of its own loveliness. Yet, as the ship beneath 
 the bunting was a balanced structure of wood, 
 and as the effort was always to get the utmost 
 result from given means, so the great cathedral 
 was a balanced structure of stone which found 
 its perfected form at the limits where men 
 could do no more. Thus it was that a cathe- 
 dral was not designed, but discovered, or 
 *‘ revealed.”’ Indeed building has been found 
 out—like speech, writing, the use of metals— 
 hence a noble architecture is not a thing of 
 will, of design, of scholarship. A true archi- 
 tecture is the discovery of the nature of things 
 in building, a continuous development along 
 some line of direction imposed by needs, 
 desires and traditions. 
 
 We used to be told that Gothic architecture 
 was largely the result of the East acting on 
 the West, mainly through the Crusades ; 
 Wren thought it should be called Saracenic. 
 It has been the intermediate fashion to 
 discard large views, and to work at particular 
 areas and details, but it is probable that we 
 shall have to come back a little way towards 
 the earlier position. We have already spoken 
 of the transmission of Eastern forms to the 
 West in and before the twelfth century. 
 
208 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Much of the romance spirit which underlies 
 the literature and art of the early Middle 
 Ages seems to have been born of contact with 
 the East; and the development of the Saracen 
 schools of art was so parallel with those of 
 the West that it seems probable, as Prof. 
 Petrie has suggested, that both belong to the 
 same great cycle. 
 
 In all, and behind all forms, Gothie art 
 is a spirit, the expression of “an energy of 
 the soul,’ and the art refuses to be driven 
 as a whole under the yoke of any single 
 formula. Attempts are frequently being made 
 to measure it by “ definition,” and the art 
 is relentlessly cut down where it does not 
 fit this foot-rule, but such attempts are a 
 mere logical pitfall. 
 
 In 1140 the abbey church of St. Denis, a 
 few miles from Paris, was begun, and it was 
 pushed forward to completion in a few years. 
 Here the way which was to be followed by 
 subsequent builders seems to have been 
 found. It is the first building which we 
 may properly call Gothic. The noble 
 cathedrals of Paris, Chartres and Laon soon 
 followed; then the mighty culminating group 
 of Amiens, Bourges, Beauvais and Reims 
 were built, and a host of other churches, 
 smaller, but hardly less lovely. 
 
 The Gothic ‘style’? was of course not 
 merely a manner used for churches alone. 
 
FRENCH GOTHIC 209 
 
 The castles, town-walls and gates, bridges 
 and houses, were no less Gothic; sculpture, 
 painting, stained glass, were all members of 
 the one art. 
 
 With the fourteenth century came over- 
 elaboration and formalism. In the fifteenth 
 century much of the work done was ex- 
 tremely artificial and yet it was done with 
 such enjoyment that it was still fresh and 
 alive when in the sixteenth century it withered 
 up in face of a fashion of building brought in 
 by the Court from Italy. 
 
 Among the chief gifts of the great French 
 Gothic school to the world of architecture 
 was, first of all, the theory of energetic con- 
 struction, by which a cathedral became a 
 stone cage with films of stained glass suspended 
 in the voids, a marvellous jewelled lantern. 
 The most characteristic single feature is the 
 traceried window which sustains this stained 
 glass in thin bars of stone, vertical below, 
 and branching in the arch-spaces into inter- 
 lacing curves. The flying buttress is also a 
 highly specialized power in this architecture. 
 The intimate association of sculpture with 
 the building should be mentioned; especially 
 in the series of deep-linked porches with their 
 great statues, lesser imagery and_ foliage. 
 The spire was developed into a most remark- 
 able feature. Only by building stone roofs 
 - at a very steep angle can the rain be resisted, 
 
 fe) 
 
210 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 and it is desirable to hang bells high in the 
 air so that they may speak far. These were 
 the mechanical justifications for high steeples, 
 but the rearing of tall landmarks was, of 
 course, a manifestation of power and pride. 
 Moreover, they fall in with the most marked 
 zesthetic delight of the medizval builders— 
 delight in acute or intricate forms silhouetted 
 against the sky. These spires were pierced 
 through and through with belfry lights and 
 foiled openings, and set about with skeleton 
 pinnacles, so that the most astonishing effects 
 result when they are seen in sunlight against 
 ‘blue sky, or all grey in the late evening. 
 Tracery, pierced parapets, pinnacles, crockets, 
 ‘* tabernacles,”’ all show a similar liking for 
 open work seen against the sky. Every 
 medieval town at a distance showed a 
 fretwork of towers and spires. 
 
 The fairy architecture, the glory of the 
 stained glass, the might of the bells, 
 the sweet incense, the organ music and the 
 splendour of the altars and vestments, all 
 contributed to the most marvellous of all 
 dramas—medizval worship. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 ENGLISH GOTHIC 
 
 EncuisH Gothic is an offshoot from the 
 parent stock of France. There were at least 
 five moments from 1050 to 1250 when French 
 styles of building were imported into England, 
 and besides these there was continuous 
 influence. From 1050 the Confessor rebuilt the 
 abbey church of Westminster on the model 
 of the church at Jumiéges, and probably 
 brought Norman masons here to execute the 
 work. From 1066 a great outburst of Norman 
 building followed on the Conquest. In the 
 first half of the twelfth century the Cistercians 
 brought in their new ideals of architecture. 
 In 1174 the rebuilding of Canterbury Cathedral 
 was undertaken by a master from Sens. 
 Henry III began in 1245 to rebuild West- 
 minster Abbey on the model of the French 
 churches of the time, especially the cathedrals 
 of Reims and Amiens. As instances of 
 general influence we may mention that the 
 abbey church of Beaulieu, Hampshire, was, 
 so far as can be judged from the foundations, 
 practically a copy of that of Clairvaux; at 
 
 211 
 
212 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Minster in Kent, and other places on the 
 south coast, we find the rows of quatrefoils 
 under string mouldings which are so character- 
 istic in the architecture of Normandy; and the 
 west door of Rochester follows a French type. 
 
 Besides all this there were regular com- 
 mercial exchanges of works of art—black 
 tomb-slabs and fonts from Tournay : lead fonts 
 from Normandy: stained glass from Rouen: 
 enamelled effigies from Limoges: plate from 
 Paris. The inlaid floor before Becket’s shrine 
 at Canterbury is fine French work, c. 1220. 
 In turn we exported embroideries, and (after 
 1350) carved alabaster works. 
 
 Henry III loved the architecture of France, 
 and Robert de Bury, Bishop of Durham in 
 the fourteenth century, praises Paris as a 
 Paradise. Wren quite rightly says: ‘‘ We 
 copied Gothic architecture . . . from France, 
 the fashions of which nation we imitated in 
 all ages, even when we defied them!” 
 
 A transition leading up to Gothic was very 
 widespread by the middle of the twelfth 
 century; even before this time the master of 
 the church of Ernulph at Canterbury had 
 plainly aimed at refinement rather than at 
 boldness, a turning-point of style. The first 
 Cistercian architecture at Fountains and 
 other monastic houses is distinctly of a 
 transitional character. And it can hardly 
 be doubted that there was a direct develop- 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 213 
 
 ment of Gothic in the Cistercian.abbeys under 
 continuous French influence. Recent ex- 
 amination of Wells Cathedral, which was 
 being built in 1190, has convinced the writer 
 that it is built in the Cistercian tradition, 
 wholly, or almost, free from the influence 
 of Canterbury. Practically all the details (ex- 
 cepting the west front) come from Cistercian 
 sources. 
 
 The new fashion of cathedral-building in- 
 troduced at Canterbury Cathedral as rebuilt 
 from 1174 rapidly spread over England. The 
 Cathedral of Lincoln, begun about 1190, shows 
 close study of Canterbury, and in turn Lincoln 
 influenced Holyrood. All these had sexpartite 
 vaults; that is, beside the two diagonal ribs in 
 each bay there was a central transverse one 
 dividing each compartment into six, a favour- 
 ite French fashion. York, Beverley, and other 
 churches drew inspiration from Lincoln. 
 
