A Text-Book of the History of Architecture
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Title: A Text-Book of the History of Architecture
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* * * * *
* * * *
COLLEGE HISTORIES OF ART
Edited By
JOHN C. VAN DYKE, L.H.D.
* * *
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
A. D. F. Hamlin
* * * * *
* * * *
COLLEGE HISTORIES OF ART
Edited By
JOHN C. VAN DYKE, L.H.D.
Professor of the History of Art
in Rutgers College
* * *
HISTORY OF PAINTING
By JOHN C. VAN DYKE, the Editor of the Series. With Frontispiece
and 110 Illustrations, Bibliographies, and Index. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
By ALFRED D. F. HAMLIN, A.M. Adjunct Professor of Architecture,
Columbia College, New York. With Frontispiece and 229 Illustrations
and Diagrams, Bibliographies, Glossary, Index of Architects, and
a General Index. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
HISTORY OF SCULPTURE
By ALLAN MARQUAND, Ph.D., L.H.D. and ARTHUR L. FROTHINGHAM, Jr.,
Ph.D., Professors of Archæology and the History of Art in Princeton
University. With Frontispiece and 112 Illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.50.
* * * * *
* * * *
[Illustration: THE PARTHENON, ATHENS, AS RESTORED BY CH. CHIPIEZ.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)]
A TEXT-BOOK
of the
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
by
A. D. F. HAMLIN, A.M.
Professor of the History of Architecture
in the School of Architecture,
Columbia University
SEVENTH EDITION
Revised
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
London, Bombay, and Calcutta
1909
Copyright, 1895, by
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
_All rights reserved._
First Edition, March, 1896
Printed and Revised, December, 1896.
December, 1898 (Revised)
October, 1900 (Revised)
October, 1902 (Revised)
September, 1904, June, 1906 (Revised).
November, 1907 (Revised)
January, 1909
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co.
425-435 East 24th Street, New York
PREFACE.
The aim of this work has been to sketch the various periods and styles
of architecture with the broadest possible strokes, and to mention,
with such brief characterization as seemed permissible or necessary,
the most important works of each period or style. Extreme condensation
in presenting the leading facts of architectural history has been
necessary, and much that would rightly claim place in a larger work has
been omitted here. The danger was felt to be rather in the direction of
too much detail than of too little. While the book is intended primarily
to meet the special requirements of the college student, those of the
general reader have not been lost sight of. The majority of the
technical terms used are defined or explained in the context, and the
small remainder in a glossary at the end of the work. Extended criticism
and minute description were out of the question, and discussion of
controverted points has been in consequence as far as possible avoided.
The illustrations have been carefully prepared with a view to
elucidating the text, rather than for pictorial effect. With the
exception of some fifteen cuts reproduced from Lübke’s _Geschichte der
Architektur_ (by kind permission of Messrs. Seemann, of Leipzig), the
illustrations are almost all entirely new. A large number are from
original drawings made by myself, or under my direction, and the
remainder are, with a few exceptions, half-tone reproductions prepared
specially for this work from photographs in my possession.
Acknowledgments are due to Messrs. H. W. Buemming, H. D. Bultman, and
A. E. Weidinger for valued assistance in preparing original drawings;
and to Professor W. R. Ware, to Professor W. H. Thomson, M.D., and to
the Editor of the Series for much helpful criticism and suggestion.
It is hoped that the lists of monuments appended to the history of each
period down to the present century may prove useful for reference, both
to the student and the general reader, as a supplement to the body of
the text.
A. D. F. HAMLIN.
COLUMBIA COLLEGE, NEW YORK,
January 20, 1896.
The author desires to express his further acknowledgments to the friends
who have at various times since the first appearance of this book called
his attention to errors in the text or illustrations, and to recent
advances in the art or in its archæology deserving of mention in
subsequent editions. As far as possible these suggestions have been
incorporated in the various revisions and reprints which have appeared
since the first publication.
A. D. F. H.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,
October 28, 1907.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface v
List of Illustrations xi
General Bibliography xix
Introduction xxi
CHAPTER I.
Primitive and Prehistoric Architecture 1
CHAPTER II.
Egyptian Architecture 6
CHAPTER III.
Egyptian Architecture, _Continued_ 16
CHAPTER IV.
Chaldæan and Assyrian Architecture 28
CHAPTER V.
Persian, Lycian, and Jewish Architecture 35
CHAPTER VI.
Greek Architecture 43
CHAPTER VII.
Greek Architecture, _Continued_ 60
CHAPTER VIII.
Roman Architecture 74
CHAPTER IX.
Roman Architecture, _Continued_ 88
CHAPTER X.
Early Christian Architecture 110
CHAPTER XI.
Byzantine Architecture 120
CHAPTER XII.
Sassanian and Mohammedan Architecture--Arabian,
Moresque, Persian, indian, and Turkish 135
CHAPTER XIII.
Early Mediæval Architecture in Italy and France 155
CHAPTER XIV.
Early Mediæval Architecture in Germany,
Great Britain, and Spain 172
CHAPTER XV.
Gothic Architecture 182
CHAPTER XVI.
Gothic Architecture in France 196
CHAPTER XVII.
Gothic Architecture in Great Britain 218
CHAPTER XVIII.
Gothic Architecture in Germany, the Netherlands,
and Spain 237
CHAPTER XIX.
Gothic Architecture in Italy 254
CHAPTER XX.
Early Renaissance Architecture in Italy 270
CHAPTER XXI.
Renaissance Architecture in Italy--The Advanced
Renaissance and Decline 288
CHAPTER XXII.
Renaissance Architecture in France 308
CHAPTER XXIII.
Renaissance Architecture in Great Britain
and the Netherlands 326
CHAPTER XXIV.
Renaissance Architecture in Germany, Spain,
and Portugal 338
CHAPTER XXV.
The Classic Revivals in Europe 354
CHAPTER XXVI.
Recent Architecture in Europe 368
CHAPTER XXVII.
Architecture in the United States 383
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Oriental Architecture--India, China, and Japan 401
Appendix 417
Glossary 429
Index of Architects 431
Index 435
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
The authorship of the original drawings is indicated by the initials
affixed: A. = drawings by the author; B. = H. W. Buemming; Bn. = H. D.
Bultman; Ch. = Château, _L’Architecture en France_; G. = drawings
adapted from Gwilt’s _Encyclopædia of Architecture_; L. = Lübke’s
_Geschichte der Architektur_; W. = A. E. Weidinger. All other
illustrations are from photographs.
PAGE
FRONTISPIECE. The Parthenon Restored
(from model in Metropolitan Museum, New York)
1 Section of Great Pyramid (A.) 8
2 Section of King’s Chamber (A.) 9
3 Plan of Sphinx Temple (A.) 9
4 Ruins of Sphinx Temple (A.) 10
5 Tomb at Abydos (A.) 11
6 Tomb at Beni-Hassan (A.) 11
7 Section and Half-plan of same (A.) 12
8 Plan of the Ramesseum (A.) 14
9 Temple of Edfou. Plan (B.) 17
10 Temple of Edfou. Section (B.) 17
11 Temple of Karnak. Plan (L.) 18
12 Central Portion of Hypostyle Hall at Karnak
(from model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 20
13 Great Temple of Ipsamboul 21
14 Edfou. Front of Hypostyle Hall 23
15 Osirid Pier (Medinet Abou) (A.) 24
16 Types of Column (A.) 25
17 Egyptian Floral Ornament-Forms (A.) 26
18 Palace of Sargon at Khorsabad. Plan (L.) 30
19 Gate, Khorsabad (A.) 32
20 Assyrian Ornament (A.) 34
21 Column from Persepolis (B.) 37
22 Lion Gate at Mycenæ (A.) 44
23 Polygonal Masonry, Mycenæ (A.) 45
24 Tholos of Atreus; Plan and Section (A.) 46
25 Tholos of Atreus, Doorway (after Clarke) (A.) 46
26 Greek Doric Order (A.) 48
27 Doric Order of the Parthenon.
(From cast in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 49
28 Greek Ionic Order, Miletus (A.) 51
29 Side View of Ionic Capital (B.) 52
30 Greek Corinthian Order (A.) 53
31 Types of Greek Temple Plans (A.) 54
32 Carved Anthemion Ornament, Athens 57
33 Temple of Zeus, Agrigentum; Plan (A.) 61
34 Ruins of the Parthenon 63
35 Plan of the Erechtheum (A.) 64
36 West End of the Erechtheum (A.) 64
37 Propylæa at Athens. Plan (G.) 65
38 Choragic Monument of Lysicrates.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 67
39 Temple of Olympian Zeus, Athens. Plan (A.) 68
40 Plan of Greek Theatre (A.) 70
41 Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (A.) 72
42 Roman Doric Order from Theatre of Marcellus.
(Model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 77
43 Roman Ionic Order (A.) 78
44 Roman Corinthian Order.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 79
45 Roman Arcade with Engaged Columns (A.) 80
46 Barrel Vault (A.) 81
47 Groined Vault (A.) 81
48 Roman Wall Masonry (B.) 83
49 Roman Carved Ornament. (Lateran Museum) 85
50 Roman Ceiling Panels (A.) 86
51 Temple of Fortuna Virilis. Plan 89
52 Circular Temple, Tivoli (A.) 90
53 Temple of Venus and Rome. Plan (A.) 93
54 Plan of the Pantheon (B.) 94
55 Interior of the Pantheon 95
56 Exterior of the Pantheon.
(Model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 96
57 Forum and Basilica of Trajan (A.) 97
58 Basilica of Constantine. Plan (G.) 98
59 Ruins of Basilica of Constantine 99
60 Central Block, Thermæ of Caracalla. Plan (G.) 100
61 Roman Theatre, Herculanum 101
62 Colosseum at Rome. Half Plan (A.) 102
63 Arch of Constantine.
(Model in Metropolitan Museum, New York) 104
64 Palace of Diocletian, Spalato. Plan (G.) 106
65 Plan of House of Pansa, Pompeii (A.) 107
66 Plan of Santa Costanza, Rome (A.) 111
67 Plan of the Basilica of
St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls, Rome (A.) 113
68 St. Paul-beyond-the-Walls. Interior 114
69 Church at Kalb Louzeh (A.) 116
70 Cathedral at Bozrah. Plan (A.) 117
71 Diagram of Pendentives (A.) 123
72 Spandril, Hagia Sophia 125
73 Capital with Impost Block, S. Vitale 126
74 Plan of St. Sergius, Constantinople (A.) 127
75 Plan of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople (A.) 128
76 Section of Hagia Sophia (A.) 128
77 Interior of Hagia Sophia (full page) 129
78 Plan of St. Mark’s, Venice (A.) 132
79 Interior of St. Mark’s 133
80 Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo. Sanctuary 137
81 Mosque of Kaîd Bey, Cairo 139
82 Moorish Detail, Alhambra 141
83 Interior of Great Mosque, Cordova 142
84 Plan of the Alhambra (A.) 144
85 Tomb of Mahmûd, Bijapur. Section (A.) 147
86 The Taj Mahal, Agra 149
87 Mosque of Mehmet II., Constantinople. Plan (L.) 151
88 Exterior of Ahmediyeh Mosque, Constantinople 152
89 Interior of Suleimaniyeh Mosque, Constantinople 153
90 Interior of San Ambrogio, Milan 157
91 West Front and Campanile, Cathedral of Piacenza 158
92 Baptistery, Cathedral, and Leaning Tower, Pisa 160
93 Interior of Pisa Cathedral 161
94 Plan of St. Front, Perigueux (G.) 164
95 Interior of St. Front (L.) 165
96 Plan of Notre Dame du Port, Clermont (Ch.) 166
97 Section of same (Ch.) 166
98 A Six-part Ribbed Vault (A.) 167
99 Plan of Minster at Worms (G.) 173
100 One Bay, Cathedral of Spires (L.) 174
101 East End, Church of the Apostles, Cologne 175
102 Plan of Durham Cathedral (Bn.) 177
103 One Bay, Transept of Winchester Cathedral (G.) 178
104 Front of Iffley Church (A.) 179
105 Constructive System of Gothic Church (A.) 183
106 Plan of Sainte Chapelle, Paris (Bn.) 184
107 Early Gothic Flying Buttress (Bn.) 185
108 Ribbed Vault, English Type (Bn. after Babcock) 186
109 Penetrations and Intersections of Vaults (Bn.) 187
110 Plate Tracery, Charlton-on-Oxmore 188
111 Bar Tracery, St. Michael’s, Warfield (W.) 189
112 Rose Window from St. Ouen, Rouen (G.) 190
113 Flamboyant Detail, Strasburg 191
114 Early Gothic Carving (A.) 192
115 Carving, Decorated Period, from Southwell Minster 193
116 Plan of Notre Dame, Paris (L.) 198
117 Interior of Notre Dame 199
118 Interior of Le Mans Cathedral 200
119 Vaulting with Zigzag Ridge Joints (A.) 201
120 One Bay, Abbey of St. Denis (G.) 203
121 The Sainte Chapelle, Paris. Exterior 204
122 Amiens Cathedral; Plan (G.) 205
123 Alby Cathedral. Plan (A. after Lübke) 206
124 West Front of Notre Dame, Paris 207
125 West Front of St. Maclou, Rouen 208
126 French Gothic Capitals (A.) 210
127 House of Jacques Cœur, Bourges (L.) 215
128 Plan of Salisbury Cathedral (Bn.) 219
129 Ribbed Vaulting, Choir of Exeter Cathedral 221
130 Lierne Vaulting, Tewkesbury Abbey 222
131 Vault of Chapter House, Wells 223
132 Cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral 225
133 Perpendicular Tracery, St. George’s, Windsor 226
134 West Front, Lichfield Cathedral 228
135 One Bay of Choir, Lichfield Cathedral (A.) 229
136 Fan Vaulting, Henry VII.’s Chapel 231
137 Eastern Part, Westminster Abbey. Plan (L.) 232
138 Roof of Nave, St. Mary’s, Westonzoyland (W.) 233
139 One Bay, Cathedral of St. George, Limburg (L.) 239
140 Section of St. Elizabeth, Marburg (Bn.) 240
141 Cologne Cathedral, Plan (G.) 242
142 Church of Our Lady, Treves (L.) 243
143 Plan of Ulm Cathedral (L.) 244
144 Town Hall, Louvain 247
145 Façade of Burgos Cathedral 249
146 Detail from S. Gregorio, Valladolid 251
147 Duomo at Florence, Plan (G.) 256
148 Duomo at Florence, Nave 257
149 One Bay, Cathedral of S. Martino, Lucca (L.) 258
150 Interior of Sienna Cathedral 259
151 Façade of Sienna Cathedral 261
152 Exterior of the Certosa, Pavia 262
153 Plan of the Certosa, Pavia 263
154 Upper Part of Campanile, Florence 265
155 Upper Part of Palazzo Vecchio, Florence 266
156 Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence 267
157 West Front of Doge’s Palace, Venice 268
158 Capital, Palazzo Zorzi, Venice 275
159 Section of Dome, Duomo of Florence (Bn.) 276
160 Exterior of Dome, Duomo of Florence 277
161 Interior of S. Spirito, Florence 278
162 Court of Riccardi Palace, Florence 279
163 Façade of Strozzi Palace, Florence 280
164 Tomb of Pietro di Noceto, Lucca 282
165 Vendramini Palace, Venice 285
166 Façade of Giraud Palace, Rome (L.) 290
167 Plan of Farnese Palace, Rome (L.) 292
168 Court of Farnese Palace, Rome 293
169 Bramante’s Plan for St. Peter’s, Rome (L.) 294
170 Plan of St. Peter’s, Rome, as now standing
(Bn. after G.) 295
171 Interior of St. Peter’s (full page) 297
172 Library of St. Mark, Venice 301
173 Interior of San Severo, Naples 302
174 Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Naples 303
175 Court Façade, East Wing of Blois 311
176 Staircase Tower, Blois 313
177 Plan of Château of Chambord (A.) 314
178 Upper Part of Château of Chambord 314
179 Detail of Court of Louvre, southwest portion 315
180 The Luxemburg Palace, Paris 318
181 Colonnade of the Louvre 321
182 Dome of the Invalides, Paris 322
183 Façade of St. Sulpice, Paris 323
184 Burghley House 327
185 Whitehall Palace. The Banqueting Hall 329
186 Plan of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London (G.) 330
187 Exterior of St. Paul’s Cathedral 331
188 Plan of Blenheim (G.) 332
189 St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London 333
190 Renaissance Houses, Brussels 335
191 The Castle, Hämelschenburg 341
192 The Friedrichsbau, Heidelberg Castle 344
193 Pavilion of Zwinger Palace, Dresden 345
194 Marienkirche, Dresden 346
195 Portal of University, Salamanca 349
196 Court (Patio) of Casa de Zaporta 350
197 Palace of Charles V., Granada 351
198 Façade of British Museum, London 357
199 St. George’s Hall, Liverpool 358
200 The Old Museum, Berlin 359
201 The Propylæa, Munich 360
202 Plan of the Panthéon, Paris (G.) 361
203 Exterior of the Panthéon 362
204 Arch of Triumph of l’Étoile, Paris 363
205 The Madeleine, Paris 364
206 Door of École des Beaux-Arts, Paris 365
207 St. Isaac’s Cathedral, St. Petersburg 366
208 Plan of Louvre and Tuileries (A.) 371
209 Pavilion Richelieu, Louvre 372
210 Grand Staircase, Paris Opera House 373
211 Fountain of Longchamps, Marseilles 374
212 Galliéra Museum, Paris 375
213 Royal Theatre, Dresden 376
214 Maria-Theresienhof, Vienna 377
215 Houses of Parliament, London 379
216 Assize Courts, Manchester 380
217 Natural History Museum, South Kensington 381
218 Christ Church, Philadelphia 386
219 Craigie House, Cambridge (Mass.) 387
220 National Capitol, Washington 389
221 Custom House, New York 390
222 Trinity Church, Boston 394
223 Public Library, Woburn (Mass.) 395
224 Times Building, New York 396
225 Country House (Mass.) 398
226 Porch of Temple of Vimalah Sah, Mount Abu. 406
227 Tower of Victory, Chittore 407
228 Double Temple at Hullabîd: Detail 410
229 Shrine of Soubramanya, Tanjore 412
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY.
(This includes the leading architectural works treating of more than one
period or style. The reader should consult also the special references
at the head of each chapter. Valuable material is also contained in the
leading architectural periodicals and in monographs too numerous to
mention.)
DICTIONARIES AND ENCYCLOPEDIAS.
Agincourt, _History of Art by its Monuments_; London.
Architectural Publication Society, _Dictionary of Architecture_; London.
Bosc, _Dictionnaire raisonné d’architecture_; Paris.
Durm and others, _Handbuch der Architektur_; Stuttgart. (This is an
encyclopedic compendium of architectural knowledge in many volumes; the
series not yet complete. It is referred to as the _Hdbuch. d. Arch._)
Gwilt, _Encyclopedia of Architecture_; London.
Longfellow and Frothingham, _Cyclopedia of Architecture in Italy and the
Levant_; New York.
Planat, _Encyclopédie d’architecture_; Paris.
Sturgis, _Dictionary of Architecture and Building_; New York.
GENERAL HANDBOOKS AND HISTORIES.
Bühlmann, _Die Architektur des klassischen Alterthums und der
Renaissance_; Stuttgart. (Also in English, published in New York.)
Choisy, _Histoire de l’architecture_; Paris.
Durand, _Recueil et parallèle d’édifices de tous genres_; Paris.
Fergusson, _History of Architecture in All Countries_; London.
Fletcher and Fletcher, _A History of Architecture_; London.
Gailhabaud, _L’Architecture du Vme. au XVIIIme. siècle_;
Paris.--_Monuments anciens et modernes_; Paris.
Kugler, _Geschichte der Baukunst_; Stuttgart.
Longfellow, _The Column and the Arch_; New York.
Lübke, _Geschichte der Architektur_; Leipzig.--_History of Art_, tr. and
rev. by R. Sturgis; New York.
Perry, _Chronology of Mediæval and Renaissance Architecture_; London.
Reynaud, _Traité d’architecture_; Paris.
Rosengarten, _Handbook of Architectural Styles_; London and New York.
Simpson, _A History of Architectural Development_; London.
Spiers, _Architecture East and West_; London.
Stratham, _Architecture for General Readers_; London.
Sturgis, _European Architecture_; New York.
_Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects_; London.
Viollet-le-Duc, _Discourses on Architecture_; Boston.
THEORY, THE ORDERS, ETC.
Chambers, _A Treatise on Civil Architecture_; London.
Daviler, _Cours d’architecture de Vignole_; Paris.
Esquié, _Traité élémentaire d’architecture_; Paris.
Guadet, _Théorie de l’architecture_; Paris.
Robinson, _Principles of Architectural Composition_; New York.
Ruskin, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_; London.
Sturgis, _How to Judge Architecture_; New York.
Tuckerman, _Vignola, the Five Orders of Architecture_; New York.
