The Classical Language

of Architecture

John Summerson
 J CORNICE
^^=
FRIEZE

SBsr?
ARCHITRAVE

CAPITAL

X CYMA RECTA

YWt^iA'A>.'^'ATAVV>K^WaV
MUTULE

rv;jjf",;\f);i.\\fi;i\jfi|

1 171 M r PI M
SHAFT
METOPE

P=i
PEDESTAL

The Doric Order, after ]amcs Gihhs, 1722

The Classical Lano-uao-e of Architecture
 Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012

http://archive.org/details/classicallanguagOOsumm
 JOHN SUMMERSON

The Classical Language of Architecture

.g=S.

^^m
.1*=^. .1*^ *^

THE M.I.T. PRESS

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts
 1963 John Summerson and the British Broadcasting Corporation

Fourteenth Printing, 1989

ISBN o 262 69012 8 (paperback)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 66-24572

Printed and bound in the United States of America by Halliday Lithograph.

 Contents

PREFACE page 6

1 THE ESSENTIALS OF CLASSICISM 7

2 THE GRAMMAR OF ANTIQUITY I3

3 SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LINGUISTICS 20

4 THE RHETORIC OF THE BAROQUE 27

5 THE LIGHT OF REASON - AND OF ARCHAEOLOGY 34
6 CLASSICAL INTO MODERN 40
Glossary 47
Notes on the Literature of Classical Architecture 53

Plates 57
 Prefcace

A script written for broadcasting is a script written for broadcast-

ing and it is, I it into something else.
think, a mistake to try to turn
This book of the very sUghtly revised scripts of
consists, therefore,
six talks, written for the B.B.C. and deUvered in May-July 1963,
together with the illustrative material made available to Hsteners
in a booklet issued at the time. In preparing the talks, I had in
mind the non-professional student who is attracted by the history
of architecture and perhaps approaches it as part of a History of
Art course, but never quite grasps the grammatical discipline which
is the nerve of all classical architecture and some feehng for which

helps to illuminate most other architectures. To him (or her) and

to anybody who likes architecture well enough to want to start

thinking about it - instead of just gazing - this book is offered.

J.S.
 I. The Essentials of Classicism

I must begin by assuming some general knowledge. Like, development of the classical language of architecture but
for instance, knowing that St. Paul's Cathedral is a classical about its nature and its use - its use as the common archi-
building while Westminster Abbey is not; that the British tectural language, inherited from Rome, of nearly the whole
Museum is a classical building while the Natural History civihzed world in the five centuries between the Renaissance
Museum South Kensington is not. That all the buildings
at and our own time.
round Trafalgar Square - the National Gallery, St. Martin's- Very well - from now on we can be more precise. Let us
in-the-Fields, Canada House and even (just) South Africa look at this word 'classical' as appHed to architecture. It is a
House are classical, that pubhc buildings in White-
all the mistake to try to defme classicism. It has all sorts of useful
hall are classical; but that the Houses of ParUament are not. meanings in different contexts and I propose to consider two
Elementary distinctions, and you may think at once that I meanings only, both of which will be useful throughout
am going to deal in superficiahties. When is a classical build- these talks. The first meaning is the most obvious. A classical
ing not a classical building? Does it really matter? Are not building one whose decorative elements derive directly or
is

the important quahties of architecture deeper than and inde- indirectlyfrom the architectural vocabulary of the ancient
pendent of such styhstic nomenclature? They are. Neverthe- world - the 'classical' world as it is often called: these ele-
less, I cannot reach all the things I want to say in these talks ments are easily recognizable, as for example columns of five
without first isolating all the buildings which are, prima standard varieties, apphed in standard ways; standard ways
facie, classical from all the others. I shall be talking about of treating door and window openings and gable ends and
architecture as a language and all I want to assume at the standard runs of mouldings appHcable to all thes^ things.
moment is that you do recognize the Latin of architecture Notwithstanding that all these 'standards' are continually
when you hear - that is, see - it. departed from they do remain still recognizable as standards
The of Architecture -
Latin that brings me to another throughout all buildings that may be called classical in this
general knowledge assumption. Classical architecture has its sense.

roots in antiquity, in the worlds of Greece and Rome, in the That, I think, is one fair description of what classical archi-
temple architecture of the Greek world and in the rehgious, tecture is, but it is only skin-deep; it enables you to recognize
mihtary and of the Romans. But these
civil architecture the 'uniform' worn by a certain category of buildings, the
talks are not going to be about the architecture of Greece category we call classical. But it tells you nothing about the
and Rome - they are not going to be about the growth and essence of classicism in architecture. Here, however, we have
got to be rather careful. 'Essences' are very elusive and are ify as a 'classical' building? The answer must, I think, be 'no'.
often found, on enquiry, not to exist. Nevertheless, embed- You can say, in describing such a building, that its propor-
ded in the history of classical architecture is a series of state- tions are classical, but it is simply confusing and an abuse of
ments about the essentials of architecture and these are in terminology to say that it is classical. The porches of Chartres

agreement over a long period, to the extent that we may Cathedral are, in distribution and proportion, just about as
say that the aim of classical architecture has always been to classical as you can get, but nobody is ever going to call them
achieve a demonstrable harnjony of parts. Such harmony has anything but Gothic. And one could cite plenty of other
been felt of antiquity and to be to
to reside in the buildings examples of the Gothic system being closely analogous to
a great extent 'built in' to the principal antique elements - the classical. It is, by the way, a great mistake to think of
especially to the five 'orders' to which we shall come pre- Gothic and Classic as opposites; they are very different but
sently. But it has also been considered in the abstract by a they are not opposites and they are not wholly unrelated.
series of theoreticians who have demonstrated that harmony It is nineteenth-century romanticism which has made us put
analogous to musical harmony in a structure is achieved by them in totally different psychological camps. People who
proportion, that is to say by ensuring that the ratios in a say they 'prefer' Gothic to Classic or Classic to Gothic are, I

building are simple arithmetical functions and that the ratios suspect, usually the victims of this nineteenth-century mis-
of all parts of the building are either those same ratios or interpretation. The fact is that the essentials of architecture -
related to them in a direct way. A vast amount of preten- as expounded by the Renaissance theorists - are to be found
tious nonsense has been written about proportion and I have expressed, consciously or unconsciously, throughout the ar-
no intention of getting involved in it. The Renaissance con- chitectures of the world. And while we must incorporate
cept of proportion is fairly simple. The purpose of propor- these essentials in our idea of what is classical we must also

tion is to estabhsh harmony throughout a structure - a accept the fact that classical architecture is only recognizable
harmony which made comprehensible
is either by the con- as such when it contains some allusion, however sHght, how-
spicuous use of one or more of the orders as dominant com- ever vestigial, to the antique 'orders'. Such an allusion may
ponents or else simply by the use of dimensions involving be no more than some groove or projection which suggests
the repetition of simple ratios. That is enough for us to go the idea of a cornice or even a disposition of windows which
on with. suggests the ratio of pedestal to column, column to entabla-
There is, however, one point about this rather abstract ture. Some modern buildings - notably those of the late
conception of what is classical and it may be put as a ques- Auguste Perret and his imitators - are classical in tliis way:
tion. Is it you may ask, for a building to display
possible, that is to say, they are thought out in modern materials but
absolutely none of the trappings associated with classical in a classical spirit and sealed as classical only by the tiniest

architecture and still, by virtue of proportion alone, to qual- allusive gestures. In the last talk in this series I shall have
more to say about meantime the thing which
all this. In the kind to have survived from antiquity and for that reason has
it is we go any
quite essential for us to understand before been accorded enormous veneration. Vitruvius was not him-
further is this question of the orders - the 'Five Orders of self a man of any great genius or Hterary talent or indeed -

Architecture'. Everybody has heard of them, but what ex- for all we know - of architectural talent. The thing about
actly are they? Why are there five and not four, or sixteen his treatise is rounds up and preserves for us an
that it

or three hundred and twenty-six? immense quantity of traditional building lore - it is the code
One thing at a time. First, what are the orders? On the of practice of a Roman architect of the first century a.d.
endpaper of this book you will fmd a very clear diagram of enriched with instances and historical notes.
the Doric order. It consists, you see, of a temple column In the course of Vitruvius' third and fourth bogks he des-
standing on a pedestal and carrying on its liead the archi- cribes three of the orders - Ionic, Doric and Corinthian - and
trave, frieze and cornice, those elements which are collect- gives a few notes on another, the Tuscan. He tells us in which
ively called the entablature. Then, in Plates i and 2 you see part of the world each was invented. He relates them to his
the Doric order again, with its four companions; it is the descriptions of temples and tells us to which Gods and God-
second from the with the Tuscan to the left of it, the
left, desses each order is appropriate. His descriptions are by no
Ionic, Corinthian and Composite to the right.There are two means exhaustive, he gives no fifth order, he does not present
sets here - one of 1540 on the left of the page (Plate i), the them in what we think of as the 'proper' sequence (Tuscan,
other more than a hundred years later (Plate 2), but they are Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) and - most important - he does
in principle the same thing. An 'order' is the 'column-and- not present them as a set of canonical formulae embodying
superstructure' unit of a temple colomiade. It docs not have all architectural virtue. That was left for the theorists of the
to have a pedestal and often does not. It does have to have an Renaissance.
entablature (columns are meaningless unless they support In the middle of the fifteenth century, fourteen hundred
something) and the cornice represen ts the ca ves of the build- years after Vitruvius, the Florentine architect and humanist,
ing fniishing off the slope of the roo/. Leon Battista Alberti, described the orders, partly with refer-
Now, why are there five orders? This is a little more diffi- ence to Vitruvius and partly from his own observations of
cult and it is necessary to glance back to some origins. The Roman was he who added, from observation, a
remains. It

earliest written description of any of the orders is in Vitru- fifth order - the Composite - which combines filatures of

vius. The name of this Roman author will crop up frequently the Corinthian with those of the Ionic. But Alberti was still
in these talks and this is the moment to introduce him. He perfectly objective and Vitruvian in his attitude. It was Sebas-
was an architect of some consquence in the reign of Augustus tiano Serlio, nearly a century later, who really starj:ed the

and wrote a treatise in ten books: De Architectura, which he orders - the five orders now - on their long career of canon-
dedicated.lo the Emperor. This is the only treatise oi^ its ical, symbolic, almost legenda ry, auth ority. I am not sure
that Serlio quitemeant to do this but that is what he did, verbs in the grammar of the Latin language.
was a man of the High Renaissance, an exact con-
Serlio This very effective and, quite literally, dramatic gesture of
temporary of Michelangelo, a near contemporary of Raphael Serlio's was not lost upon his successors, and the five orders
and an associate of the architect-painter Baldassare Perruzzi as a 'complete set', all deviations from which were question-
whose designs he inherited. He built a few quite important able, passed from hand to hand. Nearly all seventeenth and
buildings but his greatest service to architecture was to com- eighteenth century primers of architecture start in the same
pile the first full-scale fully illustrated architectural grammar way, with a plate of the five columns and entablatures ranged
of the Renaissance. It came out as a series of books. The first side by side - Bloem in Switzerland, De Vries in Flanders,
two appeared in Venice, the later books in France under the Dietterlin inGermany, Freart and Perrault in France and, in
patronage of Francois ler. The books became the architect- England, Shute, Gibbs and Sir William Chambers. George
of the civiUzed world. The Itahans used them, the
ural bible Gwilt's edition of Chambers carries us up to 1825 and if you
French owed nearly everything to SerHo and his books, the go from this to the same author's Encyclopedia of Architecture
Germans and Flemings based their own books on his, the and foUow this work to its latest edition in 1891 you will
Ehzabethans cribbed from him and Sir Christopher Wren fmd it still being stated there that 'in the proper understand-
was still fmding Serho invaluable when he built the Shel- ing and application of the orders is laid the foundation of
donian atOxford in 1663. architecture as an art'. As little as forty years ago when
was I

Serho's book on the orders starts with an engraving - the a student in the Bartlett School at University College, Lon-
very first of its kind (Plate i) - in which all five orders are don, it was taken for granted that one's first task as a studenf
shown standing side by side hke ill-assorted nine-pins ranged was to draw out in great detaO three of the classical orders.
according to their relative slimness - that is to say according Now there are two important points about all this. The
to the ratio of lower diameter to height. All are on pedestals. first is to realize that although the Romans clearly accepted
The stubby Tuscan is on the left; then the similar but shghtly the individuahty of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, and knew
taller Doric; the elegant Ionic; the lofty, elaborate Corinth- about their historical origins, it was not they who embalmed
ian; and finally the still more elongated and further enriched and sanctified them in the arbitrary, Umiting way with which
Composite. .In -the text accompanying this plate Serlio ex- we are familiar. The second point is to realize the immense
plains himself He says that just as the ancient dramatists used importance, for the whole of architecture since the Renais-
to preface their plays with a prologue telling audiences what sance, of this process of embalming, of canonization. The
it was all going to be about, so he is putting before us the orders came to be regarded as the very touch-stone of archi-
principal characters in his treatise on architecture. He does it tecture, as architectural instruments ofthe greatest possible
in a way which makes the orders seem as categorical in the subtlety, embodying all tlic ancient wisdom of mankind in

grammar of architecture as, say, the four conjugations of the building art - almost, in fact as products of nature herself

10
And this where the modern eye must often confess itself
is and sheer personal invention on the other. Somewhere be-
defeated. Unless you really know your orders and can recog- tween the extremes have been the types composed and pub-
nize, at a glance, a Tuscan according to Vitruvius, a Cor- lished by the great theorists - SerUo, of course, first in 1537,
inthian from the temple of Vespasian or an Ionic from the then Vignola in 1562, Palladio in 1570 and Scamozzi in 1615.
temple of Saturn or the rather odd Composite concocted by These have had a normahzing effect all over the world. But
SerHo from the Colosseum you will not appreciate all the in all the centuries there have been instances where architects
refmements and variations which, from time to time have have taken pride in quite literally copying specific antique

been lovingly and assiduously apphed to them. Nevertheless, examples. For instance, Jean BuUant at Ecouen, the great
even an *0 level' understanding of the orders is something, house near Paris, derived the Corinthian with most of its

for it is by no means only in the handling of the orders them- ornaments from the Temple of Castor and Pollux; that was
selves that the character of classical architecture lies. It is also in 1540. Inigo Jones at Covent Garden in 1630 reconstructed
- even more (much more, in fact) in the way they are de- the Tuscan on the basis of Vitruvius' text (Plate 19) - almost
ployed; but that is a subject for another talk. an archaeological exercise. Then Sir John Soane in 1793

Meanwhile, let us be quite clear about how variable or borrowed literally from the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli for the
how invariable the orders are. Serho puts them before us Bank of England. On the other hand, there have always been
with a tremendous air of authority giving dimensions for daring innovators. Phihbert de L'Orme invented a new
each part as if to settle the profiles and proportions once and 'French' order for the Tuileries Palace; Wendel Dietterlin's
for all. But in fact, Serlio's orders, while obviously reflecting orders in his book of 1594 are phantasmagoric variations on
Vitruvius to some extent, are also based on his own obser- Serho; Borromini's orders are outrageous and extremely ex-
vation of ancient monuments and thus, by a process of per- pressive inventions, entirely his ov^m. So it is a mistake ever to
sonal selection, to quite a considerable degree his own inven- think of the 'five orders of architecture' as a sort of child's box
tion. It could hardly be otherwise. Vitruvius' descriptions of bricks which architects have used to save themselves the
have gaps in them and these can only be fdled from know- trouble of inventing. It is much better to think of them as

ledge of surviving Roman monuments themselves. The grammatical expressions imposing a formidable discipline
orders as exemphfied in these monuments vary considerably but a discipline within which personal sensibility always has
from one to the other so it is open to anybody to abstract a certain play -a discipline, moreover, which can sometimes
what he considers the best features of each in order to set out be burst asunder by a flight of poetic genius.
what he considers his ideal Corinthian, Ionic or whatever it Now, at this point I am going to ask you to look again at

is. All through the history of classical architecture speculation the Doric order in the drawing on the endpapers. Because
as to the ideal types of each of the orders has continued, I think it may still puzzle you that the entablature has so
oscillating between antiquarian reverence on the one hand many curious bits and pieces, all with names but with no

II
particular decorative or symbolic value that you can see. back from the formalized Doric to its last timber prototype.
Why mutules? Why triglyphs and metopes? Why the taenia Their guesses are worth more than mine, but guesses they
and those odd Uttle tassels called guttae? You may v^ell ask. are and are Ukely to remain. All that matters for us now is

And I can only give you a very general ansv^er. It is quite that in the process of time a system of timber construction,
certain that the Doric order derives its forms from a prim- copied in stone, crystallized into the linguistic formula which
itive type of timBer construction. Vitruvius tells us as much. Vitruvius knew, and so we know, as the Doric order. This
yWhen you are looking at a Doric order executed in stone crystalhzation has a very obvious parallel in language. Words,
ou are looking, in effect, at a carved representation of a expressions, grammatical constructions have some time
all at

Doric order constructed of wood. Not a literal representa- had to be invented to meet particular needs of communica-
tion, of course, but a sculptural equivalent. The earliest'tem- tion. Those immediate needs are long since forgotten, but

ples in the ancient world were of wood. Gradually some of the words and their patterns still form the language we use
these temples - those, doubtless
of special sanctity and which for a thousand purposes - including poetry. That is how it is
attracted wealth - came to be rebuilt in stone. It would be with the five orders of architecture.
felt imperative to preserve in the more permanent stone One more word about the orders. They are always sup-
version the actual forms round which so much sanctity had posed to have something resembling personalities; Vitruvius
gathered. Hence, the carpentry devices of the wooden en- was perhaps responsible for this. The Doric he saw as exem-
tablature, already,no doubt, somewhat stylized, were copied phfying 'the proportion, strength and grace of a man's.body'
in stone or marble. Later on, no doubt, stone temples on - presumably an average well-built male. The Ionic, for him,
new sites copied the copies, and so it went on till the whole was characterized by 'feminine slenderness' and the Corin-
thing became a static and accepted formula. thian as imitating 'the shght figure of a girl', which, may
Look at the Doric entablature again in the hght of this and seem not very different from the last. But Vitruvius having
it docs, to some extent, explain itself The mutules seem to be opened the door to personahzation of the orders the Renais-
the ends of cantilevers jutting out to support the eaves and sance let in a lot more - often very contradictory. Thus while
to carry the eaves, from which the rain drips, well away Scamozzi echoes Vitruvius in calling the Corinthian 'vir-
from the columns. Then the triglyphs could be the ends of ginal'. Sir Henry Wotton, a few years later, distorts him by

cross beams resting on the architrave. The taenia looks like calling it 'lascivious' and 'decked like a wanton courtezan',

some kind of binding member and it appears to be secured adding that the morals of Corinth were bad anyway. Never-
to the triglyphs by the guttae, which arc not tassels, of course, theless, the Corintliian has always been regarded as female
but pegs. I say 'seem to be', 'could be', 'looks Hke' because and the Doric as male, with the Ionic in between as some-
all these things are my own rough guesses. Some archae- thing rather unsexed - an ageing scholar or a calm and gentle
ologists have devoted much ingenuity to trying to work matron. Serlio's recommendati ons are perhaps th e most

12
specific and consistent. The Doric, he says, should be used character. And there is the fascinating case of Inigo Jones and
for churches dedicated to the more extraverted male saints - the Tuscan at Covent Garden which I shall come to in another
St Paul, St Peter or St George and to mihtant types in gen- talk. Tuscan and Doric are the two most primitive orders-^

eral; the Ionic for matronly saints - neither too tough nor and arcliitects have tended to use them when they wanted
too tender and also for men of learning; the Corintliian for to express rougliness and toughness or in the_.case of the
virgins, most especially the Virgin Mary. To the Composite Doric what is called a 'soldierly bearing'. At the other end
SerHo awards no special characteristics, while the Tuscan he of the scale the Composite is sometimes quite obviously
finds suitable for fortifications and prisons. chosen because the architect wants to lay it on thick - luxury,
Now there is no need to take any of this too seriously. opulence, no expense spared.
Certainly, there no need when you are looking at the
is Anyway, the main point is this. The orders provided a
Corinthian columns of, say, the Mansion House in London, sort o( gamut of architectural character all the way from the
to wonder if the Lord Mayor who commissioned them rough and tough to the shm and fine. In true classical de-
thought of them as virginal or the other thing. The fact is signing the selection of the order is a very vital point - it is
that the orders have mostly been used according to taste, a choice of mood. What you do with the order, what exact
according to circumstances and very often according to ratios you give its different parts, what enrichments you put

means - building in plain Tuscan or Doric being obviously in or leave out, this again shifts and defmes the mood.
less expensive than building in richly carved Corinthian. Well, so much for the Five Orders of Architecture - five
There are cases w^here the use of an order has a dehberate basic elements in the architectural grammar of Antiquity.
symbohc significance. I think, for instance, that Wren must But what can you do with the orders? How does the gram-
have used Doric at Chelsea Hospital becausQ, of its soldierly mar work? That I shall try to explain in my next talk.