 There may have been an _ independent 
 Gothic centre in the northern archbishopric. 
 Ripon Cathedral is said to have been begun by 
 Archbishop Roger, who ruled from 1154 to 
 1181. But there is no reason for putting it 
 so early as Canterbury. Indeed, if it was 
 only begun by Roger, we may assume that 
 he did not live to carry it far, and that the 
 beginning of the work was about the year 
 1180. Roche Abbey is as early as, or earlier 
 than, Ripon, and it is probable, on the whole, 
 
214 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 that this. northern school: of Gothic was 
 developed at the Cistercian centres inde- 
 pendently of Canterbury, but, of course, as an 
 offshoot from the Gothic of France. There 
 is some other evidence for direct French action 
 on Yorkshire, although it may be that York 
 followed the lead of Canterbury in turning to 
 France for new inspiration. However, there is 
 little that cannot be accounted for by the 
 Cistercian tradition. A fine sculptured door- 
 way, fragments of which exist at St. Mary’s, 
 York, is almost accurately French. A splendid 
 fragment of a stained glass Jesse tree which is 
 preserved in York Cathedral must have been 
 almost a duplicate of windows at Chartres and 
 St. Denis. As such a subject, it may be noted 
 in passing, belongs to the cycle which would 
 have filled the eastern windows above the 
 altar, the fragment doubtless belonged to 
 one of those which originally lt Roger’s 
 presbytery. At Bridlington, among the frag- 
 ments, are some remarkable carved capitals 
 which are in a foreign manner. There is 
 also in this church a fine black grave-slab 
 imported from Tournay. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, begun in 1245, opened 
 a second chapter in our English Gothic. Its 
 windows, which were copied from Reims and 
 Amiens Cathedrals, were quickly imitated 
 all over the country. Its flying buttresses, 
 with their double tiers of arches, were copied 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 215 
 
 at St. Albans, and its sculptured door was 
 imitated at Lincoln. The plan was repeated 
 at Hailes Abbey, and the chapter house and 
 cloister were closely copied at Salisbury. 
 The most of our transitional and Karly Gothic 
 works may be classed as belonging to (1) the 
 Cistercian school; (2) the Canterbury school ; 
 (3) the Westminster school. 
 
 We must consider in some detail the 
 characteristics of Gothic building through a 
 knowledge of which the age of any particular 
 work may be told at sight. A _ transition 
 leading towards Gothic is visible in works 
 built about 1150, and the Gothic manner of 
 building lingered on until the middle of the 
 sixteenth century. We may thus give to the 
 Gothie style a total period of four centuries. 
 In 1348-13850 occurred the great plague called 
 the Black Death, which cast its shadow over 
 all the arts so that they never recovered their 
 earlier sweetness and elasticity of style. 
 From this time Later Gothic begins, and it is 
 well to remember the date, 1350, as the key 
 to the chronology of English art. By putting 
 two centuries in front of it we get 1150, the 
 date of beginning, and adding two centuries 
 we obtain 1550 for the death date. 
 
 The various criteria of the progress of the 
 changing style were discriminated after a long 
 comparison of documents recording works 
 of building with the fabrics themselves. It 
 
216 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 was found that many works recorded as built 
 in the twelfth century were massive round- 
 arched buildings lighted by simple windows; 
 those of the thirteenth century were elegant, 
 with sharp pointed arches, and so with the 
 distinctive marks of the rest. Then, from 
 all these fixed points the general tendency in 
 the course of architecture could be inferred. 
 The curve, as it were, of architectural develop- 
 ment being once laid down, it became easy 
 to fit buildings of which no record exists into 
 their proper place. After a time certain 
 contradictions arose, and some works were 
 occasionally found at strife with the seeming 
 testimony of the records. In such cases 
 either the records may be wrong or misread, 
 or the examples in question are misunderstood ; 
 they may have been belated, or have belonged 
 to an eddy of style. Gradually assurance 
 grows until an expert considers himself safe 
 in dating a building at sight, in most cases, 
 within ten years. 
 
 These styles, then, are but lengths marked 
 off on a continuous chain; there is no dis- 
 ruption or sudden change anywhere, but a 
 constant merging of what was into what was 
 to be. We use the word style, also, in a 
 larger sense as the Romanesque style, or 
 the Gothic. A style-development in this 
 sense, from its infancy to maturity, is the 
 coming of another summer of art. 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 217 
 
 The terminology relating to the history of 
 medizval architecture has fallen into some 
 confusion. Although the matter may be 
 thought to be only one of words, the present 
 lack of agreement must be as puzzling and 
 disheartening to the student as irritating 
 to the scholar. 
 
 Every one acknowledges that where there 
 has been a process of continuous develop- 
 ment, as was the case with medieval archi- 
 tecture, all delimitation into periods is arbi- 
 trary. There may have been quicker and 
 slower moments of change, but any attempt 
 to deal with these by tracing them to their 
 origins results in too great uncertainty and 
 confusion to make their periods the basis 
 of a scheme of classification. To take an 
 illustration: we must cut off the periods of 
 manhood from youth, and youth from child- 
 hood, arbitrarily or not at all. 
 
 The scheme that has been popular, and 
 which, I believe, has shown itself to be so 
 practically useful that it must persist, is 
 founded upon the necessity of relating some 
 striking characteristics in the art to the 
 centuries during which the varieties prevailed. 
 The terms Early English, Decorated, and 
 Perpendicular are by themselves, perhaps, 
 not very satisfactory, but as general descrip- 
 tions of the most typical forms of archi- 
 _ tecture prevailing during the three great 
 
218 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 centuries of the Medizeval Period they are 
 irresistible. We all began to “ discriminate 
 the styles”? by making these points firm. 
 No learner can grasp exactitudes at once in 
 such questions, and all attempts to make 
 ‘*Karly English” begin, say, in 1174 or 1189, 
 are quite vain. The student needs first an 
 anchorage in the centuries, for nothing beside 
 them is fixed, and unless this is accepted 
 every writer is drawn into refinements of his 
 own and anarchy. One quite gratuitous source 
 of confusion has been found in linking the 
 styles to the several kings. The date 1189 
 has been suggested for the beginning of 
 ‘Karly English” because Richard I began 
 to reign in that year. 
 
 With the forms of art prevailing in the three 
 great centuries have become firmly associated, 
 as above said, the names Early English, 
 Decorated, and Perpendicular. Now by ex- 
 tending the scheme, again by centuries, we 
 get from the year 1000 to the year 1600, the 
 easily remembered series of six periods 
 thus— 
 
 Kleventh century. . SAXON. 
 
 Twelfth century . . NORMAN. 
 Thirteenth century . Harty ENGLISH. 
 Fourteenth century . DECORATED. 
 Fifteenth century . PERPENDICULAR. 
 
 Sixteenth century . . TupDor. 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 219 
 
 There is a slight awkwardness in that three 
 of these names are descriptive, while the others 
 are historical, but for the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries it would be easy to follow 
 the model of “ Early English ” and to inter- 
 change (but not substitute) such terms as 
 Mature English or Middle Pointed with 
 Decorated, and Late English with Perpen- 
 dicular. 
 
 It has often been rightly pointed out that 
 the process of change was too rapid for 
 the characteristics of the architecture of a 
 whole century to be fully covered by one 
 descriptive name. “ Early English,” being a 
 chronological term, would easily serve for the 
 thirteenth century, but not so the descriptive 
 term “ Lancet,” with which it is frequently 
 equated. Nor will “‘ Decorated”? well serve 
 for the whole of the fourteenth century, 
 although it describes the most striking type 
 of architecture in that century. Taking these 
 terms, however, as they stand, it appears that, 
 having fixed the broader terminology for the 
 centuries, we may go on to say that the more 
 characteristic forms of the styles so named 
 are found in every case during the first half 
 of each century, the latter half being a 
 transitional era. Thus, Norman to 1150, 
 Transition to 1200, Early English to 1250, 
 Transition to 1800, Decorated to 1350, Transi- 
 tion to 1400, Perpendicular to 1450, Transition 
 
220 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to 1500, Tudor to 1550. It happens that 
 several secondary terms in current use would 
 serve to define most of these transitional 
 half-century periods picturesquely, and with 
 substantial accuracy. Combining all into an 
 extended list of twelve periods, we get the 
 following, which forms a sort of Zodiac of 
 English architecture. Beginning with the 
 year 1000, the period 1000-1050 is Saxon; 
 1050 to 1100 is Early Norman; 1100-1150 is 
 Mature Norman; the period 1150-1200 is 
 known as The Transition (for works like 
 Canterbury we might say First Gothic); 1200— 
 1250 is Lancet; 1250-1300 is Geometrical; 
 and 1300-1350 is Curvilinear. For the period 
 1350-1400 we have-no convenient name 
 other than Late Decorated, unless for the 
 sake of symmetry we could tolerate some 
 new term like fretted, or tabernacled, or. 
 Chaucerian Gothic. 
 