Van Brunt, _Greek Lines and Other Essays_; Boston.
Van Pelt, _A Discussion of Composition_.
Ware, _The American Vignola_; Scranton.
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
INTRODUCTION.
A history of architecture is a record of man’s efforts to build
beautifully. The erection of structures devoid of beauty is mere
building, a trade and not an art. Edifices in which strength and
stability alone are sought, and in designing which only utilitarian
considerations have been followed, are properly works of engineering.
Only when the idea of beauty is added to that of use does a structure
take its place among works of architecture. We may, then, define
architecture as the art which seeks to harmonize in a building the
requirements of utility and of beauty. It is the most useful of the fine
arts and the noblest of the useful arts. It touches the life of man at
every point. It is concerned not only in sheltering his person and
ministering to his comfort, but also in providing him with places for
worship, amusement, and business; with tombs, memorials, embellishments
for his cities, and other structures for the varied needs of a complex
civilization. It engages the services of a larger portion of the
community and involves greater outlays of money than any other
occupation except agriculture. Everyone at some point comes in contact
with the work of the architect, and from this universal contact
architecture derives its significance as an index of the civilization of
an age, a race, or a people.
It is the function of the historian of architecture to trace the origin,
growth, and decline of the architectural styles which have prevailed in
different lands and ages, and to show how they have reflected the great
movements of civilization. The migrations, the conquests, the
commercial, social, and religious changes among different peoples have
all manifested themselves in the changes of their architecture, and it
is the historian’s function to show this. It is also his function to
explain the principles of the styles, their characteristic forms and
decoration, and to describe the great masterpieces of each style and
period.
+STYLE+ is a quality; the “historic styles” are phases of development.
_Style_ is character expressive of definite conceptions, as of grandeur,
gaiety, or solemnity. An _historic style_ is the particular phase, the
characteristic manner of design, which prevails at a given time and
place. It is not the result of mere accident or caprice, but of
intellectual, moral, social, religious, and even political conditions.
Gothic architecture could never have been invented by the Greeks, nor
could the Egyptian styles have grown up in Italy. Each style is based
upon some fundamental principle springing from its surrounding
civilization, which undergoes successive developments until it either
reaches perfection or its possibilities are exhausted, after which a
period of decline usually sets in. This is followed either by a reaction
and the introduction of some radically new principle leading to the
evolution of a new style, or by the final decay and extinction of the
civilization and its replacement by some younger and more virile
element. Thus the history of architecture appears as a connected chain
of causes and effects succeeding each other without break, each style
growing out of that which preceded it, or springing out of the
fecundating contact of a higher with a lower civilization. To study
architectural styles is therefore to study a branch of the history of
civilization.
Technically, architectural styles are identified by the means they
employ to cover enclosed spaces, by the characteristic forms of the
supports and other members (piers, columns, arches, mouldings,
traceries, etc.), and by their decoration. The +plan+ should receive
special attention, since it shows the arrangement of the points of
support, and hence the nature of the structural design. A comparison,
for example, of the plans of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak (Fig. 11, h)
and of the Basilica of Constantine (Fig. 58) shows at once a radical
difference in constructive principle between the two edifices, and hence
a difference of style.
+STRUCTURAL PRINCIPLES.+ All architecture is based on one or more of
three fundamental structural principles; that of the _lintel_, of the
_arch_ or _vault_, and of the _truss_. The principle of the +lintel+ is
that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all
construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more
vertical supports. The +arch+ or +vault+ makes use of several pieces to
span an opening between two supports. These pieces are in compression
and exert lateral pressures or _thrusts_ which are transmitted to the
supports or abutments. The thrust must be resisted either by the
massiveness of the abutments or by the opposition to it of
counter-thrusts from other arches or vaults. Roman builders used the
first, Gothic builders the second of these means of resistance. The
+truss+ is a framework so composed of several pieces of wood or metal
that each shall best resist the particular strain, whether of tension or
compression, to which it is subjected, the whole forming a compound beam
or arch. It is especially applicable to very wide spans, and is the most
characteristic feature of modern construction. How the adoption of one
or another of these principles affected the forms and even the
decoration of the various styles, will be shown in the succeeding
chapters.
+HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.+ Geographically and chronologically, architecture
appears to have originated in the Nile valley. A second centre of
development is found in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, not
uninfluenced by the older Egyptian art. Through various channels the
Greeks inherited from both Egyptian and Assyrian art, the two influences
being discernible even through the strongly original aspect of Greek
architecture. The Romans in turn, adopting the external details of Greek
architecture, transformed its substance by substituting the Etruscan
arch for the Greek construction of columns and lintels. They developed a
complete and original system of construction and decoration and spread
it over the civilized world, which has never wholly outgrown or
abandoned it.
With the fall of Rome and the rise of Constantinople these forms
underwent in the East another transformation, called the Byzantine, in
the development of Christian domical church architecture. In the North
and West, meanwhile, under the growing institutions of the papacy and of
the monastic orders and the emergence of a feudal civilization out of
the chaos of the Dark Ages, the constant preoccupation of architecture
was to evolve from the basilica type of church a vaulted structure, and
to adorn it throughout with an appropriate dress of constructive and
symbolic ornament. Gothic architecture was the outcome of this
preoccupation, and it prevailed throughout northern and western Europe
until nearly or quite the close of the fifteenth century.
During this fifteenth century the Renaissance style matured in Italy,
where it speedily triumphed over Gothic fashions and produced a
marvellous series of civic monuments, palaces, and churches, adorned
with forms borrowed or imitated from classic Roman art. This influence
spread through Europe in the sixteenth century, and ran a course of two
centuries, after which a period of servile classicism was followed by a
rapid decline in taste. To this succeeded the eclecticism and confusion
of the nineteenth century, to which the rapid growth of new requirements
and development of new resources have largely contributed.
In Eastern lands three great schools of architecture have grown up
contemporaneously with the above phases of Western art; one under the
influence of Mohammedan civilization, another in the Brahman and
Buddhist architecture of India, and the third in China and Japan. The
first of these is the richest and most important. Primarily inspired
from Byzantine art, always stronger on the decorative than on the
constructive side, it has given to the world the mosques and palaces of
Northern Africa, Moorish Spain, Persia, Turkey, and India. The other two
schools seem to be wholly unrelated to the first, and have no affinity
with the architecture of Western lands.
Of Mexican, Central American, and South American architecture so little
is known, and that little is so remote in history and spirit from the
styles above enumerated, that it belongs rather to archæology than to
architectural history, and will not be considered in this work.
NOTE.--The reader’s attention is called to the Appendix to this volume,
in which are gathered some of the results of recent investigations and
of the architectural progress of the last few years which could not
readily be introduced into the text of this edition. The General
Bibliography and the lists of books recommended have been revised and
brought up to date.
CHAPTER I.
PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Desor, _Les constructions lacustres du lac de
Neufchatel_. Fergusson, _Rude Stone Monuments_. R. C. Hoare,
_Ancients Wiltshire_. Lyell, _The Antiquity of Man_. Lubbock,
_Prehistoric Times_. Nadaillac, _Prehistoric America_. Rougemont,
_L’age du Bronze_. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_.
+EARLY BEGINNINGS.+ It is impossible to trace the early stages of the
process by which true architecture grew out of the first rude attempts
of man at building. The oldest existing monuments of architecture--those
of Chaldæa and Egypt--belong to an advanced civilization. The rude and
elementary structures built by savage and barbarous peoples, like the
Hottentots or the tribes of Central Africa, are not in themselves works
of architecture, nor is any instance known of the evolution of a
civilized art from such beginnings. So far as the monuments testify, no
savage people ever raised itself to civilization, and no primitive
method of building was ever developed into genuine architecture, except
by contact with some existing civilization of which it appropriated the
spirit, the processes, and the forms. How the earliest architecture came
into existence is as yet an unsolved problem.
+PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE+ is therefore a subject for the archæologist
rather than the historian of art, and needs here only the briefest
mention. If we may judge of the condition of the primitive races of
antiquity by that of the savage and barbarous peoples of our own time,
they required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though the purposes
which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized
communities. A hut or house for shelter, a shrine of some sort for
worship, a stockade for defence, a cairn or mound over the grave of the
chief or hero, were provided out of the simplest materials, and these
often of a perishable nature. Poles supplied the framework; wattles,
skins, or mud the walls; thatching or stamped earth the roof. Only the
simplest tools were needed for such elementary construction. There was
ingenuity and patient labor in work of this kind; but there was no
planning, no fitting together into a complex organism of varied
materials shaped with art and handled with science. Above all, there was
no progression toward higher ideals of fitness and beauty. Rudimentary
art displayed itself mainly in objects of worship, or in carvings on
canoes and weapons, executed as talismans to ward off misfortune or to
charm the unseen powers; but even this art was sterile and never grew of
itself into civilized and progressive art.
Yet there must have been at some point in the remote past an exception
to this rule. Somewhere and somehow the people of Egypt must have
developed from crude beginnings the architectural knowledge and resource
which meet us in the oldest monuments, though every vestige of that
early age has apparently perished. But although nothing has come down to
us of the actual work of the builders who wrought in the primitive ages
of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia almost countless
monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent times,
but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions
where they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common
heritage of traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on
the probable character of the transition from barbaric to civilized
architecture.
+PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS.+ These monuments vary widely as well as in
excellence; some of them belong to Roman or even Christian times; others
to a much remoter period. They are divided into two principal classes,
the megalithic structures and lake dwellings. The latter class may be
dismissed with the briefest mention. It comprises a considerable number
of very primitive houses or huts built on wooden piles in the lakes of
Switzerland and several other countries in both hemispheres, and forming
in some cases villages of no mean size. Such villages, built over the
water for protection from attack, are mentioned by the writers of
antiquity and portrayed on Assyrian reliefs. The objects found in them
reveal an incipient but almost stationary civilization, extending back
from three thousand to five thousand years or more, and lasting through
the ages of stone and bronze down into historic times.
The +megalithic+ remains of Europe and Asia are far more important. They
are very widely distributed, and consist in most cases of great blocks
of stone arranged in rows, circles, or avenues, sometimes with huge
lintels resting upon them. Upright stones without lintels are called
_menhirs_; standing in pairs with lintels they are known as _dolmens_;
the circles are called _cromlechs_. Some of the stones are of gigantic
size, some roughly hewn into shape; others left as when quarried. Their
age and purpose have been much discussed without reaching positive
results. It is probable that, like the lake dwellings, they cover a long
range of time, reaching from the dawn of recorded history some thousands
of years back into the unknown past, and that they were erected by races
which have disappeared before the migrations to which Europe owes her
present populations. That most of them were in some way connected with
the worship of these prehistoric peoples is generally admitted; but
whether as temples, tombs, or memorials of historical or mythical events
cannot, in all cases, be positively asserted. They were not dwellings or
palaces, and very few were even enclosed buildings. They are imposing by
the size and number of their immense stones, but show no sign of
advanced art, or of conscious striving after beauty of design. The small
number of “carved stones,” bearing singular ornamental patterns,
symbolic or mystical rather than decorative in intention, really tends
to prove this statement rather than to controvert it. It is not
impossible that the dolmens were generally intended to be covered by
mounds of earth. This would group them with the tumuli referred to
below, and point to a sepulchral purpose in their erection. Some
antiquaries, Fergusson among them, contend that many of the European
circles and avenues were intended as battle-monuments or trophies.
There are also +walls+ of great antiquity in various parts of Europe,
intended for fortification; the most important of these in Greece and
Italy will be referred to in later chapters. They belong to a more
advanced art, some of them even deserving to be classed among works of
archaic architecture.
The +tumuli+, or burial mounds, which form so large a part of the
prehistoric remains of both continents, are interesting to the architect
only as revealing the prototypes of the pyramids of Egypt and the
subterranean tombs of Mycenæ and other early Greek centres. The piling
of huge cairns or commemorative heaps of stone is known from the
Scriptures and other ancient writings to have been a custom of the
greatest antiquity. The pyramids and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are
the most imposing and elaborate outgrowths of this practice, of which
the prehistoric tumuli are the simpler manifestations.
These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no
place, however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong
rather to the domain of archæology and ethnology, and have received this
brief mention only as revealing the beginnings of the builder’s art, and
the wide gap that separates them from that genuine architecture which
forms the subject of the following chapters.
+MONUMENTS+: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an
avenue, large and small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of
Bartlow and Silbury “Hills;” at Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain,
great megalithic circles and many barrows; “Sarsen stones” at
Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In
Ireland, many cairns and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows
in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and Lokmariaker in
Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In
Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many
similar remains.
CHAPTER II.
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Champollion, _Monuments de l’Egypte et de la
Nubie_. Choisy, _L’art de bâtir chez les Egyptiens_.
Flinders-Petrie, _History of Egypt; Ten Years Digging in Egypt,
1881-91_. Jomard, _Description de l’Egypte, Antiquités_. Lepsius,
_Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien_. Mariette, _Monuments of
Upper Egypt_. Maspero, _Egyptian Archæology_. Perrot and Chipiez,
_History of Art in Ancient Egypt_. Prisse d’Avennes, _Histoire de
l’art égyptien_. Reber, _History of Ancient Art_. Rossellini,
_Monumenti del Egitto_. Wilkinson, _Manners and Customs of Ancient
Egyptians_.
+LAND AND PEOPLE.+ As long ago as 5000 B.C., the Egyptians were a people
already highly civilized, and skilled in the arts of peace and war. The
narrow valley of the Nile, fertilized by the periodic overflow of the
river, was flanked by rocky heights, nearly vertical in many places,
which afforded abundance of excellent building stone, while they both
isolated the Egyptians and protected them from foreign aggression. At
the Delta, however, the valley widened out, with the falling away of
these heights, into broad lowlands, from which there was access to the
outer world.
The art history of Egypt may be divided into five periods as follows:
I. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE (cir. 4500?-3000 B.C.), comprising the first ten
dynasties, with Memphis as the capital.
II. THE FIRST THEBAN MONARCHY or MIDDLE EMPIRE (3000-2100 B.C.)
comprising the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties reigning at
Thebes.
The Hyksos invasion, or incursion of the Shepherd Kings, interrupted the
current of Egyptian art history for a period of unknown length, probably
not less than four or five centuries.
III. THE SECOND THEBAN MONARCHY (1700?-1000 B.C.), comprising the
eighteenth to twentieth dynasties inclusive, was the great period of
Egyptian history; the age of conquests and of vast edifices.
IV. THE DECADENCE or SAITIC PERIOD (1000-324 B.C.), comprising the
dynasties twenty-one to thirty (Saitic, Bubastid, Ethiopic, etc.),
reigning at Sais, Tanis, and Bubastis, and the Persian conquest;
a period almost barren of important monuments.
(Periods III. and IV. constitute together the period of the NEW EMPIRE,
if we omit the Persian dominion.)
V. THE REVIVAL (from 324 B.C. to cir. 330 A.D.) comprises the Ptolemaic
or Macedonian and Roman dominations.
+THE ANCIENT EMPIRE: THE PYRAMIDS.+ The great works of this period are
almost exclusively sepulchral, and include the most ancient buildings of
which we have any remains. While there is little of strictly
architectural art, the overwhelming size and majesty of the Pyramids,
and the audacity and skill shown in their construction, entitle them to
the first place in any sketch of this period. They number over a
hundred, scattered in six groups, from Abu-Roash in the north to Meidoum
in the south, and are of various shapes and sizes. They are all royal
tombs and belong to the first twelve dynasties; each contains a
sepulchral chamber, and each at one time possessed a small chapel
adjacent to it, but this has, in almost every case, perished.
Three pyramids surpass all the rest by their prodigious size; these are
at Ghizeh and belong to the fourth dynasty. They are known by the names
of their builders; the oldest and greatest being that of +Cheops+, or
Khufu;[1] the second, that of +Chephren+, or Khafra; and the third, that
of +Mycerinus+, or Menkhara. Other smaller ones stand at the feet of
these giants.
[Footnote 1: The Egyptian names known to antiquity are given
here first in the more familiar classic form, and then in the
Egyptian form.]
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--SECTION OF GREAT PYRAMID.
a, _King’s Chamber_; b, _Queen’s Chamber_; c, _Chamber
cut in Rock_.]
The base of the “Great Pyramid” measures 764 feet on a side; its height
is 482 feet, and its volume must have originally been nearly three and
one-half million cubic yards (Fig. 1). It is constructed of limestone
upon a plateau of rock levelled to receive it, and was finished
externally, like its two neighbors, with a coating of polished stone,
supposed by some to have been disposed in bands of different colored
granites, but of which it was long ago despoiled. It contained three
principal chambers and an elaborate system of inclined passages, all
executed in finely cut granite and limestone. The sarcophagus was in the
uppermost chamber, above which the superincumbent weight was relieved by
open spaces and a species of rudimentary arch of Λ-shape (Fig. 2). The
other two pyramids differ from that of Cheops in the details of their
arrangement and in size, not in the principle of their construction.
Chephren is 454 feet high, with a base 717 feet square. Mycerinus, which
still retains its casing of pink granite, is but 218 feet in height,
with a base 253 feet on a side.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--SECTION OF KING’S CHAMBER.]
Among the other pyramids there is considerable variety both of type and
material. At Sakkarah is one 190 feet high, constructed in six unequal
steps on a slightly oblong base measuring nearly 400 × 357 feet. It was
attributed by Mariette to Ouenephes, of the first dynasty, though now
more generally ascribed to Senefrou of the third. At Abu-Seir and
Meidoum are other stepped pyramids; at Dashour is one having a broken
slope, the lower part steeper than the upper. Several at Meroë with
unusually steep slopes belong to the Ethiopian dynasties of the
Decadence. A number of pyramids are built of brick.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--PLAN OF SPHINX TEMPLE.]
+TOMBS.+ The Ancient Empire has also left us a great number of tombs of
the type known as _Mastabas_. These are oblong rectangular structures of
stone or brick with slightly inclined sides and flat ceilings. They
uniformly face the east, and are internally divided into three parts;
the chamber or chapel, the _serdab_, and the well. In the first of
these, next the entrance, were placed the offerings made to the _Ka_ or
“double,” for whom also scenes of festivity or worship were carved and
painted on its walls to minister to his happiness in his incorporeal
life. The serdabs, or secret inner chambers, of which there were several
in each mastaba, contained statues of the defunct, by which the
existence and identity of the Ka were preserved. Finally came the well,
leading to the mummy chamber, deep underground, which contained the
sarcophagus. The sarcophagi, both of this and later ages, are good
examples of the minor architecture of Egypt; many of them are panelled
in imitation of wooden construction and richly decorated with color,
symbols, and hieroglyphs.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--RUINS OF SPHINX TEMPLE.]
+OTHER MONUMENTS.+ Two other monuments of the Ancient Empire also claim
attention: the +Sphinx+ and the adjacent so-called “+Sphinx temple+” at
Ghizeh. The first of these, a huge sculpture carved from the rock,
represents Harmachis in the form of a human-headed lion. It is
ordinarily partly buried in the sand; is 70 feet long by 66 feet high,
and forms one of the most striking monuments of Egyptian art. Close to
it lie the nearly buried ruins of the temple once supposed to be that of
the Sphinx, but now proved by Petrie to have been erected in connection
with the second pyramid. The plan and present aspect of this venerable
edifice are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The hall was roofed with stone
lintels carried on sixteen square monolithic piers of alabaster. The
whole was buried in a rectangular mass of masonry and revetted
internally with alabaster, but was wholly destitute internally as well
as externally of decoration or even of mouldings. With the exception of
scanty remains of a few of the pyramid-temples or chapels, and the
temple discovered by Petrie in Meidoum, it is the only survival from the
temple architecture of that early age.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--TOMB AT ABYDOS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN.]
+THE MIDDLE EMPIRE: TOMBS.+ The monuments of this period, as of the
preceding, are almost wholly sepulchral. We now encounter two types of
tombs. One, structural and pyramidal, is represented by many examples at
Abydos, the most venerated of all the burial grounds of Egypt (Fig. 5).