2. The Graminar of Antiquity

So far, I have devoted nearly all my time to the Five Orders I shall take your famiHarity with them for granted and talk

and I hope you are not tired of them because they are going less about the orders themselves than about how they are
to be with us more often than not. From now on, however, used. Just look for the last time at Plate i. These orders, what

13
are they? They columns supported on pedestals (whose
are in doing so they raised architectural language to a new level.

use is beams with projections to sup-

optional) and carrying They invented ways of using the orders not merely as orna-
port the eaves of a roof. What can you do with them? Well, mental enrichments for their new types of structure but as
if you are designing a temple with porticos at front and back controls. The orders are, in many Roman buildings, quite
and colonnades at the sides, these columns and their appur- useless structurally but they make their buildings expressive,
tenances account for very nearly everything, so far as the they make them speak; they conduct the building, with sense
exterior is concerned. At each of the four corners of the and ceremony and often with great elegance, into the mind
temple, the gable sphts off from the cornice to form, front of the beholder. Visually, they dominate and control the
and back, that flat triangular shape which is called a pedi- buildings to which they are attached.
ment; and there you are. But suppose you are not designing How is this done? Not just by pinning columns and en-
a temple. Suppose you are designing a large and complicated tablaturesand pediments on to an otherwise bare structure.
structure like a theatre or courts of justice, a structure of The whole thing - structure and architectural expression -
several storeys involving arches and vaults and many win- must be integrated, and this means that columns must be
dows and doors, what then? Common sense would suggest introduced in a variety of different ways. You see, there are
that you then scrap the orders as being irrevocably associated columns and columns. Columns in the round have to carry
with temples and start all over again letting your arches and something. Mostly they carry their own entablature and per-
vaults and window-patterns fmd an expression of their own. haps a wall or perhaps only the eaves of a roof above it. But
That may be modern common sense but it is not what hap- you can have what are called 'detached columns' which have
pened and it is not the view the Romans took when they a wall behind them which they just do not touch but into
adopted the arch and the vault for their pubHc buildings. which their entablature is firmly built. Then you can have
Far from leaving the orders out when they built vaulted three-quarter-columns, one quarter of each being buried in
amplii-theatrcs, basilicas and triumphal arches, they brought the wall. Similarly you can have half columns, half buried
them in, in the most conspicuous way possible, as if they felt in the wall. And you can have 'pilasters' which are
fmally
(which perhaps they did) that no building could commun- flat representations of columns, carved as it were in relief on

icate anytliing unless the orders were involved in it. To them
the orders were architecture. Perhaps it was, in the first
stance, a question of carrying over the prestige of temple
architecture into great secular projects. I do not know. Any-
way, the Romans took this highly styhzed but structurally
the wall (or you can think of them, if you Hke, as built-in
in- square columns). There you have four degrees of integration
of an order in a structure - four degrees of relief, four
strengths of shadow. The Romans never learnt to exploit the
of this, though they showed the' way. To
full possibilities

quite primitive kind of arcliitccturc and married it toarched most forcibly what I have been saying I suggest
illustrate

and vaulted multi-storey buildings of great elaboration. And you look at Plates 41, 42 and 43 - three church facades of the

14
 sixteenth-seventeenth centuries. The Gesu, Rome, is mostly of mutilation. Second because arched and vaulted buildings
pilasters. S. Susanna has pilasters above and pilasters, half- of any size require not columns but massive piers to talc e the
columns and three-quarter-columns below. The Val de loads. Columns are too slender. So what did the Romans do?

Grace in Paris has a porch with columns in the round, half- The Colosseum at Rome answers the question at once. Plate
columns, three-quarter-columns and pilasters. I shall have 3 shows the least damaged side of that astonishing* building.

more to say about these three buildings later on. Just now, Here you see its three interminable open galleries - arch upon
I am trying to get your eye in to the kinds of play which arch, with an additional soHd storey at the top. And you see
become possible with the orders as a very long-term result that every row of arches is framed inside a continuous colon-
of what the Romans pioneered. And while you are looking nade. The colonnades have no structural purpose - or very
at these three churches note one other thing. Every time an little.They are representations of temple architecture carved,
order changes its plane of relief - say from pilaster forward as it were, in relief on a building which is not a temple, which

to half, from half forward again to three-quarter, the entab- is multi-storeycd and is built as a system of arches and vaults.
*- lature has to break forward too. You cannot dodge columns If this way of combining the arcuated and trabeated sys-
about under an imchanging entablature. That is one of the tems - treating the trabeated system simply as a rneans of
rules. expression - seems to us absurdly simple, that is chiefly be-
You will understand from all this, I think, just what I mean cause we are so used to it. It is simple, but when you begin
when I say that in the classical language the orders are not to examine it in detail, not as simple as all that. We have
merely pinned on to the structure but integrated with it. here in the Colosseum four orders - Doric on the ground
Sometimes they sink right _ititD.it,. -sometimes they, come floor, Ionic on the next, Corinthian on the uppermost open
walking out of it into a free-standing porch or^ colonnade. storey and on the plain storey above aiji indeterminate order
And all the time they control it. (which has sometimes been called Composite but which is
Now back to ancient Rome. I emphasized earHer that all in fact unique to the Colosseum). Now focus on one bay of
major Roman buildings other than temples were designed one of the open storeys - say of the middle storey which is
on the basis of arches and vaults, whereas the orders belong Ionic. Plate 4 (immediately to the right of the Colosseum
strictly to the more primitive system of 'trabeation' - that is photograph) is a measured drawing of one such bay. Here

to say, post and lintel construction. To marry the two in the you have a grammatical construction which is a pretty com-
sense of giving the old types of temple column the job of plete thing. It is controlled by an Ionic order which obeys
carrying arches could work up to a point but it was never nothing but its own traditional aesthetic rules. The shape and
satisfactory for two reasons. First because the colurnns and size of the piers behind the columns and of the arch, on the
their entablatures had become so closely identified, by long other hand, havecome about through the exigencies of con-
associati on as one thing, that to divorce them meant a s ort venience and construction. The two disciplines have got to

15
meet each other harmoniously and I think we may agree no tolerance whatever round the arch. The piers are only
that they dp. The pedestal moulding of the order ranges with just wide enough to receive the arcliivolt and the returns of
the cill height of the arched gallery. The impost of the arch the pedestal mouldings. The thing is as tight as a knot. If this
strikes the columns a Httle above half their height and the design, as interpreted on your drawing-board, to your chos-
arch sits comfortably between the columns and the archi- en scale, does not come naturally to terms with your plan-
trave above. If this arrangement is satisfactory it has been ning and structural needs - well, you have got to play the
achieved by a very careful balancing of needs - the aesthetic game another way. And of course there are other ways,
dictatorship of the Ionic order and the practical needs of the plenty, if you can think of them.
building as a thing of use. A quite sHght alteration to any The Colosseum, which started us on this theme of arch
part would wreck the whole you wid-
thing. If for instance, and order in combination was, as you can imagine, one of
ened the opening by twelve inches, what would happen? the buildings from which the men of the Renaissance learnt
The crown of the arch would go up by six inches. Assuming most. It exemplifies not only this particular combination but
you want to keep the existing space between arch and en- also the superimposition of orders and, in the top storey, the
tablature, the entablature would go up by six inches; so the use of a pilaster order to render expressive a plain, almost
columns would become six inches taller; and the rules of the windowless wall. There were other buildings of this class -
Ionic order being what they ate every other part of the order the theatre of Marcellus, for instance; and, outside Rome,
would have to be bigger. The pedestal would grow so its Verona and at Pola in Istria. All were closely
the theatres at
moulding would no longer range with the cill height and, studied,and useful grammatical elements extracted from
worse still, the entablature, which you have already raised them; they were published by Serho and a generation later
by six inches, would now grow in height and probably by Palladio. If you
want to see Colosseum themes reflected
make trouble with the floor levels above, to say nothing of works of Renaissance masters, here are three instances,
in the

the proportions of the upstairs order, the Corinthian. more or less at random, among the illustrations. Plate 15:
To be frank, I think this bay of the Colosseum is capable the Palazzo Corner, Venice, with its superimposed columns
of a httle more 'tolerance' than I have represented. But you and arches. Plate 22: Mantua, where Giuho Romano roman-
will begin to see the kind of discipline which is involved in ticises the same theme. Or, for the pilastered upper storey of

the classical language and which is inherent in it. And this the Colosseum, Plate 31: the Castello Farncse at Caprarola.
discipline can be tightened. Look now at Plate 5. Here is the Very different buildings indeed but using those grammatical
same arrangement, in principle, in a theoretical design by expressions of which the Colosseum was the most conspic-
the sixteenth-century architect, Vignola. Vignola has ob- uous exemplar.
viously been determined to produce sometliing in which all Perhaps even more instructive, grammatically, than the
the parts are absolutely dependent on all the others. There is theatres were the Trium phal Arches of Rome and other

16
parts of Italy - Serlio gives as many as eleven. These arches, pressions controlling the structure.
being purely ceremonial affairs, made great play with archi- By far the most impressive case of this is the conversion of
tecturaland sculptural detail. In Rome, the largest and most the triumphal arch into a Christian church. Tliis was achiev-
important were and still are the Arch of Septimius Severus ed by Leon At Rimini, when he designed
Battista Alberti.
and the Arch of Constantine - the latter is illustrated in Plate what we know as the Tempio Malatestiana, Alberti gave it
6. Now, look at tliis arch. What does it consist of? It is a a west front manifestly based on the Roman triumphal arch
massive rectangular slab of masonry with three holes in it - just outside the town. But that was only the first step. Much
the centre hole is the main arch, the other two are lower and later, towards the end of his hfe, he designed the church of
narrower subsidiary arches. Set against the four piers divid- S. Andrea at Mantua and here he not only adapted the
ing the arches are four columns, standing on pedestals and triumphal arch idea to the west front but brought it inside
rising to an entablature which breaks out over each separate and made it the model for his nave arcades; and, more than
column and at each of those points of breaking out carries a that, he designed the west front and the arcades to the same

carved standing figure. Above the entablature is a super- scale, so that the whole church, and out, is, as it were,
inside
structure called an attic storey. It makes a background for a logical three-dimensional extension of the triumphal arch
the figures and is carved in rehef and lettered. idea. See Plates 7 and 8. 1 have dehberately kept the exterior
Now, observe the arrangement of aU these elements. The (Plate 7) small because I much doubt Alberti's responsibihty
keystone of the centre arch is hard up against the bottom of for some of its features - he died before it was built. But the
the entablature. The keystones of the side arches are hard up main idea is clear enough and you will see how it is echoed
against a line which is that of the impost of the centre arch; again in the interior (Plate 8) - though here I must warn
and the three arches are all of the same ratio of height to you against the frippery eighteenth-century wall decoration
width. The depth of the entablature is exactly such that the which in photographs always robs this building of much of
appropriate column, with its pedestal, fiUs the space between its force. Here was a real triumph - at the same time a

entablature and ground. An interesting, compact and har- conquest of Roman grammar and the creation of a continu-
monious arrangement admirably fulfilling its symbohc func- ously logical structure on the model of wliich I do not know
tion. In the fifteenth century this arch and the other Roman how many classical churches were to be built in the next
arches had an enormous imaginative appeal both for painters four centuries. S. Andrea, Mantua, is the first great step to-
and for architects (who, of course, often were painters) and, wards St Peter, Rome, and St Paul, London.
as a consequence, we find, over and over again, features and There is much more I could say about triumphal arches
combinations of features which originated in the triumphal and their contribution to the classical language. The most
arches, being used in totally different sorts of buildings, all elementary fact of aU about them - the division of a space by
sorts of buildings, and used, once again, as grammatical ex- columns into three unequal parts: narrow, wide, narrow -

17
is perhaps also the most important. Plate 23 is a design for circular temple, on the other hand, did play an important
agateway by Giuho Romano, obviously on the Triumphal part. This was chiefly, perhaps, because of its very beautiful
Arch model. But to the left of tliis and again on
(Plate 22), re-creation by Bramante, which I shall be describing later on.

the opposite page (Plate 25), are buildings by the same artist But the great achievement of the Renaissance was not the
in which the Triumphal Arch rhythm - narrow, wide, nar- strict imitation of Roman buildings (that was left for the
row - is also imphcit. At a much later date, the attic storey eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) but the re-estabhshment
was often found to be a useful element and a good back- of the grammar of antiquity as a universal discipline - the

ground for figures. There is one at Somerset House (Plate discipline, inherited from the remote past of mankind and
21) - though frankly I do not think it much helps the design appHcable to all honourable building enterprises whatever.
in that instance. A really fme handling of an attic storey with Of that grammar, that discipline, I have already perhaps said
figures is C. R. Cockerell's Ashmolean building at Oxford enough to convince you of its reahty and also of its simplic-
(Plate 35). ity, but there is a Httle more you should know. There is, for

So now we have glanced at two types of Roman building instance, the very simple matter indeed of the spacing of
- the galleried amphitheatre type, instanced by the Colos- columns - what is technically called 'intercolumniation'. In-
seum and the triumphal arch type - and seen the extent to tercolumniation sets the 'tempo' of a building and once the
which they were exploited as sources of grammatical ex- tempo is setyou cannot play fast and loose with it. Variations
pression. There are many other types of Roman architecture within the tempo - yes; but of specific and significant kinds.
but none, I tliink, which were so completely digested and The Romans attached so much importance to the spacing
became so much an organic part of the classical language as of columns that they estabhshed five standard types, meas-
these. There were the baths, of course, whose grandiose plan- ured in column diameters. Vitruvius records them. The
ning and vaulted and chambers became leading inspir-
halls closest spacing they called Pycnostyle - i\ diameters. Then
ations on certain occasions. There was the unique Pantheon, came Systyle, Eustyle, Diastyle and finally the widest, Araeo-
the prototype of all great classical domes; and the vast Basil- style, at 4 diameters. Systyle and Eustyle arc the commonest.
ica of Constantine, the challenge to all builders of great Systyle you might describe as a quick march, Eustyle as an
vaulted naves/ And, of course, there were the temples. It is easy dignified walk. The extreme intercolumniations neither
a curious fact that the typical Roman temple - the rectang- march nor walk. Pycnostyle always seems to me to mean
ular building with an open portico and pediment in front 'halt' - a palisade of men drawn up to attention. Araeostyle
and with or without columns or pilasters all round (in fact is a very longstride indeed, almost a slow leaping motion.

what we think of as the most obvious symbol of Roman If you Hke you can try to equate the intercolumniation witli
architecture) was never used as a model for churches in Italy musical terminology. I would suggest, for Diastyle, 'adagio';
and never, indeed, in Europe till the eighteenth century. The for Eustyle, 'andante' and for Systyle, 'allegro'; but I do not

18
like 'presto' for Pycnostyle, still less 'largo' for Araeostyle. As he is using as well as up against them, so that he almost be-
with all analogies of this sort it is nonsense to press it too far. heves himself to have designed the order whose manipula-
But the importance of intercolumniation - this system of tion gives him so many headaches. I cannot possibly illustrate
'beating time' in architecture - is, of course, immense. In this better than by quoting some remarks by a very great

Plates 10 and ii there is a telling contrast which puts the classical architect of the last generation - Sir Edwin Lut-

whole thing in a nut-shell. Here are buildings of the same yens. Lutyens was brought up in the picturesque Tudor
general shape and rouglily the same commemorative pur- tradition of the late nineteenth century and to that tradition
pose. But how different the emotions they arouse: Bram- all his early houses belong. When he was thirty-five, how-
ante's Diastyle (3 diameters) - stately, serene, meditative: ever, in 1903, he began to have precisely those insights into
Hawksmoor's Pycnostyle (i| diameters) - tense and forbid- the nature of classicism which were to make him eventually
ding, a ceremonial palisade. And you look through the
if one of the architectural masters of his time. He was designing
other illustrations with this question of 'tempo' in mind you a house for a rich manufacturer at Ilkley when the splendour
will be in no doubt about the importance of 'intercolumn- of the him and in a letter to his
classical discipline seized

iation'. You will also begin to see the kind of variations friend Herbert Baker, he put dov^oi some wonderfully vivid
which can be introduced - coupled columns, spaced pairs of flashes of thought:
columns, colunms in the narrow-wide-narrow rhythm of
'That time-worn doric order - a lovely thing - 1 have the
the triumphal arch and the really intricate rhythms you get
cheek to adopt. You can't copy it. To be right you have
when columns, half columns and three-quarter columns be-
to take it and design it. You cannot copy: you find if
. . .

gin to play together, sometimes (as in the church facades we you do you are caught, a mess remains.
looked at earlier on) leaving the basic tempo a matter of
It means hard labour, hard thinking, over every line in
some doubt.
all three dimensions and in every joint; and no stone can
I have been talking time about grammar and about
all this
be allowed to sHde. If you tackle it in this way, the Order
rules, to the extent that you may have begun to see the class-
belongs to you, and every stroke, being mentally handled,
ical language as a frighteningly impersonal and intractable
must become endowed with such poetry and artistry as
tiling,something which challenges the architect at every
God has given you. You alter one feature (wliich you have
turn, knocks his intuitions for six and allows him only a tiny
to, always), then every other feature has to sympathise and
margin of freedom in the choice of this rather than that. If
undergo some care and invention. Therefore it is no mean
you have received that impression I am not altogether sorry
game, nor is it a game you can play lightheartedly.'
because that is part of the game. But there is something else
- the arcliitect's identification of himself with the very ele- 'You can't copy', says Lutyens. But on the other hand, in
ments which defy him: so that he is intensely with the orders another letter:

19
 'You cannot play with the Orders. They have
originality There was an architect who really knew, because he learnt
to be so well digested that there is nothing but essence left. for himself, what the classical language meant. He loved,
When right they are curiously lovely - unalterable as plant obeyed and defied the orders all at the same time. If the
forms. . . . The perfection of the Order is far nearer nature understanding of rule is one basic factor in the creation of
than anything produced on impulse or accident-wise.' great classical buildings the defiance of rule is the other.
About that I shall have much to say later.