 “Many subtill compassyngs, 
 As barbicans and pinnacles; 
 Imageries and tabernacles 
 I sawe, and full eke of windowis, 
 As flakis falling in grete snowis.” 
 
 The period 1400-1450 is represented by 
 the Mature Perpendicular, but if this term has 
 too wide a meaning to be limited to so short 
 a period, we might use Lancastrian (Henry 1V 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 221 
 
 succeeded in 1400). An old term, Rectilinear, 
 might well serve for the time from 1450-1500, 
 or we might also use Yorkist. 1500-1550 
 was Tudor. Beyond these twelve phases of 
 medizval art in England 1550-1600 was 
 Elizabethan, 1600-1650 was Renaissance. 
 The terms Norman, Early English, and the 
 Transition coming between the two, are 
 historical and self-explanatory; the others are 
 descriptive and need some further elucidation. 
 Lancet describes the simple pointed windows 
 in use before compound windows of tracery 
 were invented. Geometric, which followed, 
 describes the earliest form of traceried win- 
 dows, which were designed in simple com- 
 positions of foiled circles above lancet lights. 
 The next phase, Curvilinear, or Early Deco- 
 rated, marks a modification; the forms flowing 
 into one another in more complex shapes. 
 In Late Decorated, a highly ornate style, the 
 tracery tends to stiffen once more, a number 
 of vertical lines being introduced. This Late 
 Decorated, in a word, forms a transition to 
 the next phase, described from this charac- 
 teristic as the Perpendicular style. In Late 
 Perpendicular, or Rectilinear, vertical and 
 horizontal lines are still more strongly marked, 
 arches are flattened and enclosed in straight- 
 sided forms, and the whole surface is often 
 covered with panelled tracery. The Tudor 
 style carried on this manner with the growing 
 
222 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 intrusion of forms derived from the Renais- 
 sance architecture of the Continent. 
 
 The acceptance of such definitions of terms 
 will not at all tie the investigator who is 
 working at the origins of any particular phase 
 of style. The origin of Perpendicular, for 
 instance, may be pushed back to 1380, 1860 
 or 1840; the Decorated can be carried back 
 into Early English, and Early English into 
 Norman. When we consider any of these 
 separately we can enlarge their periods as 
 much as we like. But in a schedule of the 
 sequences of styles, Perpendicular, if it is to 
 mean anything fixed, must be held to begin 
 at midnight, December 31, 1399. We must 
 hold that up to that moment enough of the 
 earlier tradition survived to make Perpen- 
 dicular-like compositions really only Late 
 Decorated. In a similar way, summer has 
 to be violently divided from spring, and spring 
 from winter, whatever the weather may be 
 like. When we come to apply any system to 
 some given example there may sometimes 
 seem to be a difficulty. Thus, Canterbury 
 Cathedral, begun in 1174, is certainly Gothic. 
 However, there is no contradiction in allowing 
 that sporadic cases of First Gothic fell in 
 the Transitional Period. If our terms mean 
 anything fixed, we can somehow contrive to 
 be precise. The point to get clear is, that a 
 connection has been established by popular 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 223 
 
 usage between the three best-known style 
 names and the thirteenth, fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries. 
 
 Parker, in the Concise Glossary (1869), 
 divides the periods thus: Norman, 1066- 
 1189; Early English, 1189-1272; Decorated, 
 1272-1377; Perpendicular, c. 13850-c. 1500. 
 Sharpe, in his excellent essay, The Seven 
 Periods of English Architecture (1871), gives 
 the several styles periods which vary in 
 length from forty-five to one hundred and 
 ninety years, and begin and end at dates 
 which also are quite impossible to remember. 
 Thus: Saxon, up to 1066; Norman, 1066- 
 1145; Transitional, 1145-1190; Lancet, 1190— 
 1245; Geometrical, 1245-1315; Curvilinear, 
 13815-1360; Rectilinear, 1860-1550. To re- 
 capitulate the results which we may hope to 
 retain in our memory :— 
 
 The mid-point of Gothic architecture was 
 in 1350. In 1150 it began, in 1550 it ended. 
 The first two centuries were the period of 
 Early Gothic, the last two the period of Late 
 Gothic. The most characteristic phases of 
 the Norman, Early English, Decorated, Per- 
 pendicular, and Tudor styles fell in the 
 twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, and these names may — 
 stand more exactly for the styles as they were 
 in the first halves of those several centuries. 
 That this should be so agrees conveniently 
 
224 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 with the fact that the main points of beginning, 
 middle and end of the whole span of Gothic 
 fall in the middle of the twelfth, fourteenth 
 and sixteenth centuries. 
 
 The word Gothic was applied at the Renais- 
 sance to art which was not classical, but it 
 has come to mean the most characteristic 
 medizval art in western Kurope. An attempt, 
 however, has been made by a distinguished 
 writer, in an able study of the style, to 
 show that English work is not “ true Gothic,” 
 and that it has no claim to bear the same name 
 as the great French medieval art. And 
 he suggests that it might more properly be 
 called the Pointed style. It should be ad- 
 mitted that English work is inferior to the 
 most perfect ogival architecture of France, 
 but it is a mistake to define any class by the 
 qualities of its highest members. There is 
 room in the class for better and worse, even 
 for good and bad. It is a mistake, also, to 
 attempt to define Gothic art by a mere archi- 
 tectural formula. The word Gothic applies 
 to much more than architecture, and Gothic 
 architecture answered to a spirit, an atmo- 
 sphere, a moment and an environment. It 
 is the building style which responded to the 
 medizeval civilization in western Europe, the 
 centre of which was the Ile de France. But 
 this, of course, was not a centre without a 
 circumference. 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 225 
 
 The general perception of likeness has led 
 to giving the name of Gothic to a type of 
 building the traditions of which spread from. 
 the He de France, Picardy, and Champagne; 
 and the word has been in use in England for 
 three hundred years. If only the culminating 
 works of the thirteenth century in France 
 are to be called Gothic, what is the rest to be 
 named ? May we say Gothic of Burgundy 
 and of Normandy ? If so, why may we not 
 say Anglo-Norman, or English Gothic ? That 
 England was saturated with Frenchness in 
 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries need 
 not be said. According to a recent French 
 writer on Chaucer, his inspiration, his outlook 
 on life, the atmosphere, the framework of 
 his powers, are French—French of France, 
 Champagne, or Burgundy, not Norman or 
 Breton. ‘“ His spirit is French, like his name. 
 He descends in a straight line from our 
 trouvéres, and he has everything except their 
 tongue.” 
 
 We have no more claim to call our archi- 
 tecture Pointed than Gothic, for the logic 
 of pointed construction was best understood 
 at the Gothic centre. In England the round 
 arch lasted long, and as the style grew old 
 the arches tended to lose their points. As 
 everything was done better somewhere else, 
 should English work have any name at all ? 
 By the use of special definitions, contriving a 
 
 P 
 
226 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 ‘* fundamental difference,’”? anything may be 
 proved. i 
 
 On the other hand, some English writers 
 make over-patriotic demands for the inde- 
 pendence of English Gothic, and we are prone 
 to date our works too early where it is 
 not altogether impossible. Thus in Oxford 
 Cathedral, of which at least a part was dedi- 
 cated in 1180, most of the carved foliage 
 distinctly appears to be affected by the style 
 of the work begun in Canterbury in 1174; yet 
 in recent books we find its beginning put 
 somewhere near the middle of the century. 
 Examination of the fabric itself shows that 
 the small presbytery was first completed as 
 a separate work, and this is probably all. that 
 was dedicated in 1180. It might have been 
 begun as late as 1175. Part of the carving 
 in this presbytery is of an earlier type than 
 that at Canterbury, but much of it appears 
 to be later. 
 