All of these are built of brick, and are of moderate size and little
artistic interest. The second type is that of tombs cut in the vertical
cliffs of the west bank of the Nile Valley. The entrance to these faces
eastward as required by tradition; the remoter end of the excavation
pointing toward the land of the Sun of Night. But such tunnels only
become works of architecture when, in addition to the customary mural
paintings, they receive a decorative treatment in the design of their
structural forms. Such a treatment appears in several tombs at
Beni-Hassan, in which columns are reserved in cutting away the rock,
both in the chapel-chambers and in the vestibules or porches which
precede them. These columns are polygonal in some cases, clustered in
others. The former type, with eight, sixteen, or thirty-two sides (in
these last the _arrises_ or edges are emphasized by a slight concavity
in each face, like embryonic fluting), have a square abacus, suggesting
the Greek Doric order, and giving rise to the name _proto-Doric_
(Fig. 6). Columns of this type are also found at Karnak, Kalabshé,
Amada, and Abydos. A reminiscence of primitive wood construction is seen
in the dentils over the plain architrave of the entrance, which in other
respects recalls the triple entrances to certain mastabas of the Old
Empire. These dentils are imitations of the ends of rafters, and to some
archæologists suggest a wooden origin for the whole system of columnar
design. But these rock-cut shafts and heavy architraves in no respect
resemble wooden prototypes, but point rather to an imitation cut in the
rock of a well-developed, pre-existing system of stone construction,
some of whose details, however, were undoubtedly derived from early
methods of building in wood. The vault was below the chapel and reached
by a separate entrance. The serdab was replaced by a niche in which was
the figure of the defunct carved from the native rock. Some of the tombs
employed in the chapel-chamber columns of quatrefoil section with
capitals like clustered buds (Fig. 7), and this type became in the next
period one of the most characteristic forms of Egyptian architecture.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--SECTION AND HALF-PLAN OF A TOMB AT
BENI-HASSAN.]
+TEMPLES.+ Of the temples of this period only two have left any remains
of importance. Both belong to the twelfth dynasty (cir. 2200 B.C.). Of
one of these many badly shattered fragments have been found in the ruins
of Bubastis; these show the clustered type of lotus-bud column mentioned
above. The other, of which a few columns have been identified among the
ruins of the Great Temple at Karnak, constituted the oldest part of that
vast agglomeration of religious edifices, and employed columns of the
so-called proto-Doric type. From these remains it appears that
structural stone columns as well as those cut in the rock were used at
this early period (2200 B.C.). Indeed, it is probable that the whole
architectural system of the New Empire was based on models developed in
the age we are considering; that the use of multiplied columns of
various types and the building of temples of complex plan adorned with
colossal statues, obelisks, and painted reliefs, were perfectly
understood and practised in this period. But the works it produced have
perished, having been most probably demolished to make way for the more
sumptuous edifices of later times.
+THE NEW EMPIRE.+ This was the grand age of Egyptian architecture and
history. An extraordinary series of mighty men ruled the empire during a
long period following the expulsion of the Hyksos usurpers. The names of
Thothmes, Amenophis, Hatasu, Seti, and Rameses made glorious the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Foreign conquests in Ethiopia,
Syria, and Assyria enlarged the territory and increased the splendor of
the empire. The majority of the most impressive ruins of Egypt belong to
this period, and it was in these buildings that the characteristic
elements of Egyptian architecture were brought to perfection and carried
out on the grandest scale.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--PLAN OF THE RAMESSEUM.
a, _Sanctuary_; b, _Hypostyle Hall_; c, _Second court_;
d, _Entrance court_; e, _Pylons_.]
+TOMBS OF THE NEW EMPIRE.+ Some of these are structural, others
excavated; both types displaying considerable variety in arrangement and
detail. The rock-cut tombs of Bab-el-Molouk, among which are twenty-five
royal sepulchres, are striking both by the simplicity of their openings
and the depth and complexity of their shafts, tunnels, and chambers.
From the pipe-like length of their tunnels they have since the time of
Herodotus been known by the name _syrinx_. Every precaution was taken to
lead astray and baffle the intending violator of their sanctity. They
penetrated hundreds of feet into the rock; their chambers, often formed
with columns and vault-like roofs, were resplendent with colored reliefs
and ornament destined to solace and sustain the shadowy Ka until the
soul itself, the Ba, should arrive before the tribunal of Osiris, the
Sun of Night. Most impressively do these brilliant pictures,[2] intended
to be forever shut away from human eyes, attest the sincerity of the
Egyptian belief and the conscientiousness of the art which it inspired.
[Footnote 2: See Van Dyke’s _History of Painting_, Figure 1.]
While the tomb of the private citizen was complete in itself, containing
the Ka-statues and often the chapel, as well as the mummy, the royal
tomb demanded something more elaborate in scale and arrangement. In some
cases external structures of temple-form took the place of the
underground chapel and serdab. The royal effigy, many times repeated in
painting and sculpture throughout this temple-like edifice, and flanking
its gateways with colossal seated figures, made buried Ka-statues
unnecessary. Of these sepulchral temples three are of the first
magnitude. They are that of +Queen Hatasu+ (XVIIIth dynasty) at
Deir-el-Bahari; that of +Rameses II.+ (XIXth dynasty), the +Ramesseum+,
near by to the southwest; and that of +Rameses III.+ (XXth dynasty) at
Medinet Abou still further to the southwest. Like the tombs, these were
all on the west side of the Nile; so also was the sepulchral temple of
Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty), the +Amenopheum+, of which hardly a
trace remains except the two seated colossi which, rising from the
Theban plain, have astonished travellers from the times of Pausanias and
Strabo down to our own. These mutilated figures, one of which has been
known ever since classic times as the “vocal Memnon,” are 56 feet high,
and once flanked the entrance to the forecourt of the temple of
Amenophis. The plan of the Ramesseum, with its sanctuary, hypostyle
hall, and forecourts, its pylons and obelisks, is shown in Figure 8, and
may be compared with those of other temples given on pp. 17 and 18. That
of Medinet Abou resembles it closely. The Ramesseum occupies a rectangle
of 590 × 182 feet; the temple of Medinet Abou measures 500 × 160 feet,
not counting the extreme width of the entrance pylons. The temple of
Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahari is partly excavated and partly structural,
a model which is also followed on a smaller scale in several lesser
tombs. Such an edifice is called a _hemispeos_.
CHAPTER III.
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter II.
+TEMPLES.+ The surpassing glory of the New Empire was its great temples.
Some of them were among the most stupendous creations of structural art.
To temples rather than palaces were the resources and energies of the
kings devoted, and successive monarchs found no more splendid outlet for
their piety and ambition than the founding of new temples or the
extension and adornment of those already existing. By the forced labor
of thousands of fellaheen (the system is in force to this day and is
known as the _corvée_) architectural piles of vast extent could be
erected within the lifetime of a monarch. As in the tombs the internal
walls bore pictures for the contemplation of the Ka, so in the temples
the external walls, for the glory of the king and the delectation of the
people, were covered with colored reliefs reciting the monarch’s
glorious deeds. Internally the worship and attributes of the gods were
represented in a similar manner, in endless iteration.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--TEMPLE OF EDFOU. PLAN.]
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--TEMPLE OF EDFOU. SECTION.]
+THE TEMPLE SCHEME.+ This is admirably shown in the temple of Khonsu, at
Karnak, built by Rameses III. (XXth dynasty), and in the temple of Edfou
(Figs. 9 and 10), though this belongs to the Roman period. It comprised
a sanctuary or _sekos_, a hypostyle (columnar) hall, known as the “hall
of assembly,” and a forecourt preceded by a double pylon or gateway.
Each of these parts might be made more or less complex in different
temples, but the essential features are encountered everywhere under all
changes of form. The building of a temple began with the sanctuary,
which contained the sacred chamber and the shrine of the god, with
subordinate rooms for the priests and for various rites and functions.
These chambers were low, dark, mysterious, accessible only to the
priests and king. They were given a certain dignity by being raised upon
a sort of platform above the general level, and reached by a few steps.
They were sumptuously decorated internally with ritual pictures in
relief. The hall was sometimes loftier, but set on a slightly lower
level; its massive columns supported a roof of stone lintels, and light
was admitted either through clearstory windows under the roof of a
central portion higher than the sides, as at Karnak, or over a low
screen-wall built between the columns of the front row, as at Edfou and
Denderah. This method was peculiar to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.
The court was usually surrounded by a single or double colonnade;
sometimes, however, this colonnade only flanked the sides or fronted the
hall, or again was wholly wanting. The _pylons_ were twin buttress-like
masses flanking the entrance gate of the court. They were shaped like
oblong truncated pyramids, crowned by flaring cornices, and were
decorated on the outer face with masts carrying banners, with obelisks,
or with seated colossal figures of the royal builder. An avenue of
sphinxes formed the approach to the entrance, and the whole temple
precinct was surrounded by a wall, usually of crude brick, pierced by
one or more gates with or without pylons. The piety of successive
monarchs was displayed in the addition of new hypostyle halls, courts,
pylons, or obelisks, by which the temple was successively extended in
length, and sometimes also in width, by the increased dimensions of the
new courts. The great Temple of Karnak most strikingly illustrates this
growth. Begun by Osourtesen (XIIth dynasty) more than 2000 years B.C.,
it was not completed in its present form until the time of the
Ptolemies, when the last of the pylons and external gates were erected.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--TEMPLE OF KARNAK. PLAN.]
The variations in the details of this general type were numerous. Thus,
at El Kab, the temple of Amenophis III. has the sekos and hall but no
forecourt. At Deir-el-Medineh the hall of the Ptolemaic Hathor-temple is
a mere porch in two parts, while the enclosure within the circuit wall
takes the place of the forecourt. At Karnak all the parts were repeated
several times, and under Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty) a wing was
built at a nearly right angle to the main structure. At Luxor, to a
complete typical temple were added three aisles of an unfinished
hypostyle hall, and an elaborate forecourt, whose axis is inclined to
that of the other buildings, owing to a bend of the river at that point.
At Abydos a complex sanctuary of many chambers extends southeast at
right angles to the general mass, and the first court is without
columns. But in all these structures a certain unity of effect is
produced by the lofty pylons, the flat roofs diminishing in height over
successive portions from the front to the sanctuary, the sloping
windowless walls covered with carved and painted pictures, and the dim
and massive interiors of the columnar halls.
+TEMPLES OF KARNAK.+ Of these various temples that of +Amen-Ra+ is
incomparably the largest and most imposing. Its construction extended
through the whole duration of the New Empire, of whose architecture it
is a splendid _résumé_ (Fig. 11). Its extreme length is 1,215 feet, and
its greatest width 376 feet. The sanctuary and its accessories, mainly
built by Thothmes I. and Thothmes III., cover an area nearly 456 × 290
feet in extent, and comprise two hypostyle halls and countless smaller
halls and chambers. It is preceded by a narrow columnar vestibule and
two pylons enclosing a columnar atrium and two obelisks. This is entered
from the +Great Hypostyle Hall+ (h in Fig. 11; Fig. 12), the noblest
single work of Egyptian architecture, measuring 340 × 170 feet, and
containing 134 columns in sixteen rows, supporting a massive stone roof.
The central columns with bell-capitals are 70 feet high and nearly 12
feet in diameter; the others are smaller and lower, with lotus-bud
capitals, supporting a roof lower than that over the three central
aisles. A clearstory of stone-grated windows makes up the difference in
height between these two roofs. The interior, thus lighted, was splendid
with painted reliefs, which helped not only to adorn the hall but to
give scale to its massive parts. The whole stupendous creation was the
work of three kings--Rameses I., Seti I., and Rameses II. (XIXth
dynasty).
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--CENTRAL PORTION OF HYPOSTYLE HALL
AT KARNAK.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)]
In front of it was the great court, flanked by columns, and still
showing the ruins of a central avenue of colossal pillars begun, but
never completed, by the Bubastid kings of the XXIId dynasty. One or two
smaller structures and the curious lateral wing built by Amenophis III.,
interrupt the otherwise orderly and symmetrical advance of this plan
from the sanctuary to the huge first pylon (last in point of date)
erected by the Ptolemies.
The smaller temple of Khonsu, south of that of Amen-Ra, has already been
alluded to as a typical example of templar design. Next to Karnak in
importance comes the +Temple of Luxor+ in its immediate neighborhood. It
has two forecourts adorned with double-aisled colonnades and connected
by what seems to be an unfinished hypostyle hall. The +Ramesseum+ and
the temples of +Medinet Abou+ and +Deir-El-Bahari+ have already been
mentioned (p. 15). At Gournah and Abydos are the next most celebrated
temples of this period; the first famous for its rich clustered
lotus-columns, the latter for its beautiful sanctuary chambers,
dedicated each to a different deity, and covered with delicate painted
reliefs of the time of Seti I.
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--GREAT TEMPLE OF IPSAMBOUL.]
+GROTTO TEMPLES.+ Two other styles of temple remain to be noticed. The
first is the subterranean or grotto temple, of which the two most
famous, at Ipsamboul (Abou-simbel), were excavated by Rameses II. They
are truly colossal conceptions, reproducing in the native rock the main
features of structural temples, the court being represented by the
larger of two chambers in the Greater Temple (Fig. 13) Their façades are
adorned with colossal seated figures of the builder; the smaller has
also two effigies of Nefert-Ari, his consort. Nothing more striking and
boldly impressive is to be met with in Egypt than these singular
rock-cut façades. Other rock-cut temples of more modest dimensions are
at Addeh, Feraig, Beni-Hassan (the “Speos Artemidos”), Beit-el-Wali, and
Silsileh. At Gherf-Hossein, Asseboua, and Derri are temples partly
excavated and partly structural.
+PERIPTERAL TEMPLES.+ The last type of temple to be noticed is
represented by only three or four structures of moderate size; it is the
_peripteral_, in which a small chamber is surrounded by columns, usually
mounted on a terrace with vertical walls. They were mere chapels, but
are among the most graceful of existing ruins. At Philæ are two
structures, one by Nectanebo, the other Ptolemaic, resembling peripteral
temples, but without cella-chambers or roofs. They may have been
waiting-courts for the adjoining temples. That at Elephantine (Amenophis
III.) has square piers at the sides, and columns only at the ends.
Another by Thothmes II., at Medinet Abou, formed only a part (the
sekos?) of a larger plan. At Edfou is another, belonging to the
Ptolemaic period.
+LATER TEMPLES.+ After the architectural inaction of the Decadence came
a marvellous recrudescence of splendor under the Ptolemies, whose
Hellenic origin and sympathies did not lead them into the mistaken
effort to impose Greek models upon Egyptian art. The temples erected
under their dominion, and later under Roman rule, vied with the grandest
works of the Ramessidæ, and surpassed them in the rich elaboration and
variety of their architectural details. The temple at Edfou (Figs. 9,
10, 14) is the most perfectly preserved, and conforms most closely to
the typical plan; that of Isis, at Philæ, is the most elaborate and
ornate. Denderah also possesses a group of admirably preserved temples
of the same period. At Esneh, and at Kalabshé and Kardassy or Ghertashi
in Nubia are others. In all these one notes innovations of detail and a
striving for effect quite different from the simpler majesty of the
preceding age (Fig. 14). One peculiar feature is the use of screen walls
built into the front rows of columns of the hypostyle hall. Light was
admitted above these walls, which measured about half the height of the
columns and were interrupted at the centre by a curious doorway cut
through their whole height and without any lintel. Long disused types of
capital were revived and others greatly elaborated; and the wall-reliefs
were arranged in bands and panels with a regularity and symmetry rather
Greek than Egyptian.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.--EDFOU. FRONT OF HYPOSTYLE HALL.]
+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ With the exception of a few purely utilitarian
vaulted structures, all Egyptian architecture was based on the principle
of the lintel. Artistic splendor depended upon the use of painted and
carved pictures, and the decorative treatment of the very simple
supports employed. Piers and columns sustained the roofs of such
chambers as were too wide for single lintels, and produced, in halls
like those of Karnak, of the Ramesseum, or of Denderah, a stupendous
effect by their height, massiveness, number, and colored decoration. The
simplest piers were plain square shafts; others, more elaborate, had
lotus stalks and flowers or heads of Hathor carved upon them. The most
striking were those against whose front faces were carved colossal
figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The
columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated
with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either
round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The
capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five
chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, the
Middle Empire and a few of the earlier monuments of the New Empire
employed polygonal or slightly fluted shafts (see p. 11), as at Beni
Hassan and Karnak; these had a plain square abacus, with sometimes a
cushion-like echinus beneath it. A round plinth served as a base for
most of the columns.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.--OSIRID PIER (MEDINET ABOU).]
+CAPITALS.+ The five chief types of capital were: a, the plain lotus
bud, as at Karnak (Great Hall); b, the clustered lotus bud (Beni-Hassan,
Karnak, Luxor, Gournah, etc.); c, the _campaniform_ or inverted bell
(central aisles at Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum); d, the palm-capital,
frequent in the later temples; and e, the Hathor-headed, in which heads
of Hathor adorn the four faces of a cubical mass surmounted by a model
of a shrine (Sedinga, Edfou, Denderah, Esneh). These types were richly
embellished and varied by the Ptolemaic architects, who gave a clustered
or quatrefoil plan to the bell-capital, or adorned its surface with palm
leaves. A few other forms are met with as exceptions. The first four are
shown in Fig. 16.
Every part of the column was richly decorated in color. Lotus-leaves or
petals swathed the swelling lower part of the shaft, which was elsewhere
covered with successive bands of carved pictures and of hieroglyphics.
The capital was similarly covered with carved and painted ornament,
usually of lotus-flowers or leaves, or alternate stalks of lotus and
papyrus.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--TYPES OF COLUMN.
a, _Campaniform_; b, _Clustered Lotus-Column_; c, _Simple
Lotus-Column_; d, _Palm-Column_.]
The lintels were plain and square in section, and often of prodigious
size. Where they appeared externally they were crowned with a simple
cavetto cornice, its curved surface covered with colored flutings
alternating with _cartouches_ of hieroglyphics. Sometimes, especially on
the screen walls of the Ptolemaic age, this was surmounted by a cresting
of adders or uræi in closely serried rank. No other form of cornice or
cresting is met with. Mouldings as a means of architectural effect were
singularly lacking in Egyptian architecture. The only moulding known is
the clustered torus (_torus_ = a convex moulding of semicircular
profile), which resembles a bundle of reeds tied together with cords or
ribbons. It forms an astragal under the cavetto cornice and runs down
the angles of the pylons and walls.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--EGYPTIAN FLORAL ORNAMENT-FORMS.]
+POLYCHROMY AND ORNAMENT.+ Color was absolutely essential to the
decorative scheme. In the vast and dim interiors, as well as in the
blinding glare of the sun, mere sculpture or relief would have been
wasted. The application of brilliant color to pictorial forms cut in low
relief, or outlined by deep incision with the edges of the figures
delicately rounded (_intaglio rilievo_) was the most appropriate
treatment possible. The walls and columns were covered with pictures
treated in this way, and the ceilings and lintels were embellished with
symbolic forms in the same manner. All the ornaments, as distinguished
from the paintings, were symbolical, at least in their origin. Over the
gateway was the solar disk or globe with wide-spread wings, the symbol
of the sun winging its way to the conquest of night; upon the ceiling
were sacred vultures, zodiacs, or stars spangled on a blue ground.
Externally the temples presented only masses of unbroken wall; but
these, as well as the pylons, were covered with huge pictures of a
historical character. Only in the tombs do we find painted ornament of a
purely conventional sort (Fig. 17). Rosettes, diaper patterns, spirals,
and checkers are to be met with in them; but many of these can be traced
to symbolic origins.[3]
[Footnote 3: See Goodyear’s _Grammar of the Lotus_ for an
elaborate and ingenious presentation of the theory of a common
lotus-origin for all the conventional forms occurring in Egyptian
ornament.]
+DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.+ The only remains of palaces are the pavilion of
Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth
has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The
Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important
edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably in
most cases built of wood or crude brick, and their disappearance is thus
easily explained. Relief pictures on the monuments indicate the use of
wooden framing for the walls, which were probably filled in with crude
brick or panels of wood. The architecture was extremely simple. Gateways
like those of the temples on a smaller scale, the cavetto cornice on the
walls, and here and there a porch with carved columns of wood or stone,
were the only details pretending to elegance. The ground-plans of many
houses in ruined cities, as at Tel-el-Amarna and a nameless city of
Amenophis IV., are discernible in the ruins; but the superstructures are
wholly wanting. It was in religious and sepulchral architecture that the
constructive and artistic genius of the Egyptians was most fully
manifested.
+MONUMENTS+: The principal necropolis regions of Egypt are centred
about Ghizeh and ancient Memphis for the Old Empire (pyramids and
mastabas), Thebes for the Middle Empire (Silsileh, Beni Hassan),
and Thebes (Vale of the Kings, Vale of the Queens) and Abydos for
the New Empire.
The Old Empire has also left us the Sphinx, Sphinx temple, and the
temple at Meidoum.
The most important temples of the New Empire were those of Karnak
(the great temple, the southern or temple of Khonsu), of Luxor,
Medinet Abou (great temple of Rameses III., lesser temples of
Thothmes II. and III. with peripteral sekos; also Pavilion of
Rameses III.); of Abydos; of Gournah; of Eilithyia (Amenophis
III.); of Soleb and Sesebi in Nubia; of Elephantine (peripteral);
the tomb temple of Deir-el-Bahari, the Ramesseum, the Amenopheum;
hemispeos at Gherf Hossein; two grotto temples at Ipsamboul.
At Meroë are pyramids of the Ethiopic kings of the Decadence.
Temples of the Ptolemaic period: Philæ, Denderah.
Temples of the Roman period: Koum Ombos, Edfou; Kalabshé, Kardassy
and Dandour in Nubia; Esneh.