3. Sixteenth-Century Linguistics

I have been concerned with the grammatical workings of who stated firmly and fmally: 'this is the Roman language
classical architecture - the mechanics of it: the nature of the - this and no other is the way to use it'. Everybody recog-
Five Orders; columns, three-quarter and half columns; pilas- nized his authority. Serho wrote that he was the man who
ters; the conjunction of columns with arches; intercolumn- revived the buried architecture of antiquity; and SerHo paid
iation, and all that. Now, getting a little warmer, I am going Bramante an even greater tribute when he included some of
to talk about the handling of this grammar by some of the his works in the part of his book ostensibly devoted entirely

great innovating personaHties of the sixteenth century and to ancient Rome. For Serlio, Bramante was the exact equiv-
first of all by Donato Bramante. alent of the antique.
The reason I go straight for Bramante is this. It was he, Before Bramante came to Rome in 1499 he had worked
more than anybody else, who re-established the grammar of in Milan in the court circle in wliich Leonardo da Vinci was
ancient Rome of pre-eminent consequence. I
in buildings the phenomenal presence. Leonardo was interested philo-
am not forgetting the performances of some of his prece- sophically, diagrammatically, in architecture rather than in
cessors: of Alberti, who, as we saw earher, generated the working it out in the orthodox forms of the antique. Bram-
perfect model for a classical church out of the Roman tri- ante was interested in both, but more precisely in the work-
umphal arch; of BruneUeschi, who earlier still, gave new ing out and you can still see in Milan, tucked crookedly away
breath to the Corinthian order in the naves of his Florentine off one of the busiest streets, his earliest work, the strange
churches. But it was Bramante who set the seal on all this, Httle church of S. Satiro, with its nave of piers, pilasters and

20
arches and its choir which isn't there at all but is only- with a hemi-spherical dome. Now, is this a hteral recon-
represented in a marveUoiis perspective representation in low struction of a Roman temple or is it not? Clearly not. It is
reUef. an extension of an idea borrowed from the Romans, The
When Bramante came to Rome and entered the ser\dce plinth and the vertical penetration of the central cylinder up
of the Pope, he was already fifty-five and had only another and through to a hemi-spherical dome are Bramante's inven-
sixteen years to live. But they were tremendously full years. tions and highly successful ones to judge by the number of
Among other things he designed and partly built the new times they have been imitated.
St Peter's and two great courts in the Vatican and if these This tempictto is a perfect piece of architectural prose - a
talks were supposed to be a history of classical architecture statement, clear as a bell. Through Serho's regrettably in-
I would have to settle down at this point to describing them. accurate engraving and, later, Palladio's more accurate one,
But I am quite content, for my present purpose, to take one the buildingbecame world-famous - as famous almost as the
building by Bramante and ask you to look at it rather closely. Pantheon or the Arch of Constantine and as much a 'classic'.
It is illustrated in Plate lo: the tcmpietto (Httle temple) in the Sir Christopher Wren knew of course, through Palladio,
it

cloisterof S. Pietro in Montorio, Rome, built in 1502 on the and at one phase in the designing of St Paul's he tried using
traditional site of St Peter's martyrdom. This building is a two Bramante temples as the top stages of his two western
reconstruction by Bramante of an ancient Roman circular towers. That was while he was still struggling with all sorts
temple - or so it seems at first. The picture to the left (Plate of unmanageable alternatives for the great drum and dome
9) is a real antique - the so-called temple of Vesta on the over the Cathedral's transeptal space. Eventually it dawned
bank of the Tiber; it has lost the whole of its entablature and on him that the tempietto was the clue to that problem even
the rather pretty pan-tiled hat it wears is just a make-shift. more than to the other, in spite of the enormous difference
But there (or in a temple of that sort) is Bramante's theme. in size and site. Look at St Paul's dome (Plate 13) and you

He transposes it from Corinthian to Doric (Doric, perhaps, wiU see at once just how much it owes to the tempietto. But
as appropriate to St Peter's militant sainthood). He mounts the more you look the more you will see that St Paul's dome
it on three steps and sets a continuous moulded plinth under is no mere enlargement of the tempietto. The tempietto has 16

the order. This plinth (which Serho carelessly omitted in his columns - Wren required twice as many. A ring of 32 col-
engraving) gives the little building a sudden and auspicious umns. Wren saw, would lack stable orientation; so he filled
'lift' - enough to ratify its sanctity. Then comes the Doric up every fourth intercolumniation - those which come over
order, then the balustrade. And each Doric column has an the great piers - and carved a niche in each, thus giving his
answering Doric pilaster (you can just see tliis in the photo- colonnade a definite 'tempo' of four to the bar. So Wren's
graph) on the wall of the inner building - what is called the dome isno mere erJargement of Bramante but an imagina-
cella. This cella rises higher than the colonnade and is covered tive extension -just as Bramante was an extension of the

21
antique. teenth-century Hfe. And, once again, this new classic echoes
Over and over again, in the seventeenth and eighteenth down the centuries to our own. Sansovino brought it to
centuries, this tempietto idea comes into play - the colonnade Venice (Plate 15) and the Grand Canal. They do not have
surrounding the cylindrical,domed Hawksmoor, in
core. shops on the Grand Canal; so here the three middle arches
hismausoleum at Castle Howard (Plate ii) makes it tragic of the ground floor become a grand entrance while the side
-columns close and forbidding Hke a palisade, dome deflated, arches are replaced by windows. And, Venice demanding
un-aspiring; and for base a funereal platform, prostrating additional height, Sansovino duplicated Bramante's upper
itself along the ground. But then look at the next picture storey, arriving at something which faintly but I think de-
(Plate 12), James Gibbs's RadcHffe library at Oxford. Is this hberately echoes the Roman Colosseum. Then, nearer home,
the same theme? It is. But the columns have re-grouped if you turn to Plate 21, there is the Strand front of Somerset
themselves in pairs, pairs wnequally spaced, over a podium House, a clear descendant of Bramante: date, 1780. And
which with its pedimented projections accents one set of when you are in the Strand, just look across from there to
intervals and under a dome whose buttresses descend em- and arrogantly bedizened Doric col-
the shop-filled arches
phatically over the other set. Curiously elaborate and sophis- umns of Austraha House - Bramante again, in the age of
ticated, it would have delighted a Gonzaga or a Medici and British Imperialism: date, 191 1.

is perhaps slightly absurd for a building whose sole function Bramante led architecture in Italy to that stage of com-
is to make space for serious books and serious readers in an plete conquest of the antique and complete confidence in

EngHsh university. extending and adapting which we call, in all the arts, the
it

Plate 14 shows you another classic invention of Bram-
ante's. It is the palace in Rome which Raphael, the painter,
hved in for a time so that it is always called after him. It no
longer stands. The main rooms of this palace were at the
top. Below was a series of arches let off as shops - a common
Roman practice. Bramante has given the lower part the
rough but disciplined character of Roman engineering
works. To the upper part only he has attached an order -
High Renaissance. The generation which followed and ac-
cepted him included Raphael, the painter who was also on
occasion an architect; Baldassare Peruzzi; the younger An-
tonio da Sangallo; Sansovino who, as we have seen, brought
Bramante's (and incidentally Peruzzi's) ideas to Venice; and
Sammichele who took them to and developed them in
Verona. But on none of these names am I going to dwell;
if I did it would be a question mostly of trying to define

Doric, coupled, on pedestals, the pedestals ranging with the what they owed to Bramante and in what special directions
balustrades of the windows. Elementary it may seem to us each of them departed. Instead, I want to move on to the
- a direct prose statement. But, as in the caseof the tempietto next generation after that and talk of Palladio - Andrea
it was new. The Romans had not done this - not quite. It Palladio; because we are thinking about Architecture as a

was, once again, an extension of Rome, appropriate to six- language and from this point of view it is more rewarding

22
to put Palladio next to Bramante, even though Bramante is very much the jame in both. But Alberti expresses himself
died three years before Palladio was born. From Bramante only in pilasters, Palladio in half-columns. This is what I

to Palladio is an easy step and this is why. Palladio, a miller's mean by articulation. In PaUadio's church you are much
son, came up out of obscurity and spent most of his Hfe in more aware of the order than in Alberti's; and at the east
a rather obscure Httle north-Itahan town called Vicenza. end of the Redentore, Palladio's order becomes perfectly
There, he grew up among a small land-owning inteUigentsia free as it turns round to form an apsidal screen behind the

to whom Rome was a very long way off indeed. They had, altar. It seems as if Palladio's church really is an affair of lofty
as it were, their own belated High Renaissance. When Pal- columns supporting their heavy entablatures: the walls and
ladio got to Rome as a young man the first thing which arches seem merely to fill in between them.
must have struck him was the appalling inadequacy of the Now look at Plate 16, Palladio's Chiericati Palace at Vi-
only pubhshed drawings of the Roman ruins - those of our -
cenza an important town house in which the ground floor
old friend Serho, whose book was then fairly new. Palladio offers an open colonnade to the pubhc and the first floor has

would feel that Serho had only scratched the surface of these two open balconies so that the walls only come out to the
studies, had omitted much that was valuable and had never street front where they enclose the grand saloon in the centre.
really much conception of those refinements of profile and Again, Palladio makes his orders the dominant factor in the
proportion which were the essence of the antique. So Pal- building. In both these buildings - in nearly all Palladio's
ladio became a scholar of architecture, the most learned and buildings - you have the sense of his deep love of the orders
exact of his time. But he became much more than that. He and his great pride in exhibiting them in his own perfec-
overtook Bramante' s mastery of the grammar of Roman He was resurrecting Rome in Vicenza and
tionist versions.

architecture and when opportunities came to him - as they the Veneto with even more realism than Bramante had
did, thick and fast, in and around Vicenza and later in Venice resurrected it in Rome herself.
- he built buildings in which the language of Rome was Now this reahsm in recalling Rome is only one aspect of
more eloquent, more articulate, than had ever been.
it Palladio. It happens to be the one that best suits my exposi-
When I say 'more articulate', I mean something quite pre- tion at the moment. And it is, of course, inseparable from

cise. Let me demonstrate. Look back, first, to Plate 8, the another aspect I have already mentioned - Palladio the ar-
photograph of the interior of S. Andrea, Mantua; and then chaeologist. Archaeologist is perhaps not quite the right
turn forward to Plate 17, the photograph of the interior of word because Palladio's enquiries into the past were more
II Redentore, Venice. There is almost exactly a hundred strongly tinged with imaginative awareness of what might
years between the building of these two churches, the first have been than we should think quite proper. Still, call it

by Alberti, the second by Palladio. You will see that the bay archaeology. When Palladio investigated the text of Vit-
design - that is to say, the repeating unit of piers and arches - ruvius or the ruins of Rome his results led him at once to

23
make and these restorations were among the
'restorations' itwas sacked and pillaged by the Imperial troops in 1527.
most exciting things in his book - or rather books: I mean There was at that time a very considerable uneasiness about
the four books (the Quattro Libri), pubHshed in 1570. The what the High Renaissance (as we call it now) had achieved.
of these reconstructions reached far beyond Italy: in
effect There are signs of an incipient malaise even in some of
fact theywere more fertile outside Italy than in and their Raphael's last works and in the work of one of his pupils,
impact in England was rather specially important. In Plate GiuUo Romano, there is positive revolt - a romantic dash
19 you see the portico of St Paul's Covent Garden. This is for freedom.
by Inigo Jones but it is based on Palladian archaeology. It But I cannot begin to talk about Giulio without explaining
follows (though with certain expert and sensitive deviations) the meaning of a word of great significance in classical archi-
Palladio's Hteral interpretation of what Vitruvius tells us tecture from this time on - rustication. What is rustication?
about the Tuscan order. Those fine, spreading eaves, those As the word rather impHes, it was at fir t conceived to mean
wide-apart columns, are Palladian archaeology. a rough countrified way of laying stones, each particular
A hundred years after Inigo Jones, Lord Burlington availed stone retaining some of the individuality it had when hewn
liimsclf of Palladio's archaeology when he built the Assembly from the quarry. However, this rustic roughness was recog-
Rooms at York. Plates 18 and 20 show just how Hterally he nized as having character - artistic possibilities - and it be-
did so. But this building has significance in another context came in due course the subject of extreme sophistication.
and I shall return to it later on. Already, by the time Serlio was writing his fourth book
Now in taking Bramante and certain aspects of Palladio (published 1537) rustication had been styHsed and systcma-
together have been confining myself to the grand simplic-
I tiscd, as you can see by his engraving, reproduced in Plate

ities of sixteenth-century Italy - the re-establishment of the 24. From being just rough it had become highly artificial -
Latin of architecture: the orders arrogantly displayed and cut into geometrical facets. Serho describes rustication, how-
drilled with absolute conviction. It is just possible, I tliink, ever, as being fundamentally a mixture of the natural and
that along with the completeness, the authority, the fmality the artificial - he seems to imply a sort of struggle between
of all this you may have begun to feel a certain uneasiness - the artificer and the forces of nature. This, of course, is

not to say boredom. The five orders can, of course, become a thoroughly romantic idea and in the works of Giulio
the most terrific bore. If you do feel a slight uneasiness you Romano we can see it at work. Look at the detail, Plate 25,
are not alone - you are very much with some of the more of the Palazzo del Te - the summer palace of the Dukes of
adventurous and romantic personahties of the generation Mantua. Here is a very strange performance. You recognize,
which followed Bramante; some of the men who were in of course, the Doric order. And the major columns are
Rome when he died in 15 15, who were still in Rome when approximately on the triumphal-arch pattern. But wliile the

Raphael died in 1520 and perhaps still about the place when outside columns have pHnths to themselves, the inner col-

24
umns share their pHnths, most illogically, with an intrusive unforgettable study in the classical-grotesque which you see

minor Doric which frames the arch. Everything is a bit in Plate 22 - the Cortile della Cavallerizza. And lastly, to
uneasy, a bit wrong. Do you notice that in the entablature complete our ghmpse of Giulio look at his design (Plate 23)
some of the stones have slipped? And do you notice that for a city gateway - a triumphal arch conceived entirely in
these 'sHpped' stones occur in exactly the same places on terms of this same exaggerated toughness.
either side of the centre? The long-term effect of GiuHo's inventions was tremen-
What is this all about? That it represents a flight from dous. Even Palladio, who you might think, from what I have
everything Bramante stood for is pretty obvious. It is irra- said of him, would be proof against such explosive stuff,

tional, impressionistic. It recalls ruins (especially, of course, borrowed from him in his later palaces. In eighteenth cen-
in the deUberately dropped stones). It recalls ancient build- tury England, Newgate Prison (which you see in Plate 50)
ings left half-fmished. But it has great power and this is very had Giuho to thank for its horrific solemnity. And you can-
largely because of the dramatic use of rustication. The stones not walk through any commercial centre built up in the
seem to be quarrelling all the time with the highly finished nineteenth-twentieth centuries without seeing Banks and
architectural detail. The rough key-stones in the two side Insurance Offices loaded up with rustic devices, many of
recesses are forcing a cornice up into the stones above. The which have their origin in Mantua. Look at the load carried
key-stones of the two round-headed niches are grotesquely by London's elected representatives at County Hall (Plate 51).
too big, that of the centre arch is absurdly small. In patches, But I must end up by introducing you to a much greater
here and there, there is no rustication at all and suddenly the revolutionary than Giuho Romano, to the man who really
wall looks embarrassingly naked. did outrage the authority of the High Renaissance and turn
How serious is all this? Well, I am sure it is not meant to classical architecture into new courses - Michelangelo.
be funny. It is an arrogant protest against rules and - yes, it Michelangelo was twenty-five years older than Giuho
is which has something to do with grottos
poetry; a poetry Romano, but had done no architecture at all when Giulio
and with the cult of giants and dwarfs which seems to have began the Palazzo del Te; and his major works nearly all

haunted the court of Federigo Gonzaga. For us now, the belong to the period after Giuho's death in 1546 when he
importance of it all is the quantity of sheer invention it con- himself was over seventy. His architecture is a world away
tains. GiuHo didn't invent rustication (the Romans used it; from Giulio's. Rustication had almost no interest for him.
Brunelleschi used it; Bramante had used it in the House of His walls are smooth and their power is concentrated into
Raphael), but Giuho did bring it to a pitch of expressiveness tightly bounded surfaces, recessions and projections and
which no one else had dreamed of and from which very few moulded elements which are rarely enriched. Michelangelo
arcliitects after his time failed to benefit. From the Palazzo always insisted that he was not an architect but a sculptor yet
del Te, he went on to the Ducal Palace itself and built that no professed architect has ever had so startling an effect on

25
architecture. Vasari said of him that 'he broke the bonds and Look at Plates 26 and 27. Here are two architectural frames
chains of a way of working that had become habitual by or 'aedicules' by two great classical masters. The one on the
common usage'. That is, if anything, an understatement; it left is by Raphael, a beautifully elegant piece of classical

does scant justice to the positive effects of Michelangelo's prose at the Palazzo Pandolfini, Florence. Perfect of its kind,
inventions, the enormous incentive they supplied. but not exactly moving; and nearly every line can be des-
The 'way of working' mentioned by Vasari was, of course, cribed categorically in Vitruvian terms. On the right is an
the way of the High Renaissance masters since Bramante - aedicule by Michelangelo - one of the niche-Hke recesses in
that is to say, the grammatical approach through a study of the Medici Chapel at S. Lorenzo. This is almost impossible
Vitruvius, fd!ed out by prolonged observation of the antiq- to describe in words. It has -just to say - some of the main
uities of Rome - we had all that in my second talk. Cornice elements of the Raphael work: pilasters, pediment, archi-
profJes and the dressings of doors and windows were all trave but all are re-invented and of what a Vitruvian
full

designed with reference to antique authority. If an architect's critic would have to call gross and absurd errors. Are the
own sensitivity entered into his designs was involuntary
it pilasters Doric, or what? What is the sense of those breaks
and through chinks in the process of selection from the con- in the curved Hne of the pediment? And by what rule or
secrated sources. Now, on this whole idea of 'authority' precedent does an architrave moulding go sliding up into
Michelangelo turned his back. He was already a sculptor the tympanum to lean its sharp elbows on a cornice? No,
with a mastery of form and material transcending the an- this work is really almost abstract sculpture. It is Michel-
tique and when he turned to architecture this same power angelo's personal equivalent of the Vitruvian. It strikes the
of seeing through the dead, accepted forms to something beholder, perhaps, as strange, even at first unacceptable. But

intensely alive, enabled him to transcend, with absolute it stays in the memory, this curiously tense, deeply felt crea-
assurance, the Vitruvian grammar. As Vasari says, rather tion. No architect - anyway no young and impressionable
naively, 'he proceeded quite differently in proportion, com- architect - who visited the Medici chapel when Michel-
position and rules from what others had done fo lowing angelo had done with it could ever feel quite the same about
common practice'. He did indeed - quite differently. architecture again.