 The nave of Rochester Cathedral, with its 
 sculptured west door, is assigned, in the most 
 recent and thorough study of the subject, 
 to about 1130, although to the present writer 
 it appears that it must be thirty or forty years 
 later. The search for variety of form, which 
 is obvious in the plans of the nave columns; 
 the carving of the fronts of the triforium 
 arches, which include small foiled panels; 
 the pointed arch of the passage at trifortum 
 
ENGLISH GOTHIC 207 
 
 level; the type of bay design, in which the 
 triforium story is included in the interior 
 height of the aisle; the west front, with its 
 sculptures, dog-tooth ornament, incipient tre- 
 foil arches, and other points, all show it to 
 be a transitional work. Whitby Abbey is 
 said to have been built early in the thirteenth 
 century, but the wall arcade of the transept 
 has tracery that cannot be earlier than 1250, 
 and it may be doubted whether the church 
 was begun much before the middle of the 
 century. Important parts of both Fountains 
 Abbey and Wells Cathedral have also been 
 pushed too far back. Merton College Chapel 
 has been dated c. 1270, but it has recently 
 been shown that it was built from 1294 to 
 1297. 
 
 French authors also make extravagantly 
 exorbitant demands on their side. Thus, 
 M. Emile Male has lately annexed all English 
 stained glass up to the fourteenth century. 
 Now, the Guthlac roll in the British Museum 
 is guaranteed by all experts to be an English 
 work of the latter end of the twelfth century, 
 and to be a set of designs for stained glass 
 windows. If technical designs for stained 
 glass of a high quality like these were made in 
 England, there must at the same time have 
 been a school of glass-workers here; and much 
 of our thirteenth and fourteenth century glass 
 is obviously not French. 
 
228 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Dr. M. R. James has given reasons for 
 thinking that the superb glass of Canterbury 
 choir was at least designed on a scheme drawn 
 up in England, and we know that stained glass 
 was made use of at Durham as early as the 
 time of Bishop Pudsey, who glazed the choir 
 of the cathedral. 
 
 The special contributions which were made 
 by the English school to the traditions of 
 Medieval Gothic art were: the octagonal 
 chapter house, of which that at Westminster 
 is the most perfect type; the working out of 
 several fine varieties of open timber roofs, 
 and the early elaboration of curvilinear 
 tracery, which possibly, to some degree, 
 reacted in forming the flamboyant stonework 
 of France. The ruling temper of English 
 Gothic at its high time is a spirit of sweetness 
 which contrasts with the soaring grandeur 
 of the French cathedrals. 
 
 The theory of stonework construction at 
 maximum stress was never perfectly grasped, 
 but still English work is truly Gothic. To 
 attempt to prove that it is not, is like 
 proving that a rustic isnoman. It can be 
 easily done by manipulating definitions, but 
 he remains a man after all. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE—ARCHITECTURE OF RHE- 
 TORIC AND ARCHITECTURE OF _ FIRST 
 PRINCIPLES 
 
 AFTER the Lombard invasion, and especially 
 after the establishment of the Empire of 
 Charlemagne, in the early Middle Ages, 
 northern Italy was split up into many city- 
 states which owed allegiance to the German 
 emperors; the only central power in Italy 
 was that of the Pope. When the medieval 
 culture, of which Dante was the perfect flower, 
 matured, Italy was already the most learned 
 country in Europe. Its artists and scholars 
 were in daily contact with the monuments of 
 the past, and they could do no other than look 
 back to the splendour that was Rome. As 
 the study of antiquity progressed, it was 
 perceived that the buildings of the “ Dark 
 Ages’? were of an entirely different spirit 
 from those of Rome. Raphael, an eager 
 antiquary, called them Gothic, by which he 
 meant that they had followed on the Gothic 
 invasions, including in this term alike the 
 architecture of seen the Goth in the 
 
230 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 sixth century and that of Countess Matilda 
 in the twelfth. These things were alien, 
 barbarous. They were builded evidence of 
 the conquest of the true Italians by the 
 ** Tedeschi.” 
 
 A revival of paren feeling, and of ancient 
 letters, necessarily carried along with it 
 an endeavour to resume the ancient and 
 glorious art of Rome. Thus the Renaissance 
 in Italy was a “ nationalist ’? movement and 
 a ““modernist ”’ one as well. According to the 
 new programme of learning every phenomenon 
 was to be studied and seen as it was. History, 
 science, antiquities, were all alike branches 
 of human knowledge. Withal Rome had 
 never passed out of sight. Theodoric had 
 issued orders for the protection of the city. 
 Here and there people still dwelt and wor- 
 shipped in Roman buildings; the writings 
 of Vitruvius had continued to be copied 
 as a mysterious guide in architecture ; and 
 such a medieval work as the Baptistery at 
 Florence was almost classical in largeness of 
 style and in the antique form of its details. 
 
 The Renaissance in Roman Italy was thus 
 a perfectly natural impulse, and was, indeed, 
 inevitable. Perhaps if it had taken some 
 different turning it might have been more 
 obviously beneficial; as it was, there was not 
 only eagerness to learn and to bring back 
 forgotten powers to architecture, but there 
 
THE RENAISSANCE 231 
 
 Was eagerness, as well, to forget what the 
 intervening time had gained. In _ looking 
 back, art loses its life. 
 
 Outside Italy, in Germany, France, and 
 England, the movement is less easily under- 
 stood. The court of the popes was the centre 
 of European culture, and the fashion to follow 
 the lead of the most advanced country sprang 
 up in all the other courts of Europe, so that 
 a great break with the near past was made. 
 This revolution was something like that which 
 has happened in modern Japan. One great 
 social consequence which such a change must 
 have, in Europe, or in Japan, is that art 
 becomes divorced from the people. Art had 
 been a common aptitude by which customary 
 needs were satisfied, but after such a disrup- 
 tion it was understood only by experts and 
 connoisseurs who themselves only thought 
 they understood. It is very confusing to 
 speculate why that which happened, and 
 ** was to be,” should be at war with life. The 
 Renaissance has led to noble expression in 
 individual arts where there was a second 
 inspiration as well as that of antiquity—the 
 sculptures of Michael Angelo, the portraiture 
 of Velasquez, the landscapes of Claude and 
 Turner—but in all these direct reference 
 to Nature comes in at the source. Such 
 refreshment was excluded from the purview 
 of the sanctioned architecture in the grand 
 
239 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 style. In early times, especially, very beauti- 
 ful mixed works were wrought, but the Roman 
 revival as a whole has proved arid and sterile, 
 nothing grows from it. It may be, but this 
 is the vaguest theory, that in this second- 
 hand dealing with Rome the influence of the 
 East has been too entirely strained out, and 
 that there must always be a circuit established 
 between East and West by which art may be 
 vitalized, as first at the beginning we found 
 Egypt, Europe, and Mesopotamia reacting 
 upon one another. 
 
 As another consequence of its remoteness 
 from the people Renaissance art came to be 
 thought of as a matter of pride and pretty 
 shapes, of taste and appearance. It was not 
 generally seen that great art like great science 
 is the discovery of necessity; although 
 Leonardo da Vinci—and in a less degree 
 Wren—did reach this concept of the meaning 
 of art. To discover this is to reach to the 
 universal in architecture and to a point of 
 view which looks on all styles as accidents of 
 an environment and a moment. All vital 
 schools, however, knew this instinctively, as 
 knowing no other. They did not theorize, 
 but built. 
 
 It must, I think, be admitted by those who 
 have in part understood the great primary 
 styles, Greek or Gothic, that the Renaissance 
 is a style of boredom. However beautiful 
 
THE RENAISSANCE 233 
 
 single works may be, it tends to be blind, 
 puffy, and big-wiggy; Louis Quatorze might 
 have said of the art of his court as he did of the. 
 state, “‘ It is myself.’’ Its highest inspiration 
 was good taste, it was architect’s architecture. 
 Splendid works were wrought even in the age of 
 its gloomy maturity by Peruzzi, Michael Angelo, 
 and Wren, but as a whole it seems to be the art 
 of an age of Indigestion. There are things in 
 Nature—a dewy morning, a snowy peak, a 
 clear stream—which are ever and again more 
 wonderful than we had remembered. A true 
 work of art always has something of this 
 surprising freshness; but the Renaissance as 
 a whole lacked the spirit of life. Gothic art 
 witnesses to a nation in training, hunters, 
 craftsmen, athletes; the Renaissance is the 
 art of scholars, courtiers, and the connoisseur- 
 ship of middlemen. 
 