CHAPTER IV.
CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Reber. Also, Babelon, _Manual of
Oriental Antiquities_. Botta and Flandin, _Monuments de Ninive_.
Layard, _Discoveries in Nineveh_; _Nineveh and its Remains_.
Loftus, _Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana_. Perrot
and Chipiez, _History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria_. Peters,
_Nippur_. Place, _Ninive et l’Assyrie_.
+SITUATION; HISTORIC PERIODS.+ The Tigro-Euphrates valley was the seat
of a civilization nearly or quite as old as that of the Nile, though
inferior in its monumental art. The kingdoms of Chaldæa and Assyria
which ruled in this valley, sometimes as rivals and sometimes as
subjects one of the other, differed considerably in character and
culture. But the scarcity of timber and the lack of good building-stone
except in the limestone table-lands and more distant mountains of upper
Mesopotamia, the abundance of clay, and the flatness of the country,
imposed upon the builders of both nations similar restrictions of
conception, form, and material. Both peoples, moreover, were probably,
in part at least, of Semitic race.[4] The Chaldæans attained
civilization as early as 4000 B.C., and had for centuries maintained
fixed institutions and practised the arts and sciences when the
Assyrians began their career as a nation of conquerors by reducing
Chaldæa to subjection.
[Footnote 4: This is denied by some recent writers, so far as
the Chaldæans are concerned, and is not intended here to apply
to the Accadians and Summerians of primitive Chaldæa.]
The history of Chaldæo-Assyrian art may be divided into three main
periods, as follows:
1. The EARLY CHALDÆAN, 4000 to 1250 B.C.
2. The ASSYRIAN, 1250 to 606 B.C.
3. The BABYLONIAN, 606 to 538 B.C.
In 538 the empire fell before the Persians.
+GENERAL CHARACTER OF MONUMENTS.+ Recent excavations at Nippur (Niffer),
the sacred city of Chaldæa, have uncovered ruins older than the
Pyramids. Though of slight importance architecturally, they reveal the
early knowledge of the arch and the possession of an advanced culture.
The poverty of the building materials of this region afforded only the
most limited resources for architectural effect. Owing to the flatness
of the country and the impracticability of building lofty structures
with sun-dried bricks, elevation above the plain could be secured only
by erecting buildings of moderate height upon enormous mounds or
terraces, built of crude brick and faced with hard brick or stone. This
led to the development of the stepped pyramid as the typical form of
Chaldæo-Assyrian architecture. Thick walls were necessary both for
stability and for protection from the burning heat of that climate. The
lack of stone for columns and the difficulty of procuring heavy beams
for long spans made broad halls and chambers impossible. The plans of
Assyrian palaces look like assemblages of long corridors and small cells
(Fig. 18). Neither the wooden post nor the column played any part in
this architecture except for window-mullions and subordinate members.[5]
It is probable that the vault was used for roofing many of the halls;
the arch was certainly employed for doors and the barrel-vault for the
drainage-tunnels under the terraces, made necessary by the heavy
rainfall. What these structures lacked in durability and height was made
up in decorative magnificence. The interior walls were wainscoted to a
height of eight or nine feet with alabaster slabs covered with those
low-relief pictures of hunting scenes, battles, and gods, which now
enrich the museums of London, Paris, and other modern cities. Elsewhere
painted plaster or more durable enamelled tile in brilliant colors
embellished the walls, and, doubtless, rugs and tapestries added their
richness to this architectural splendor.
[Footnote 5: See Fergusson, _Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis_,
for an ingenious but unsubstantiated argument for the use of
columns in Assyrian palaces.]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--PALACE OF SARGON AT KHORSABAD.]
+CHALDÆAN ARCHITECTURE.+ The ruins at Mugheir (the Biblical Ur), dating,
perhaps, from 2200 B.C., belong to the two-storied terrace or platform
of a temple to Sin or Hurki. The wall of sun-dried brick is faced with
enamelled tile. The shrine, which was probably small, has wholly
disappeared from the summit of the mound. At Warka (the ancient Erech)
are two terrace-walls of palaces, one of which is ornamented with convex
flutings and with a species of mosaic in checker patterns and zigzags,
formed by terra-cotta cones or spikes driven into the clay, their
exposed bases being enamelled in the desired colors. The other shows a
system of long, narrow panels, in a style suggesting the influence of
Egyptian models through some as yet unknown channel. This panelling
became a common feature of the later Assyrian art (see Fig. 19). At
Birs-Nimroud are the ruins of a stepped pyramid surmounted by a small
shrine. Its seven stages are said to have been originally faced with
glazed tile of the seven planetary colors, gold, silver, yellow, red,
blue, white, and black. The ruins at Nippur, which comprise temples,
altars, and dwellings dating from 4000 B.C., have been alluded to.
Babylon, the later capital of Chaldæa, to which the shapeless mounds of
Mujehbeh and Kasr seem to have belonged, has left no other recognizable
vestige of its ancient magnificence.
+ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ Abundant ruins exist of Nineveh, the Assyrian
capital, and its adjacent palace-sites. Excavations at Koyunjik,
Khorsabad, and Nimroud have laid bare a number of these royal dwellings.
Among them are the palace of Assur-nazir-pal (885 B.C.) and two palaces
of Shalmaneser II. (850 B.C.) at Nimroud; the great palace of Sargon at
Khorsabad (721 B.C.); that of Sennacherib at Koyunjik (704 B.C.); of
Esarhaddon at Nimroud (650 B.C.); and of Assur-bani-pal at Koyunjik (660
B.C.). All of these palaces are designed on the same general principle,
best shown by the plan (Fig. 18) of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad,
excavated by Botta and Place.
In this palace two large and several smaller courts are surrounded by a
complex series of long, narrow halls and small, square chambers. One
court probably belonged to the harem, another to the king’s apartments,
others to dependents and to the service of the palace. The crude brick
walls are immensely thick and without windows, the only openings being
for doors. The absence of columns made wide halls impossible, and great
size could only be attained in the direction of length. A terraced
pyramid supported an altar or shrine to the southwest of the palace; at
the west corner was a temple, the substructure of which was crowned by a
cavetto cornice showing plainly the influence of Egyptian models. The
whole palace stood upon a stupendous platform faced with cut stone, an
unaccustomed extravagance in Assyria.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--GATE, KHORSABAD.]
+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ There is no evidence that the Assyrians ever
used columnar supports except in minor or accessory details. There are
few halls in any of the ruins too wide to be spanned by good Syrian
cedar beams or palm timbers, and these few cases seem to have had
vaulted ceilings. So clumsy a feature as the central wall in the great
hall of Esarhaddon’s palace at Nimroud would never have been resorted to
for the support of the ceiling, had the Assyrians been familiar with the
use of columns. That they understood the arch and vault is proved by
their admirable terrace-drains and the fine arched gate in the walls of
Khorsabad (Fig. 19), as well as by bas-reliefs representing dwellings
with domes of various forms. Moreover, a few vaulted chambers of
moderate size, and fallen fragments of crude brick vaulting of larger
span, have been found in several of the Assyrian ruins.
The construction was extremely simple. The heavy clay walls were faced
with alabaster, burned brick, or enamelled tiles. The roofs were
probably covered with stamped earth, and sometimes paved on top with
tiles or slabs of alabaster to form terraces. Light was introduced most
probably through windows immediately under the roof and divided by small
columns forming mullions, as suggested by certain relief pictures. No
other system seems consistent with the windowless walls of the ruins. It
is possible that many rooms depended wholly on artificial light or on
the scant rays coming through open doors. To this day, in the hot season
the population of Mosul takes refuge from the torrid heats of summer in
windowless basements lighted only by lamps.
+ORNAMENT.+ The only structural decorations seem to have been the
panelling of exterior walls in a manner resembling the Chaldæan
terrace-walls, and a form of parapet like a stepped cresting. There were
no characteristic mouldings, architraves, capitals, or cornices. Nearly
all the ornament was of the sort called _applied_, _i.e._, added after
the completion of the structure itself. Pictures in low relief covered
the alabaster revetment. They depicted hunting-scenes, battles, deities,
and other mythological subjects, and are interesting to the architect
mainly for their occasional representations of buildings and details of
construction. Above this wainscot were friezes of enamelled brick
ornamented with symbolic forms used as decorative motives; winged bulls,
the “sacred tree” and mythological monsters, with rosettes, palmettes,
lotus-flowers, and _guilloches_ (ornaments of interlacing bands winding
about regularly spaced buttons or eyes). These ornaments were also used
on the archivolts around the great arches of palace gates. The most
singular adornments of these gates were the carved “portal guardians”
set into the deep jambs--colossal monsters with the bodies of bulls, the
wings of eagles, and human heads of terrible countenance. Of mighty
bulk, they were yet minutely wrought in every detail of head-dress,
beard, feathers, curly hair, and anatomy.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--ASSYRIAN ORNAMENT.]
The purely conventional ornaments mentioned above--the rosette,
guilloche, and lotus-flower, and probably also the palmette, were
derived from Egyptian originals. They were treated, however, in a quite
new spirit and adapted to the special materials and uses of their
environment. Thus the form of the palmette, even if derived, as is not
unlikely, from the Egyptian lotus-motive, was assimilated to the more
familiar palm-forms of Assyria (Fig. 20).
Assyrian architecture never rivalled the Egyptian in grandeur or
constructive power, in seriousness, or the higher artistic qualities. It
did, however, produce imposing results with the poorest resources, and
in its use of the arch and its development of ornamental forms it
furnished prototypes for some of the most characteristic features of
later Asiatic art, which profoundly influenced both Greek and Byzantine
architecture.
+MONUMENTS+: The most important Chaldæan and Assyrian monuments of
which there are extant remains, have already been enumerated in
the text. It is therefore unnecessary to duplicate the list here.
CHAPTER V.
PERSIAN, LYCIAN AND JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Babelon; Bliss, _Excavations at
Jerusalem_. Reber. Also Dieulafoy, _L’Art antique de la Perse_.
Fellows, _Account of Discoveries in Lycia_. Fergusson, _The Temple
at Jerusalem_. Flandin et Coste, _Perse ancienne_. Perrot and
Chipiez, _History of Art in Persia_; _History of Art in Phrygia,
Lydia, Caria, and Lycia_; _History of Art in Sardinia and Judæa_.
Texier, _L’Arménie et la Perse_; _L’Asie Mineure_. De Vogüé, _Le
Temple de Jérusalem_.
+PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ With the Persians, who under Cyrus (536 B.C.)
and Cambyses (525 B.C.) became the masters of the Orient, the Aryan race
superseded the Semitic, and assimilated in new combinations the forms it
borrowed from the Assyrian civilization. Under the Achæmenidæ (536 to
330 B.C.) palaces were built in Persepolis and Susa of a splendor and
majesty impossible in Mesopotamia, and rivalling the marvels in the Nile
Valley. The conquering nation of warriors who had overthrown the
Egyptians and Assyrians was in turn conquered by the arts of its
vanquished foes, and speedily became the most luxurious of all nations.
The Persians were not great innovators in art; but inhabiting a land of
excellent building resources, they were able to combine the Egyptian
system of interior columns with details borrowed from Assyrian art, and
suggestions, derived most probably from the general use in Persia and
Central Asia, of wooden posts or columns as intermediate supports. Out
of these elements they evolved an architecture which has only become
fully known to us since the excavations of M. and Mme. Dieulafoy at Susa
in 1882.
+ELEMENTS OF PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ The Persians used both crude and
baked bricks, the latter far more freely than was practicable in
Assyria, owing to the greater abundance of fuel. Walls when built of the
weaker material were faced with baked brick enamelled in brilliant
colors, or both moulded and enamelled, to form colored pictures in
relief. Stone was employed for walls and columns, and, in conjunction
with brick, for the jambs and lintels of doors and windows. Architraves
and ceiling-beams were of wood. The palaces were erected, as in Assyria,
upon broad platforms, partly cut in the rock and partly structural,
approached by imposing flights of steps. These palaces were composed of
detached buildings, propylæa or gates of honor, vast audience-halls open
on one or two sides, and chambers or dwellings partly enclosing or
flanking these halls, or grouped in separate buildings. Temples appear
to have been of small importance, perhaps owing to habits of out-of-door
worship of fire and sun. There are few structural tombs, but there are a
number of imposing royal sepulchres cut in the rock at Naksh-i-Roustam.
+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ The Persians, like the Egyptians, used the
column as an internal feature in hypostyle halls of great size, and
externally to form porches, and perhaps, also, open kiosks without
walls. The great +Hall of Xerxes+ at Persepolis covers 100,000 square
feet--more than double the area of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak. But the
Persian column was derived from wooden prototypes and used with wooden
architraves, permitting a wider spacing than is possible with stone. In
the present instance thirty-six columns sufficed for an area which in
the Karnak hall contained one hundred and thirty-four. The shafts being
slender and finely fluted instead of painted or carved, the effect
produced was totally different from that sought by the Egyptians. The
most striking peculiarity of the column was the capital, which was
forked (Fig. 21). In one of the two principal types the fork, formed by
the coupled fore-parts of bulls or symbolic monsters, rested directly on
the top of the shaft. In the other, two singular members were interposed
between the fork and the shaft; the lower, a sort of double bell or
bell-and-palm capital, and above it, just beneath the fork, a curious
combination of vertical scrolls or volutes, resembling certain ornaments
seen in Assyrian furniture. The transverse architrave rested in the
fork; the longitudinal architrave was supported on the heads of the
monsters. A rich moulded base, rather high and in some cases adorned
with carved leaves or flutings, supported the columns, which in the Hall
of Xerxes were over 66 feet high and 6 feet in diameter. The architraves
have perished, but the rock-cut tomb of Darius at Naksh-i-Roustam
reproduces in its façade a palace-front, showing a banded architrave
with dentils--an obvious imitation of the ends of wooden rafters on a
lintel built up of several beams.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--COLUMN FROM PERSEPOLIS.]
These features of the architrave, as well as the fine flutings and
moulded bases of the columns, are found in Ionic architecture, and in
part, at least, in Lycian tombs. As all these examples date from nearly
the same period, the origin of these forms and their mutual relations
have not been fully determined. The Persian capitals, however, are
unique, and so far as known, without direct prototypes or derivatives.
Their constituent elements may have been borrowed from various sources.
One can hardly help seeing the Egyptian palm-capital in the lower member
of the compound type (Fig. 21).
The doors and windows had banded architraves or trims and cavetto
cornices very Egyptian in character. The portals were flanked, as in
Assyria, by winged monsters; but these were built up in several courses
of stone, not carved from single blocks like their prototypes. Plaster
or, as at Susa, enamelled bricks, replaced as a wall-finish the Assyrian
alabaster wainscot. These bricks, splendid in color, and moulded into
relief pictures covering large surfaces, are the oldest examples of the
skill of the Persians in a branch of ceramic art in which they have
always excelled down to our own day.
+LYCIAN ARCHITECTURE.+ The architecture of those Asiatic peoples which
served as intermediaries between the ancient civilizations of Egypt and
Assyria on the one hand and of the Greeks on the other, need occupy us
only a moment in passing. None of them developed a complete and
independent style or produced monuments of the first rank. Those chiefly
concerned in the transmission of ideas were the Cypriotes, Phœnicians,
and Lycians. The part played by other Asiatic nations is too slight to
be considered here. From Cyprus the Greeks could have learned little
beyond a few elementary notions regarding sculpture and pottery,
although it is possible that the volute-form in Ionic architecture was
originally derived from patterns on Cypriote pottery and from certain
Cypriote steles, where it appears as a modified lotus motive. The
Phœnicians were the world’s traders from a very early age down to the
Persian conquest. They not only distributed through the Mediterranean
lands the manufactures of Egypt and Assyria, but also counterfeited them
and adopted their forms in decorating their own wares. But they have
bequeathed us not a single architectural ruin of importance, either of
temples or palaces, nor are the few tombs still extant of sufficient
artistic interest to deserve even brief mention in a work of this scope.
In Lycia, however, there arose a system of tomb-design which came near
creating a new architectural style, and which doubtless influenced both
Persia and the Ionian colonies. The tombs were mostly cut in the rock,
though a few are free-standing monolithic monuments, resembling
sarcophagi or small shrines mounted on a high base or pedestal.
In all of these tombs we recognize a manifest copying in stone of framed
wooden structures. The walls are panelled, or imitate open structures
framed of squared timbers. The roofs are often gabled, sometimes in the
form of a pointed arch; they generally show a banded architrave,
dentils, and a raking cornice, or else an imitation of broadly
projecting eaves with small round rafters. There are several with
porches of Ionic columns; of these, some are of late date and evidently
copied from Asiatic Greek models. Others, and notably one at Telmissus,
seem to be examples of a primitive Ionic, and may indeed have been early
steps in the development of that splendid style which the Ionic Greeks,
both in Asia Minor and in Attica, carried to such perfection.
+JEWISH ARCHITECTURE.+ The Hebrews borrowed from the art of every people
with whom they had relations, so that we encounter in the few extant
remains of their architecture Egyptian, Assyrian, Phœnician, Greek,
Roman, and Syro-Byzantine features, but nothing like an independent
national style. Among the most interesting of these remains are tombs of
various periods, principally occurring in the valleys near Jerusalem,
and erroneously ascribed by popular tradition to the judges, prophets,
and kings of Israel. Some of them are structural, some cut in the rock;
the former (tomb of Absalom, of Zechariah) decorated with Doric and
Ionic engaged orders, were once supposed to be primitive types of these
orders and of great antiquity. They are now recognized to be debased
imitations of late Greek work of the third or second century B.C. They
have Egyptian cavetto cornices and pyramidal roofs, like many Asiatic
tombs. The openings of the rock-cut tombs have frames or pediments
carved with rich surface ornament showing a similar mixture of
types--Roman triglyphs and garlands, Syrian-Greek acanthus leaves,
conventional foliage of Byzantine character, and naturalistic carvings
of grapes and local plant-life. The carved arches of two of the ancient
city gates (one the so-called Golden Gate) in Jerusalem display rich
acanthus foliage somewhat like that of the tombs, but more vigorous and
artistic. If of the time of Herod or even of Constantine, as claimed by
some, they would indicate that Greek artists in Syria created the
prototypes of Byzantine ornament. They are more probably, however,
Byzantine restorations of the 6th century A.D.
The one great achievement of Jewish architecture was the national
+Temple of Jehovah+, represented by three successive edifices on Mount
Moriah, the site of the present so-called “Mosque of Omar.” The first,
built by Solomon (1012 B.C.) appears from the Biblical description[6] to
have combined Egyptian conceptions (successive courts, lofty
entrance-pylons, the Sanctuary and the sekos or “Holy of Holies”) with
Phœnician and Assyrian details and workmanship (cedar woodwork,
empaistic decoration or overlaying with _repoussé_ metal work, the
isolated brazen columns Jachin and Boaz). The whole stood on a mighty
platform built up with stupendous masonry and vaulted chambers from the
valley surrounding the rock on three sides. This precinct was nearly
doubled in size by Herod (18 B.C.) who extended it southward by a
terrace-wall of still more colossal masonry. Some of the stones are
twenty-two feet long; one reaches the prodigious length of forty feet.
The “Wall of Lamentations” is a part of this terrace, upon which stood
the Temple on a raised platform. As rebuilt by Herod, the Temple
reproduced in part the antique design, and retained the porch of Solomon
along the east side; but the whole was superbly reconstructed in white
marble with abundance of gilding. Defended by the Castle of Antonia on
the northwest, and embellished with a new and imposing triple colonnade
on the south, the whole edifice, a conglomerate of Egyptian, Assyrian,
and Roman conceptions and forms, was one of the most singular and yet
magnificent creations of ancient art.
[Footnote 6: 1 Kings vi.-vii.; 2 Chronicles iii.-iv.]
The temple of Zerubbabel (515 B.C.), intermediate between those above
described, was probably less a re-edification of the first, than a new
design. While based on the scheme of the first temple, it appears to
have followed more closely the pattern described in the vision of
Ezekiel (chapters xl.-xlii.). It was far inferior to its predecessor in
splendor and costliness. No vestiges of it remain.
+MONUMENTS.+ PERSIAN: at Murghab, the tomb of Cyrus, known as
Gabré-Madré-Soleiman--a gabled structure on a seven-stepped
pyramidal basement (525 B.C.). At Persepolis the palace of Darius
(521 B.C.); the Propylæa of Xerxes, his palace and his harem (?)
or throne-hall (480 B.C.). These splendid structures, several of
them of vast size, resplendent with color and majestic with their
singular and colossal columns, must have formed one of the most
imposing architectural groups in the world. At various points,
tower-like tombs, supposed erroneously by Fergusson to have been
fire altars. At Naksh-i-Roustam, the tomb of Darius, cut in the
rock. Other tombs near by at Persepolis proper and at Pasargadæ.
At the latter place remains of the palace of Cyrus. At Susa the
palace of Xerxes and Artaxerxes (480-405 B.C.).
There are no remains of private houses or temples.