26
 4. The Rhetoric of the Baroque

I ended my last talk by saying that no architect - anyway no never done this: in fact the CapitoHne palaces are, very
young and impressionable architect - who visited the Medici roughly, like Roman temples whose sides have been Tilled
Chapel at Florence, when Michelangelo had done with it, in', with modern work - walls and windows above, an open
could ever feel quite the same about arcliitecture again. Why storey below. And on an en-
notice that the upper wall rests
not? Well, I do not know. I can only leave those two illus- tablature supported by Ionic columns - two to a bay. This
trations - Plates 26 and 27 - to speak for themselves. I sup- arrangement, this way of making two orders work together
pose it is necessary to feel the conventionality of the Raphael to control a two-storey building - was one of Michelangelo's
aedicule (on the left) in order to feel the startling unconven- most valuable and Hberating inventions.
tionahty of the Michelangelo aedicule (on the right). Michel- It is an easy step from the Capitoline palace to the two

angelo's distortions of the Latin of architecture here are rather church facades illustrated on the same page. Both of them
like his dis:ortions of the human body in many of his sculp- (most obviously S. Andrea al Quirinale on the left) make
tures; only we all know, or think we know, the human body use of the Capitoline theme. But these churches are more
and easily grasp the significance of distortions, while few of than a hundred years later than the Capitoline. They are what
us know our architectural Latin very well. Anyway, I think is called Baroque and I cannot talk about Baroque without

that someting of the intensity of Michelangelo's handling of first trying to give you some idea what went on in Italian

architecturalform is inescapable; it does not surely have to architecture between the time that the double impact of
be underlined by comparisons and analogies. GiuUo Romano and Michelangelo was first received in the
Michelangelo's other architectural works have not all this 1530S and 1540S and the time when the Baroque got into its
same intense originality of detail - they surprise us in other stride a century later.

ways. Look at Plate 28, one of the palaces on the CapitoHne There is a name for what went on and it is 'Mannerism'.
Hill at Rome. Here Michelangelo is using a very big and Mannerism means very much what we mean when we talk
quite conventional Corinthian pilaster order. But there are of a person being 'mamiered' - that is to say, affecting to
two special things about it. One is that it is very big - the imitate a type and in doing so showing an artificiality, an
pilasters are forty-five feet high and so are going in the direc- affectation of manner. Maimerism is not a style. It is the
tion of Michelangelo's St Peter's where they become simply 'mood' of an age and all sorts of very different things hap-
colossal - in fact ninety feet high. The other thing is that pened while that mood prevailed. For our purpose, which
these pilasters pass through two storeys. The Romans had is to consider architecture as a language, what we want to

27
know is which Mannerism coloured the lang-
the extent to play of meaning rather than any precise series of statements.
uage and enriched its 3 1 and 41 are two
vocabulary. In Plates This way of putting it may be clearer when appHed to a
very famous buildings by Vignola, both of which are always more thoroughly Mannerist facade; so turn to the second
considered outstanding monuments of the age of Manner- Vignola building I mentioned - the church of the Gesu, the
ism. Take first Plate 31 - the Castello Farnese, Caprarola. principal church of the Jesuit order in Rome (Plate 41). This
I must explain at once that the bastion-hke features at the is huge church (photographs always make it look too small)
a
corners of the house are the result of the foundations having with a huge west front in two pilastered storeys, both of
been and the walls partly carried up on another plan by
laid them Corinthian. If you look at this building carefully and
another architect. Apart from these, the main block of the try to spell out its architecture in High Renaissance terms
house could be, for all you can see in the photograph, simply you soon get into difficulties. There is no clear repetitive

an extension of High Renaissance practice - something that rhythm. Surfaces advance and recede in a baffling way and
Bramante perhaps and Raphael certainly might have com- at one point on the ground storey, one pilaster seems to be
posed - though a rather obvious divergence is that the three- partly tucked in behind another. Obviously the whole tiling

arched loggia between the curving steps is rusticated (rather is meant to be received as a broad piece of architectural
gently) in the manner of GiuHo Romano. modelling within which, as I said before, a certain play of
But now look at the engraving (Plate 34) on the opposite meaning resides.

page, from Vignola's book. This is a detail of the main en- It is important to understand these products of the age of
tablature at Caprarola. It is not quite like any of the entabla- Mannerism because their effect reached a very long way.
tures in our Plates i and 2 though it has something in The early Victorians, for instance, re-discovered Mannerist
common with Serho's rather ugly version of the Composite architecture (though they did not call it that - they just called
and this in fact is the clue. Serlio's source for his Composite it Itahan) .They rediscovered Mannerist architecture as some-
was the pilastered top storey of the Colosseum (Plate 3 if thing exactly suited to themselves. It seemed to release them
you want to check your memory): the top storey at Cap- from the cold pedantry of the classical revivals and it had
rarola, with its pilasters, is based on this same theme. But what they liked to call 'character'. Most of the big, black
Vignola has very briUiantly invented an entablature which banks and many of the more ornate warehouses in places
is, one and the same time, nicely in scale with the pilaster
at like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds are thoroughly 'Man-

order below it and big and bold enough to form a crowning nerist' in inspiration and most of them are terrible rubbish,

feature for the whole mass of the building. It is a departure interesting now only because for us they reflect the Victorian
from the strict grammar of the antique - a departure in the image so sharply. But occasionally the artistry of the original

direction of inventive modelling, of designing a facade as a Mannerists shines through as it does in the work of our one
pattern in Hght and shade, a pattern through which runs a Victorian classical architect of international calibre, Charles

28
Robert Cockerell. The little drawing, Plate 32, shows how of the Palazzo Marino, Milan. This is a httle square court-
Cockerell drew from Caprarola most of what he needed for yard - three arches to each side -which few visitors to Milan
an insurance office in the city of London. The photograph to ever bother to look at, though plumb in the centre of
it is

the right of it, Plate 33 is to show, in parenthesis, what some-

, the City. The curious thing about this - a work of Galeazzo
body else made of Cockerell fifty years later - a regular fruit- Alessi - is that, above the Doric order on the ground floor,
salad of Mannerist and Baroque material, a piece of profes- with its very much contracted entablature, nearly every-
sional showmanship exactly suited to the mood ojin-de- thing has got turned into sculpture - or, rather, the archi-
siecle critics who, for a few years, thought the Chartered tecture is put in in outline and the surfaces are fiUed with
Accountants Institute the most wonderful modern building figure-sculpture, animal masks, swagsand festoons of fruit
in London. and flowers. Instead of an upper order there are 'terms' -
Cockerell is worth much more attention than this kind of pedestals narrow at the base and widening to human busts
thing and for sheer wit and invention in the handling of at the top; between these 'terms' are niches containing fig-
Mannerist themes there is no building in Britain quite Hke ures; between the arches are elaborate panels containing
his Ashmolean building in Oxford (Plate 35). Cockerell saw sculpture in rehef; and so on. AU very theatrical and prob-
with the eyes of the Itahan mannerists but saw far more; and ably, indeed, of theatrical origin. Now this kind of archi-
the Greek detail of which, as an archaeologist, he was a tectural decor travelled very easily - anyway it travelled
master, wonderfully enriches the Mannerist idiom of Vig- north very easily; furthermore it lent itself to the making of
nola, whose famous cornice - re-profiled - you will at once highly attractive engraved plates such as you see reproduced
recognize. and 39. These are by the Fleming, Vredeman de
in Plates 38
In our next five plates (36-40), Mannerism is shown pene- Vries,and the German, Wendel Dietterhn, respectively and
trating in another direction altogether. On the extreme left they show the form in which the architecture of Mannerism
(Plate 36) we have a charming work by the Florentine Man- reached - among other places - Ehzabethan England. In
nerist architect (who was also a sculptor), Ammanati - very fact, Wollaton on the right, is decorated very largely
Hall,
tight and tense with any amount of 'modelling' - sunk panels with quotations from De Vries. And although Dietterlin's
raised panels, raised panels within sunk panels and over the frightfuUy intricate designs were not often copied in Eng-
haunches of the arch on the ground floor a deHberate ab- land, his book was so well known that Ehzabethan and Jac-
surdity - two Ionic capitals carved as if in suspension, or as obean ornament became genericaUy known, in the seven-
if they were part of a thin film of architecture partly cut teenth and eighteenth centuries as 'ditterHng' ornament.
away to reveal the arch. This sculptural attitude to facades, AU this is taking us to the far outside edge of our subject
which derives ultimatelyfrom Michelangelo, is reflected and I am not inviting you for one moment to consider
again (but perhaps even more so) in Plate 37, the courtyard Wollaton HaU as an important manifestation of the classical

29
language; it may be important for a great deal else, but not pretation belongs to a phase in French art which has classical
for that. To copy De Vries was to copy quite pretty paper standards of its own, the standards of Poussin, of Racine -
patterns containing only a skin-deep appreciation of the kind and of Mansart, the architect of this church.
of classical designing which these talks are about. It is impossible to dodge the occasional embarrassment of
So let us get back to the centre of the stage. Plate 41 is the these generalizing expressions - 'High Renaissance', 'Man-
west front of the Gesu. On the same page are two other nerist','Baroque', and so on. We cannot escape using them
west fronts quite obviously deriving from it. Below is S. and in fact I have used one for the title of this talk, in calling
Susanna, Rome, and if you
compare this with the Gesu you it 'The Rhetoric of the Baroque'. Baroque is nearly always

will be struck at once by two things. First, that it is much rhetorical, in the sense of grandiloquent, contrived, persuas-
more compact; it insists defmitely on a vertical rectangle and ive oratory; and if we are talking about architecture as a sort

the scrolls over the aisles, which swing out in the Gesu, are of language, this is of some of the
a useful qualification
here drawn firmly in to help the vertical stress. Second, you greater buildings of the seventeenth century - the ones we
will feel, I tliink, that whereas the pattern of pilasters in the mostly have in mind when we use the word 'Baroque'. And
Gesu facade is diffuse, in S. Susamia the arrangement of col- I am going to conclude this talk by considering three such
umns and pilasters is unmistakeably designed to bring your works. First, the Piazza of St Peter's, Rome, by Bernini.
attention to the centreand indeed to the central door. Now Second, the east front of the Palais du Louvre, Paris, by Le
this comparison has often been made and is as handy a com- Vau, Perrault and Le Brun. Third, Blenheim Palace, near
parison as any to explain the difference between Mamierist Oxford, by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. In case anybody
and Baroque architecture - Santa Susanna is Baroque. But should want to ask me: 'are you quite sure all these are pure
just to show how carefulyou have to be with these terms, Baroque?' let me say at once that the answer is 'no, of course
look now at the third church on this page - the Val de Grace, I am not For one thing there is no such category as
sure'.

built in Paris fifty years later than S. Susanna. Mannerist? 'pure Baroque' - just because there is a word, it does not
Baroque? Well, let us see. It has not the diffusencss and am- mean there is a pure essence to match it. For another thing,
biguity of the Gesu; but neither has it the force and decision while it could certainly be proved beyond reasonable doubt
of S. Susanna. Nor is it merely sometliing between the two. that these three buildings are entitled to the appellation Bar-
It has a character of its own. It is relaxed and harmonious oque, it could be shown with equal certainty that there are
and the gradual articulation of the ground floor order from tilings about each which might J/5qualify them in some con-
pilaster to column-in-the-round seems to breathe a truer texts. So let us not bother. Let us just look at the buildings
classical spirit than anything in the other two buildings. themselves and see what they have to say to us.

Mannerist? Baroque? No; neither. It is a personal interpre- Bernini designed the piazza before St Peter's as a huge
tation, by a Frenchman, of the Gesu theme - and the inter- enclosed forecourt. As such you see it in the air-view, Plate

30
44, taken before the demolitions of Mussolini's time. It is a them, are steadied by columns standing out at the ends and
forecourt, not an 'approach' : a forecourt, an enclosed space, - sentinels. It is a mar-
again, in coupled pairs, at. the centre
an atrium, built with the specific purpose of accommodating vellous performance and of course the opportunity was mar-
great gatherings to receive the blessing of the Pope. Apart vellous - and unique: the opportunity to build a structure of
from the two straight corridors attaching themselves to the this size and to build it entirely of columns. The opportunity

facade of the church, consists of one immense oval space

it has, so far as I know, never occurred again - it has only been

partly defmed by two curved regiments of columns - col- envied.

umns fifty feet high and standing four deep. There are here Now a Palace is a very different thing and when we turn
in all 280 free-standing, fifty-foot high columns - probably to the Louvre in Paris (Plate 42) we do indeed see another
the most imposing assembly of columns in the world. And colonnade but one whose existence has had to be contrived
the columns (some are shown in Plate 46, on the right), the as part of a royal residence. The designing of this east front
-
columns are what? Doric? Well, yes; except that they have was one of the great episodes of European architectural his-
Tuscan bases and are a trifle taller than the conventional tory. The rest of the Louvre had been built, over a period of
Doric and that they carry an entablature which is not Doric a hundred years and Colbert, Louis XIV's minister, was
at all but more or less Ionic. In other words, for this partic- determined that the east front should be the culminating
ular occasion, Bernini has taken the law into his own hands success of the whole. AH the leading French architects
were
and designed his own order - an order fusing the soldierly asked for designs -
and some famous Itahans, too including
dignity of the Doric with the elegance of the Ionic. It is a Bernini who visited Paris in great state and whose design
curiously memorable order. One remembers it, inevitably, was accepted. But it was not built. In the end, the work was
as Doric (because of the capitals); but as a Doric with a per- entrusted to three men: Le Vau, the King's First Architect;
sonahty entirely its own. Le Brun, his First Painter; and a physician of wide scientific
I want to make it clear what a tremendous impression attainments, Claude Perrault - and it is always supposed that
these colonnades make. When you look at the photograph Perrault's was the most original and innovating mind of the
(Plate 46) remember that the columns are repeated three three.
times behind what you see there, so that when you are inside The result is Never had any ItaHan master suc-
spectacular.
the colonnades, on the route taken sometimes by great pro- ceeded - or perhaps ever had occasion to seek success - in the
cessions, these ascending cylinders press round you like forest exposition of Roman temple architecture on this scale in
trees. The sun strikes through as it may; and from this cere- combination with the purposes of a palace. But the first
monious forest you look across the Piazza to another, as large thing that strikes one about the Louvre is, of course, this
and as deep. Then notice how each of those two giant cres- Corintliian colonnade of fully articulated Roman columns.
cents, whose own rhythm could so easily run away with The columns are in pairs. We have seen this arrangement

31
before, in Bramante's house of Raphael (Plate 14); it is a delicacy of a kind which is pecuHarly French and which
good way of securing the wide intercolumniation you need accounts for the extraordinary vitaHty of this building, which
for windows. But Bramante's columns were against a wall. on a brilliant spring morning looks Hke the newest, freshest
At the Louvre the iimer wall is, for part of the way, set right thing you ever saw in your Hfe.

back so that the columns stand out as if they were indeed And now, lastly, another palace, but utterly different from
part of a temple colonnade. But taking the whole length of the Louvre - Blenheim Palace (Plate 48). Not, this time, one
this facade together, you will see that, although the colon- long facade with subtle variations of plane but a building of
nade is an immediately striking and dramatic element in it, many parts - deploying this way and that, advancing, reced-
it is not the only factor which makes for its success. This is ing; not one long serene sky-line but a silhouette in violent
due to the handling of the order as a whole - its integration motion. Blenheim Palace, built by Queen Arme for the Duke
with the building, its control of the building. And how is of Marlborough as a reward for his services to the nation and
this managed? In two long stretches, as we have just seen, at the same time as a monument to British miHtary glory,
the order has its independence. In the centre feature, how- was the joint work of Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. It is easily
ever, comes a pace forward and carries a pediment; and
it one of the most complex classical buildings in aU Europe.
here the columns are backed by a soHd wall - a wall, inci- Why it is so complex I could only explain by going at length
dentally, which has an arch in it, covering the main entrance, into Vanbrugh's ideas about architecture. There is not time
and which (above the arch) is splendidly decorated with low- for that and all I will say is that Vanbrugh fused in his work
rehef sculpture. Then in the end blocks (pavilions the French two very different influences. One was what you would
call them and so, mostly, do we) - in the end paviHons, the expect - a passionate love of Roman architecture and aU
wall comes further forward and the order, with the same that the great masters and theorists had done with it (in that,
intercolumniation as in the colonnade, turns itself into pilas- he had the fullest possible support from his colleague. Hawks-
ters. But in compensation, as it were, in the (subtly widened) moor). The other influence was an unexpected one for his
middle intercolunmiation in these end pavihons is a recess time: Vanbrugh had a strong feeling for medieval castles and
where of the wall in the
the wall goes back to the plane for those most daring of all English buildings, the great tow-
centre pavihon, and moreover contains a round-arched win- ered and turreted houses of EHzabethan and Jacobean times.
dow echoing the entrance arch in the centre. Follow this At Blenheim these two influences merge in the exciting and
carefully in the illustration, because the Louvre is a wonder- apparently chaotic result you see. But Blenheim is not chao-
ful example of the 'play' of a classical order in controlling tic: it is most beautifully and logically put together, as per-

a very long frontage not merely without monotony but with haps I can show you even on the basis of the one small
wit and grace and aesthetic logic. I will only add, concerning engraving before us.

the Louvre, that the carved ornaments have crispness and Take first those two towers, left and right, heavily rusti-

32
cated and crowned by a mass of piers and pinnacles. There melodramatic, invention. There is the way the Corinthian
are in fact four of these towers, though you can only see order penetrates the building and comes out to a different
two clearly; and those four mark the four comers of a rec- sort of portico on the park side. Tomore would be
say any
tangle: they pin Blenheim down to the soil. These towers straining to get too much out of one small illustration. But
have no The rest of the house has - it is con-
classical order. one thing you may already have noticed. Vanbrugh and
trolled by two orders: a fifty-foot Corinthian and a Doric Hawksmoor could never have made what they did of Blen-
half that height, and those two orders play a sort of counter- heim without knowing - through engravings - what Ber-
point between, into and out from the towers. The centre nini and his predecessors had done, on just about double the
block of the house is Corinthian - fully articulated columns scale, at St Peter's half a century before. Compare Blenheim

in the portico, pilasters on either flank. The Doric order is, vdth the Httle air-view of St Peter's (Plate 44); the Doric
as it were, hiding in this block - it is just detectable in the wings of Blenheim with Bernini's colonnades; the giant
sides of the ground floor windows: three each side of the order at Blenheim with Michelangelo's giant pilasters at St.
portico. But in the wings, out it comes. There is a double Peter's (Plate 45).
beat, then it wheels round. Another double beat: it turns, Well, there are three buildings which, I believe, demon-
enters the towers - it disappears. Then out it marches from strate with pecuhar briUiance the 'rhetoric' of the Baroque.
the near side of each tower, marches forward till it is returned Yes, I think, 'rhetoric' key word. These buildings use
is the
as a formal entry with steps inside and a flourish of arms the classical language of architecture with force and drama
above. That is very roughly the lay-out of this architectural in order to overcome our resistance and persuade us into the
manoeuvre - this still choreography. There is a great deal truth of what they have to tell us - whether it is about the
more to Blenheim than that. There is the way the verticals invincible glory of British arms, the paramount magnifi-
of the portico shoot up through the pediment and then run cence of Louis XIV, or the universal embrace of the Roman
back to meet the gable of the hall - a truly dramatic, yM5f not Church.