 The Renaissance made itself felt in different 
 centres during the fifteenth century. At 
 Florence a beautiful mixed style which fol- 
 lowed traditional spacing and changed only 
 the forms of cornices and other details, pre- 
 vailed for a time. In Venice veneering 
 with marble, inlaying with porphyry and 
 the use of coloured materials in construction 
 was long continued from the earlier Byzantine 
 tradition. Only gradually, and by later 
 masters like Palladio, was the “ true antique ”’ 
 imposed as a dogma; it even seems to have 
 
7 
 
 234 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 been held in some half-realized way, that the 
 ‘‘ orders ’’ had been specially revealed as the 
 only absolute architecture; nothing else can 
 explain the awed devotion of the expounders 
 and commentators of the text of Vitruvius. 
 *It fell out, however, that the chief works 
 which had to be built were not columnar 
 temples, but palaces with enclosing walls. 
 The chief features of these had necessarily to 
 be windows, floors, staircases, just the things 
 for which there was least authority. In 
 adopting the precedents to these new condi- 
 
 ' tions there was at first considerable ingenuity 
 
 which gives an interest to the “style ’’; but 
 other factors, like roofs and chimneys, were 
 suppressed as much as possible as not being 
 quite respectable; although, to a northern 
 mind, the roof is.the most essential part of 
 a building—” roof”? and “chimney,” indeed, 
 are almost synonymous with home. As a 
 whole the building interest, the essential 
 centre of architecture, gave way to scholar- 
 ship and taste; knowledge of precedents took 
 the place of adventure. 
 
 On the other hand it seems as if the men of 
 the Renaissance first awoke to full conscious- 
 ness of their environment. The ruins of 
 Rome existed, but they had hardly been seen 
 for a thousand years. The wonderful Greek 
 temples of Pestum appear to have been 
 unnoticed even until about 1750. Travellers 
 
THE RENAISSANCE | 235 
 
 passed them by, and shepherds rested in 
 their shadow, but they seem to have been 
 taken for granted and observed only as the 
 goats observed them. The first enthusiasm 
 of the Renaissance must have been a won- 
 derful experience, when men like Donatello, 
 awakening to the idea “We are Romans,” 
 explored the Forum, and broke into the 
 chambers of the Great Baths, where they 
 studied the paintings and found noble marble 
 statues buried in the débris. 
 
 The great gift of the Renaissance would 
 seem to be the scientific spirit, and we prob- 
 ably owe to it larger ideas of civic order and 
 hygiene. The architects brought back many 
 of the lost powers of their art, and developed 
 certain factors like the staircase and the 
 balustrade. The art of engineering advanced 
 so swiftly that it has since broken away from 
 the general art of building to the detriment 
 of both. 
 
 On the one hand the Renaissance was a 
 rhetorical art, but on the other its artists 
 to some degree reconsidered first principles. 
 To go back to first principles in architecture 
 is, we are often told, impossible. Doubtless 
 it is to do so absolutely, but all schools of archi- 
 tecture have done it in some degree, and the 
 Renaissance, in the thought of the greatest 
 mind of its age, was to include an exhaustive 
 exploration of the first principles of all arts. 
 
 ~ 
 
236 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 The history of art is full of instances of return 
 to underlying principles. 
 
 Roman architecture, on its structural side, 
 was largely an art of first principles: the 
 early Christian and Byzantine schools of build- 
 ing divested themselves of nearly all that 
 was formula; and Gothic architecture sprang 
 up after the Cistercians had brought about 
 a large return to the structural elements of 
 building. Modern engineering, the noblest 
 architectural result of the Renaissance, is 
 almost entirely an art of first principles. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 THE MODERN POSITION 
 
 Axout the middle of the eighteenth century 
 the first ideal of the Renaissance, the desire 
 to be Roman, passed away. It had been a 
 fashion at courts and they tired of it. About 
 this time the monuments of Greek art were 
 discovered and described, and at home our 
 national architecture was rediscovered. Then 
 soon along the same line of Renaissance—the 
 essential idea of which is the attempt to pro- 
 duce an architecture by copying old external 
 forms—some English architects set about 
 being Greek, and later others became “ Gothic 
 men.’ After more than a century of these 
 mixed efforts to be Roman, Greek and Gothic, 
 efforts which necessarily fell short of the 
 earlier Renaissance because they lacked its 
 conviction and solidity, a still greater anarchy 
 of style arose. Some clever men varied Greek 
 by a slight tinge of Egyptian, others attempted 
 the Dutch house style, and others the Byzan- 
 tine church style. Some, again, attempted a 
 Renaissance of Wren’s Renaissance, and to- 
 
 day others—and this seems to be the last 
 237 
 
238 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 word—endeavour to bring about a Renais- 
 sance of Professor Cockerell’s Greek. 
 
 It was very natural for the enthusiastic 
 medizvalists who first studied our national 
 monuments to suppose that this architecture 
 was a matter of forms, proportions and details, 
 and that if these were observed and absorbed, 
 similar works might be produced out of due 
 time. When disappointment was felt with 
 the result of these attempts it was always 
 proposed to rectify any failing by still closer 
 study. Not the actual forms, but clever 
 adaptations of them, “in the spirit of the 
 original,’’ was to form the basis of the new 
 departure. Then it was seen that old work 
 was full of variations which seemed to be 
 accidents, and our contract workmen were 
 carefully instructed in jointing, tooling and 
 texture, so that their work might appear to 
 have the same old eager mastery; for still it 
 was thought that if the appearance were 
 reached ‘the essence itself of Gothicness must 
 be present. 
 
 About 1860 many gifted men seem really 
 to have thought that they were Gothic archi- 
 tects, and that they could supply thirteenth, 
 fourteenth and fifteenth century buildings at 
 demand. Thus they had little hesitation in 
 applying the process called “ Restoration ” 
 to our ancient buildings, for, if any part were 
 imperfect, they could make it good and as it 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 239 
 
 ought to be. They always, indeed, saw that 
 the restorations of other men, and even their 
 own, were failures as soon as they were 
 irrevocable, but they always hoped to be 
 truly Gothic next time. It was not seen that 
 as no man, by taking observation, may be 
 a Chinese or an Egyptian artist, so no man 
 might be Plantagenet or Edwardian at will. 
 Men of high genius like Victor Hugo, Ruskin 
 and Morris, early perceived the facts, but the 
 men who called themselves practical had to 
 shut their eyes to such disquieting literature. 
 Ruskin, for instance, in his chapter on “ The 
 Nature of Gothic ” wrote: “ Its elements are 
 certain mental tendencies of the builders 
 legibly expressed in it; it is not enough that 
 it has the form if it has not also the power 
 and the life. . . . Various mental characters 
 make up the soul of Gothic.” 
 
 Before passing to consider what might be 
 done—if anything can be done before the 
 hour strikes—it is desirable to examine 
 shortly two esthetic superstitions about 
 beauty in architecture which stand in the way 
 of our attaining it. One is the vague idea 
 of an abstract and absolute proportion, 
 whereas true proportion is always changing in 
 answer to changing conditions. Proportion, 
 properly, is the resultant of fitness. The 
 Greeks, as their temple architecture slowly 
 developed, came to think that a special 
 
240 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 virtue attached itself to dimensional simplicity, 
 that, if every part were related to every other 
 part by a simple scheme of fractions, a unity 
 would result, and that the temple in reaching 
 this unity would become a perfect thing. But 
 all such ideas necessarily break down where 
 building becomes more complex and is con- 
 ditioned by other needs than that of attaining 
 a sort of sacred perfection. Proportion of 
 this sort was in truth rather a satisfaction to 
 the mind than to the eye. Dante found 
 pleasure in building his poem according to 
 similar rules. Even to-day something of 
 the same feeling persists. We know that if 
 a room is a foot or two out of square, the 
 irregularity can hardly be seen, and if it is 
 a few inches only no one will ever notice it, 
 but, still, we do not like it so. We feel a satis- 
 faction in saying that a room is a double 
 square, or 80 x 20, yet it would be just as 
 good a room if it were 31 x 19. However, 
 these ideas are definite and clear, and they 
 can be applied to any simple structure like a 
 Greek temple. A modern architect might 
 design a tombstone with certain ratios, if he 
 cared, but he could hardly try to apply a 
 preconceived and arbitrary system to larger 
 problems. 
 