LYCIAN: the principal Lycian monuments are found in Myra,
Antiphellus, and Telmissus. Some of the monolithic tombs have been
removed to the British and other European museums.
JEWISH: the temples have been mentioned above. The palace of
Solomon. The rock-cut monolithic tomb of Siloam. So-called tombs
of Absalom and Zechariah, structural; probably of Herod’s time or
later. Rock-cut Tombs of the Kings; of the Prophets, etc. City
gates (Herodian or early Christian period).
CHAPTER VI.
GREEK ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Reber. Also, Anderson and Spiers,
_Architecture of Greece and Rome_. Baumeister, _Denkmäler der
Klassischen Alterthums_. Bötticher, _Tektonik der Hellenen_.
Chipiez, _Histoire critique des ordres grecs_. Curtius, Adler and
Treu, _Die Ausgrabungen zu Olympia_. Durm, _Antike Baukunst_ (in
_Handbuch d. Arch._). Frazer, _Pausanias’ Description of Greece_.
Hitorff, _L’architecture polychrome chez les Grecs_. Michaelis,
_Der Parthenon_. Penrose, _An Investigation, etc., of Athenian
Architecture_. Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Primitive
Greece_; _La Grèce de l’Epopée_; _La Grèce archaïque_. Stuart and
Revett, _Antiquities of Athens_. Tarbell, _History of Greek Art_.
Texier, _L’Asie Mineure_. Wilkins, _Antiquities of Magna Græcia_.
+GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.+ Greek art marks the beginning of European
civilization. The Hellenic race gathered up influences and suggestions
from both Asia and Africa and fused them with others, whose sources are
unknown, into an art intensely national and original, which was to
influence the arts of many races and nations long centuries after the
decay of the Hellenic states. The Greek mind, compared with the Egyptian
or Assyrian, was more highly intellectual, more logical, more
symmetrical, and above all more inquiring and analytic. Living nowhere
remote from the sea, the Greeks became sailors, merchants, and
colonizers. The Ionian kinsmen of the European Greeks, speaking a
dialect of the same language, populated the coasts of Asia Minor and
many of the islands, so that through them the Greeks were open to the
influences of the Assyrian, Phœnician, Persian, and Lycian
civilizations. In Cyprus they encountered Egyptian influences, and
finally, under Psammetichus, they established in Egypt itself the Greek
city of Naukratis. They were thus by geographical situation, by
character, and by circumstances, peculiarly fitted to receive, develop,
and transmit the mingled influences of the East and the South.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--LION GATE AT MYCENÆ.]
+PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS.+[7] Authentic Greek history begins with the
first Olympiad, 776 B.C. The earliest monuments of that historic
architecture which developed into the masterpieces of the Periclean and
Alexandrian ages, date from the middle of the following century. But
there are a number of older buildings, belonging presumably to the
so-called Heroic Age, which, though seemingly unconnected with the later
historic development of Greek architecture, are still worthy of note.
They are the work of a people somewhat advanced in civilization,
probably the Pelasgi, who preceded the Dorians on Greek soil, and
consist mainly of fortifications, walls, gates, and tombs, the most
important of which are at +Mycenæ+ and +Tiryns+. At the latter place is
a well-defined acropolis, with massive walls in which are passages
covered by stones successively overhanging or corbelled until they meet.
The masonry is of huge stones piled without cement. At Mycenæ the city
wall is pierced by the remarkable +Lion Gate+ (Fig. 22), consisting of
two jambs and a huge lintel, over which the weight is relieved by a
triangular opening. This is filled with a sculptured group, now much
defaced, representing two rampant lions flanking a singular column which
tapers downward. This symbolic group has relations with Hittite and
Phrygian sculptures, and with the symbolism of the worship of Rhea
Cybele. The masonry of the wall is carefully dressed but not regularly
coursed. Other primitive walls and gates showing openings and embryonic
arches of various forms, are found widely scattered, at Samos and Delos,
at Phigaleia, Thoricus, Argos and many other points. The very earliest
are hardly more than random piles of rough stone. Those which may fairly
claim notice for their artistic masonry are of a later date and of two
kinds: the coursed, and the polygonal or Cyclopean, so called from the
tradition that they were built by the Cyclopes. These Cyclopean walls
were composed of large, irregular polygonal blocks carefully fitted
together and dressed to a fairly smooth face (Fig. 23). Both kinds were
used contemporaneously, though in the course of time the regular coursed
masonry finally superseded the polygonal.
[Footnote 7: For enlargement on this topic see Appendix A.]
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--POLYGONAL MASONRY.]
+THOLOS OF ATREUS.+ All these structures present, however, only the
rudiments of architectural art. The so-called +Tholos+ (or Treasury) of
+Atreus+, at Mycenæ, on the other hand, shows the germs of truly
artistic design (Fig. 24). It is in reality a tomb, and is one of a
large class of prehistoric tombs found in almost every part of the
globe, consisting of a circular stone-walled and stone-roofed chamber
buried under a tumulus of earth. This one is a beehive-shaped
construction of horizontal courses of masonry, with a stone-walled
passage, the _dromos_, leading to the entrance door. Though internally
of domical form, its construction with horizontal beds in the masonry
proves that the idea of the true dome with the beds of each course
pitched at an angle always normal to the curve of the vault, was not yet
grasped. A small sepulchral chamber opens from the great one, by a door
with the customary relieving triangle over it.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--THOLOS OF ATREUS. PLAN AND SECTION.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--THOLOS OF ATREUS. DOORWAY.]
Traces of a metal lining have been found on the inner surface of the
dome and on the jambs of the entrance door. This entrance is the most
artistic and elaborate part of the edifice (Fig. 25). The main opening
is enclosed in a three-banded frame, and was once flanked by columns
which, as shown by fragments still existing and by marks on either side
the door, tapered downward as in the sculptured column over the Lion
Gate. Shafts, bases, and capitals were covered with zig-zag bands or
chevrons of fine spirals. This well-studied decoration, the banded
jambs, and the curiously inverted columns (of which several other
examples exist in or near Mycenæ), all point to a fairly developed art,
derived partly from Egyptian and partly from Asiatic sources. That
Egyptian influences had affected this early art is further proved by a
fragment of carved and painted ornament on a ceiling in Orchomenos,
imitating with remarkable closeness certain ceiling decorations in
Egyptian tombs.
+HISTORIC MONUMENTS; THE ORDERS.+ It was the Dorians and Ionians who
developed the architecture of classic Greece. This fact is perpetuated
in the traditional names, Doric and Ionic, given to the two systems of
columnar design which formed the most striking feature of that
architecture. While in Egypt the column was used almost exclusively as
an internal support and decoration, in Greece it was chiefly employed to
produce an imposing exterior effect. It was the most important element
in the temple architecture of the Greeks, and an almost indispensable
adornment of their gateways, public squares, and temple enclosures. To
the column the two races named above gave each a special and radically
distinct development, and it was not until the Periclean age that the
two forms came to be used in conjunction, even by the mixed Doric-Ionic
people of Attica. Each of the two types had its own special shaft,
capital, entablature, mouldings, and ornaments, although considerable
variation was allowed in the proportions and minor details. The general
type, however, remained substantially unchanged from first to last. The
earliest examples known to us of either order show it complete in all
its parts, its later development being restricted to the refining and
perfecting of its proportions and details. The probable origin of these
orders will be separately considered later on.
+THE DORIC.+ The column of the Doric order (Figs. 26, 27) consists of a
tapering shaft rising directly from the stylobate or platform and
surmounted by a capital of great simplicity and beauty. The shaft is
fluted with sixteen to twenty shallow channellings of segmental or
elliptical section, meeting in sharp edges or _arrises_. The capital is
made up of a circular cushion or _echinus_ adorned with fine grooves
called _annulæ_, and a plain square _abacus_ or cap Upon this rests a
plain architrave or _epistyle_, with a narrow fillet, the _tænia_,
running along its upper edge. The frieze above it is divided into square
panels, called the _metopes_, separated by vertical _triglyphs_ having
each two vertical grooves and chamfered edges. There is a triglyph over
each column and one over each intercolumniation, or two in rare
instances where the columns are widely spaced. The cornice consists of a
broadly projecting _corona_ resting on a _bed-mould_ of one or two
simple mouldings. Its under surface, called the _soffit_, is adorned
with _mutules_, square, flat projections having each eighteen _guttæ_
depending from its under side. Two or three small mouldings run along
the upper edge of the corona, which has in addition, over each slope of
the gable, a gutter-moulding or _cymatium_. The cornices along the
horizontal edges of the roof have instead of the cymatium a row of
_antefixæ_, ornaments of terra-cotta or marble placed opposite the foot
of each tile-ridge of the roofing. The enclosed triangular field of the
gable, called the _tympanum_, was in the larger monuments adorned with
sculptured groups resting on the shelf formed by the horizontal cornice
below. Carved ornaments called _acroteria_ commonly embellished the
three angles of the gable or pediment.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--GREEK DORIC ORDER.
A, _Crepidoma, or stylobate_; b, _Column_; c, _Architrave_;
d, _Tænia_; e, _Frieze_; f, _Horizontal cornice_; g, _Raking
cornice_; h, _Tympanum of pediment_; k, _Metope_.]
+POLYCHROMY.+ It has been fully proved, after a century of debate, that
all this elaborate system of parts, severe and dignified in their
simplicity of form, received a rich decoration of color. While the
precise shades and tones employed cannot be predicated with certainty,
it is well established that the triglyphs were painted blue and the
metopes red, and that all the mouldings were decorated with
leaf-ornaments, “eggs-and-darts,” and frets, in red, green, blue, and
gold. The walls and columns were also colored, probably with pale tints
of yellow or buff, to reduce the glare of the fresh marble or the
whiteness of the fine stucco with which the surfaces of masonry of
coarser stone were primed. In the clear Greek atmosphere and outlined
against the brilliant sky, the Greek temple must have presented an
aspect of rich, sparkling gayety.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--DORIC ORDER OF THE PARTHENON.]
+ORIGIN OF THE ORDER.+ It is generally believed that the details of the
Doric frieze and cornice were reminiscences of a primitive wood
construction. The triglyph suggests the chamfered ends of cross-beams
made up of three planks each; the mutules, the sheathing of the eaves;
and the guttæ, the heads of the spikes or trenails by which the
sheathing was secured. It is known that in early astylar temples the
metopes were left open like the spaces between the ends of
ceiling-rafters. In the earlier peripteral temples, as at Selinus, the
triglyph-frieze is retained around the cella-wall under the ceiling of
the colonnade, where it has no functional significance, as a survival
from times antedating the adoption of the colonnade, when the tradition
of a wooden roof-construction showing externally had not yet been
forgotten.
A similar wooden origin for the Doric column has been advocated by some,
who point to the assertion of Pausanias that in the Doric Heraion at
Olympia the original wooden columns had with one exception been replaced
by stone columns as fast as they decayed. (See p. 62.) This, however,
only proves that wooden columns were sometimes used in early buildings,
not that the Doric column was derived from them. Others would derive it
from the Egyptian columns of Beni Hassan (p. 12), which it certainly
resembles. But they do not explain how the Greeks could have been
familiar with the Beni Hassan column long before the opening of Egypt to
them under Psammetichus; nor why, granting them some knowledge of
Egyptian architecture, they should have passed over the splendors of
Karnak and Luxor to copy these inconspicuous tombs perched high up on
the cliffs of the Nile. It would seem that the Greeks invented this form
independently, developing it in buildings which have perished; unless,
indeed, they brought the idea with them from their primitive Aryan home
in Asia.
+THE IONIC ORDER+ was characterized by greater slenderness of proportion
and elegance of detail than the Doric, and depended more on carving than
on color for the decoration of its members (Fig. 28). It was adopted in
the fifth century B.C. by the people of Attica, and used both for civic
and religious buildings, sometimes alone and sometimes in conjunction
with the Doric. The column was from eight to ten diameters in height,
against four and one-third to seven for the Doric. It stood on a base
which was usually composed of two tori (see p. 25 for definition)
separated by a _scotia_ (a concave moulding of semicircular or
semi-elliptical profile), and was sometimes provided also with a square
flat base-block, the _plinth_. There was much variety in the proportions
and details of these mouldings, which were often enriched by flutings or
carved guilloches. The tall shaft bore twenty-four deep narrow flutings
separated by narrow fillets. The capital was the most peculiar feature
of the order. It consisted of a bead or _astragal_ and echinus, over
which was a horizontal band ending on either side in a scroll or volute,
the sides of which presented the aspect shown in Fig. 29. A thin moulded
abacus was interposed between this member and the architrave.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--GREEK IONIC ORDER. (MILETUS.)]
The Ionic capital was marked by two awkward features which all its
richness could not conceal. One was the protrusion of the echinus beyond
the face of the band above it, the other was the disparity between the
side and front views of the capital, especially noticeable at the
corners of a colonnade. To obviate this, various contrivances were
tried, none wholly successful. Ordinarily the two adjacent exterior
sides of the corner capital were treated alike, the scrolls at their
meeting being bent out at an angle of 45°, while the two inner faces
simply intersected, cutting each other in halves.
The entablature comprised an architrave of two or three flat bands
crowned by fine mouldings; an uninterrupted frieze, frequently
sculptured in relief; and a simple cornice of great beauty. In addition
to the ordinary bed-mouldings there was in most examples a row of narrow
blocks or _dentils_ under the corona, which was itself crowned by a high
cymatium of extremely graceful profile, carved with the rich
“honeysuckle” (_anthemion_) ornament. All the mouldings were carved with
the “egg-and-dart,” heart-leaf and anthemion ornaments, so designed as
to recall by their outline the profile of the moulding itself. The
details of this order were treated with much more freedom and variety
than those of the Doric. The pediments of Ionic buildings were rarely or
never adorned with groups of sculpture. The volutes and echinus of the
capital, the fluting of the shaft, the use of a moulded circular base,
and in the cornice the high corona and cymatium, these were constant
elements in every Ionic order, but all other details varied widely in
the different examples.
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--SIDE VIEW OF IONIC CAPITAL.]
+ORIGIN OF THE IONIC ORDER.+ The origin of the Ionic order has given
rise to almost as much controversy as that of the Doric. Its different
elements were apparently derived from various sources. The Lycian tombs
may have contributed the denticular cornice and perhaps also the general
form of the column and capital. In the Persian architecture of the sixth
century B.C., the high moulded base, the narrow flutings of the shaft,
the carved bead-moulding and the use of scrolls in the capital are
characteristic features, which may have been borrowed by the Ionians
during the same century, unless, indeed, they were themselves the work
of Ionic or Lycian workmen in Persian employ. The banded architrave and
the use of the volute in the decoration of stele-caps (from στηλη =
a memorial stone or column standing isolated and upright), furniture,
and minor structures are common features in Assyrian, Lycian, and other
Asiatic architecture of early date. The volute or scroll itself as an
independent decorative motive may have originated in successive
variations of Egyptian lotus-patterns.[8] But the combination of these
diverse elements and their development into the final form of the order
was the work of the Ionian Greeks, and it was in the Ionian provinces of
Asia Minor that the most splendid examples of its use are to be found
(Halicarnassus, Miletus, Priene, Ephesus), while the most graceful and
perfect are those of Doric-Ionic Attica.
[Footnote 8: As contended by W. H. Goodyear in his _Grammar of
the Lotus_.]
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--GREEK CORINTHIAN ORDER.
(From the monument of Lysicrates.)]
+THE CORINTHIAN ORDER.+ This was a late outgrowth of the Ionic rather
than a new order, and up to the time of the Roman conquest was only used
for monuments of small size (see Fig. 38). Its entablature in pure Greek
examples was identical with the Ionic; the shaft and base were only
slightly changed in proportion and detail. The capital, however, was a
new departure, based probably on metallic embellishments of altars,
pedestals, etc., of Ionic style. It consisted in the best examples of a
high bell-shaped core surrounded by one or two rows of acanthus leaves,
above which were pairs of branching scrolls meeting at the corners in
spiral volutes. These served to support the angles of a moulded abacus
with concave sides (Fig. 30). One example, from the Tower of the Winds
(the clepsydra of Andronicus Cyrrhestes) at Athens, has only smooth
pointed palm-leaves and no scrolls above a single row of acanthus
leaves. Indeed, the variety and disparity among the different examples
prove that we have here only the first steps toward the evolution of an
independent order, which it was reserved for the Romans to fully
develop.
+GREEK TEMPLES; THE TYPE.+ With the orders as their chief decorative
element the Greeks built up a splendid architecture of religious and
secular monuments. Their noblest works were temples, which they designed
with the utmost simplicity of general scheme, but carried out with a
mastery of proportion and detail which has never been surpassed. Of
moderate size in most cases, they were intended primarily to enshrine
the simulacrum of the deity, and not, like Christian churches, to
accommodate great throngs of worshippers. Nor were they, on the other
hand, sanctuaries designed, like those of Egypt, to exclude all but a
privileged few from secret rites performed only by the priests and king.
The statue of the deity was enshrined in a chamber, the _naos_ (see
plan, Fig. 31), often of considerable size, and accessible to the public
through a columnar porch the _pronaos_. A smaller chamber, the
_opisthodomus_, was sometimes added in the rear of the main sanctuary,
to serve as a treasury or depository for votive offerings. Together
these formed a windowless structure called the _cella_, beyond which was
the rear porch, the _posticum_ or _epinaos_. This whole structure was in
the larger temples surrounded by a colonnade, the _peristyle_, which
formed the most splendid feature of Greek architecture. The external
aisle on either side of the cella was called the _pteroma_. A single
gabled roof covered the entire building.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--TYPES OF GREEK TEMPLE PLANS.
a, _In Antis_; b, _Prostyle_; c, _Amphiprostyle_; d, _Peripteral_
(_The Parthenon_); N, _Naos_; O, _Opisthodomus_; S, _Statue_.]
The Greek colonnade was thus an exterior feature, surrounding the solid
cella-wall instead of being enclosed by it as in Egypt. The temple was a
public, not a royal monument; and its builders aimed, not as in Egypt at
size and overwhelming sombre majesty, but rather at sunny beauty and the
highest perfection of proportion, execution, and detail (Fig. 34).
There were of course many variations of the general type just described.
Each of these has received a special name, which is given below with
explanations and is illustrated in Fig. 31.
_In antis_; with a porch having two or more columns enclosed between the
projecting side-walls of the cella.
_Prostylar_ (or prostyle); with a columnar porch in front and no
peristyle.
_Amphiprostylar_ (or -style); with columnar porches at both ends but no
peristyle.
_Peripteral_; surrounded by columns.
_Pseudoperipteral_; with false or engaged columns built into the walls
of the cella, leaving no pteroma.
_Dipteral_; with double lateral ranges of columns (see Fig. 39).
_Pseudodipteral_; with a single row of columns on each side, whose
distance from the wall is equal to two intercolumniations of the front.
_Tetrastyle_, _hexastyle_, _octastyle_, _decastyle_, etc.; with four,
six, eight, or ten columns in the end rows.
+CONSTRUCTION.+ All the temples known to us are of stone, though it is
evident from allusions in the ancient writers that wood was sometimes
used in early times. (See p. 62.) The finest temples, especially those
of Attica, Olympia, and Asia Minor, were of marble. In Magna Græcia, at
Assos, and in other places where marble was wanting, limestone,
sandstone, or lava was employed and finished with a thin, fine stucco.
The roof was almost invariably of wood and gabled, forming at the ends
pediments decorated in most cases with sculpture. The disappearance of
these inflammable and perishable roofs has given rise to endless
speculations as to the lighting of the cellas, which in all known ruins,
except one at Agrigentum, are destitute of windows. It has been
conjectured that light was admitted through openings in the roof, and
even that the central part of the cella was wholly open to the sky. Such
an arrangement is termed _hypæthral_, from an expression used in a
description by Vitruvius;[9] but this description corresponds to no
known structure, and the weight of opinion now inclines against the use
of the hypæthral opening, except possibly in one or two of the largest
temples, in which a part of the cella in front of the statue may have
been thus left open. But even this partial _hypæthros_ is not
substantiated by direct evidence. It hardly seems probable that the
magnificent chryselephantine statues of such temples were ever thus left
exposed to the extremes of the climate, which are often severe even in
Greece. In the model of the Parthenon designed by Ch. Chipiez for the
Metropolitan Museum in New York, a small clerestory opening through the
roof admits a moderate amount of light to the cella; but this ingenious
device rests on no positive evidence (see Frontispiece). It seems on the
whole most probable that the cella was lighted entirely by artificial
illumination; but the controversy in its present state is and must be
wholly speculative.
[Footnote 9: Lib. III., Cap. I.]
The wooden roof was covered with tiles of terra-cotta or marble. It was
probably ceiled and panelled on the under side, and richly decorated
with color and gold. The pteroma had under the exterior roof a ceiling
of stone or marble, deeply panelled between transverse architraves.