33
 5 . The Light of Reason and of Archaeology

The use of the classical language of architecture has impHed, Hving person had ever seen.
at all times when it has risen to high eloquence, a certain That touching and unreasoning faith in Roman excellence
philosophy. You cannot use the orders lovingly unless you belongs mostly to the fifteenth century. It comes over to us
love them; and you cannot love them without persuading vividly in the Httle story I have just told you. It comes back
yourself that they embody some absolute principle of truth with incredible force in some of the paintings of Mantegna
or beauty. Behef in the fundamental authority of the orders in which senators, consuls, Hctors and centurions, stand ready
has taken various forms, the simplest being in these terms: to re-enact their parts within an ambience of superb and
Rome was the greatest; Rome knew best. The sheer vener- ghttering monuments.
ation of Rome is the clue to much in our civilization. It is But the simplicity of that faith made it vulnerable. If it
a veneration we cannot easily share ourselves because we inspired action, it also challenged enquiry and criticism; and
know too much about Rome and do not always like what criticism, while knowing and accepting the fact that Rome

we know; and also because we know far more than has ever was best and greatest, demanded to know why? Why was
been known before of other civiHzations which ministered Rome the fount of all goodness in architecture? One answer
to the successes which Rome achieved. But to understand was, because all educated people everywhere agreed on the
the mind of the and sixteenth centuries we must,
fifteenth incomparable beauty of Roman arcliitecture; but that mere-
in this respect, be simple. There is a beautiful story told by ly begged the question. Another answer was that it enshrined
Burckhardt of an occasion in 1485, when it was announced certain mathematical rules to which all beauty was account-
that the corpse of a Roman lady, in perfect preservation, had able; but that was not easy to prove. A third answer - and

been discovered in an ancient sarcophagus. The corpse was a much more profound one - was that Roman architecture
taken to the Palazzo dei Conservatori and as the news spread had descended, through the Greeks, from the most primitive
people thronged to see this marvel. The Roman lady, her epoch of human history and was thus possessed of a sort of
mouth and eyes half open, the colour still in her cheeks, was natural Tightness - was indeed, almost a work of nature. Vit-
'more beautiful', says a contemporary, 'than can be said or ruvius was invoked to support this view. He taught that the
written and were it said or written, it would not be beheved Doric order developed from a timber prototype and from
by those who had not seen her'. Of course, the tiling was a this it was argued that the original temples had had tree-

fake. But the emotion was not. If the lady was Roman, peo- trunks for colunms and were thus derived from the primitive
ple knew she must be beautiful beyond anything that any forests. A curious allusion to this behef occurs in some of the

34
columns in the cloister of S. Ambrogio, Milan, designed by decessors. But it is far more than that. Cordemoy wants not
Bramante, where the shafts of the stone columns have the only to hberate the orders from every kind of distortion and
stumps of sawn-ofF branches carved on them. affectation; he wants to get rid of the whole business of using
But this question of 'why?' did not really worry anybody the orders ornamentally - to get rid of what he calls, rather
very much till the seventeenth century and then it was not effectively, 'arcliitecture in reUef - pilasters, half, three-
'

in Italy but in France that the questioners appeared. It was quarter columns, attached columns, ornamental pediments,
natural, I suppose, that a critical spirit should emerge not in pedestals, attic storeys - the lot. His approach is a sort of
the homeland of classical architecture, Italy, but in a country primitive methodism, stripping away all the elaborate ling-
where it had been absorbed and adapted and where it dis- uistics of architecture, all themystery and drama, all the
placed the most intellectual ofall medieval building traditions. briUiant play of the Itahan masters, and making the orders
Anyway, it was in France, about the middle of the seven- speak their own original functional language - no more, no
teenth century, that questions began to be asked about the less.

true nature of the orders and the way they should be used This approach was all very fme and much in line with
in modem buildings. The 'natural rightness' of the orders French thought of the period; it was all very rational (which,

was accepted and the first concern of French critics was to of course, was the point) but it did not really work even in
ensure their purity and integrity. The new call to order came theory because the orders themselves, as found in Rome, are
in a series of books. First, there was the famous Parallek, the by no means primitive, by no means functional but, on the
Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern, by Roland contrary, highly styHzed. And it was left for another French
Freart, which contains a minute comparison of the orders as abbe, the Jesuit Laugier, nearly fifty yearslater, to announce

found in antiquity and as interpreted by the theorists from a theory which really did upset the architectural apple-cart
SerHo onwards. Freart pleads for rigorous selective purity. and shift the basis of architectural thought for a century to
Then came the leading architect of the Louvre, Claude Per- come. Perhaps more than a century; because I am not sure
rault, with liis beautiful and searchingly annotated edition of that Laugier may not justly be called the first modern archi-
Vitruvius; likewise his treatise on the orders - the treatise tectural philosopher.
from which I have borrowed Plate 2 as being perhaps the Now, the estabhshed hypothesis of all architectural theor-
most elegant of all engraved presentations of the orders. And ists was had originated when primitive man
that architecture
then, in 1706, followed a more remarkable book than any built himself a primitive hut. From the hut he went on to the
of these - a book by a French abbe, the abbe Cordemoy. On temple and, refining continually on the temple formula, he
the face of it, Cordemoy 's Nouveau Traite, his New Treatise on invented the timber version of the Doric and then copied it

the whole of Architecture, seems to be just another critical re- in stone. The other orders followed. That was the theory and
view of the orders, tending in the same direction as his pre- everybody accepted it. But what nobody had done was to

35
think at all concretely about the primitive hut; and this is him as quite necessarily an affair of columns. And it is not at

what Laugier did. He visualised it. He visuaUsed it as a struc- all difficult to be this. Look. A single column is
with him in
ture consisting of upright posts, cross beams and a pitched just - well, a point on a plan; or rather, a very small circle
roof - much what you see in the allegorical frontispiece to on a plan - it gives you the module of an order but nothing
his book, reproduced in Plate 52. This, he declared, was the more. But two columns give you at once an intercolumnia-
ultimate image of architectural truth, 'the model' (to use his tion, therefore a rhythm and there, with the module, you
own words) 'upon which all the magnificences of architect- have the germ of a whole building. The principle is as logic-
ure have been imagined'. ally vaHd today as it was two hundred and ten years ago.
Here, for the first time, the basis of authority of the orders But what effect did Laugier's book, his Essai sur F Archi-
was undermined - displaced by something else, by an image tecture, have in 1753? In France it was devoured; in England

of their own hypothetical prototype, which is a functional, and in Germany translations appeared within two years. It
a rational prototype. Not that Laugier wanted to banish the was discussed and attacked, digested or rejected all over
orders; on the contrary, he beUeved that further orders might Europe. In actual building I think it is fair to say that any
well be invented. But he wanted architects to use them with fresh, innovating workabout 1755 is certain either to
after
the same sense of constructional truth as the posts and beams be coloured by Laugier's views or to show a positive rejec-
in the primitive hut. He agreed with Cordemoy that all tion of them. The building which embodies his principles in
'architecture in reUef ' must go, but he went further in want- the most spectacular degree is the Pantheon in Paris, of which
ing even walls to go. For Laugier, the ideal building con- there are illustrations in Plates 53 and 54. The Pantheon is
sisted entirely of columns - columns carrying beams, carry- now no longer a church but was begun as one, dedicated
it

ing a roof. to Ste Genevieve and the architect was Jacques-Germain

This may, on the face of seem mildly funny - though
it, Soufflot. Soufflot was not exactly a disciple of Laugier's but
to us in the mid-twentieth century, surrounded by brand- his own ideas on architectural principles ran close to Laug-
new buildings consisting of reinforced concrete columns ier's and were probably inflected by them. If you look at the

with nothing but glass diaphragms between them, it should exterior of the Pantheon, Plate 53, you may, I am afraid, be
not seem funny so much as grandly prophetic. Anyway, in rather baffled by the fact that, contrary to everything Laug-
1753, rio architect could have proposed anything so crazy as ier advocated, it consists almost entirely of wall. But if you

the aboHtion of walls. But Laugier was not an architect; he
was a philosopher and he was dealing in abstractions. He
knew, of course, that walls could not be and would not be
abolished, but he was estabhshing a principle of arcliitectural
beauty and that principle, he believed, had been revealed to
look carefully you will see grey oblong patches in the walls;
and these are filled-in windows; Soufflot's intention, in fact,
was more window than wall but his factor of safety proved
too low: the windows had to be blocked. The interior is
more to the point though, here again, unintended masonry

36
had to be introduced to assure stability. Still, Soufflot's in- cribed in the previous chapter - Bernini's Piazza in front
tention is perfectly clear and you feel it today the moment of St Peter's (Plate 46). What, you may say, could possibly
you enter that brittle and coldly exquisite building. He was be truer to Laugier's ideal than those giant crescents consist-
trying to build a church in which the order, expressed only ing wholly of independent columns, innocent of all model-
in the round, only in independent, cylindrical shafts, not only ling and enrichment. Yes, indeed. As so often happens, the
looked very beautiful but actually did the whole work of expression of a new ideal had involuntarily presented itself,
carrying the roof. He very nearly succeeded. on one particular occasion, fuUy fledged, long before it
Now this is a very long way from another church I des- occurred to anybody to formulate the new ideal in words.
cribed in these talks - Palladio's Redentore in Venice (Plate Something of this sort happened also in English architect-

17). You may remember that when I described the Reden- ure even earHer and in a pecuharly striking way. Look at

tore made a special point of the articulation of the orders.

I Plate 19 - Inigo Jones's church of St Paul, Covent Garden.
If Palladio made a virtue of articulation, Soufflot made it It was built in 163 1, but if it is not pure neo-classicism I do
quintessential. To put these two churches side by side is to not know what is. It is a study in the primitive, based on
see exactly the difference in ideals between the mid-sixteenth Vitruvius's description of the Tuscan. That fine, spreading
century and the mid-eighteenth. Palladio was trying, above roof, those massive wide-spaced columns are almost pure
all things, to be truly Roman. to be
Soufflot was trying archaeology, and about as basically structural as you can get
something altogether more philosophical - trying to reach - in fact, well on the way to the primitive hut. A hundred

the truth behind Rome, the combined structural and aes- years later, but still well before Laugier's formulation of the
thetic truth which the orders, in their origin, could be sup- new theory, the EngHsh were acknowledging Jones's leader-
posed to have embodied. ship in tliis direction, one perhaps somewhat over-enthus-
The Pantheon is the first major building which can be iastic critic of 1734 describing the Covent Garden church as

called neo-classical - 'neo-classical' being the expression 'without a rival, one of the most perfect pieces of architect-
which has come to be used for architecture which, on the ure that the art of man can produce'. If one is in sympathy
one hand, tends towards the rational simphfication advo- with the Neo-classical ideal one can see what he meant. And
cated by Cordemoy and Laugier and, on the other hand, this was written only a year or two after Lord Burlington

seeks to present the orders with the utmost antiquarian
ity. Reason and archaeology are the two complementary
elements which make Neo-classicism and which differen-
tiate it from the Baroque. Or do they? Once again I must
warn you against giving too exact a meaning to these labels.
Just think back to one of the major Baroque works I des-
fidel- had paid his respects to Vitruvian archaeology by building
the Assembly Room at York (Plate 20), a perfect recon-
struction of the 'Oecus Aegyptius' or Egyptian Hall - a Vit-
ruvian model illustrated from Palladio's wood-cut (Plate 18).
I do not suppose had heard of either of these
that Laugier
buildings, but Soufflot obviously - and I think you will

37
already have noticed this - knew something of English ar- (Plate 49) is obviously in the mood of Piranesi but some of
chitecture because he took St Paul's dome as his model for whose other works by Laugier.
are just as clearly influenced
the dome of the Pantheon. You can judge for yourself The estabhshment, on was against Laugier. Sir
the whole,
whether you think the imitation an entire success. To my Wnham Chambers, the author of the one great English
mind, the narrower intercolumniation of the Pantheon and eighteenth-century treatise on architecture, objected both to
the eUmination of the sohd piers in every fourth bay, results the thesis of the primitive hut and to the sweeping ehmina-
in a loss of gravity: the Pantheon dome spins rather too airily tion of everything except columns in the round. And yet in
over the rectangles of the cross-shaped structure below. the plate in Chambers's book where he illustrates the devel-
Soufflot, no doubt, thought he was purifying Wren's design opment of the Doric order, reproduced in Plate 55, are two
- getting rid of what Cordemoy would have called 'archi- versions of the primitive hut which must surely have been
tecture in reUef and seizing only the essentials.
' sketched after a reading of Laugier.
The actual impact of Laugier on English architecture is Whatever the actual effect of Laugier's thought in Eng-
another story and an important one. The Enghsh already land, the idea of primitivism, of searching back to the true,
had - as we have just seen - a strong tradition of architect- untainted sources of architectural beauty, certainly prevailed
ural puritanism, appearing first in Inigo Jones, cropping up in this country and it had two main results. One of these was
again and again, even sometimes in Wren and Hawksmoor, the Greek Revival. The other was the pecuhar, idiosyncratic
and imphcit in the Enghsh eighteenth century addiction to primitivism of Sir John Soane.
Palladio. But perhaps the very fact that the Enghsh had this The Greek Revival is somediing in which England played
rather puritanical attitude to architecture made them reluct- a very special part. Till the middle of the eighteenth century
ant to go all the way with Laugier. Besides, the English were, Greek architecture was something of a mystery. Everybody
under the skin, incurably romantic; and if the rationaUsm knew that the Romans had got their architecture from the
of Laugier pulled in one direction, the wildly irrational in- Greeks and was a question of looking for 'untainted
if it

ventions of the great architect-etcher, Giambattista Pirancsi, sources' Greece was obviously the place to look. But nobody
pulled in another. The imagination of Piranesi was irresist- ever went to Greece, It was a long way off; it was part of
ible.Look at Plate 49, one of Piranesi's famous prison scenes the Ottoman Empire and neither an easy nor a safe place for
- a cavernous perspective of Roman arches, chipped and the western traveller. However, in 1751 two Enghshmen,
scarred, dripping with horror, and rusticated more wildly James Stuart and Nicholas Rcvett, set out for Athens; they
than anything at Mantua. An architect could hardly, you came back three years later and in 1762 the first volume of
would think, have both Laugier and Piranesi for his heroes. their book, containing accurate measured drawings of Greek

And yet that is very much what some Enghsh architects buildings, was pubhshed. A Frenchman, Le Roy, forestalled
did - George Dance for instance, whose Newgate Prison them with a more pictorial book in 1758, but Stuart and
Revett became the acknowledged authorities. style which the Romans had done, since the Greeks never
When people saw, for the first time, accurate representa- used the arch or the vault or built huge multistorey build-
tions of the Parthenon and the Theseion - the major exam- ings, the revived Greek elements tended to be used as cum-
ples of the Greek Doric order of the age of Pericles - what bersome and costly appendages to modern buildings of other
did they think of them? Were they coarser and cruder than wise rather negative character. Look again at the photograph
Roman Doric, because earher in date; or were they purer of the High School at Edinburgh (Plate 57), built in 1825 -
because nearer the source? depended on what one was
It all certainly a most spectacular and persuasive Greek Doric per-
looking for. Some saw them as one thing, some as another. formance, beautifully sited on Calton Hill. But I really be-
You see, Greek Doric (of which Plate 57 gives a fair imi- heve that if all this arcliitecture were taken away the High
tated example) is squatter and more massive than the Roman School as a functioning building would still be there - and
(compare the Roman Doric column in Plate 55). On the it would get a great deal more Hght. Much the same could

other hand its profiles are more tense and subtle. Some lat- be said of the British Museum, illustrated on page 47, bottom
itude of interpretation was inevitable. The first Greek Doric right. Of course, I know this is not quite fair. 'Useless' por-
buildings built in England were built more or less as curios- ticos and 'useless' colonnades are perfectly legitimate means
ities, exotic souvenirs, in the form of temples and porches of architectural expression, but when they become a sort of
on gentlemen's estates. But about the turn of the century cultural luggage carried by buildings wliich they screen,
the conviction that the Greek Doric - and Greek Ionic and cover and adorn but do not really control a very dead dead-
Greek Corinthian - were in all ways purer and better than end has been reached.
their Roman counterparts had won the day and the Greek Now Sir Jolin Soane, who had one of the most original
Revival proper had started. There were now not five orders and explorative minds of the period which saw the Greek
to choose from but eight - the five Roman orders estab- Revival, never committed himself to anything of this kind.
lished long ago by Serlio, and the three Greek orders which He always designed liis buildings from inside out. He knew
could be extracted from Stuart and Revett. The RevivaHsts, his Greek orders very well. He knew his Roman orders even
of course, confmcd themselves to these. better. He knew his Italians. He had a keen appreciation of
The Greek Revival, which started in England, eventually Laugier. And knowing all this he was able to go to the root
manifested itself all over Europe and quickly spread to of the matter and make his own statements as to the fund-
America. It lasted for about thirty years and I do not think amentals of architecture. Laugier's primitivism - the idea of
anybody would consider it one of the more glorious epi- going back to pre-historic beginnings - certainly appealed
sodes in architectural history. The Greek orders always re- to him but he was prepared to go much further than Laugier
mained curiosities - specimens brought out of a museum. in actually eliminating all the conventional orders from his
Since the Greeks had never evolved the daring mechanics of practice and inventing a 'primitive' order of his own. You

39
can see it at his Dulwich Art Gallery, which still stands, and When he died, his style died with him and nobody was sorry.
of which a drawing, from the Soane Museum, is illustrated The Greek Revival was dying too. Laugier and his ideas
in Plate 56. Soane's 'order' here is nothing but a brick pier were forgotten. It might seem that the story of the classical
or a brick strip with a stone necking and a stone projection language of architecture was fmished.
over it which is a token cornice. He did not share Laugier's But it was not. Whether the story of that language ever
hostility to pilasters. Soane's critics made fun of this order was or ever will be finished I do not know. But in my next
by calling it his 'Boeotian' order. There is not a single con- talk, which will also be my last, I shall go deeper into what

ventional column or even a conventional moulding in sight. I called in my first talk the essentials of classicism. Because

Everything has been abstracted and then rendered back in these penetrated the stylistic chaos of the nineteenth century
Soane's own personal interpretation. It is all very original and became the vital factors in the architectural revolution
and seems to point to a new freedom for architecture. It of the twentieth - the revolution which gave us the archi-
seems so to us, but it did not to the generation that followed. tecture which we use today.