 Proportion, then, means either the result 
 of building according to dimensions having 
 definite relations one to another, or it means 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 241 
 
 functional fitness. It might be said, “ But 
 are not some relations more agreeable than 
 others, even if no exact explanation of them 
 can be given?”? The answer is twofold—if no 
 explanation can be given the hoped-for result 
 might be obtained by an instinct, but it 
 certainly will not by reasoning about it. And 
 secondly, what is to be done when such ideas 
 of proportions and other considerations con- 
 flict—as they always will do until the eye is 
 schooled to take its delight in fitness? For 
 instance, we may think we like the relation 
 of window to wall usual in Italian palaces, 
 but it is unsuitable for darker latitudes. The 
 right proportion of window to wall is that 
 which shall give the most suitable light. There 
 will always be room enough for individual 
 opinion and for instinctive adjustments, but 
 to talk of proportion without attempting to 
 realize what is meant is mere confusion. 
 The other superstition is that an external 
 form of beauty may be reached and demon- 
 strated other than as the sum of many 
 obviously desirable qualities, such as dur- 
 ability, spaciousness, order, masterly con- 
 struction, and a score of other factors needful 
 to a fine school of building. There is no 
 beauty beyond these except in the expression 
 of mind and of the temperament of the soul. 
 Probably the less that is satd about these the 
 better. The temper of the national soul is 
 Q 
 
242 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 likely to operate best in silence. Little could 
 be gained by disquisitions on purpose, fitness, 
 unity, vigour, simplicity, dignity, generosity 
 and intelligibility. Qualities like these rising 
 to joy and fervour, or sweetness and gaiety, 
 all tell in the result for beauty—they are all 
 the stuff from which beauty is made—but 
 the mere semblance of rapture and intensity 
 are abhorrent. Experience seems to show 
 that much esthetic intention is destructive. 
 No art can long outlast it, for art should 
 deal with higher and deeper things, realities 
 which will force their own expression. 
 
 We know those too capricious monuments 
 which popular insight has well named 
 *“* Follies.” All modern buildings have too 
 much that is merely capricious. Little in 
 ancient architecture was “‘ designed.” Things 
 designed by a single mind are mostly “ sports,” 
 which must quickly perish. Only that which 
 is in the line of development can persist. 
 Greek temples and Gothic cathedrals were 
 built traditionally according to custom. Even 
 the sites—those wonderful sites of temples 
 and cathedrals—were not selected because 
 the building would “ look well’ there. The 
 sites were sacred from remote time or they 
 were pointed out by some oracular dictum. 
 Alike on the Cape of Sunium, the cliffs of 
 Selinus, and the Acropolis rock of Athens, or 
 on the plain of Pestum and the muddy flat 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 243 
 
 of Ephesus, the Greeks indifferently founded 
 their great temples. Nothing looks well that 
 has been done for “ look.”? It seems right at 
 first, but quickly the doing becomes diseased. 
 Only by being intensely real can we get back 
 wonder into building once more. We have 
 this awe of a ship, a bridge, a machine. Why 
 should that ancient thing, a house, have be- 
 come so vulgar and pretentious ? It seems to 
 be the result of “ good taste.” 
 
 One rather confusing element is the question 
 of decoration. Here, again, much may be 
 accepted as obvious; casings and inlays of 
 finer material, the glitter of gold, harmonious 
 change of colour, some little intricacy of work- 
 manship, and, above all, stories in painting 
 and sculpture. The commonplaces of ordin- 
 ary architectural “‘ ornamentation ”’ cannot be 
 justified; at their origin these things had a 
 meaning, and most generally patterns were 
 simplified pictures. ‘“ Plastic art has gone 
 through a process of mental evolution far 
 higher than the futile pleasure of decoration.” 
 Ample materials for ornamentation exist 
 . which are universal and modern without our 
 calling for more hundreds of miles of “‘ egg 
 and tongue” or more acres of “‘ vermicula- 
 tion.”” These are such methods as_ the 
 introduction of precious material, and changes 
 of colour, plaitings and frets of lines, forms 
 simplified from Nature, sculptured stories, 
 
244 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 inscriptions; we don’t make enough use of 
 inscriptions. After all, we must remember 
 that beauty may be unadorned, and it is 
 possible that ornamentation, which arises in 
 such arts as tattooing, belongs to the infancy 
 of the world, and it may be that it will 
 disappear from our architecture as it has 
 from our machinery. Why should we wish 
 for a sham Jacobean house more than for a 
 motor-car in the style of a sedan chair ? 
 
 When a better modern architecture is to 
 emerge, we shall necessarily find a greater 
 interest in it and a sounder basis of criticism. 
 In the days when the cathedrals were built, 
 people were as concerned about them as we 
 are about cricket. The arts can only flourish 
 when there is a common interest in them, and 
 constant criticism by all—that is, by all people 
 except critics. 
 
 When the series of Renaissance styles reach 
 their end, we may expect that on the then 
 existing basis, whether it may be sham Greek 
 or sham Gothic, a movement will be imper- 
 ceptibly entered on which will transform the 
 chaos into another order. 
 
 The Renaissance was self-conscious, but 
 moderns are conscious that they are self- 
 conscious. In the arts there seem to be only 
 three possible courses open to us: (1) that 
 we may be able to determine our way and 
 come to some agreement, and thus build up 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 245 
 
 a fully conscious architecture, free and fine; 
 (2) or there may be some turn in civilization, | 
 quick or slow, which by a change of conditions 
 will compel a change in the arts; (8) or 
 there remains the treadmill of stylemongering 
 —successive fashions of little party cries and 
 their enthusiasms, now for imitation Gothie, 
 then for the national Renaissance, and a 
 return to Roman and Greek once more. 
 
 Supposing that we could as reasonable men 
 make a stand, and guide development, there 
 is much which obviously requires to be done. 
 One of the first things—there are so many— 
 should be a greater public demand for sub- 
 stantial and convenient buildings. In this 
 respect our big cities fall far short of many 
 second-rate towns on the Continent. Except 
 for a hundred or two of buildings, London 
 needs to be rebuilt from end to end. No 
 writer on economics has yet told us what are 
 the limits to expenditure in public arts, 
 whether a beautiful city is an investment, 
 or an extravagance. The modern political 
 economy of quantity should be corrected by 
 a political economy of quality. 
 
 Writers who have set out theories of cor- 
 porate life talk much of utilities, but they often 
 have a very narrow view of what makes a 
 utility; and the blind may lead the blind 
 down so steep a place that they drive those 
 who have eyes along with them. According 
 
246 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 to Plutarch, Pericles entered on the rebuilding 
 of Athens as the best means of wisely dis- 
 tributing wealth among the people, and it is 
 somewhat curious that the first systematic 
 writer on political economy was the Greek 
 architect, Hippodamus of Miletus, in the fifth 
 century B.C. 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren asserts: “ Archi- 
 tecture has its political use; public buildings 
 being the ornament of a country, it establishes 
 a nation; draws people and commerce; makes 
 the people love their native country, which 
 ‘passion is the great original of all great actions 
 in the commonwealth. The emulation of 
 the Greek cities was the true cause of their 
 greatness. The obstinate valour of the Jews, 
 occasioned by the love of their temple, was 
 a cement that held that people together for 
 many ages through infinite changes.” 
 