The naos and opisthodomus being in the larger temples too wide to be
spanned by single beams, were furnished with interior columns to afford
intermediate support. To avoid the extremes of too great massiveness and
excessive slenderness in these columns, they were built in two stages,
and advantage was taken of this arrangement, in some cases, at least, to
introduce lateral galleries into the naos.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--CARVED ANTHEMION ORNAMENT. ATHENS.]
+SCULPTURE AND CARVING.+ All the architectural membering was treated
with the greatest refinement of design and execution, and the aid of
sculpture, both in relief and in the round, was invoked to give splendor
and significance to the monument. The statue of the deity was the focus
of internal interest, while externally, groups of statues representing
the Olympian deities or the mythical exploits of gods, demigods, and
heroes, adorned the gables. Relief carvings in the friezes and metopes
commemorated the favorite national myths. In these sculptures we have
the finest known adaptations of pure sculpture--_i.e._, sculpture
treated as such and complete in itself--to an architectural framework.
The noblest examples of this decorative sculpture are those of the
Parthenon, consisting of figures in the full round from the pediments,
groups in high relief from the metopes, and the beautiful frieze of the
Panathenaic procession from the cella-wall under the pteroma ceiling.
The greater part of these splendid works are now in the British Museum,
whither they were removed by Lord Elgin in 1801. From Olympia, Ægina,
and Phigaleia, other master-works of the same kind have been transferred
to the museums of Europe. In the Doric style there was little carving
other than the sculpture, the ornament being mainly polychromatic. Greek
Ionic and Corinthian monuments, however, as well as minor works such as
steles, altars, etc., were richly adorned with carved mouldings and
friezes, festoons, acroteria, and other embellishments executed with the
chisel. The anthemion ornament, a form related to the Egyptian lotus and
Assyrian palmette, most frequently figures in these. It was made into
designs of wonderful vigor and beauty (Fig. 32).
+DETAIL AND EXECUTION.+ In the handling and cutting of stone the Greeks
displayed a surpassing skill and delicacy. While ordinarily they were
content to use stones of moderate size, they never hesitated at any
dimension necessary for proper effect or solid construction. The lower
drums of the Parthenon peristyle are 6 feet 6½ inches in diameter, and
2 feet 10 inches high, cut from single blocks of Pentelic marble. The
architraves of the Propylæa at Athens are each made up of two lintels
placed side by side, the longest 17 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 10 inches
high, and 2 feet 4 inches thick. In the colossal temples of Asia Minor,
where the taste for the vast and grandiose was more pronounced, blocks
of much greater size were used. These enormous stones were cut and
fitted with the most scrupulous exactness. The walls of all important
structures were built in regular courses throughout, every stone
carefully bedded with extremely close joints. The masonry was usually
laid up without cement and clamped with metal; there is no filling in
with rubble and concrete between mere facings of cut stone, as in most
modern work. When the only available stone was of coarse texture it was
finished with a coating of fine stucco, in which sharp edges and minute
detail could be worked.
The details were, in the best period, executed with the most
extraordinary refinement and care. The profiles of capitals and
mouldings, the carved ornament, the arrises of the flutings, were cut
with marvellous precision and delicacy. It has been rightly said that
the Greeks “built like Titans and finished like jewellers.” But this
perfect finish was never petty nor wasted on unworthy or vulgar design.
The just relation of scale between the building and all its parts was
admirably maintained; the ornament was distributed with rare judgment,
and the vigor of its design saved it from all appearance of triviality.
The sensitive taste of the Greeks led them into other refinements than
those of mere mechanical perfection. In the Parthenon especially, but
also in lesser degree in other temples, the seemingly straight lines of
the building were all slightly curved, and the vertical faces inclined.
This was done to correct the monotony and stiffness of absolutely
straight lines and right angles, and certain optical illusions which
their acute observation had detected. The long horizontal lines of the
stylobate and cornice were made convex upward; a similar convexity in
the horizontal corona of the pediment counteracted the seeming concavity
otherwise resulting from its meeting with the multiplied inclined lines
of the raking cornice. The columns were almost imperceptibly inclined
toward the cella, and the corner intercolumniations made a trifle
narrower than the rest; while the vertical lines of the arrises of the
flutings were made convex outward with a curve of the utmost beauty and
delicacy. By these and other like refinements there was imparted to the
monument an elasticity and vigor of aspect, an elusive and surprising
beauty impossible to describe and not to be explained by the mere
composition and general proportions, yet manifest to every cultivated
eye.[10]
[Footnote 10: These refinements, first noticed by Allason in
1814, and later confirmed by Cockerell and Haller as to the
columns, were published to the world in 1838 by Hoffer, verified
by Penrose in 1846, and further developed by the investigations
of Ziller and later observers.]
CHAPTER VII.
GREEK ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter VI. Also, Bacon and Clarke,
_Investigations at Assos_. Espouy, _Fragments d’architecture
antique_. Harrison and Verrall, _Mythology and Monuments of
Ancient Athens_. Hitorff et Zanth, _Recueil des Monuments de
Ségeste et Sélinonte_. Magne, _Le Parthénon_. Koldewey and
Puchstein, _Die griechischen Tempel in Unteritalien und Sicilien_.
Waldstein, _The Argive Heræum_.
+HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT.+ The history of Greek architecture, subsequent to
the Heroic or Primitive Age, may be divided into periods as follows:
The ARCHAIC; from 650 to 500 B.C.
The TRANSITIONAL; from 500 to 460 B.C., or to the revival of prosperity
after the Persian wars.
The PERICLEAN; from 460 to 400 B.C.
The FLORID or ALEXANDRIAN; from 400 to 300 B.C.
The DECADENT; 300 to 100 B.C.
The ROMAN; 100 B.C. to 200 A.D.
These dates are, of course, somewhat arbitrary; it is impossible to set
exact bounds to style-periods, which must inevitably overlap at certain
points, but the dates, as given above, will assist in distinguishing the
successive phases of the history.
+ARCHAIC PERIOD.+ The archaic period is characterized by the exclusive
use of the Doric order, which appears in the earliest monuments complete
in all its parts, but heavy in its proportions and coarse in its
execution. The oldest known temples of this period are the +Apollo
Temple+ at Corinth (650 B.C.?), and the +Northern Temple+ on the
acropolis at +Selinus+ in Sicily (cir. 610-590 B.C.). They are both of a
coarse limestone covered with stucco. The columns are low and massive
(4⅓ to 4⅔ diameters in height), widely spaced, and carry a very high
entablature. The triglyphs still appear around the cella wall under the
pteroma ceiling, an illogical detail destined to disappear in later
buildings. Other temples at Selinus date from the middle or latter part
of the sixth century; they have higher columns and finer profiles than
those just mentioned. The great +Temple of Zeus+ at +Selinus+ was the
earliest of five colossal Greek temples of very nearly identical
dimensions; it measured 360 feet by 167 feet in plan, but was never
completed. During the second half of the sixth century important Doric
temples were built at Pæstum in South Italy, and Agrigentum in Sicily;
the somewhat primitive temple at Assos in Asia Minor, with uncouth
carvings of centaurs and monsters on its architrave, belongs to this
same period. The +Temple of Zeus+ at +Agrigentum+ (Fig. 33) is another
singular and exceptional design, and was the second of the five colossal
temples mentioned above. The pteroma was entirely enclosed by walls with
engaged columns showing externally, and was of extraordinary width. The
walls of the narrow cella were interrupted by heavy piers supporting
atlantes, or applied statues under the ceiling. There seem to have been
windows between these figures, but it is not clear whence they borrowed
their light, unless it was admitted by the omission of the metopes
between the external triglyphs.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--TEMPLE OF ZEUS. AGRIGENTUM.]
+THE TRANSITION.+ During the transitional period there was a marked
improvement in the proportions, detail, and workmanship of the temples.
The cella was made broader, the columns more slender, the entablature
lighter. The triglyphs disappeared from the cella wall, and sculpture of
a higher order enhanced the architectural effect. The profiles of the
mouldings and especially of the capitals became more subtle and refined
in their curves, while the development of the Ionic order in important
monuments in Asia Minor was preparing the way for the splendors of the
Periclean age. Three temples especially deserve notice: the +Athena
Temple+ on the island of +Ægina+, the +Temple of Zeus+ at +Olympia+, and
the so-called +Theseum+--perhaps a temple of Heracles--in Athens. They
belong to the period 470-450 B.C.; they are all hexastyle and
peripteral, and without triglyphs on the cella wall. Of the three the
second in the list is interesting as the scene of those rites which
preceded and accompanied the Panhellenic Olympian games, and as the
central feature of the Altis, the most complete temple-group and
enclosure among all Greek remains. It was built of a coarse
conglomerate, finished with fine stucco, and embellished with sculpture
by the greatest masters of the time. The adjacent +Heraion+ (temple of
Hera) was a highly venerated and ancient shrine, originally built with
wooden columns which, according to Pausanias, were replaced one by one,
as they decayed, by stone columns. The truth of this statement is
attested by the discovery of a singular variety of capitals among its
ruins, corresponding to the various periods at which they were added.
The Theseum is the most perfectly preserved of all Greek temples, and in
the refinement of its forms is only surpassed by those of the Periclean
age.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--RUINS OF THE PARTHENON.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--PLAN OF ERECHTHEUM.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--WEST END OF ERECHTHEUM, RESTORED.]
+THE PERICLEAN AGE.+ The Persian wars may be taken as the dividing line
between the Transition period and the Periclean age. The _élan_ of
national enthusiasm that followed the expulsion of the invader, and the
glory and wealth which accrued to Athens as the champion of all Hellas,
resulted in a splendid reconstruction of the Attic monuments as well as
a revival of building activity in Asia Minor. By the wise administration
of Pericles and by the genius of Ictinus, Phidias, and other artists of
surpassing skill, the Acropolis at Athens was crowned with a group of
buildings and statues absolutely unrivalled. Chief among them was the
+Parthenon+, the shrine of Athena Parthenos, which the critics of all
schools have agreed in considering the most faultless in design and
execution of all buildings erected by man (Figs. 31, 34, and
Frontispiece). It was an octastyle peripteral temple, with seventeen
columns on the side, and measured 220 by 100 feet on the top of the
stylobate. It was the work of Ictinus and Callicrates, built to enshrine
the noble statue of the goddess by Phidias, a standing chryselephantine
figure forty feet high. It was the masterpiece of Greek architecture not
only by reason of its refinements of detail, but also on account of the
beauty of its sculptural adornments. The frieze about the cella wall
under the pteroma ceiling, representing in low relief with masterly
skill the Panathenaic procession; the sculptured groups in the metopes,
and the superb assemblages of Olympic and symbolic figures of colossal
size in the pediments, added their majesty to the perfection of the
architecture. Here also the horizontal curvatures and other refinements
are found in their highest development. Northward from it, upon the
Acropolis, stood the +Erechtheum+, an excellent example of the
Attic-Ionic style (Figs. 35, 36). Its singular irregularities of plan
and level, and the variety of its detail, exhibit in a striking way the
Greek indifference to mere formal symmetry when confronted by practical
considerations. The motive in this case was the desire to include in one
design several existing and venerated shrines to Attic deities and
heroes--Athena Polias, Poseidon, Pandrosus, Erechtheus, Boutes, etc.
Begun by unknown architects in 479 B.C., and not completed until 408
B.C., it remains in its ruin still one of the most interesting and
attractive of ancient buildings. Its two colonnades of differing design,
its beautiful north doorway, and the unique and noble caryatid porch or
balcony on the south side are unsurpassed in delicate beauty combined
with vigor of design.[11] A smaller monument of the Ionic order, the
amphiprostyle temple to +Nike Apteros+--the Wingless Victory--stands on
a projecting spur of the Acropolis to the southwest. It measures only 27
feet by 18 feet in plan; the cella is nearly square; the columns are
sturdier than those of the Erechtheum, and the execution of the monument
is admirable. It was the first completed of the extant buildings of the
group of the Acropolis and dates from 466 B.C.
[Footnote 11: See Appendix, p. 427.]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.--PROPYLÆA AT ATHENS. PLAN.]
In the +Propylæa+ (Fig. 37), the monumental gateway to the Acropolis,
the Doric and Ionic orders appear to have been combined for the first
time (437 to 432 B.C.). It was the master work of Mnesicles. The front
and rear façades were Doric hexastyles; adjoining the front porch were
two projecting lateral wings employing a smaller Doric order. The
central passageway led between two rows of Ionic columns to the rear
porch, entered by five doorways and crowned, like the front, with a
pediment. The whole was executed with the same splendor and perfection
as the other buildings of the Acropolis, and was a worthy gateway to the
group of noble monuments which crowned that citadel of the Attic
capital. The two orders were also combined in the temple of +Apollo
Epicurius+ at +Phigalæa+ (Bassæ). This temple was erected in 430 B.C. by
Ictinus, who used the Ionic order internally to decorate a row of
projecting piers instead of free-standing columns in the naos, in which
there was also a single Corinthian column of rather archaic design,
which may have been used as a support for a statue or votive offering.
+ALEXANDRIAN AGE.+ A period of reaction followed the splendid
architectural activity of the Periclean age. A succession of disastrous
wars--the Sicilian, Peloponnesian, and Corinthian--drained the energies
and destroyed the peace of European Greece for seventy-five years,
robbing Athens of her supremacy and inflicting wounds from which she
never recovered. In the latter part of the fourth century, however, the
triumph of the Macedonian empire over all the Mediterranean lands
inaugurated a new era of architectural magnificence, especially in Asia
Minor. The keynote of the art of this time was splendor, as that of the
preceding age was artistic perfection. The Corinthian order came into
use, as though the Ionic were not rich enough for the sumptuous taste of
the time, and capitals and bases of novel and elaborate design
embellished the Ionic temples of Asia Minor. In the temple of +Apollo
Didymæus+ at Miletus, the plinths of the bases were made octagonal and
panelled with rich scroll-carvings; and the piers which buttressed the
interior faces of the cella-walls were given capitals of singular but
elegant form, midway between the Ionic and Corinthian types. This temple
belongs to the list of colossal edifices already referred to; its
dimensions were 366 by 163 feet, making it the largest of them all. The
famous +Artemisium+ (temple of Artemis or Diana) measured 342 by 163
feet. Several of the columns of the latter were enriched with sculptured
figures encircling the lower drums of the colossal shafts. The most
lavish expenditure was bestowed upon small structures, shrines, and
sarcophagi. The graceful monument still visible in Athens, erected by
the choragus Lysicrates in token of his victory in the choral
competitions, belongs to this period (330 B.C.). It is circular, with a
slightly domical imbricated roof, and is decorated with elegant engaged
Corinthian columns (Fig. 38). In the Imperial Museum at Constantinople
are several sarcophagi of this period found at Sidon, but executed by
Greek artists, and of exceptional beauty. They are in the form of
temples or shrines; the finest of them, supposed by some to have been
made for Alexander’s favorite general Perdiccas, and by others for the
Persian satrap who figures prominently on its sculptured reliefs, is the
most sumptuous work of the kind in existence. The exquisite polychromy
of its beautiful reliefs and the perfection of its rich details of
cornice, pediment, tiling, and crestings, make it an exceedingly
interesting and instructive example of the minor architecture of the
period.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--CHORAGIC MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.
(Restored model, N.Y.)]
+THE DECADENCE.+ After the decline of Alexandrian magnificence Greek art
never recovered its ancient glory, but the flame was not suddenly
extinguished. While in Greece proper the works of the second and third
centuries B.C., are for the most part weak and lifeless, like the +Stoa
of Attalus+ (175 B.C.) and the +Tower of the Winds+ (the Clepsydra of
Andronicus Cyrrhestes, 100 B.C.) at Athens or the Portico of Philip in
Delos, there were still a few worthy works built in Asia Minor. The
splendid +Altar+ erected at +Pergamon+ by Eumenes II. (circ. 180 B.C.)
in the Ionic order, combined sculpture of extraordinary vigor with
imposing architecture in masterly fashion. At +Aizanoi+ an Ionic +Temple
to Zeus+, by some attributed to the Roman period, but showing rather the
character of good late Greek work, deserves mention for its elegant
details, and especially for its frieze-decoration of acanthus leaves and
scrolls resembling those of a Corinthian capital.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--TEMPLE OF OLYMPIAN ZEUS. ATHENS.]
+ROMAN PERIOD.+ During this period, _i.e._, throughout the second and
first centuries B.C., the Roman dominion was spreading over Greek
territory, and the structures erected subsequent to the conquest partake
of the Roman character and mingle Roman conceptions with Greek details
and _vice versâ_. The temple of the +Olympian Zeus+ at Athens (Fig. 39),
a mighty dipteral Corinthian edifice measuring 354 by 171 feet, standing
on a vast terrace or temenos surrounded by a buttressed wall, was begun
by Antiochus Epiphanes (170 B.C.) on the site of an earlier unfinished
Doric temple of the time of Pisistratus, and carried out under the
direction of the Roman architect, Cossutius. It was not, however,
finally completed until the time of Hadrian, 130 A.D. Meanwhile Sulla
had despoiled it of several columns[12] which he carried to Rome (86
B.C.), to use in the rebuilding of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol,
where they undoubtedly served as models in the development of the Roman
Corinthian order. The columns were 57 feet high, with capitals of the
most perfect Corinthian type; fifteen are now standing, and one lies
prostrate near by. To the Roman period also belong the +Agora Gate+
(circ. 35 B.C.), the +Arch of Hadrian+ (117 A.D.), the +Odeon of
Regilla+ or of Herodes Atticus (143 A.D.), at Athens, and many temples
and tombs, theatres, arches, etc., in the Greek provinces.
[Footnote 12: L. Bevier, in _Papers of the American Classical
School at Athens_ (vol. i., pp. 195, 196), contends that these
were columns left from the old Doric temple. This is untenable,
for Sulla would certainly not have taken the trouble to carry
away archaic Doric columns, with such splendid Corinthian columns
before him.]
+SECULAR MONUMENTS; PROPYLÆA.+ The stately gateway by which the
Acropolis was entered has already been described. It was the noblest and
most perfect of a class of buildings whose prototype is found in the
monumental columnar porches of the palace-group at Persepolis. The
Greeks never used the arch in these structures, nor did they attach to
them the same importance as did most of the other nations of antiquity.
The Altis of Olympia, the national shrine of Hellenism, appears to have
had no central gateway of imposing size, but a number of insignificant
entrances disposed at random. The +Propylæa+ of +Sunium+, +Priene+ and
+Eleusis+ are the most conspicuous, after those of the Athenian
Acropolis. Of these the Ionic gateway at Priene is the finest, although
the later of the two at Eleusis is interesting for its anta-capitals.
(_Anta_ = a flat pilaster decorating the end of a wing-wall and treated
with a base and capital usually differing from those of the adjacent
columns.) These are of Corinthian type, adorned with winged horses,
scrolls, and anthemions of an exuberant richness of design,
characteristic of this late period.
+COLONNADES, STOÆ.+ These were built to connect public monuments (as the
Dionysiac theatre and Odeon at Athens); or along the sides of great
public squares, as at Assos and Olympia (the so-called +Echo Hall+); or
as independent open public halls, as the +Stoa Diple+ at Thoricus. They
afforded shelter from sun and rain, places for promenading, meetings
with friends, public gatherings, and similar purposes. They were rarely
of great size, and most of them are of rather late date, though the
archaic structure at Pæstum, known as the +Basilica+, was probably in
reality an open hall of this kind.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--PLAN OF GREEK THEATRE.
o, _Orchestra_; l, _Logeion_; p, _Paraskenai_; _s, s_, _Stoa_.]
+THEATRES, ODEONS.+ These were invariably cut out of the rocky
hillsides, though in a few cases (Mantinæa, Myra, Antiphellus) a part of
the seats were sustained by a built-up substructure and walls to eke out
the deficiency of the hill-slope under them. The front of the excavation
was enclosed by a stage and a set scene or background, built up so as to
leave somewhat over a semicircle for the _orchestra_ or space enclosed
by the lower tier of seats (Fig. 40). An altar to Dionysus (Bacchus) was
the essential feature in the foreground of the orchestra, where the
Dionysiac choral dance was performed. The seats formed successive steps
of stone or marble sweeping around the sloping excavation, with carved
marble thrones for the priests, archons, and other dignitaries. The only
architectural decoration of the theatre was that of the set scene or
_skene_, which with its wing-walls (_paraskenai_) enclosing the stage
(_logeion_) was a permanent structure of stone or marble adorned with
doors, cornices, pilasters, etc. This has perished in nearly every case;
but at Aspendus, in Asia Minor, there is one still fairly well
preserved, with a rich architectural decoration on its inner face. The
extreme diameter of the theatres varied greatly; thus at Aizanoi it is
187 feet, and at Syracuse 495 feet. The theatre of Dionysus at Athens
(finished 325 B.C.) could accommodate thirty thousand spectators.
The odeon differed from the theatre principally in being smaller and
entirely covered in by a wooden roof. The +Odeon of Regilla+, built by
Herodes Atticus in Athens (143 A.D.), is a well-preserved specimen of
this class, but all traces of its cedar ceiling and of its intermediate
supports have disappeared.