6. Classical into Modern

In the last fifty years the architectural habits of the world triaUzed world in which the thin, high glossy blocks, the
have changed completely. Within that period and at the perspectives of concrete posts, the eternally repeating rec-
heart of the process of change we can now trace as a matter tangles are not typical and famihar. Today one would hardly
of history, the workings of what it is still natural to call the cross the road to look at a building whose kind thirty years
Modem Movement in architecture. The Modern Movement ago, drew one across Europe with excited anticipation to
had its beginnings in the decade before 1914. It reached its see, photograph and write home about.
highest pitch of creative vigour in the late 'twenties. After Such is the architectural revolution of our century. And it

World War II, it ceased to move; not because the war killed is, I think, complete. Fashions eddy across the surface of
it but because the war had rendered its universal acceptance things, brilhant individual performances make spectacular
inevitable. Its effects spread and spread with undiminishing rings, but the revolution is done with, spent. Questions of
momentum until by now there is no corner of the indus- form in architecture are tending to recede, giving place to

40
questions of teclinology and industrialization, planning and through an understanding of its classical parentage and it is

mass-production for social needs - quest ons of building this function of the classical language that I want to put be-
rather than architecture; and it is even a matter for debate fore you now.
whether architecture will retain its traditional status much You will remember that in my
last talk I said something

longer, or dissolve into a close federation of town-planning, of the architectural philosophyof the Abbe Laugier - the
structural engineering and industrial design. man who set before the world the image of the primitive
There is nothing to deplore about - in fact, there
all this hut or 'rustic cabin' as the ultimate source of all architectural
is much to hope for in this transformation which is, in effect, beauty. This image was rather quaint - it consisted simply
the full arrival of a new man-made environment - one which of four tree trunks with branches set across them for beams
has been predicted for a long time. The only reason I make and more branches for rafters; and it had no walls. As a
any mention of these things here is in order to ask, against building of this kind would be quite useless to anybody,
this sweeping background, the rather simple-minded ques- however primitive, it may be assumed that it never existed
tion, 'Where now is the classical language of architecture?' except in Laugier's imagination. It had no more archaeolo-
Well, obviously, it is not here, is it? Has it then any rele- gical sanction than Rousseau's Noble Savage (who came on
vance? Let us ask another question - modern archi-
'What is the hterary scene a few years later) had anthropological
tecture?' You can answer that question, if you like, with a sanction. It was, in fact, a symbohc diagram; and the mean-
few platitudes about form and function. But they will not ing of it was that behind Rome, behind Greece there was
really do; and if you are going to describe what modern 2.principle which was, as it were, pure essence of architecture.
architecture is, you can only do so by describing the achieve- There were impUcations here which I do not think Laugier
ments of specific innovating personahties, their time and himself reahzed and which took a very long time indeed to
space relationships and their progressive disturbance of the unfold. If the primitive hut was 'pure' architecture, did that
general drift of architectural theory and practice. The roots mean that it was a one hundred per cent efficient solution of
of modern architecture are in the thought and in the per- a specific problem of shelter? Obviously not. Or did it mean
formance of these leaders and the thought and performance that 'pure' architecture was Hmited to columns, beams and
of these leaders is inextricably involved with their reactions rafters? That does seem to have been in Laugier's mind and

to, their alliance with and departures from the classical tra- to that extent his primitive hut was simply a reduction to
ditions of their own and earher centuries. Not only that, but the lowest possible terms of the classical temple form - an
within these consecutive traditions there are persistent fore- expression still well witliin the classical language of archi-
shadowings of the modern, from the middle of the eight- tecture. On the other hand it contained the germ of the
eenth century onwards. In short, an exact understanding of rational - the column merely a cylindrical post - the pedi-
what we so vaguely and airily call modern can only come ment merely a built-up triangle; it contained, in fact, the

41
germ of an architecture from which all decorative and plastic They consist mainly of a rectangular mass, one of whose
expressions were removed and which (once the tree-trunks sides is of columns. These are seen
a transparent screen
were given a bit of poHsh) was strictly an affair of solid against an inner wall, but behind tliis wall rises, in the middle,
geometry. But it was still architecture. the cubic form of the central hall of the Museum. A simple
Such an architecture did come into being - or very nearly but very powerful three-dimensional combination indeed,
- towards the end of the eighteenth century. It mostly had beside which the British Museum (Plate 60), for all the
rather Utopian implications and one of its most astonishing splendour of its colonnades, cuts a rather poor figure. For
manifestations is in the ideal city conceived, designed, never the British Museum is all colonnade - there is not a single
executed, but published, in 1805, by the French architect architectural clue to the building behind it, which, so far as

Ledoux. This is a dream city for a dream society and con- the onlooker from outside is concerned, might almost as well
tains some projects as surprising in their purpose as their not be there.
form. Plate 58 is one of them. It is a centre for the sexual Now, although I have underlined the importance of pure
instruction of adolescents - a very high-minded affair, let sohd geometry Ledoux design and in Schinkel's mu-
in the
me say - with an elaborate programme which need not con- seum, it will not have escaped you that in both of them
cern us here. But look at the geometry of it - a complex but architectural orders are present - in the Ledoux design as a
harmonious disposition of soHds in beautiful relation to the Greek portico at one end of the building controlling its main
landscape. Irresistibly one is reminded of the defmition of lines and echoed at the other end by a semi-circular colon-

architecture which Le Corbusier wrote in 192 1 - 'the play nade; in the museum, as a spectacular and beautifully detailed
of volumes, disposed with masterly and superb exactitude colonnade which has great formal importance in the whole
beneath the Hght'. Le Corbusier also projected an ideal city design. The language of classical architecture is still very
- his Ville Radieuse - and it is not surprising that in the much ahve and the orders are still not only present but in

nine teen-twenties an architectural scholar thought it worth control. Although we may seem, on the threshold
here, to be
writing a book drawing an analogy between the two Utopias of modern architecture, that threshold was to take a long
- Ledoux's and Le Corbusier's. This is not to say that Le time to cross. Most of the nineteenth and part of the twen-
Corbusier was influenced by Ledoux. So far as I know he tieth centuries stood between.
was not. The nineteenth century was very much concerned - over-
Ledoux's passion for seeing buildings as aggregates of sim- concerned wc may think - with the historical styles. Classical

ple geometrical shapes was shared by some others of liis time buildings were continually being built but they always look-
and a httle later - the German, Karl Friedrich Scliinkel, for ed back, not merely to Greece and Rome but to nearly every
instance, whose old Museum at Berlin is illustrated in Plate succedeing phase of classical development, using the past as
59. Here the shapes are very simple but enormously effective. one glorious quarry of ideas. C. R. Cockerell, in his New

42
Ashmolean building at Oxford, which we looked at earHer tecture out of iron and glass, as well as timber and masonry
on (Plate 35), wove into his design ornaments from Greek - an architecture just as economical, as rational, as the Gothic.
temples, a columnar arrangement from the Roman trium- His challenge was met in various ways. The experimental
phal arch, a cornice from Vignola and other elements from Art Nouveau of the 'nineties contains several attempted an-
sources as far apart as Florentine mannerism and Nicholas swers to the problems he posed. But none of them really
Hawksmoor. Similarly, Charles Gamier's Paris Opera House worked - they were far-fetched and smelt too much of the
(Plate 61), built twenty years later than the Ashmolean, studio. The real answers were to come after all, not from
contains a basic idea by Bramante, the Louvre colonnade - an ingenious and really rather precarious pliilosophy of
into which is intruded a subsidiary order on Michelangelo's Gothic, but from the classical tradition which all Europe
Capitoline principle - some parts of the earlier Louvre and had shared with antiquity for so long.
a Roman attic storey. Classical designers were, so to speak, The story of what I suppose will always be called the
circling round the achievements of the past looking for 'Modem Movement' in architecture has been written sev-
things which could be done again in a different way or in eral times and is hkely to be re-written many times more.
different combinations. Here, my only business with that complex and involved
Meanwhile, the hvely and progressive thought of the age piece of history is to show how and to what extent the class-
of Laugier took what we may odd turning.
think a rather ical language which has been the subject of these talks entered
To Frenchmen, however classically minded, it was never into what effect it had and how much of that effect re-
it,

quite possible to ignore the fact that some of the most daring, mains. The most direct way of doing this will be to go
powerful and ingenious buildings ever built were the med- straight to the work of two great pioneers of the first gen-
ieval cathedrals standing on their own soil. The French never eration of modems - the German, Peter Behrens, who was
had quite the nostalgic, parochial reverence for Gotliic wliich bom and the Frenchman, Auguste Perret, born in
in 1868;
the Enghsh had; they admired it as engineering. And admir- 1873. Bmldings by both are illustrated (Plates 62 and 63).
ing it thus - for the structural economy and completeness Peter Behrens, who started as a painter, was one of the
represented by a vaulted church - it was perhaps inevitable leaders of the German arts and crafts movement of the early
that the idea of a rational architecture should be transferred nineteen-hundreds. The great electrical combine, A.E.G.,
from an interest in classical antiquity to an interest in the appointed him their architect and artistic adviser and in 1908
middle ages. Anyway, the greatest French theorist of the commissioned liim to design a turbine erection hall for their

nineteenth century - Eugene Viollet-le-Duc - spent most of factory in Berlin (Plate 62). Behrens was faced here with the
his Ufe elucidating Gothic arcliitecture as a completely ra- problem of designing a building for a strictly industrial pur-
tional way of building and then issuing, in his lectures, a pose, but at the same time giving it the 'prestige' character
challenge to the modern world to create a modern archi- which the company expected of their architect. It was typical

43
of German thought at this time that Behrens should look lenge of steel had to be more directly and economically met
back to German neo-classicism and the age of Karl-Friedrich and it was Walter Gropius, a pupil of Behrens, who took
Scliinkel, whose Berlin museum we were considering just the next step, moving a good deal further from the neo-
now. The turbine hall is really a neo-classical building de- classical model but without losing aesthetic integrity or, in-
signed on the lines of a temple but with all the stylistic signs deed, the sense of classical order and symmetry. The pre-
and symbols left out or changed. You may remember, from first-war industrial buildings of Gropius as well as those of
my last talk, that Sir John Soane was doing something like Behrens are key monuments of the Modern Movement.
this more than a hundred years earher. And in a sense Beh- Now turn from Behrens and his pupil Gropius to the
rens in 1908 was not much more advanced than Soane (at Frenchman - Auguste Perret. Here was an entirely different
Dulwich) in 181 1. Except for this: Soane was working out kind of designer. Perret had no need, or desire, to look back
his style in traditional and (so far as he could see) unchang- to the neo-classicism of the early nineteenth century; as a
ing materials; while Behrens had to accept the challenge of Frenchman he had in his bones, so to speak, the still living
structural steel, a material economic dictatorship
which, if its tradition of classical design fostered by the Ecole des Beaux
was not accepted, would soon put architects out of business. Arts, that school of design whose most obviously represen-
So in the turbine hall the classical colonnade is represented tative buUding is, I suppose, the Paris Opera-house. I think
by those unmodulated verticals on the flank of the building ifyou glance again at the Opera (Plate 61) and then at the
which are in fact steel stanchions. The temple portico has building by Perret on the same page (bottom right) you
shrunk into one great window area, under a 'pediment' will see a certain connection. Perret's Naval Construction
which is not triangular but multangular to suit the structure Depot is all in reinforced concrete, totally without enrich-
of the roof behind At the corners are plain wall surfaces
it. ment. But it is thought out in terms of 'orders' - a major
with horizontal on them which seem to be a vestigial
lines order starting from the ground and running up to some-
kind of rustication. None of this would 'tcU' in quite the thing rather like an architrave and cornice; and the ghost of
splendid way it does if Behrens had not adopted the device a secondary order whose entablature belongs just above the
of 'battering' - that is to say leaning in - his solid wall in the heads of the windows. There is almost as much
first-floor

same leaning plane as the windows along the side. To what 'relief and almost as much variety of rhythm in this building
extent this dcVice is purely aesthetic I do not know but it as in the Opera-house. Only there are no mouldings and

gives relief and shadow at the eaves of the roof in just the there is no carving.
place where in a temple we should have the relief and shadow In those buildings by two masters of the Modern Move-
of the cornice. ment we have two statements regarding the possible inter-
Behrens' turbine hall is a great performance but not a kind pretation of the classical language in terms of steel (Behrens)
of performance that could be repeated very often. The chal- and reinforced concrete (Perret). Buildings such as these

44
claimed in their day a new freedom, unrelated to specific work. Le Corbusier threw away tliis framework and let the
orders and yet still closely related to the rhythms and general industrial forms speak their own, often bizarre, language;
disposition of classical architecture. There was no reason at but he exercised a more formidable and effective control than
all why this kind of diagrammatic classicism should not pre- the token orders of Behrens and Ferret could do by the appH-
vail indefinitely as the medium for new constructions - in- cation of what he has called 'traces regulateurs' - lines of
deed, plenty of buildings are still being built very close in Le Corbusier was re-assuming a kind
control. In doing this,
expression to Ferret's work of the But it happened
'twenties. of control which had never been entirely forgotten but
otherwise, cliiefly through the creative genius of one man - which belongs essentially to the Renaissance and was fun-
Le Corbusier - the most inventive mind in the architecture damental to the work both of Alberti and of Falladio.
of our time and also, in a curious way, one of the most class- At the base of this kind of control is the conviction that
ical minds. harmonious relationships in architecture can only be secured
Le Corbusier was born in 1887. hi 1908-9 he was for a if the shapes of rooms and the openings in walls and indeed
short time in Ferret's office in Faris; in 1910 to 191 1 he spent all elements in a building are made to conform with certain
a few months Germany with Behrens. His first house,
in ratios which are related continuously to all other ratios in the
built in Switzerland during World War I, showed the influ- building. To what extent rational systems of this kind do
ence of these masters, especially of Ferret. After the war he produce effects which eye and mind can consciously appre-
turned to painting and was involved, along with Amedee hend I am extremely doubtful. I have a feeling that the real
Ozenfant, in a movement they called Furism whose aim was point of such systems is simply that their users (who are
to bring a mathematical disciphne to bear on what they saw mostly their authors) need them; that there are types of
as the imminent disintegration of cubism. In 1920 Le Cor- extremely fertile, inventive mind which need the tough
busier started writing - about architecture. His collected ar- inexorable disciphne of such systems to correct and at the
ticleswere made up into a book, pubHshed in 1923, the same time stimulate invention. And the fate of these systems
famous Vers unc Architecture - 'Towards an architecture' - seems, on the whole, to confirm this; they rarely survive
probably the most widely circulated and influential architect- their authors and users and the next man of fertile genius
ural book of our time. invents his own. That, however, in no way diminishes their
Now, one way of putting Le Corbusier's architectural importance.
achievement in a nutshell would be to say that he completely In the first talk in this series I said that 'the aim of classical
reversed modern architecture as he found it - he turned it architecture has always been to achieve a demonstrable har-
upside down. He found men Hke Behrens and Ferret sub- mony of parts'. Ferhaps the word 'demonstrable' should not
duing the chaos of empirical engineering and industrial have been quite so closely linked with 'always'. Nevertheless
building by disciphning it into a classically designed frame- a demonstrable harmony - one which results from a specific

45
code to which reference can be made - is something which minutiae of precision instruments on the one hand and to
conforms absolutely with the nature of classicism and lies the scale of vast town-planning enterprises on the other.
very close to the use of the orders which are in themselves Le Corbusier made enormous claims for the Modulor
demonstrations of harmonious composition. For Le Corbus- as a system which, if widely adopted, could solve many of

ier the demonstration of the harmonious was always the standardization problems of industry and promote har-
extremely important. EVen his first Perret-style house of mony throughout our whole physical environment into the
1916 he pubHshed with the 'traces regulateurs' ruled across bargain. Perhaps it could; but the fact is that, since its pub-
the elevations. The Purist manifesto ran in the same direc- Hcation in 1950, interest in it has rather receded and I am
tion and the 'traces' are dealt with - if rather superficially - inclined to think that, in this case as in so many others, the
in a chapter of Vers une Architecture. But it was not till the real importance of the thing was as part of its author's mental
early years of World War II that Le Corbusier created the furniture - enabling him to embark on projects as wildly
system which he used in all his later work - the system original, for instance, as his chapel at Ronchamp - a build-
which he has called the 'Modulor'. 'Modulor' is a word ing so free in form as to be practically abstract sculpture -
made out of 'module' (that is of measurement)
to say, unit always secure in his complete grasp of rational procedure.
and 'section d'or' or golden section - otherwise mean and 'Rational procedure'. That is perhaps the last, and cer-
extreme ratio: that is to say the division of a line so that the tainly not the least legacy of classicism to the architecture of
larger part is to the whole line as the smaller part to the our own time: rational procedure controlling - and inciting
larger. The Modulor is a system of space-notation based on - invention. That has always been and is always likely to be
this geometrical absolute and constituting a 'gamut' of di- the way architectural creation works. And of this process
mensions. A middle phase of the gamut relates to the dimen- the history of the classical language of architecture provides
sions of the human body; the other phases extend it to the the immemorial, the most universal and explicit model.

46
 Glossary

ABACUS The top part of any capital; as it were a square ASTRAGAL A Small moulding of circular profde.
slab placed on top of the capital to bear the beam (archi- ATTIC BASE See BASE.
trave). ATTIC STOREY A storey placed over the main entablature
ABUTMENT The soUd mass from which an arch springs. of a building and in strictly architectural relation to it (as
ACANTHUS The plant of which a highly conventionaHzed e.g. in some triumphal arches).
version decorates the capitals of the Corinthian and Com- BASE (of a column) There are three main varieties, (i) The
posite orders. Attic Base, the commonest, which is found with all orders
ACROTERiA Small pedestals (originally for sculpture but except the Tuscan; it consists of two tori separated by a
often seen without) at the extremities and apex of a ped-
scotia and fillets, (ii) The Tuscan Base, consisting simply
iment.
of a torus and fillet, (iii) A type consisting of two scotiae
AEDICULE The frame of an opening, consist-
architectural
separated by two astragals with a torus above and a torus
ing usually of two columns supporting an entablature and
below. This, with variations of it, is applicable to the
pediment.
Ionic, Corinthian and Composite.
AMPHIPROSTYLE See TEMPLE.
BEAD-AND-REEL See ENRICHMENTS.
A N T A Equivalent to pilaster where the latter is the resp ond
BED MOULDINGS The mouldings between the corona
to a column. Mostly appHed to Greek architecture, where
(q.v.) and any entablature.
the frieze (q.v.) in
the anta capital is different from that of the columns
accompanying it.
BUKRANiA Carved representations of ox skulls, often found
araeostyle See intercolumniation. in the metopes of the Doric frieze.

ARCHITRAVE The lowest of the three primary divisions of CAPITAL (of a column) Each of the five orders has its ap-
the ENTABLATURE. The word is loosely applied to any propriate capital. Those of the Tuscan and (Roman) Doric

moulding roimd a door or window and such mouldings are much ahke, consisting mainly of abacus, ovolo and,

do, in fact, most frequently borrow the profde of the further down, an astragal; the Doric has more multiplicity
architrave in the strict sense. of small mouldings than the Tuscan. The Ionic is disting-
ARCHITRAVE-CORNICE An entablature from which the uished by volutes. These are the coiled ends of an element
frieze is eHded. inserted between the abacus and the ovolo. Sometimes,
ARCHivoLT An architrave moulding when it follows the however, the volutes spring separately from the ovolo.
line of an arch. The Corintliian capital is decorated with two ranks of

47
 acanthus leaves, while fern-like stems reach out to the machus who, he says, was inspired by the sight of a basket
comers of the abacus. The Composite capital combines of toys placed, with a stone slab for protection (the abacus),
Corinthian leaves with Ionic volutes. on the grave of a Corinthian girl and around which wHd
CARYATIDES Female figures supporting an entablature. The acanthus had grown. The Corintliian order, as employed
most famous example is at the Erectheum, Athens, where from the sixteenth century onwards, is based on Roman
Vitruvius improbably supposed the figures to represent examples, notably the temples of Vespasian and Castor and
Carian captives, hence the generic name. Pollux in the Forum.
CAVETTO A hollow moulding, whose profile is usually a CORNICE The uppermost of the three primary divisions of
quarter of a circle. the ENTABLATURE (q.v.) The word is loosely applied to
COLOSSAL ORDER Any order whose columns extend from almost any horizontal moulding forming a main decora-
the ground through several storeys. tive feature, especially to a moulding at the junction of
COMPOSITE ORDER This order, which combines features walls and ceihng in a room. Such mouldings do, tradition-
of the Ionic with the Corinthian, is not described by Vit- ally, follow the profdes of cornices in the strict sense.

ruvius and was probably evolved after his time. It was CORONA The part of a cornice forming a sudden projection
first identified by Alberti {c. 1450) and first figured by over the bed-moulding (q.v.).