 If ever we are to have a time of architecture 
 again, it must be founded on a love for the 
 city, a worship of home and nation. No plant- 
 ing down of a few costly buildings, ruling some 
 straight streets, provision of fountains, or 
 setting up of a number of stone and bronze 
 dolls, is enough without the enthusiasm for 
 corporate life and common ceremonial. Every 
 noble city has been a crystallization of the 
 contentment, pride and order of the com- 
 munity. <A period of architecture is the time 
 of a flowing tide. 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 247 
 
 If the municipalities would spend less on 
 “art,” and more on requiring fine quality 
 in all ordinary forms of workmanship the 
 situation would soon be improved. Cleaner 
 streets and tidier railway stations would be 
 better than all the knowledge of all the styles. 
 An endeavour to better the city in inducing 
 civic patriotism would be sure in due time to 
 bring a fit method of expression. When we 
 see how powerful is an idea—the cause, order, 
 form—to boys, it does seem possible that men 
 too may organize themselves into lovers of 
 the city, seekers after discipline. 
 
 With increased demand for buildings fit 
 for modern cities must be undertaken the 
 more systematic education of architects. Our 
 education for the most part has been archzo- 
 logical, with the result that we now stand 
 timidly at the centre of a score of roads, and 
 we seem to know all about all of them, but we 
 do not know which to take, although the 
 fairest horizon might be reached if we could 
 go in one direction long enough. 
 
 It has been a wasteful system, too regard- 
 less of results, or too regardful of wrong 
 results. It is absurd, for instance, that the 
 writer should have been allowed to study 
 cathedrals from Kirkwall to Rome and from 
 Quimper to Constantinople; it would be far, 
 better to have an equivalent knowledge of 
 steel and concrete construction. 
 
248 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 Now that all the styles on earth have been 
 surveyed and accounted for historically, what 
 is wanted is a new type of classification by 
 essential differences of structure, an account 
 of the powers of architecture, a new science of 
 building morphology. To forget the past 
 would be as foolish as to ignore the future. 
 Behind is custom, as in front is adventure. 
 Great building types should be investigated 
 as structural problems, the temple, basilica, 
 theatre, baths, church, town hall, hospital, 
 bridge, and the city as a whole. 
 
 Further, the several factors of building, 
 the powers of architecture, require to be 
 investigated one by one—the wall, the column, 
 the floor, the roof, the buttress, the arch, 
 vault and dome. We want especially for our 
 own country a record of existing building 
 methods and traditions of workmanship, as 
 they are still carried on in their several 
 localities in relation to the materials at hand; 
 as Yorkshire walling and stone dressing— 
 which is still quite beautiful in out-of-the-way 
 parts; Norfolk thatching, Essex plastering, 
 Kentish tiling. Finally, we need a true science 
 of architecture, a sort of architectural biology 
 which shall investigate the unit cell and all 
 the possibilities of combination. 
 
 _ Modern armoured concrete is only a higher 
 power of the Roman system of construction. 
 If we could sweep away our fear that it is 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 249 
 
 an inartistic material, and boldly build a 
 railway station, a museum, or a cathedral, 
 wide and simple, amply lighted, and call in our 
 painters to finish the walls, we might be inter- 
 ested in building again almost at once. This 
 building interest must be aroused. We have 
 to aim at a standard of ordinary good quality ; 
 damp, cracked and leaky “ architecture”’ 
 must give way to houses as efficient as a 
 bicycle. 
 
 Our great difficulty is lack of spontaneous 
 agreement; an expressive form of art is only 
 reached by building out in one direction 
 during a long time. No art that is only one 
 man deep is worth much; it should be a 
 thousand men deep. We cannot forget our 
 historical knowledge, nor would we if we 
 might. The important question is, Can it be 
 organized and directed, or must we continue 
 to be betrayed by it? The only agreement 
 that seems possible is agreement on a scientific 
 basis, on an endeavour after perfect structural 
 efficiency. If we could agree on this we 
 need not trouble about beauty, for that 
 would take care of itself. Our survey should 
 have shown us that there is not one absolute 
 external form of beauty, but rather an endless 
 series of changing modes in which the uni- 
 versal spirit of beauty may manifest itself ; 
 that, indeed, change of the form is one of the 
 conditions of its continuance. In Egyptian 
 
250 ~ ARCHITECTURE 
 
 architecture power, wonder, terror, are ex- 
 pressed; in the Greek, serenity, measure and 
 balance, fairness; in the Roman, force and 
 splendour; in the Byzantine, solemnity, 
 mystery, adoration; in the Romanesque, 
 strife and life; in the Arab, elasticity, intricacy 
 and glitter, a suggestion of fountain spray 
 and singing birds; in the Gothic, intensity, 
 swiftness, a piercing quality, an architecture 
 not only of stone, but of stained glass, bells 
 and organ music. Beauty is the complexion 
 of health, to reach it we must put aside our 
 preoccupation about different sorts of rouge. 
 We are always agonizing about design, but 
 design, as Rodin has said, is as nothing com- 
 pared to workmanship. Any one may see 
 a beautiful landscape composition, but it 
 needs a Turner to paint it. A rearing horse 
 is a living statue, but the difficulty is to carve 
 like Phidias. A skilful architect may design 
 the lines of a cathedral bigger than Bourges, 
 and embodying several excellent new ideas, 
 before his breakfast, but there is little virtue 
 in writing “‘'700 feet long,” or in planning 
 three transepts instead of one, or in making 
 the chapels quatrefoils instead of octagonal ; 
 these are nothing compared to great building 
 skill. 
 
 Through the ages when architecture was 
 a direct and developing art, architects were 
 masters of building, engineers, masons and 
 
THE MODERN POSITION 251 
 
 carpenters, in immediate contact with 
 materials. Experiment must be brought back 
 once more as the centre of architecture, and 
 architects must be trained as engineers are 
 trained. It cannot be genius that is lacking to 
 us. An age that can produce Watts’ Physical 
 Energy, Madox Brown’s Manchester paintings, 
 and the Forth Bridge, should be able to pro- 
 duce anything—anything that is, except the 
 Tower Bridge as well. 
 
 Modern works like the Nile dam, the magni- 
 ficent railway viaduct at Morlaix, and the 
 Rhine bridge at Cologne, need no apology. 
 We must learn from France, Germany and 
 Switzerland how worthily to finish engineering 
 structures ; most of our English works are too 
 crude and raw. 
 
 The modern way of building must be flexible 
 and vigorous, even smart and hard. We must 
 give up designing the broken-down picturesque 
 which is part of the ideal of make-believe. 
 The enemy is not science, but vulgarity, a 
 pretence to beauty at second hand. We have 
 to awaken the civic ideal and to aim first at 
 the obvious commonplaces of cleanliness, 
 order and neatness. Much has to be done, 
 it is a time of beginning as well as of making 
 an end. 
 

 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 GENERAL.—J. Ruskin, Seven Lamps of Architecture, The Stones 
 of Venice, etc. The best general histories are by A. Choisy 
 in French, Diirm in German, and Russell Sturgis in 
 English. See also works by J. Fergusson, F. M. Simpson, 
 and Banister Fletcher. 
 
 Ecypr.—J. Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt; G. Foucart, 
 Histoire del ordre Lotiforme ; Perrot and Chipiez, History 
 of Art, etc.; W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Revolutions of 
 Civilization, Egyptian Aris and Crafis, Meydum, etc. ; 
 J. E. Perring, The Pyramids of Gizeh; A. Choisy, L’ Art 
 de Batir chez les Hgyptiens. 
 
 BABYLON AND AssyRIA.—Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, 
 etc. ; G. C. C. Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization ; W. 
 Andrae, Der Anu-Adad-Tempel in Assur. 
 
 CRETE AND Mycenm.—Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art, 
 etc. ; R. M. Burrows, Discoveries in Crete ; Sir A. Evans, 
 articles in the Annual of the British School at Athens, 
 1900, etc. 
 
 GreEEcE.—Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and 
 Rome, with a full bibliography; A. Marquand, Greek 
 Architecture; W. BR. Lethaby, Greek Buildings in the 
 British Museum. 
 
 Romr.—J. H. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome ; A. Choisy, 
 LT Art de Bétir chez les Romains (and see Greece). 
 
 EARLy OCuristTIAN.—H. M. Leclercq, Manuel d Archéologie 
 Chretienne, with a full bibliography ; A. Pératé, L’ Archéo- 
 logie Chretienne; A. L. Frothingham, The Monuments of 
 Christian Rome; H. Crosby Butler, Architecture and 
 other Arts, etc.; Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, etec.; Sir 
 W. Ramsey and Miss Lowthian Bell, The Thousand and 
 One Churches; ©. M. Kaufmann, Die Menasstadt, etc.; 
 T. D. Lowrie, Christian Art and Archeology. 
 