+BUILDINGS FOR ATHLETIC CONTESTS.+ These comprised stadia and
hippodromes for races, and gymnasia and palæstræ for individual
exercise, bathing, and amusement. The _stadia_ and _hippodromes_ were
oblong enclosures surrounded by tiers of seats and without conspicuous
architectural features. The _palæstra_ or _gymnasium_--for the terms are
not clearly distinguished--was a combination of courts, chambers, tanks
(_piscinæ_) for bathers and _exedræ_ or semicircular recesses provided
with tiers of seats for spectators and auditors, destined not merely for
the exercises of athletes preparing for the stadium, but also for the
instruction and diversion of the public by recitations, lectures, and
discussions. It was the prototype of the Roman thermæ, but less
imposing, more simple in plan and adornment. Every Greek city had one or
more of them, but they have almost wholly disappeared, and the brief
description by Vitruvius and scanty remains at Alexandria Troas and
Ephesus furnish almost the only information we possess regarding their
form and arrangement.
+TOMBS.+ These are not numerous, and the most important are found in
Asia Minor. The greatest of these is the famed +Mausoleum+ at
Halicarnassus in Caria, the monument erected to the king Mausolus by his
widow Artemisia (354 B.C.; Fig. 41). It was designed by Satyrus and
Pythius in the Ionic style, and comprised a podium or base 50 feet high
and measuring 80 feet by 100 feet, in which was the sepulchre. Upon this
base stood a cella surrounded by thirty-six Ionic columns; and crowned
by a pyramidal roof, on the peak of which was a colossal marble quadriga
at a height of 130 feet. It was superbly decorated by Scopas and other
great sculptors with statues, marble lions, and a magnificent frieze.
The British Museum possesses fragments of this most imposing monument.
At Xanthus the +Nereid Monument+, so called from its sculptured figures
of Nereides, was a somewhat similar design on a smaller scale, with
sixteen Ionic columns. At Mylassa was another tomb with an open
Corinthian colonnade supporting a roof formed in a stepped pyramid. Some
of the later rock-cut tombs of Lycia at Myra and Antiphellus may also be
counted as Hellenic works.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--MAUSOLEUM AT HALICARNASSUS.
(As restored by the author.)]
+DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.+ This never attained great importance in Greece,
and our knowledge of the typical Greek house is principally derived from
literary sources. Very few remains of Greek houses have been found
sufficiently well preserved to permit of restoring even the plan. It is
probable that they resembled in general arrangement the houses of
Pompeii (see p. 107); but that they were generally insignificant in size
and decoration. The exterior walls were pierced only by the entrance
doors, all light being derived from one or more interior courts. In the
Macedonian epoch there must have been greater display and luxury in
domestic architecture, but no remains have come down to us of sufficient
importance or completeness to warrant further discussion.
+MONUMENTS.+ In addition to those already mentioned in the text
the following should be enumerated:
PREHISTORIC PERIOD. In the Islands about Santorin, remains of
houses antedating 1500 B.C.; at Tiryns the Acropolis, walls, and
miscellaneous ruins; the like also at Mycenæ, besides various
tombs; walls and gates at Samos, Thoricus, Menidi, Athens, etc.
ARCHAIC PERIOD. Doric Temples at Metapontium (by Durm assigned to
610 B.C.), Selinus, Agrigentum, Pæstum; at Athens the first
Parthenon; in Asia Minor the primitive Ionic Artemisium at Ephesus
and the Heraion at Samos, the latter the oldest of colossal Greek
temples.
TRANSITIONAL PERIOD. At Agrigentum, temples of Concord, Castor and
Pollux, Demeter, Æsculapius, all circ. 480 B.C.; temples at
Selinus and Segesta.
PERICLEAN PERIOD. In Athens the Ionic temple on the Illissus,
destroyed during the present century; on Cape Sunium the temple of
Athena, 430 B.C., partly standing; at Nemea, the temple of Zeus;
at Tegea, the temple of Athena Elea (400? B.C.); at Rhamnus, the
temples of Themis and of Nemesis; at Argos, two temples, stoa, and
other buildings; all these were Doric.
ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD. The temple of Dionysus at Teos; temple of
Artemis Leucophryne at Magnesia, both about 330 B.C. and of the
Ionic order.
DECADENCE AND ROMAN PERIOD. At Athens the Stoa of Eumenes, circ.
170 B.C.; the monument of Philopappus on the Museum hill, 110
A.D.; the Gymnasium of Hadrian, 114 to 137 A.D.; the last two of
the Corinthian order.
THEATRES. Besides those already mentioned there are important
remains of theatres at Epidaurus, Argos, Segesta, Iassus (400?
B.C.), Delos, Sicyon, and Thoricus; at Aizanoi, Myra, Telmissus,
and Patara, besides many others of less importance scattered
through the Hellenic world. At Taormina are extensive ruins of a
large Greek theatre rebuilt in the Roman period.
CHAPTER VIII.
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Anderson and Spiers, Baumeister,
Reber. Choisy, _L’Art de bâtir chez les Romains_. Desgodetz, _Rome
in her Ancient Grandeur_. Durm, _Die Baukunst der Etrusker_; _Die
Baukunst der Romer_. Lanciani, _Ancient Rome in the Light of
Modern Discovery_; _New Tales of Old Rome_; _Ruins and Excavations
of Ancient Rome_. De Martha, _Archéologie étrusque et romaine_.
Middleton, _Ancient Rome in 1888_.
+LAND AND PEOPLE.+ The geographical position of Italy conferred upon her
special and obvious advantages for taking up and carrying northward and
westward the arts of civilization. A scarcity of good harbors was the
only drawback amid the blessings of a glorious climate, fertile soil,
varied scenery, and rich material resources. From a remote antiquity
Dorian colonists had occupied the southern portion and the island of
Sicily, enriching them with splendid monuments of Doric art; and
Phœnician commerce had brought thither the products of Oriental art and
industry. The foundation of Rome in 753 B.C. established the nucleus
about which the sundry populations of Italy were to crystallize into the
Roman nation, under the dominating influence of the Latin element. Later
on, the absorption of the conquered Etruscans added to this composite
people a race of builders and engineers, as yet rude and uncouth in
their art, but destined to become a powerful factor in developing the
new architecture that was to spring from the contact of the practical
Romans with the noble art of the Greek centres.
+GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.+ While the Greeks bequeathed to posterity the
most perfect models of form in literary and plastic art, it was reserved
for the Romans to work out the applications of these to every-day
material life. The Romans were above all things a practical people.
Their consummate skill as organizers is manifest in the marvellous
administrative institutions of their government, under which they united
the most distant and diverse nationalities. Seemingly deficient in
culture, they were yet able to recast the forms of Greek architecture in
new moulds, and to evolve therefrom a mighty architecture adapted to
wholly novel conditions. They brought engineering into the service of
architecture, which they fitted to the varied requirements of
government, public amusement, private luxury, and the common comfort.
They covered the antique world with arches and amphitheatres, with
villas, baths, basilicas, and temples, all bearing the unmistakable
impress of Rome, though wrought by artists and artisans of divers races.
Only an extraordinary genius for organization could have accomplished
such results.
The architects of Rome marvellously extended the range of their art, and
gave it a flexibility by which it accommodated itself to the widest
variety of materials and conditions. They made the arch and vault the
basis of their system of design, employing them on a scale previously
undreamed of, and in combinations of surpassing richness and majesty.
They systematized their methods of construction so that soldiers and
barbarians could execute the rough mass of their buildings, and
formulated the designing of the decorative details so that artisans of
moderate skill could execute them with good effect. They carried the
principle of repetition of motives to its utmost limit, and sought to
counteract any resulting monotony by the scale and splendor of the
design. Above all they developed planning into a fine art, displaying
their genius in a wonderful variety of combinations and in an unfailing
sense of the demands of constructive propriety, practical convenience,
and artistic effect. Where Egyptian or Greek architecture shows one type
of plan, the Roman shows a score.
+GREEK INFLUENCE.+ Previous to the closing years of the Republic the
Romans had no art but the Etruscan. The few buildings of importance they
possessed were of Etruscan design and workmanship, excepting a small
number built by Greek hands. It was not until the Empire that Roman
architecture took on a truly national form. True Roman architecture is
essentially imperial. The change from the primitive Etruscan style to
the splendors of the imperial age was due to the conquest of the Greek
states. Not only did the Greek campaigns enrich Rome with an
unprecedented wealth of artistic spoils; they also brought into Italy
hosts of Greek artists, and filled the minds of the campaigners with the
ambition to realize in their own dominions the marble colonnades, the
temples, theatres, and propylæa of the Greek cities they had pillaged.
The Greek orders were adopted, altered, and applied to arcaded designs
as well as to peristyles and other open colonnades. The marriage of the
column and arch gave birth to a system of forms as characteristic of
Roman architecture as the Doric or Ionic colonnade is of the Greek.
+THE ROMAN ORDERS.+ To meet the demands of Roman taste the Etruscan
column was retained with its simple entablature; the Doric and Ionic
were adopted in a modified form; the Corinthian was developed into a
complete and independent order, and the Composite was added to the list.
A regular system of proportions for all these five orders was gradually
evolved, and the mouldings were profiled with arcs of circles instead of
the subtler Greek curves. In the building of many-storied structures the
orders were superposed, the more slender over the sturdier, in an
orderly and graded succession. The immense extent and number of the
Roman buildings, the coarse materials often used, the relative scarcity
of highly trained artisans, and above all, the necessity of making a
given amount of artistic design serve for the largest possible amount of
architecture, combined to direct the designing of detail into uniform
channels. Thus in time was established a sort of canon of proportions,
which was reduced to rules by Vitruvius, and revived in much more
detailed and precise form by Vignola in the sixteenth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--ROMAN DORIC ORDER.
(THEATRE OF MARCELLUS).]
In each of the orders, including the Doric, the column was given a base
one half of a diameter in height (the unit of measurement being the
diameter of the lower part of the shaft, the _crassitudo_ of Vitruvius).
The shaft was made to contract about one-sixth in diameter toward the
capital, under which it was terminated by an _astragal_ or collar of
small mouldings; at the base it ended in a slight flare and fillet
called the _cincture_. The entablature was in all cases given not far
from one quarter the height of the whole column. The +Tuscan+ order was
a rudimentary or Etruscan Doric with a column seven diameters high and a
simple entablature without triglyphs, mutules, or dentils. But few
examples of its use are known. The +Doric+ (Fig. 42) retained the
triglyphs and metopes, the mutules and guttæ of the Greek; but the
column was made eight diameters high, the shaft was smooth or had deep
flutings separated by narrow fillets, and was usually provided with a
simple moulded base on a square plinth. Mutules were used only over the
triglyphs, and were even replaced in some cases by dentils; the corona
was made lighter than the Greek, and a cymatium replaced the antefixæ on
the lateral cornices. The Ionic underwent fewer changes, and these
principally in the smaller mouldings and details of the capital. The
column was nine diameters high (Fig. 43). The +Corinthian+ was made into
an independent order by the designing of a special base of small _tori_
and _scotiæ_, and by sumptuously carved _modillions_ or brackets
enriching the cornice and supporting the corona above a denticulated
bed-mould (Fig. 44). Though the first designers of the modillion were
probably Greeks, it must, nevertheless, be taken as really a Roman
device, worthily completing the essentially Roman Corinthian order. The
+Composite+ was formed by combining into one capital portions of the
Ionic and Corinthian, and giving to it a simplified form of the
Corinthian cornice. The Corinthian order remained, however, the favorite
order of Roman architecture.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--ROMAN IONIC ORDER.]
+USE OF THE ORDERS.+ The Romans introduced many innovations in the
general use and treatment of the orders. Monolithic shafts were
preferred to those built up of superposed drums. The fluting was omitted
on these, and when hard and semi-precious stone like porphyry or
verd-antique was the material, it was highly polished to bring out its
color. These polished monoliths were often of great size, and they were
used in almost incredible numbers.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--CORINTHIAN ORDER
(TEMPLE OF CASTOR AND POLLUX).]
Another radical departure from Greek usage was the mounting of columns
on pedestals to secure greater height without increasing the size of the
column and its entablature. The Greek _anta_ was developed into the
Roman pilaster or flattened wall-column, and every free column, or range
of columns perpendicular to the façade, had its corresponding pilaster
to support the wall-end of the architrave. But the most radical
innovation was the general use of engaged columns as wall-decorations or
buttresses. The engaged column projected from the wall by more than half
its diameter, and was built up with the wall as a part of its substance
(Fig. 45). The entablature was in many cases advanced only over the
columns, between which it was set back almost to the plane of the wall.
This practice is open to the obvious criticism that it makes the column
appear superfluous by depriving it of its function of supporting the
continuous entablature. The objection has less weight when the
projecting entablature over the column serves as a pedestal for a statue
or similar object, which restores to the column its function as a
support (see the Arch of Constantine, Fig. 63).
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--ROMAN ARCADE WITH ENGAGED COLUMNS
(From the Colosseum.)]
+ARCADES.+ The orders, though probably at first used only as free
supports in porticos and colonnades, were early applied as decorations
to arcaded structures. This practice became general with the
multiplication of many-storied arcades like those of the amphitheatres,
the engaged columns being set between the arches as buttresses,
supporting entablatures which marked the divisions into stories (Fig.
45). This combination has been assailed as a false and illogical device,
but the criticism proceeds from a too narrow conception of architectural
propriety. It is defensible upon both artistic and logical grounds; for
it not only furnishes a most desirable play of light and shade and a
pleasing contrast of rectangular and curved lines, but by emphasizing
the constructive divisions and elements of the building and the vertical
support of the piers, it also contributes to the expressiveness and
vigor of the design.
+VAULTING.+ The Romans substituted vaulting in brick, concrete, or
masonry for wooden ceilings wherever possible, both in public and
private edifices. The Etruscans were the first vault-builders, and the
Cloaca Maxima, the great sewer of Republican Rome (about 500 B.C.) still
remains as a monument of their engineering skill. Probably not only
Etruscan engineers (whose traditions were perhaps derived from Asiatic
sources in the remote past), but Asiatic builders also from conquered
eastern provinces, were engaged together in the development of the
wonderful system of vaulted construction to which Roman architecture so
largely owed its grandeur. Three types of vault were commonly used: the
barrel-vault, the groined or four-part vault, and the dome.
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--BARREL VAULT.]
The barrel vault (Fig. 46) was generally semi-cylindrical in section,
and was used to cover corridors and oblong halls, like the
temple-cellas, or was bent around a curve, as in amphitheatre passages.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--GROINED VAULT.
_g, g_, _Groins._]
The groined vault is formed by the intersection of two barrel-vaults
(Fig. 47). When several compartments of groined vaulting are placed
together over an oblong plan, a double advantage is secured. Lateral
windows can be carried up to the full height of the vaulting instead of
being stopped below its springing; and the weight and thrust of the
vaulting are concentrated upon a number of isolated points instead of
being exerted along the whole extent of the side walls, as with the
barrel-vault. The Romans saw that it was sufficient to dispose the
masonry at these points in masses at right angles to the length of the
hall, to best resist the lateral thrust of the vault. This appears
clearly in the plan of the Basilica of Constantine (Fig. 58).
The dome was in almost all Roman examples supported on a circular wall
built up from the ground, as in the Pantheon (Fig. 54). The pendentive
dome, sustained by four or eight arches over a square or octagonal plan,
is not found in true Roman buildings.
The Romans made of the vault something more than a mere constructive
device. It became in their hands an element of interior effect at least
equally important with the arch and column. No style of architecture has
ever evolved nobler forms of ceiling than the groined vault and the
dome. Moreover, the use of vaulting made possible effects of
unencumbered spaciousness and amplitude which could never be compassed
by any combination of piers and columns. It also assured to the Roman
monuments a duration and a freedom from danger of destruction by fire
impossible with any wooden-roofed architecture, however noble its form
or careful its execution.
+CONSTRUCTION.+ The constructive methods of the Romans varied with the
conditions and resources of different provinces, but were everywhere
dominated by the same practical spirit. Their vaulted architecture
demanded for the support of its enormous weights and for resistance to
its disruptive thrusts, piers and buttresses of great mass. To construct
these wholly of cut stone appeared preposterous and wasteful to the
Roman. Italy abounds in clay, lime, and a volcanic product, _pozzolana_
(from Puteoli or Pozzuoli, where it has always been obtained in large
quantities), which makes an admirable hydraulic cement. With these
materials it was possible to employ unskilled labor for the great bulk
of this massive masonry, and to erect with the greatest rapidity and in
the most economical manner those stupendous piles which, even in their
ruin, excite the admiration of every beholder.
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--ROMAN WALL MASONRY.
a, _Brickwork_; b, _Tufa ashlar_; r, _Opus reticulatum_;
i, _Opus incertum_.]
+STONE, CONCRETE, AND BRICK MASONRY.+ For buildings of an externally
decorative character such as temples, arches of triumph, and
amphitheatres, as well as in all places where brick and concrete were
not easily obtained, stone was employed. The walls were built by laying
up the inner and outer faces in _ashlar_ or cut stone, and filling in
the intermediate space with rubble (random masonry of uncut stone) laid
up in cement, or with concrete of broken stone and cement dumped into
the space in successive layers. The cement converted the whole into a
conglomerate closely united with the face-masonry. In Syria and Egypt
the local preference for stones of enormous size was gratified, and even
surpassed, as in Herod’s terrace-walls for the temple at Jerusalem
(p. 41), and in the splendid structures of Palmyra and Baalbec. In
Italy, however, stones of moderate size were preferred, and when blocks
of unusual dimensions occur, they are in many cases marked with false
joints, dividing them into apparently smaller blocks, lest they should
dwarf the building by their large scale. The general use in the Augustan
period of marble for a decorative lining or wainscot in interiors led in
time to the objectionable practice of coating buildings of concrete with
an apparel of sham marble masonry, by carving false joints upon an
external veneer of thin slabs of that material. Ordinary concrete walls
were frequently faced with small blocks of tufa, called, according to
the manner of its application, _opus reticulatum_, _opus incertum_,
_opus spicatum_, etc. (Fig. 48). In most cases, however, the facing was
of carefully executed brickwork, covered sometimes by a coating of
stucco. The bricks were large, measuring from one to two feet square
where used for quoins or arches, but triangular where they served only
as facings. Bricks were also used in the construction of skeleton ribs
for concrete vaults of large span.
+VAULTING.+ Here, as in the wall-masonry, economy and common sense
devised methods extremely simple for accomplishing vast designs. While
the smaller vaults were, so to speak, cast in concrete upon moulds made
of rough boards, the enormous weight of the larger vaults precluded
their being supported, while drying or “setting,” upon timber centrings
built up from the ground. Accordingly, a skeleton of light ribs was
first built on wooden centrings, and these ribs, when firmly “set,”
became themselves supports for intermediate centrings on which to cast
the concrete fillings between the ribs. The whole vault, once hardened,
formed really a monolithic curved lintel, exerting no thrust whatever,
so that the extraordinary precautions against lateral disruption
practised by the Romans were, in fact, in many cases quite superfluous.
+DECORATION.+ The temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum (long
miscalled the temple of Jupiter Stator), is a typical example of Roman
architectural decoration, in which richness was preferred to the subtler
refinements of design (see Fig. 44). The splendid figure-sculpture which
adorned the Greek monuments would have been inappropriate on the
theatres and thermæ of Rome or the provinces, even had there been the
taste or the skill to produce it. Conventional carved ornament was
substituted in its place, and developed into a splendid system of highly
decorative forms. Two principal elements appear in this decoration--the
acanthus-leaf, as the basis of a whole series of wonderfully varied
motives; and symbolism, represented principally by what are technically
termed _grotesques_--incongruous combinations of natural forms, as when
an infant’s body terminates in a bunch of foliage (Fig. 49). Only to a
limited extent do we find true sculpture employed as decoration, and
that mainly for triumphal arches or memorial columns.
[Illustration: FIG. 49--ROMAN CARVED ORNAMENT.
(Lateran Museum.)]
The architectural mouldings were nearly always carved, the Greek
water-leaf and egg-and-dart forming the basis of most of the
enrichments; but these were greatly elaborated and treated with more
minute detail than the Greek prototypes. Friezes and bands were commonly
ornamented with the foliated scroll or _rinceau_ (a convenient French
term for which we have no equivalent). This motive was as characteristic
of Roman art as the anthemion was of the Greek. It consists of a
continuous stem throwing out alternately on either side branches which
curl into spirals and are richly adorned with rosettes, acanthus-leaves,
scrolls, tendrils, and blossoms. In the best examples the detail was
modelled with great care and minuteness, and the motive itself was
treated with extraordinary variety and fertility of invention. A derived
and enriched form of the anthemion was sometimes used for bands and
friezes; and grotesques, dolphins, griffins, infant genii, wreaths,
festoons, ribbons, eagles, and masks are also common features in Roman
relief carving.