SerHo as the fifth and most elaborate of the five orders. CYMA RECTA A moulding which is concave in its upper
CONSOLE A bracket in the form of an S-shaped scroll, with part andconvex below.
one end broader than the other. A console has many appH- cymareversaA moulding which is convex in its upper
cations, either vertical (e.g. against a wall to carry a bust) part and concave below.
or horizontal (as the visible part of a cantilever supporting DECASTYLE See PORTICO.
a gallery). Key-stones of arches are often modelled as con- DENTILS Small closely-spaced blocks forming one of the
soles. members of a cornice in the Ionic, Corinthian, Composite
CORINTHIAN ORDER This order was an Athenian inven- and, more rarely, Doric orders.
tion of the fifth century B.C. but in early examples is only DIASTYLE See INTERCOLUMNIATION.
differentiated from the Ionic by its leaf-enfurled capital. DIPTERAL See TEMPLE.
Even Vitruvius, in the first century a.d., described only DiSTYLEiNANTis A disposition comprising two columns
the capital 'because the Corinthian order has not separate between pilasters or antae.
rules for the cornices and other ornaments'. However, in DODECASTYLE See PORTICO.
later Roman practice the Corinthian entablature crystal- DORIC ORDER The Greek Doric and Roman Doric both
Uzed as something quite distinct. The original design of have, ultimately, a Greek origin but they developed in
the capital is attributed by Vitruvius to the sculptor CaUi- different ways. They have in common (i) the presence of

48
 triglyphs iii the frieze, with mutules and guttae on the narrow moulding.
soffit of the corona and (ii) the fact that the capital consists FILLET A narrow horizontal strip separating the larger
of Httle more than an abacus supported by a moulding or curved mouldings in a cornice or base.
mouldings. The Greek order has no base, nor is a base pre- fluting Vertical chamiels, of ounded section, cut in the
scribed by though in practice the Roman Doric
Vitruvius, shafts of columns. Never found in the Tuscan and optional

always has a base, the Greek never. As full knowledge and in the other orders. Sometimes the lower flutings are filled
appreciation of the Greek order was only regained in the with solid cylindrical pieces; they are then described as
late eighteenth century its appearance in the modern world cabled flutings.
before c. 1 800 is rare. frieze The middle of the three primary divisions of the
ECHINUS See ovolo. ENTABLATURE. In essence the frieze is a plain horizontal
EGG-AND-DART See ENRICHMENTS. band between the elaborately shelving cornice above and
ENRICHMENTS Certain standard types of carved enrich- the architrave (which may or may not be divided into
ment are appropriate to certain standard profiles. Thus, fasciae) below. But the Doric frieze usually contains trig-
the ovolo is enriched with egg-and-dart, the cyma reversa lyphs; while in the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite or-
with water-leaf, the bead or astragal with head-and-reel. For ders, the frieze is often appropriated to figure sculpture.
the cyma recta, less frequently enriched, laurel leaves or GUTTAE Small conical pieces carved on the architrave below
honey-suckle are appropriate. In other elements of the the taenia under each triglyph in the Doric order. They
order there wide margin of choice in enrichment.
is a evidently represent wooden pegs and thus originate, as
ENTABLATURE The whole assemblage of parts supported does the triglyph, in the timber prototypes of the Doric.
by the column. The three primary divisions are archi- HEXASTYLE See PORTICO.
trave, FRIEZE and cornice. Of these, only the archi- impost The moulding of a pier at the springing of an arch.
trave and cornice are subdivided. intercolumniation The distance, measured in diam-
entasis The swelling of a column. All classical columns eters, between two columns. The types named by Vit-

are broader at the base than at the capital. The diminution ruvius, with the ratios later assigned to them, are as follows:
often begins one third of the way up the column and there- Pycnostyle, ijD; Systyle, 2 D; Eustyle, 2jD; Diasytle, 3 D;
after takes the form of a curve whose setting-out is pre- Araeostyle, 4 D. Other intercolumniations are found in the
scribed in various ways. Doric order where spacing is necessarily controlled by the
eustyle See intercolumniation. triglyph-metope rhythm in the frieze. Eustyle intercol-
FASCIA A plain horizontal band. A common form of archi- umniation ismost common.
the
trave consists of two or three fasciae each shghtly over- ionic order This order, which originated in Asia Minor
sailing the one below and perhaps separated from it by a about the middle of the sixth century B.C. is distinguished

49
 in Roman examples by two main characteristics: (i) the PALLADiAN MOTIF The name given by the French [motif
voluted capital; (ii) the presence of dentils in the cornice. Palladio) to the combination of arch and columns con-
Vitruvius gives a minute description of the order. spicuously illustrated in Palladio's BasiUca at Vicenza (Fig.
METOPE The square space between two triglyphs in the i). In principle the arrangement consists of an opening
of the Doric order. Often left plain but sometimes
frieze where an arch stands over columns whose entablatures are
decorated with bukrania, trophies or other ornaments. the lintels of narrower side openings (see Venetian win-
MO DILI ON An ornament in the cornice of the Corinthian dow). In Palladio's Basilica this triple opening is framed
and Composite orders. A modilion is a diminutive con- in the bays formed by a superior order and it is to this
sole or scrolled bracket and the modilions in a cornice system that the term 'Palladian Motif should be confined.
give the appearance of supporting the corona. They are
spaced so as to allow a square sinking in the soffit between
each pair.
MODULE The relative sizes of all parts of an order are tra-

ditionally given in Modules, a Module being half the

diameter of the column just above its mouMed base. The
Module is divided into thirty minutes. Sometimes the
diameter itself is called the Module, in which case it con-
tains sixty minutes.
MUTULE A square block carved on the soffit of the Corona
in the Doric order immediately over each triglyph. See
TRIGLYPH.
OCTASTYLE See PORTICO.
ORDER An order is the total assemblage of parts comprising
the column and its appropriate entablature. The primary

divisions of the column are base, shaft and capital. The

primary divisions of the entablature are architrave, frieze Fig. I
and cornice. A pedestal under the column is not an essen-
tial part of the order but appropriate pedestals are given pedestal A substructure under a column. See order.
by the theorists from Serlio onwards. pediment The triangular space created by the sloping eaves
OVOLO A convex moulding whose profile is usually a quar- and horizontal cornice line of a gabled temple or other
ter of a circle. classical building. The word appears to be an alteration of

50
 periment, the word used in sixteenth century EngHsh ac- entrance to a temple or similar building. Porticos of tliis

counts and perhaps deriving from French parement, facing. kind are described according to the number of frontal
Pediments do not always express the end of a roof but are columns viz. Tetrastyle (4), Hexastyle (6), Octastyle (8),

often used ornamentally, even on a large scale. On a min- and Dodecastyle (12). Where there are only
Decastyle (10)
iature scale they commonly surmount door and window two columns between pilasters or antae the expression
openings. There are many varieties and distortions of the used in Distyle in Antis.

pediment, pediment with a curved (segmental)

e.g. the PROSTYLE See TEMPLE.
instead of pointed top, and the 'broken pediment' whose PSEUDODIPTERAL See TEMPLE.
sloping sides are returned before reaching the apex. PSEUDOPERIPTERAL See TEMPLE.
PERIPTERAL See TEMPLE. PYCNOSTYLE See INTERCOLUMNIATION.
PERISTYLE A continuous colonnade surrounding a temple QUOINS Usually the external angles of buildings, especially
or court. when these are emphasized by rustication.
PIER The soHds between door, window or other openings. RUSTICATION Masonry (or an imitation thereof) where
Piers are invariably part of the carrying structure of a the jointsbetween the stones are dehberately emphasized
building. They may or may not be combined or overlaid by sinkings or where the stones are left rough or worked
with pilasters, half-colunms, three-quarter columns, etc. in such a way as to afford a striking textural effect.

PILASTER The representation in rehef of a column against SCOTIA A

hollow moulding, most often seen between the
a wall. The pilaster is sometimes considered as the visible of columns.
tori in bases

part of a square column built into the wall. Pilasters are SHAFT That part of a column which i between the base and
.

necessarily ornamental. They have a quasi-structural func- the capital.

tion, however, when acting as responds, i.e. as the thicken- SOFFIT The under-side of any architectural element, e.g. a
ing of a wall opposite a column whose entablature carries corona, or an architrave where it does not rest on columns.
over to the wall. STYLOBATE The steps under a portico or colonnade.
PILLAR A word in common use which has no specific mean- systyle See intercolumniation.
ing in the context of classical architecture. TAENIA The narrow projecting band between architrave
PLINTH The square sohd. under the base of a column or and frieze in the Doric order.
pedestal. TEMPLE The of columns around temples has
disposition
PODIUM A structure, usually massive, providing a platform given rise to A temple with
the following nomenclature.
on which a classical building is placed. a portico in front only. Prostyle; with porticos at front and
PORTICO A place for walking under shelter. The word is rear, Amphiprostyle; with porticos connected by open col-

usually applied to the columned project on before the onnades along the sides. Peripteral; with porticos connected

51
 only by pilasters or columns in relief, Pseudopcripteral; with relieving arch, concentric with the inner arch, extends
porticos connected by double ranges of columns along the overall three openings, was derived by Lord Burlington

with the same arrangement as regards spac-

sides, Dipteral; from a drawing by Palladio and used in several of his
ing, but the inner ranges of columns omitted, Pseudodip- works and after him by English arcliitects till far into the
etral. nineteenth century.
TETRASTYLE See PORTCIO.
TORUS A moulding of semi-circular profile used in the

bases of columns.
TRIGLYPH A feature of the frieze of the Doric order, con-
sisting of a vertical element with two sunk vertical chan-
nels and two half-channels at the edges. The triglyph is
related to the mutule above and to the guttae below. The
whole system is a paraphrase in masonry of features deriv-
ing from timber construction.
TUSCAN ORDER This order derives from an ancient type of
Etruscan temple and, as Vitruvius describes it, is of primi-
tive character with wide spaces between the columns,
necessarily involving timber beams. The sixteenth cen-
tury theorists regarded it as proto-Doric and the crudest
and most massive of the five orders.
VENETIAN WINDOW A triple opening in which the wider Fig. 2
central opening is closed by an arch while the side open-
ings have lintels (Fig. 2). Not characteristically Venetian VOLUTE See capital.
but used by Bramante and Raphael, later by Scamozzi, voussoiR A block of stone, or other material, which is one
and adopted by Inigo Jones. In English eighteenth-century of a series constituting an arch.
practice it was common. A variant in which an outer WATER-LEAF See ENRICHMENTS.

52
 Notes on the Literature of Classical Architecture

classical arcliitecture has always, even in ancient times, de- From the sixteenth century onwards there are translations,
pended on precedents and therefore on written treatises. paraphrases and commentaries in nearly every European
Vitruvius himself declared his indebtedness to ancient authors language, a famous if rather sHght Enghsh derivative being
and the classicism of the modern world has been to a great that of Sir Henry Wotton [Elements of Architecture, 1624).
extent dependent on Vitruvius. Editions of his work there- The best modem text (with EngHsh translation) is that edited
fore take precedence in any review of the Hterature of classi- by Frank Granger for the Loeb Classical Library (Heine-
cal architecture. Next to Vitruvius, the treatises of sixteenth- mann, 193 1; 2nd ed. 1944-56, 2 vols.).
century Italy are of the greatest consequence; they are fol-
lowed by the treatises of other nations which invariably refer
// Italian Treatises
back both to Vitruvius and to the Italians. The following hsts
are liighly selective and include only the best knov^oi and LEON BATTiSTA ALBERTi (1404-1472), De Re Aedificator'ia.
most representative treatises of the main European countries. Presented in ms. to Pope Nicholas V, 1452. First printed
(in Latin) in Florence, 1485. The first Itahan translation
appeared in Venice in 1546 and the first illustrated edition
/ Vitruvius
in 1550. A French translation by Jean Martin followed in
Vitruvius wTote liis treatise, de Architectura, in the first quarter 1553. In England, Giacomo Leoni's translation [Ten Books
of the first century a.d. He was the only Roman writer on on Architecture) appeared in 1726. A reduced facsimile of
architecturewhose work survived to be copied and re-copied this (with introduction and notes by |. Rykwert) was pub-
through the Middle Ages. The oldest existing manuscript is lished in 1955.
in the British Museum (Harl. 2767); it belongs to the eighth Alberti's treatise, although making exhaustive use of
century and was probably written at Jarrow. There are six- Vitruvius, is a great original work setting forth the prin-
teen later medieval manuscripts in various European libraries. of architecture in the light of the author's own phil-
ciples

The first printed text appeared in Rome about i486. The osophy and of his analysis of Roman buildings. It pro-
next editions were those of Fra Giocondo (Florence, 151 1) foundly influenced all subsequent Itahan theory.
and Philander (Rome, 1544). Of great importance were the SEBASTIANO SERLio (1475-1552), pubHshcd in his life-

illustrated translations by Cesariano (Como, 1521) and Dan- time six books of arcliitecture, aU richly illustrated. In

iele Barbaro (Venice, 1567; with illustrations by Palladio). 1566, the first five were assembled as a single treatise,

53
 though not in the order they were written. The subjects great advance on Serlio's - they were, in fact, not super-
of these five are (with original pubhcation dates): i, Geom- seded as records till Desgodetz's work of 1682. The inclu-
etry (1545); 2, Perspective (1545); 3, Antiquities (1540); 4, sion of Palladio's own designs resulted in his recognition
The Orders (1537); 5, Churches (1547). A sixth book called throughout Europe, but especially in England, as the
Libro Estraordinario, containing designs for arches and gate- greatest modern interpreter of classical architecture. Eng-
ways, was pubHshed in 155 1 and repubHshed in 1566. A Hsh editions, 1663, 1715, 1736 and 1738.
posthumous book made up from SerHo's drawings was viNCENzo scAMOzzi (1552-1616), DeW Idea dell'Archi-
published with the others at Frankfurt in 1575. The first, tettura Universale, Venice, 1615. A massive work, owing
and only, English edition was published in 161 1. much to Palladio, but designed to promote a pure, aca-
Serlio's work is both a text-book and a treasury of de- demic classicism which belongs in spirit to the eighteenth
signs. It became the standard authority on architecture and century rather than to the seventeenth.
the most popular source-book throughout Europe in the
later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, SerHo's versions
/// French Treatises
of the five Orders being at the root of most expositions
outside Italy, till they were superseded by Vignola and PHiLiBERT DE l'orme [c. 1510-1570), Architecture, Paris,
Palladio. 1567. A work of great originahty, combining thought
GIACOMO BAROZZI DA VIGNOLA (15O7-I573), Regola deriving from medieval French tradition with sensitive
delli Cinque Ordini d' Architettura, 1562. A set of fme en- and scholarly observation of Roman architecture.
gravings on copper of versions of the five Orders, based ROLAND freart [d. 1676), Parallek de V Architecture Antique
on Roman
examples and with reference to Vitruvius. et de la Moderne, Paris, 1650. A detailed critical review by
More refmed and scholarly than SerUo. No text - only a scholar, of all the estabhshed versions of the orders,
introduction and notes, but the book includes a number ancient and modern. EngUsh edition by John Evelyn,
of Vignola's own designs. Many later editions, mostly 1664.
Italian and French. First English edition in 1669. CLAUDE PERRAULT (1613-1688), Ordonnances des Cinq
ANDREA PALLADIO (1508-1580), / Quattro Lihri delfArchi- Especes de Colonne, Paris, 1676. A critical dissertation on
tettura, Venice, 1570. The four books deal respectively the orders with Per rank's own preferred versions (see Pi.
with: I, The Orders, 2, Domestic Buildings (including Pal- i). Perrault's translation of Vitruvius (Paris, 1684), with
ladio's own palaces and villas), 3, Public Buildings (mostly copious commentary ranks as a treatise of major import-
Roman, but including Palladio's Basihca at Vicenza) and ance.

4, Temples (Roman). Palladio's orders are as refined as DE CORDEMOY (datcs unknown), Nouvcau Traite de Toute

Vignola's. His illustrations of Roman antiquities are a r Architecture, 1706. Ostensibly concerned mostly with the

54
 orders but actually a revolutionary 'anti-Baroque' state- London, 1563 (Facsimile, with introd. by L.
chitecture,

ment demanding a new purity of conception in design. Weaver, 1912). The orders, after Serho, with variations.
M. A. LAUGiER (1713-1769), Essai suT l Architecture, Paris, JAMES GIBBS (1682-1754) Ruks for Drawing the Several
1753. Deriving mainly from Cordemoy, Laugier carries Parts of Architecture, London, 1732. An admirably clear
the latter's rationalism to extremes. text-book rather than a treatise.

The above are only a few of the many French treatises. A ISAAC WARE (d. 1766), The Complete Body of Architecture.
type of great importance in the eighteenth and nineteenth London, 1756. An encyclopaedic work representative of
centuries was that introduced by Francois blondel the Palladian movement.
(1679-1719) , who pubhshed his Academy lectures as Cours d' SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS (1723-1796), A Treatise on Civil
Architecture (Paris 1675). Other treatises based on lecture Architecture, London, 1759. Republished in 1791 as A
courses but encyclopaedic in character are those of A. c. Treatise on the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture and
d'aviler (Paris, 1691) and Jacques francois blondel again in 1825 (ed. Joseph Gwilt). A historical and critical
(Paris, 1771-1777). The Lepns of j. n. l. durand (Paris, work of great refinement.
1 801-1805 aii<i later) reflect the severe rationalism deriving
from Laugier.
vi Modern Historical Works in English

For the architecture of the ancient world:

iv German and Flemish Treatises
A. w. LAWRENCE, Greek Architecture (PeHcan History of
HANS BLUM, Quittque Cohimnarum exacta descriptio atque de- Art). Penguin Books, 1957.
lineatio, Zurich, 1550. An exposition of the orders based D. s. ROBERTSON, Handbook of Greek and Roman Archi-
on Serlio, often republished. First EngHsh edition, 1608. tecture, C.U.P., 1929. 2nded., 1943.
vredeman de vries (1527-1604), Architectural Antwerp, For the history oj architecture since the Renaissance:

1577 (many later eds.). The orders, based on Serho but N. PEVSNER, An Outline of European Architecture, Penguin
elaborated and enriched (see Pi. 38). Books, 7th ed., 1963. The post-Renaissance chapters give
WENDEL DiETTERLiN [c. 1550-1599), Architectura, Nur- an admirable general perspective, while the bibhography
emberg, 1 594-1 598. Extravaganzas on the orders (see includes important foreign books not hsted here.
Pi. 39). R. wiTTKOWER, Architectural Principles in the Age of Hum-
anism, Warburg Inst., Univ. of London, 1949. Tiranti, 2nd
ed., 1952.
V English Treatises
p. MURRAY, The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance.
JOHN SHUTE (d. 1563), The First and Chief Groundes of Ar- Batsford, 1963.

55
R. wiTTKOWER, ^r^ and Architecture in Italy 1 600-1 y^o (Pel- H. R. HITCHCOCK, Architecture: igth and 20th centuries
ican History of Art). Penguin Books, 1958. (Pelican History of Art). Penguin Books, 1958.
A. BLUNT, Art and Architecture in France, 1^00-iyoo (Pelican
History of Art). Penguin Books, 1953. Monographs
w. H. WARD, The Architecture of the Renaissance in France, J. s. ACKERMAN, The Architecture of Michelangelo. Zwem-
(Vol. I The Early Renaissance 1495-1640. Vol. 2 The Later mer, 1961.
Renaissance 1640-1830). Batsford, 191 1. 2nd ed., 1926. F. HARTT, Giulio Romano, 2 vols. Yale U.P., 1958; O.U.P.,

J. SUMMERSON, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (Pelican 1958.

History of Art). Penguin Books, 1953. 4th ed., 1963. w. HERRMANN, Laugier and 18th century French Theory.
E. KAUFMANN, Architecture in the Age of Reason. Harvard Zwemmer, 1962.
U.P., 1955; O.U.P., 1955.

Acknowledgment is due to the following for permission to reproduce illustrations

ALBERTINA, VIENNA ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION Plate 57; ARCHIVES

Plate 23;
PHOTOGRAPHIQUES BATSFORD LTD Platcs 32 and 50 from Monumental
Plate 47; B. T.
Classic Architecture by A. E. Richardson; bildarchiv foto marburg Plate 30; British
MUSEUM Plate 48; P. CANNON BROOKES Plate 2$] CHEVOJON, PARIS Plate 63
s.p.A.D.E.M. Paris 1963; courtauld institute of art Plate 8; housing and
ESTATES DEPT FOR YORK CITY COUNCIL Plate 20 (plioto Catcheside Studio); A. F.
KERSTING Plates 12, 21, 28, 46, 53 and 60; london COUNTY COUNCIL Plate 51;
MANSELL COLLECTION Platcs 3, 9, ID, 29, 31, 41 and 45 (Anderson), 6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 27,
36, 42 and 44 (Alinari), 37 (Brogi), 43 and 54 (Giraudon); national buildings record
Plates II, 19 and 40; radio times hulton picture library Plate 35; roger
schall Plate 61; sir john soane's museum Plate 56; Thames and Hudson ltd
Plate 22 from Italian Villas and Palaces by Georgina Masson; ullstein gmbh Plate 62;
WARBURG institute Plate 13.

Wc are grateful to The Royal Institute of British Architects for allowing photographs to
be taken from books in their possession.