 253 
 
O54 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 BYzANTINE.—O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art; Ch. Diehl, 
 Manuel @ Art Byzantine: A. Van Millingen, The Churches 
 of Constantinople, etc.; Schultz and Barnsley, The 
 Monastery of St. Luke, ete. 
 
 THE East.—Saladin and Migeon, Manuel d Art Musulman ; 
 F. Sarre, Dankmdler Persischer Baukunst ; Sarre and 
 Herzfeld, Archdologische Reise im EHuphrat, etc. 
 
 RoMANESQUE.—G. J. Rivoira, Lombardic Architecture ; 
 Rohault de Fleury, La Messe; Cattaneo, Architecture in 
 Ltaly from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century’; A. Venturi, 
 Storia del? Arte Italiana. 
 
 Saxon, Etc.—Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England; 
 J. Anderson, The Harly Christian Monuments of 
 Scotland; J. Romilly Allen, The Monumental History of 
 the British Church, etc. 
 
 Gotrnic.—C. Eulart, Manuel del? Archéologie Francaise ; CO. H. 
 Moore, Development of Gothic Architecture; E. 8. Prior, 
 A History of Gothic Art in England; A. K. Porter, 
 Medieval Architecture; E. Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire 
 Raisonné, etc. ; F. Bond, Gothic Architecture in England ; 
 Sir G. G. Scott, Lectures on the Rise, etc., of Medieval 
 Art. 
 
 THE RENAISSANCE.—W. J. Anderson, Architecture of the 
 Renaissance in Italy ; C. H. Moore, Character of Renais- 
 sance Architecture; Reg. T. Blomfield, A History of 
 Renaissance Architecture in England, A History of Renais- 
 sance Architecture in France; W. H. Ward, The Archi- 
 tecture of the Renaissance in France. 
 
 Some Smatt Votumes.—The best introductory books for 
 Egyptian, Greek and Early Christian Art are the Guides 
 to the several departments of the British Museum. Parker’s 
 Concise Glossary of Gothic Architecture and T. D. Atkinson’s 
 English Architecture are useful handbooks. See also 
 G. H. West’s Gothic Architecture in England and France. 
 For the Renaissance, see Reg. T. Blomfield’s Smaller 
 History of Renaissance Architecture. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACROTERIA, 101 
 
 Apses, 115 
 
 Arches, Egyptian, 53; pointed, 56, 
 111, 152, 163, 166; Babylonian, 
 71; Greek, 110; cusped, 144, 164, 
 166, 189 ; Byzantine, 147; horse- 
 shoe, 164 
 
 Architecture, morphology of, 8, 
 248; powers of, 9, 15, 65, 108, 
 135, 209, 248; true classification 
 of, 9; and change, 9; definition 
 of, 9; and building, 10; and 
 decoration, 13, 243; and magic, 
 13, 18; lost elements of, 14 ; 
 and materials, 15; origins of, 
 18; and need, 18; wooden, 25, 
 81; Homeric, 80; first prin- 
 ciples in, 1385; beauty in, 241, 
 249 
 
 Basilicas, 115, 128 
 
 Baths, 114 
 
 Bricks, 15, 53; burnt, 58, 119 
 
 Brickwork, undulating, 59 
 
 Bronze, use of, 76, 102, 174 
 
 Buildings, round, 24, 86, 115; 
 square, 24 
 
 Carpentry, 25, 125 
 
 Caryatides, 100 
 
 eae re Egyptian, 21; English, 
 215 ff. 
 
 Churches, 133, 176, 183, 187 
 
 Columns, early, 14; origins of, 26, 
 80; Assyrian, 73; Ionic, 73; 
 Cretan, 76; Doric, 87, 100; By- 
 zantine, 137 ff. 
 
 Concrete, 120, 130 
 
 Decoration, origins of, 16, 27; 
 naturalism in, 79; Cufic, 152; 
 Arab, 159 
 
 Design, 105, 107, 208, 204, 242, 243 
 
 255 
 
 Domes, 54, 56 ff., 71, 75, 78, 108, 
 122, 142, 147, 152, 158, 160, 162, 
 179, 181 
 
 Doors, 104, 150 
 
 Engineering, 107, 180, 235, 250 
 
 Factory chimneys, 12 
 
 Fortifications, Egyptian, 52; Assy- 
 rian, 72 
 
 Friezes, 75, 91 
 
 Gables, 84, 90 
 
 Ideals, Egyptian, 61, 64; Greek, 
 81, 98, 96, 106; Roman, 107, 126, 
 131; Gothic, 201; Renaissance, 
 229, 232 
 
 Labyrinths, 46, 76 
 
 Masonry, wrought, first use of, 803 
 pyramid, 37, 40, 58; accuracy of, 
 60, 62; Cretan, 77; Greek, 97 
 
 Mastabas, 25, 34 ff, 
 
 Monoliths, 49 
 
 Mosaics, 120, 129, 186, 154, 165 
 
 Mouldings, origin of, 28; Greek, 
 99, 106 ; Byzantine, 144, 155 
 
 Obelisks, 48, 64 
 
 Origins, of architecture, 18; of 
 decoration, 16, 27; of squaro 
 building, 24; of columns, 26, 30; 
 of mouldings, 28; of pyramids, 
 44 ; of labyrinths, 46 ; of temples, 
 49, 82; of arches, 538, 72; of 
 vaults, 53, 72; of domes, 54; of 
 cities, 72; of drainage, 72; of 
 bricks, 72; of slab-ceilings, 74; 
 of rosettes, 743; of Doric frieze, 
 77; of Greek art, 82; of the 
 plinth, 85; of the peristyle, 85; 
 
256 
 
 of Greek orders, 87, 95; of the 
 cornice, 88 ; of cusping, 144 
 Orientation, 61 
 
 Painting, Egyptian, 33, 34, 50, 655 
 Cretan, 76; Greek, 90, 99; Roman, 
 129; Romanesque, 192, 197 
 
 Palaces, Egyptian, 51 ; Babylonian, 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 Pattern, 16, 165, 167, 192 
 Planning, 126, 156, 180, 184, 193 
 Plastering, 120, 129 
 Prehistoric art, 19 
 Proportion, 62 ff., 95, 205, 239 
 Pyramids, 31, 35 ff., 44; angles of, 
 88; durability of, 40; size of, 
 40; casing stones of, 40, 415 
 courts of, 41; cost of, 41; origin 
 of, 44 ; hidden chambers of, 46 ff. 
 
 Quatrefoil, the, 189 
 
 Roofs and ceilings, stone, 50, 76 
 Round buildings, 24, 86, 115 
 
 Sandbags, use of, 46 
 
 Sculpture, Egyptian, 32, 64; Baby- 
 lonian, 73; Greek, 91; Roman- 
 esque, 181; Saxon, 185; Gothic, 
 209 
 
 Sphinx, the, 44 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Square buildings, 24 
 Sees glass, 175, 182, 209, 214, 
 22 
 
 Staircases, 79, 103, 106 
 Stars on ceiling, 36, 75 
 Stonehenge, 14, 78 
 Symbolism, 51, 61 
 
 Temples, Egyptian, 49, symbolism 
 of, 51; Babylonian, 70; Greek, 
 82 
 
 Theatres and amphitheatres, 114 
 
 Tiles, glazed, 36, 58, 65, 73, 1643 
 Roof-, 90, 91, 102, 157; casings 
 of, 108, 117 
 
 Towers, 115, 136, 187 
 
 Towns, Egyptian, 52 
 
 Variety in detail, 94 
 Vaults, Egyptian, 53; Babylonian, 
 71; Hellenistic, 108, 122; Byzan- 
 tine, 148, 155; Romanesque, 179, 
 180, 195 ; Gothic, 196, 198, 202 
 
 Walls, leaning, 25; recesses in, 28 ; 
 Greek, 98 
 
 Whitewash, 58, 99 
 
 Windows, 52, 103, 144, 150, 164 
 
 Ziggurats, 71 
 
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