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--ROMAN CEILING PANELS.
(a, From Palmyra; b, Basilica of Constantine.)]
The Romans made great use of panelling and of moulded plaster in their
interior decoration, especially for ceilings. The panelling of domes and
vaults was usually roughly shaped in their first construction and
finished afterward in stucco with rich moulding and rosettes. The panels
were not always square or rectangular, as in Greek ceilings, but of
various geometric forms in pleasing combinations (Fig. 50). In works of
a small scale the panels and decorations were wrought in relief in a
heavy coating of plaster applied to the finished structure, and these
stucco reliefs are among the most refined and charming products of Roman
art. (Baths of Titus; Baths at Pompeii; Palace of the Cæsars and tombs
at Rome.)
+COLOR DECORATION.+ Plaster was also used as a ground for painting,
executed in distemper or by the encaustic process, wax liquefied by a
hot iron being the medium for applying the color in the latter case.
Pompeii and Herculaneum furnish countless examples of brilliant
wall-painting in which strong primary colors form the ground, and a
semi-naturalistic, semi-fantastic representation of figures,
architecture and landscape is mingled with festoons, vines, and purely
conventional ornament. Mosaic was also employed to decorate floors and
wall-spaces, and sometimes for ceilings.[13] The later imperial baths
and palaces were especially rich in mosaic of the kind called opus
Grecanicum, executed with numberless minute cubes of stone or glass, as
in the Baths of Caracalla and the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli.
[Footnote 13: See Van Dyke’s _History of Paintings_, p. 33.]
To the walls of monumental interiors, such as temples, basilicas, and
thermæ, splendor of color was given by veneering them with thin slabs of
rare and richly colored marble. No limit seems to have been placed upon
the costliness or amount of these precious materials. Byzantine
architecture borrowed from this practice its system of interior color
decoration.
CHAPTER IX.
ROMAN ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter VIII. Also, Guhl and
Kohner, _Life of the Ancient Greeks and Romans_. Adams, _Ruins of
the Palace of Spalato_. Burn, _Rome and the Campagna_. Cameron,
_Roman Baths_. Mau, tr. by Kelcey, _Pompeii, its Life and Art_.
Mazois, _Ruines de Pompeii_. Von Presuhn, _Die neueste
Ausgrabungen zu Pompeii_. Wood, _Ruins of Palmyra and Baalbec_.
+THE ETRUSCAN STYLE.+ Although the first Greek architects were employed
in Rome as early as 493 B.C., the architecture of the Republic was
practically Etruscan until nearly 100 B.C. Its monuments, consisting
mainly of city walls, tombs, and temples, are all marked by a general
uncouthness of detail, denoting a lack of artistic refinement, but they
display considerable constructive skill. In the Etruscan walls we meet
with both polygonal and regularly coursed masonry; in both kinds the
true arch appears as the almost universal form for gates and openings.
A famous example is the Augustan Gate at Perugia, a late work rebuilt
about 40 B.C., but thoroughly Etruscan in style. At Volaterræ (Volterra)
is another arched gate, and in Perugia fragments of still another appear
built into the modern walls.
The Etruscans built both structural and excavated tombs; they consisted
in general of a single chamber with a slightly arched or gabled roof,
supported in the larger tombs on heavy square piers. The interiors were
covered with pictures; externally there was little ornament except about
the gable and doorway. The latter had a stepped or moulded frame with
curious _crossettes_ or ears projecting laterally at the top. The gable
recalled the wooden roofs of Etruscan temples, but was coarse in detail,
especially in its mouldings. Sepulchral monuments of other types are
also met with, such as _cippi_ or memorial pillars, sometimes in groups
of five on a single pedestal (tomb at Albano).
Among the temples of Etruscan style that of +Jupiter Capitolinus+ on the
Capitol at Rome, destroyed by fire in 80 B.C., was the chief. Three
narrow chambers side by side formed a cella nearly square in plan,
preceded by a hexastyle porch of huge Doric, or rather Tuscan, columns
arranged in three aisles, widely spaced and carrying ponderous wooden
architraves. The roof was of wood; the cymatium and ornaments, as well
as the statues in the pediment, were of terra-cotta, painted and gilded.
The details in general showed acquaintance with Greek models, which
appeared in debased and awkward imitations of triglyphs, cornices,
antefixæ, etc.
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--TEMPLE FORTUNA VIRILIS. PLAN.]
+GREEK STYLE.+ The victories of Marcellus at Syracuse, 212 B.C., Fabius
Maximus at Tarentum (209 B.C.), Flaminius (196 B.C.), Mummius (146
B.C.), Sulla (86 B.C.), and others in the various Greek provinces,
steadily increased the vogue of Greek architecture and the number of
Greek artists in Rome. The temples of the last two centuries B.C., and
some of earlier date, though still Etruscan in plan, were in many cases
strongly Greek in the character of their details. A few have remained to
our time in tolerable preservation. The temple of +Fortuna Virilis+
(really of Fors Fortuna), of the second century (?) B.C., is a
tetrastyle prostyle pseudoperipteral temple with a high _podium_ or
base, a typical Etruscan cella, and a deep porch, now walled up, but
thoroughly Greek in the elegant details of its Ionic order (Fig. 51).
Two circular temples, both called erroneously +Temples of Vesta+, one at
Rome near the Cloaca Maxima, the other at Tivoli, belong among the
monuments of Greek style. The first was probably dedicated to Hercules,
the second probably to the Sibyls; the latter being much the better
preserved of the two. Both were surrounded by peristyles of eighteen
Corinthian columns, and probably covered by domical roofs with gilded
bronze tiles. The Corinthian order appears here complete with its
modillion cornice, but the crispness of the detail and the fineness of
the execution are Greek and not Roman. These temples date from about 72
B.C., though the one at Rome was probably rebuilt in the first century
A.D. (Fig. 52).
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--CIRCULAR TEMPLE. TIVOLI.]
+IMPERIAL ARCHITECTURE; AUGUSTAN AGE.+ Even in the temples of Greek
style Roman conceptions of plan and composition are dominant. The Greek
architect was not free to reproduce textually Greek designs or details,
however strongly he might impress with the Greek character whatever he
touched. The demands of imperial splendor and the building of great
edifices of varied form and complex structure, like the thermæ and
amphitheatres, called for new adaptations and combinations of planning
and engineering. The reign of Augustus (27 B.C.-14 A.D.) inaugurated the
imperial epoch, but many works erected before and after his reign
properly belong to the Augustan age by right of style. In general, we
find in the works of this period the happiest combination of Greek
refinement with Roman splendor. It was in this period that Rome first
assumed the aspect of an opulent and splendid metropolis, though the way
had been prepared for this by the regularization and adornment of the
Roman Forum and the erection of many temples, basilicas, fora, arches,
and theatres during the generation preceding the accession of Augustus.
His reign saw the inception or completion of the portico of Octavia, the
Augustan forum, the Septa Julia, the first Pantheon, the adjoining
Thermæ of Agrippa, the theatre of Marcellus, the first of the imperial
palaces on the Palatine, and a long list of temples, including those of
the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), of Mars Ultor, of Jupiter Tonans on
the Capitol, and others in the provinces; besides colonnades, statues,
arches, and other embellishments almost without number.
+LATER IMPERIAL WORKS.+ With the successors of Augustus splendor
increased to almost fabulous limits, as, for instance, in the vast
extent and the prodigality of ivory and gold in the famous Golden House
of Nero. After the great fire in Rome, presumably kindled by the agents
of this emperor, a more regular and monumental system of street-planning
and building was introduced, and the first municipal building-law was
decreed by him. To the reign of Vespasian (68-79 A.D.) we owe the
rebuilding in Roman style and with the Corinthian order of the temple of
Jupiter Capitolinus, the Baths of Titus, and the beginning of the
Flavian amphitheatre or Colosseum. The two last-named edifices both
stood on the site of Nero’s Golden House, of which the greater part was
demolished to make way for them. During the last years of the first
century the arch of Titus was erected, the Colosseum finished,
amphitheatres built at Verona, Pola, Reggio, Tusculum, Nîmes (France),
Constantine (Algiers), Pompeii and Herculanum (these last two cities and
Stabiæ rebuilt after the earthquake of 63 A.D.), and arches, bridges,
and temples erected all over the Roman world.
The first part of the second century was distinguished by the splendid
architectural achievements of the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) in
Rome and the provinces, especially Athens. Nearly all his works were
marked by great dignity of conception as well as beauty of detail.
During the latter part of the century a very interesting series of
buildings were erected in the Hauran (Syria), in which Greek and Arab
workmen under Roman direction produced examples of vigorous stone
architecture of a mingled Roman and Syrian character.
The most-remarkable thermæ of Rome belong to the third century--those of
Caracalla (211-217 A.D.) and of Diocletian (284-305 A.D.)--their ruins
to-day ranking among the most imposing remains of antiquity. In Syria
the temples of the Sun at Baalbec and Palmyra (273 A.D., under
Aurelian), and the great palace of Diocletian at Spalato, in Dalmatia
(300 A.D.), are still the wonder of the few travellers who reach those
distant spots.
While during the third and fourth centuries there was a marked decline
in purity and refinement of detail, many of the later works of the
period display a remarkable freedom and originality in conception. But
these works are really not Roman, they are foreign, that is, provincial
products; and the transfer of the capital to Byzantium revealed the
increasing degree in which Rome was coming to look to the East for her
strength and her art.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--TEMPLE OF VENUS AND ROME. PLAN.]
+TEMPLES.+ The Romans built both rectangular and circular temples, and
there was much variety in their treatment. In the rectangular temples a
high _podium_, or basement, was substituted for the Greek stepped
stylobate, and the prostyle plan was more common than the peripteral.
The cella was relatively short and wide, the front porch inordinately
deep, and frequently divided by longitudinal rows of columns into three
aisles. In most cases the exterior of the cella in prostyle temples was
decorated by engaged columns. A barrel vault gave the interior an aspect
of spaciousness impossible with the Greek system of a wooden ceiling
supported on double ranges of columns. In the place of these, free or
engaged columns along the side-walls received the ribs of the vaulting.
Between these ribs the ceiling was richly panelled, or coffered and
sumptuously gilded. The temples of +Fortuna Virilis+ and of +Faustina+
at Rome (the latter built 141 A.D., and its ruins incorporated into the
modern church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda), and the beautiful and admirably
preserved +Maison Carrée+, at Nîmes (France) (4 A.D.) are examples of
this type. The temple of +Concord+, of which only the podium remains,
and the small temple of Julius (both of these in the Forum) illustrate
another form of prostyle temple in which the porch was on a long side of
the cella. Some of the larger temples were peripteral. The temple of the
+Dioscuri+ (Castor and Pollux) in the Forum, was one of the most
magnificent of these, certainly the richest in detail (Fig. 44). Very
remarkable was the double temple of +Venus and Rome+, east of the Forum,
designed by the Emperor Hadrian about 130 A.D. (Fig. 53). It was a vast
pseudodipteral edifice containing two cellas in one structure, their
statue-niches or apses meeting back to back in the centre. The temple
stood in the midst of an imposing columnar peribolus entered by
magnificent gateways. Other important temples have already been
mentioned on p. 91.
Besides the two circular temples already described, the temple of Vesta,
adjoining the House of the Vestals, at the east end of the Forum should
be mentioned. At Baalbec is a circular temple whose entablature curves
inward between the widely-spaced columns until it touches the cella in
the middle of each intercolumniation. It illustrates the caprices of
design which sometimes resulted from the disregard of tradition and the
striving after originality (273 A.D.).
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--PLAN OF THE PANTHEON.]
+THE PANTHEON.+ The noblest of all circular temples of Rome and of the
world was the +Pantheon+. It was built by Hadrian, 117-138 A.D., on the
site of the earlier rectangular temple of the same name erected by
Agrippa. It measures 142 feet in diameter internally; the wall is 20
feet thick and supports a hemispherical dome rising to a height of 140
feet (Figs. 54, 55). Light is admitted solely through a round opening 28
feet in diameter at the top of the dome, the simplest and most
impressive method of illumination conceivable. The rain and snow that
enter produce no appreciable effect upon the temperature of the vast
hall. There is a single entrance, with noble bronze doors, admitting
directly to the interior, around which seven niches, alternately
rectangular and semicircular in plan and fronted by Corinthian columns,
lighten, without weakening, the mass of the encircling wall. This wall
was originally incrusted with rich marbles, and the great dome, adorned
with deep coffering in rectangular panels, was decorated with rosettes
and mouldings in gilt stucco. The dome appears to have been composed of
numerous arches and ribs, filled in and finally coated with concrete.
A recent examination of a denuded portion of its inner surface has
convinced the writer that the interior panelling was executed after, and
not during, its construction, by hewing the panels out of the mass of
brick and concrete, without regard to the form and position of the
origin skeleton of ribs.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--EXTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)]
The exterior (Fig. 56) was less successful than the interior. The gabled
porch of twelve superb granite columns 50 feet high, three-aisled in
plan after the Etruscan mode, and covered originally by a ceiling of
bronze, was a rebuilding with the materials and on the plan of the
original pronaos of the Pantheon of Agrippa. The circular wall behind it
is faced with fine brickwork, and displays, like the dome, many curious
arrangements of discharging arches, reminiscences of traditional
constructive precautions here wholly useless and fictitious because only
skin-deep. A revetment of marble below and plaster above once concealed
this brick facing. The portico, in spite of its too steep gable (once
filled with a “gigantomachia” in gilt bronze) and its somewhat awkward
association with a round building, is nevertheless a noble work, its
capitals in Pentelic marble ranking among the finest known examples of
the Roman Corinthian. Taken as a whole, the Pantheon is one of the great
masterpieces of the world’s architecture.
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--FORUM AND BASILICA OF TRAJAN.]
+FORA AND BASILICAS.+ The fora were the places for general public
assemblage. The chief of those in Rome, the +Forum Magnum+, or +Forum
Romanum+, was at first merely an irregular vacant space, about and in
which, as the focus of the civic life, temples, halls, colonnades, and
statues gradually accumulated. These chance aggregations the systematic
Roman mind reduced in time to orderly and monumental form; successive
emperors extended them and added new fora at enormous cost and with
great splendor of architecture. Those of Julius, Augustus, Vespasian,
and Nerva (or Domitian), adjoining the Roman Forum, were magnificent
enclosures surrounded by high walls and single or double colonnades.
Each contained a temple or basilica, besides gateways, memorial columns
or arches, and countless statues. The +Forum of Trajan+ surpassed all
the rest; it covered an area of thirty-five thousand square yards, and
included, besides the main area, entered through a triumphal arch, the
Basilica Ulpia, the temple of Trajan, and his colossal Doric column of
Victory. Both in size and beauty it ranked as the chief architectural
glory of the city (Fig. 57). The six fora together contained thirteen
temples, three basilicas, eight triumphal arches, a mile of porticos,
and a number of other public edifices.[14] Besides these, a net-work of
colonnades covered large tracts of the city, affording sheltered
communication in every direction, and here and there expanding into
squares or gardens surrounded by peristyles.
[Footnote 14: Lanciani: _Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent
Discoveries_, p. 89.]
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. PLAN.]
The public business of Rome, both judicial and commercial, was largely
transacted in the _basilicas_, large buildings consisting usually of a
wide and lofty central nave flanked by lower side-aisles, and
terminating at one or both ends in an apse or semicircular recess called
the _tribune_, in which were the seats for the magistrates. The
side-aisles were separated from the nave by columns supporting a
clearstory wall, pierced by windows above the roofs of the side-aisles.
In some cases the latter were two stories high, with galleries; in
others the central space was open to the sky, as at Pompeii, suggesting
the derivation of the basilica from the open square surrounded by
colonnades, or from the forum itself, with which we find it usually
associated. The most important basilicas in Rome were the +Sempronian+,
the +Æmilian+ (about 54 B.C.), the +Julian+ in the Forum Magnum (51
B.C.), and the +Ulpian+ in the Forum of Trajan (113 A.D.). The last two
were probably open basilicas, only the side-aisles being roofed. The
Ulpian (Fig. 57) was the most magnificent of all, and in conjunction
with the Forum of Trajan formed one of the most imposing of those
monumental aggregations of columnar architecture which contributed so
largely to the splendor of the Roman capital.
These monuments frequently suffered from the burning of their wooden
roofs. It was Constantine who completed the first vaulted and fireproof
basilica, begun by his predecessor and rival, Maxentius, on the site of
the former Temple of Peace (Figs. 58, 59). Its design reproduced on a
grand scale the plan of the tepidarium-halls of the thermæ, the
side-recesses of which were converted into a continuous side-aisle by
piercing arches through the buttress-walls that separated them. Above
the imposing vaults of these recesses and under the cross-vaults of the
nave were windows admitting abundant light. A _narthex_, or porch,
preceded the hall at one end; there were also a side entrance from the
Via Sacra, and an apse or tribune for the magistrates opposite each of
these entrances. The dimensions of the main hall (325 × 85 feet), the
height of its vault (117 feet), and the splendor of its columns and
incrustations excited universal admiration, and exercised a powerful
influence on later architecture.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.--BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. RUINS.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--THERMÆ OF CARACALLA.
PLAN OF CENTRAL BLOCK.
A, _Caldarium, or Hot Bath_; B, _Intermediate Chamber_;
C, _Tepidarium, or Warm Bath_; D, _Frigidarium, or Cold Bath_;
E, _Peristyles_; a, _Gymnastic Rooms_; b, _Dressing Rooms_;
c, _Cooling Rooms_; d, _Small Courts_; e, _Entrances_;
v, _Vestibules_.]
+THERMÆ.+ The leisure of the Roman people was largely spent in the great
baths, or _thermæ_, which took the place substantially of the modern
club. The establishments erected by the emperors for this purpose were
vast and complex congeries of large and small halls, courts, and
chambers, combined with a masterly comprehension of artistic propriety
and effect in the sequence of oblong, square, oval, and circular
apartments, and in the relation of the greater to the lesser masses.
They were a combination of the Greek _palæstra_ with the Roman _balnea_,
and united in one harmonious design great public swimming-baths, private
baths for individuals and families, places for gymnastic exercises and
games, courts, peristyles, gardens, halls for literary entertainments,
lounging-rooms, and all the complex accommodation required for the
service of the whole establishment. They were built with apparent
disregard of cost, and adorned with splendid extravagance. The earliest
were the +Baths of Agrippa+ (27 B.C.) behind the Pantheon; next may be
mentioned those of +Titus+, built on the substructions of Nero’s Golden
House. The remains of the +Thermæ of Caracalla+ (211 A.D.) form the most
extensive mass of ruins in Rome, and clearly display the admirable
planning of this and similar establishments. A gigantic block of
buildings containing the three great halls for cold, warm, and hot
baths, stood in the centre of a vast enclosure surrounded by private
baths, _exedræ_, and halls for lecture-audiences and other gatherings.
The enclosure was adorned with statues, flower-gardens, and places for
out-door games. The +Baths of Diocletian+ (302 A.D.) embodied this
arrangement on a still more extensive scale; they could accommodate
3,500 bathers at once, and their ruins cover a broad territory near the
railway terminus of the modern city. The church of S. Maria degli Angeli
was formed by Michael Angelo out of the _tepidarium_ of these
baths--a colossal hall 340 × 87 feet, and 90 feet high. The original
vaulting and columns are still intact, and the whole interior most
imposing, in spite of later stucco disfigurements. The circular
_laconicum_ (sweat-room) serves as the porch to the present church. It
was in the building of these great halls that Roman architecture reached
its most original and characteristic expression. Wholly unrelated to any
foreign model, they represent distinctively Roman ideals, both as to
plan and construction.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--ROMAN THEATRE. (HERCULANUM.)
(From model.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--COLOSSEUM. HALF PLAN.]
+PLACES OF AMUSEMENT.+ The earliest Roman theatres differed from the
Greek in having a nearly semicircular plan, and in being built up from
the level ground, not excavated in a hillside (Fig. 61). The first
theatre was of wood, built by Mummius 145 B.C., and it was not until
ninety years later that stone was first substituted for the more
perishable material, in the theatre of Pompey. The +Theatre of
Marcellus+ (23-13 B.C.) is in part still extant, and later theatres in
Pompeii, Orange (France), and in the Asiatic provinces are in excellent
preservation. The orchestra was not, as in the Greek theatre, reserved
for the choral dance, but was given up to spectators of rank; the stage
was adorned with a permanent architectural background of columns and
arches, and sometimes roofed with wood, and an arcade or colonnade
surrounded the upper tier of seats. The amphitheatre was a still more
distinctively Roman edifice. It was elliptical in plan, surrounding an
elliptical arena, and built up with continuous encircling tiers of
seats. The earliest stone amphitheatre was erected by Statilius Taurus
in the time of Augustus. It was practically identical in design with the
later and much larger Flavian amphitheatre, commonly known as the
+Colosseum+, begun by Vespasian
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