56
The F w'c orders. Pi. i (ahove): Serlio's woodcut of 1540, the

first presentation oj the Urders as a complete ar\d authoritative

series. Pi. 2 (ri^ht): Claude Perrault'5 version, 1676, en-

graved on coi^^er, reflects the greater precision and scholarship

of its time.
 m..
11 s HBPim
,, .
-.:,.M _
BSBBBBBES mmmm
Si
_^^,^ .

mmmm IPly.y

Pl. 3 ('abovej: tlie CoIo55eum, Rome, a major 50ur o/tfic 'grammar' o/tfie Renaiwance.
Pi. 4 (^top rijrfitj: elevation o/ mi bay o/ the second (lomc) sta^ge o/ the Colosseum.
Pl. 5 ("top le/t, opposite ^Oigt): the same theme, interpreted by Vi^^nola, 1562. In
Vi^jMoIa's \ai\m the interdependenee 0/ elements \s s\xc\\ that no dimension cm he

changed without a^ectinj^ the scale o/the order and thus of the whole design,

Pl. 6 fri^htj; the Arch 0/ Constantme, Rome. Triumphal arches were the source of

many ^grammatical expressions applicable to other purposes. Thus, at S. Andrea,

Mantua, F\. y (opposite page), Alherti, in 1472, applied the scheme of the triumphal

arch to the west front of a church hut replaced the attic storey by a pediment. The
triumphal arch theme is again reflected in the interior, Pl. 8 (opposite page).
Pi. 8: S. Andrea, Mantua. The hay design, Uh the west front (P\. 7), is hased on tlic tniiniphal

arch theme. Alherti here created a \o^\ca\ and cons\stcnt type of classical church.
The Roman circular temple and

four derivatives. Pi. 9; the temple

of Vesta, Rome (the entablature

is missing). Pi. 10: Bramante's

re-creation o/the circular type at S.

Pietro in Montorio, Rome, 1502.

Pi. 13: dome of St Paul's
(Wren, c. 1696-1708), deriving
fromBramantc. Pi. 11: mausoleum
at Castle Howard (Hawhmoor,
1729), another derivative, with
strikin|[ly di^erent }^ropon\ons.

Pi. 12; the RaddiJ'e Camera,

Oxford (G\hhs, 1739-49), a

derivative with elaborated rhvthms.

 IS

Pi. 14: Bramante's House 0/ Raphael, Romc(isi2; not

now existing), a Hi^li Renaissance prototype of palace

facade design, consistinj^ of a (Done) order with coiiplej

coliinins stafidin^^on an arched rusticated podium. Pi. 15:
Sansovino's Palazco Corner, Venice (153-2) which
repeats these elements hut adds an upper storey.

13
 In Palladio's huildin^s, antiquarian learn-

ing and artistic invention join hands. The

Palarro Chiericati, Vicenra (155^-54)5
Pi. 16 fle/tj commands a public space and
the main/ront echoes V'Mrnwns's description

0/ the galleries 0/ a Forum while ^ivin^

direct ex^nss\on to the inward symmetries 0/

a ^reat house. Typical 0/ Palladio is the

jirm articulation 0/ the orders - Dor'xc and

Ionic. Palladio the scholar is represented

a^ain in his rtconsirncuon of Vitruvius's

'E^gyptian Hall', Pi. iSfhelowj, engraved

in the Quattro Libri.

i6

Pi. 17 (ri^hi): the church

of II Rcdcniorc, Venice

(iSjG-gi), by Palladio.
Here the theme 0/

y^lherti's S. Andrea,
Mantua f Pi. 8j/i5
developed with a/tilly

articulated Corinthian

order. The aim 0/

building a Christian

church in Moman terms is

completely /ul/illed.
17
Palladia's authority has hccn accepted in many parts of the world, hut

especially in England. St Paul's, Covcnt Garden, Pi. i9(ri^ht) is a

radical study by Ini^o Jones ^1630) of Palladto's interpretation of the

Tuscan order, with tlie massiye ea\es specifed by Vitruvitis hut \pored

ty most of the theorists. In the i8th enitury, PallacJio dominated

En_^Iisli taste and when Lord Burlinj^ton designed the AssemHy
Rooms at York in 1730, lie made the Ball Room, Pi. 20 (below), an

exact replica o/PallaJio'sreeonstrtietion 0/ the 'Egyptian HaHY?'- 18,

opposite pa^e). The 'Palladian' tradition in England extends as far as

Sir William Chamhers whose Strand front of Somerset House (1780),

Pi. 21 (lower right), has the discipline and clear articulation of Palladia,

though other sources are involved in its composition.

19
 'S^,

23

Dipoicoi
iotfiK&Ktjaai* iisof dDdc>][ii (a

^wm T& .IW. ^'v a

' '
tr^-wt7w \^
'

mw ^
'

^
'?i' i

S^l^
la

VuiMo am uuggKff rijtctto, u come uc de

fi (jui iotco 4&f ihu> .

il(nArtbRiuliu>tMiralataurjrm3rj;iu<i]iliciin#A,&puiofJaurofo4RptninKflio.-fMflJi<

Giulio Romano and tfie art of Rustication . P\.22(ahove): Cortilc deWa CavaWerizza,
Palazzo Ducalc, Mantua (1538-9). Pi. 23 (top ri^ht): Giulio's drawing for the

Mantua (ri^ht): a pagi {rom Serlio s\\omng

Porta Cittadella, (c.
1533J. Pi. 24 flWI.TOILORDlNii iu>-ArtOTEVSTlCO

rusticated masonry.
1NCOMINCI4 IL OOLICO.
various typ of
24
Pi. 2s: Giulio Romano's assault on the grammar of classicism. A section of the courtyard of the Palazzo del Tc, Mantua, IS26-]S-
26

Archilectural frames ty Raphael and Michelangelo. Raphaels window at the Pandolfmi Palace, Florence, Pi. 26, is harmonious High Renaissance
prose, in which every element can he described in Vitruvian terms. The niche by Michelangelo in the Medici Chapel at S. Lorenzo, Florence, Pi. zy,
is a fantasy on the same theme, manifesting an intensity of feeling which is personal. Little here can he described in Vitruvian lan_^ua^e.
 s

Pi. 28(n^ht): one of Michelangelo'

twin palaces on the Capitoline Hill,

Rome(iS47). The ^i ant Corinthian
order embraces two storeys while an
Ionic order ^ivcs expression and
support to the intermediate jloor. This

way of eomhinin^ two orders of

di^erent scales was Michelangelo's
invention and a fruitful legacy to his

successors. The device was used in

Baroque tuilejin_^s like the churches in

Pis. 29 and ^0 fhelowj and re-

appears in the mid-nineteenth eentury

Opera in Paris (Pi. 61).

Two Baroque church facades which draw inspiration

from the Capitoline palaces. The facade 0/ Bernini's
S. Andrea al Qiiirinale (^1658-70), Pi. 29 (far left),

is like a single hay of the Capitoline in whieh the Ionic

order is set in motion, circuiting the oval form of the

church and then swin^in^ out throu_gh the Corinthian

pilasters to make a porch. Borromini's facade of S.
Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, Ro me ('i 665-7j, f*'- 3^,
has two orders (Ionic and Corinthianj superimposed.
But in hoth stages a subsidiary order is related to the

majororderon the Capitoline principle. Bernini'sjiuency

and Borromini's hrohn rhythms are well contrasted in

these two treatments of the same Michelangelesque theme.

30
 Pi. 3], (below): the Chartered Acountants
Institute, Loi^don, by John Belcher, 1890.

Influenced, through Qckerell, by the Castello

Farnese, but otherwise a free improvisation on

themes mostly from Borromini rendered in the

decorative spirit of Art Nouveau. Here the

authority of the Orders is submerged in the

ebullience 0/ clever detailinj^ in which ji^ure-

sculpture fhy Hamo Thorneycro/tJ has a

prominent place.

Pi. 31: ihc CasteWo Farncse,

Caprarola, one of the representa-
tive works of Italian Manner-
ism, was desired by Vi^griola

and huilt in ISS9-64. The ela-

borate modelling and rich and

subtle use of rustication made
this building a favourite model

for architect; in the 19th century.

An interestinj^ clerivative is

C. H. Cockerell's Sun Assur-

ance O^ce at the corner of
Threadneedle Street, London,
1H41, shown (before alterationj
in PI. 32.
32
Pi. 34(le(t): a plate from Vi^nolas Rcgola dclli Cinque Ordini, showing
the entablature of the Castello Farnese (Pi. 31, opposite page). This, with its

vertical hrackets (consoles) standing in the frieze was one of Vignola's most
famous ifivcrttion5. Cockerell used it, with variations, in the Sun Office (Pi. 22,
opposite page) and also in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Pi. 2S (ahove),
1841-5, a huilding in which Italian Mannerist artifice and Greek archeology
are mixed with extraordinary suhtlety.
 PI. s6(helow): ihc Palazzo Provincialc, Lucca
ty Bartolommco Ammanati, 1577, a facade
whose effect is due less to the handling of the orders
than to interesting overall modelUng - sunk
panels, raised panels, raised panels withm sunk
panels and so on. In the lower storey, the purely
sculptural use of the Ionic order is stressed by the
two capitals 'suspended' oxer the haunches
of the
arch.

PI. 37 (above): courtyard of the Palazzo Marino, Milan, ty Galeazzo

Alessi, 1558. Here,
decorative carving in relief takes over almost completely
from the Orders, which are manifested
only in the Doric of the ground floor. In the upper storey is an 'order' of terms (pedestals with
human busts) carrying an impost moulding, but it is scarcely more important than the extra-
vagantly framed panels abo\e or the swags and cartouches in the frieze. This conversion of
architecture into decoration inspired German and Flemish designers like De Vries and Dictterlm
(Pis. 38 and 39, opposite page).

36
Pi. 40 (ri^ht): Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, built by Robert
Smythson, is8o-88. One of the most symmetrical and monumental
of Elizabethan houses, it is based on a plan ^mn by Serlio, while
the ornaments derive lar_gely/rom De Vries. With its ^reat display

o/mullioneci and transomed window; it is still very mueh a Tudor

house, deeorated rather than dominated by the display of Doric,

Ionic and Corinthian i^ilasters.

Pis. }8 and 39(^belowJ are plates from two famous northern hooks of
desi_gns. Pi. ^8 is a detail ofDe Vries' s Corinthian Order, from his

Architectura (^Antwerp, 1577J. Pi. 39 is a plate from the Archi-

tectura of Wendel Dietterlin (Nuremberg, IS94-8), showin_^
terms which may be compared with those in Pi. 27 (^opposite page).

-iTiiiT nraasai
IjE^^^^I

^^^^^hm^^HO^^^^^^^h

39 40
 .0> vA>

41

Pi. 41: the Church of

the Gcsu, Rome, designed
by Vi^nola in 1568 and
executed ty Delia Porta.
A facade of complex
rhythms and subtle modu-
lation, it was imitated,
with every eoneeivahle
variation, throughout

Europe. Two variations

are illustrated here.

Pi. 42: S. Susanna,

43
Rome, desiped hy Carlo
Maderna Pi. 43 (above): the Church of the Val de Grace, Paris,
in 1597. Here,
the theme of the Gesu is
hepn hy Franpis Mansart in 1645 and completed hy
Lemercier. Neither complex and diffuse like the Gesii, nor
rendered in a compact
forceful like S. Susanna, Mansart' s facade balances
way, with decisive
horizontal against vertical, projection against recession, with
vertical stress, fore-

Baroque. delicate precision.

shadowing the
42
44

Pi. 44 (top): St Peter's, Rome, and the Piazza.

Pi. 4$ (ahoxe): Michelangelo's apse of St Peter's with

us 90 ft. hi^h Corinthian pilasters. Pi. 46 (right):

detail of the Piazza desiped l^y Bernini and begun in
1657.
Pi. 47; east from of the Louvre, Paris, Lniilt in 1667-70 by
Le Van, Pcrrault and Le Brun. A complex play of in-
fluences - ancient Roman, Italian anci French - here resolves

Itself into the greatest palace facade in Europe. The idea of

coupled columns standing on a high podium goes hack to

Bramante ("Pi. 14), hut at the Louvre the Corinthian order

is artieulated in the spirit of a Roman temple. The division
of the composition hy centre and end hlocks is speeijieally

French, and so is the sculptural decoration.

Pi. 48: Blenheim Palace, built m iyos-24 by Sn John
Vanhru^h and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Compared with the

solemn Louvre (opj^osite) Blenheim is pieture5(]ue and

mobile - an affair of contra5tin_^ masses through whieh a major
Corinthian ani^ a subsidiary Doric order perform an elaborate
counterpoint. As in the Louvre, many influences are at work.

There are echoes of Palladio, Scamozzi and Bernini; but

behind them all i^ a 5tron^/eelin^/or the romantic palaces of
the Elizabethans.
 PI. 49 fl^/tj: A Prison

Sum ty Piranwi,
puHishecI about 1744.
This/antasy derives /rom
the Baro(]ue theatre hut

is also pro/ounJIy archi-

tectural, a romanik stuciy

in rustication. The onlas

are ahscnt hut the raw
arches are still evocative of

Rome. Piranesi made a

deep impression on the

ima^mation of the mid

1 8th century and prepared
it for new adventures in

classical desip.

Pi. so: old Newgate

Prison, London, hy

George Dance, 1769

(^demolished 1902). The
lan^ua^e of rustication
and the dark vision of

Piranesi introduced in

a huildin_g conceived as

a symbol as well as a

punitive stronghold.

Pi. 51: in the County

Hall, London ("hy Ralph
Knott, 191 ij, Piranesi
is a^ain invoked to aive

monumentality at\d

prestige to the seat of an

administrative hody.
49 51
Pi. S2: the frontispiece

of haulier's Essai sur

Architecture, 1753,
showing the 'rustic cahin

of primitive man, 'the

model upon which all the

ma^nifcences 0/ architecture
have heen ima^ineJ'. The

pi'r/ect huilclin^,

rofb'istin^ mainly of an
ivaaniration of single

load-hearing columns, was

attempted hy Sou^ot m
the Pantheon, Paris, Pis.

S2 and S4, he^un in 1756;

the Jirst _great monument
of Neo-classmsm.
52 54
 '/.-.././//., /','///,/

'

;";%, y " ^ly '^

y '

=r T^
Jk=4i

Pl. 55; a plate /rom Sir William Cfiamberf' treatise 0/

1759, showing the hypotfietieal evolution 0/ the Doric

order from the primitive hut. A deliberate reversion to the

primitive is seen in the pilaster order of Soane's Art

Gallery at Dulwieh fi8ii-i4J, Pl. $6-
Plain geometrical forms and archaeological
purity of detail ]f)er\ade the architecture

of Neo -classicism. The Greek orders

supersede the Roman and are rei^roduced

uncleviatin|[ly in temple i^orticos and

colonnades, as in Thomas Hamilton's
Hij;h School at Edinburgh ^1825),
Pi. 57. The daring geometry of
Ledoux's 'Oikema' in his ideal city

(c. 178s), Pi. 58, still hows to the

temple idea. Schinkel's Altes Museum

m Berlin (1824-8), Pi. 59, and
Smirk's British Museum (182^-47),
Pi. 60, present fac^ades which are temple

peristyles unmodulated from end to end.

M&sMssa;LL4^]f;.^if^ ^^ j<
|
rif.rl' ^^Zi^!^l

60
Pi. 61 (left): the Opera, Paris, t'y Charles Garmer, 1861-75, a
building in which the vocahulary of classicism is hrilliantly

exploiteci. The coupleci eolumns on an arched ifodium are from

Bramante, with a glance at the Louvre colonnade; the secondary
order is Mi(:helan_gelo'5 Capitoline invention; the end pavilions
echo the Louvre of Lescot. The eomhinations are harmonious,
natural to the plan and inventively enriched.

Pi. 62(helow, left): the AEG Turhine Erection Hall, Berlin, a

revolutionary hiiiUin_g by Peter Behrens, 1908, still reflects the

flassieal temple ima_^e with peciiment, colonnades and rustication in

paraif)hrase. Pi. 6} (helow, right): Au^uste Perret's Naval Con-

struction Depot, 1929, uses the device of major and subsidiary
orders, though the 'ori^ers' are never exj^ressed, only implied in the

pattern.
 CYMA RF.CTA

b^^^y^f^f^fTT^CWMA RLVrRSA '/V^AT^^^'-^'^'^.'^'xgN'^'A'^>^

PASCIA

CORNICE

t^IZj ARCIIITU u <J \y u

CYMA RHVERSA
ASIRAC/ ASTRAGAL

J
f.

CAPITAl T
- c
PLINTH
~CYMA M:.VLNSAVAVAVAT^T|^^
r V L M s <yAV AV ATJCT

tt^ctt^St
CYMA RhCTA
^
CYMA RFVLRSA
ASTRAGAL /;i.>4^>afe^;^^^^fi^fe<:^'c^>i^>^>
CAVITTC)
FASCIA

SHAPT .CYMA RFVPRSA

rxy. cJL.r^Zc.^^''-^. ^>.-.'Lo-J>-^v>^V^-X<vy^^Y>:^!lA.^
FASCIA
I " " " " " H Tl .ASTRAGAL

Din OR DADO

PLAN OF CORNICE LOOKING UP

CAVETTO
ASTRAGAL .0^

^^ M-^^M^^ '
.^'^^^ rM^:^-^^^
TORUS
^rwrMHM W W(-W Wf MOm^ fl^ii:^

PLINTH

Tfie Corinthian Order, afur James Gihhs, 1722

ARCHITECTURE
The Classical Language of Architecture
by John Summerson
"The author explains in his usual cool
and drily witty manner the origin and
significance of the Orders, and the in-
fluence of classical disciplines on Ren-
aissance and Baroque architects and
others nearer our own time: Ledoux,
Soane, Cockerell, Perret, Peter Behrens,
even Le Corbusier ... to be read with
care and enjoyment both by students
and amateurs."
Times Literary Sup-
plement (London)
"The entire work is pervaded by Sum-
merson's charming style and seemingly
effortless scholarship ... a means
investigating many cf
architecture's
most subtle aspects."
Architectural
Record
Classical architecture is a visual "lan-
guage" and like any other language has
its own grammatical rules. Classical
buildings as widely spaced in time as a
Roman temple, an Italian Renaissance
palace, and a Regency house all show
an awareness of these rules even if they
vary them, break them, or poetically
contradict them. Sir Christopher Wren
described them as the "Latin" of archi-
tecture, and the analogy is almost exact.
There is the difference, however, that
whereas the learning of Latin is a slow
and difficult business, the language of
classical architecture is relatively sim-
ple. It is still, to a great extent, the mode
book, the author's purpose is to
In this
set out as simply and vividly as possible
the exact grammatical workings of this
architectural language. He is less con-
cerned with its development in Greece
and Rome than with its expansion and
use in the centuries since the Renais-
sance. He explains the vigorous disci-
pline of "the orders" and the scope of
"rustication"; the dramatic deviations of
the Baroque and, in the last chapter, the
relationship between the classical tradi-
tion and the "modern" architecture of
today. The book is intended for anybody
who cares for architecture but more
specifically for students beginning a
course in the history of architecture, to
for whom a guide to the classical rules will
be an essential companion.
Sir John Summerson, one of the most
distinguished contemporary writers on
architecture, is the author of Georgian
London and many other books. He lec-
tures on the history of architecture and
is Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum.
The MIT Press
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

of expression of our urban surround-

ings, since classical architecture was
the common language of the western
world till comparatively recent times.
Anybody to whom architecture makes
a strong appeal has probably already
discovered something of its grammar
for himself.

Cover designed for the MITPress

by Omnigraphics, Inc. SUMCP