Part 16 (1/2)
n'est rose sans epine_; it has also only a ground floor and two storeys, with three s in each, separated by rich floork, and with balconies, supported, the central one by an eagle with open wings, the lateral ones by winged griffins standing on cornucopiae The idea that a house ether of rowth, and is parallel with the idea, that no picture can be historical, except of a size ader than life
I would have, then, our ordinary dwelling-houses built to last, and built to be lovely; as rich and full of pleasantness as ree of likeness to each other in style and manner, I will say presently, under another head;[164] but, at all events, with such differences as ht suit and express each man's character and occupation, and partly his history This right over the house, I conceive, belongs to its first builder, and is to be respected by his children; and it would be well that blank stones should be left in places, to be inscribed with a su thus the habitation into a kind of , into ood custo sorace of God's per-place, in such sords as s I have taken thereen pastures which descend frolacier:--
Mit herzlichem Vertrauen Hat Johannes Mooter und Maria Rubi Dieses Haus bauen lassen
Der liebe Gott woll uns bewahren Vor alleen lassen stehn Auf der Reise durch diese Jammerzeit Nach dem himmlischen Paradiese, Wo alle Frommen wohnen, Da wird Gott sie belohnen Mil der Friedenskrone Zu alle Ewigkeit[165]
In public buildings the historical purpose should be still es of Gothic architecture,--I use the word Gothic in the most extended sense as broadly opposed to classical,--that it adether unlimited Its minute and multitudinous sculptural decorations afford , either symbolically or literally, all that need be known of national feeling or achievement More decoration will, indeed, be usually required than can take so elevated a character; and htful periods, has been left to the freedom of fancy, or suffered to consist ofor syenerally unwise, even in e of variety which the spirit of Gothic architecture admits; much more in i-courses, as of course in all confessed has-reliefs Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without reat civic buildings, without some intellectual intention Actual representation of history has in modern times been checked by a difficulty, eable costuinative treatment, and frank use of symbols, all such obstacles ree necessary to produce sculpture in itself satisfactory, but at all events so as to enable it to becorand and expressive element of architectural coement of the capitals of the ducal palace at Venice
History, as such, was indeed entrusted to the painters of its interior, but every capital of its arcades was filled with e one, the corner stone of the whole, next the entrance, was devoted to the symbolization of Abstract Justice; above it is a sculpture of the Judgment of Solomon, remarkable for a beautiful subjection in its treatures, if the subject had been entirely composed of thele, and dith; and therefore in the midst of them, entirely without relation to the mother, there rises the ribbed trunk of a massy tree, which supports and continues the shaft of the angle, and whose leaves above overshadow and enrich the whole The capital below bears a justice to the , Aristotle ”che die legge,”
and one or two other subjects now unintelligible from decay The capitals next in order represent the virtues and vices in succession, as preservative or destructive of national peace and power, concluding with Faith, with the inscription ”Fides optiure is seen on the opposite side of the capital, worshi+pping the sun After these, one or two capitals are fancifully decorated with birds, and then co, first the various fruits, then the national costumes, and then the animals of the various countries subject to Venetian rule
Now, not to speak of any ine our own India House adorned in this way, by historical or symbolical sculpture: massively built in the first place; then chased with has-reliefs of our Indian battles, and fretted with carvings of Oriental foliage, or inlaid with Oriental stones; and the roups of Indian life and landscape, and pro the phantasms of Hindoo worshi+p in their subjection to the Cross Would not one such work be better than a thousand histories? If, however, we have not the invention necessary for such efforts, or if, which is probably one of the most noble excuses we can offer for our deficiency in suchabout ourselves, even in marble, than the Continental nations, at least we have no excuse for any want of care in the points which insure the building's endurance And as this question is one of great interest in its relations to the choice of various modes of decoration, it will be necessary to enter into it at soards and purposes of men in eneration They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for its praise: they edBut all this is ard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers ould fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority ould gladly support our presently disputed claims The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present econo forests that our descendantscities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place anized motives of exertion Yet these are not the less our duties; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the coe God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail It belongs as much to those who are to come after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation, as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath And this the more, because it is one of the appointed conditions of the labour ofand the harvest, is the fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of e have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure of our success Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which human voice is ever sent forth, there is none frorave
Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity
Every hunificence, by its regard to things that are to coht, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test
Therefore, e build, let us think that we build for ever Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that ht substance of thereatest glory of a building is not in its stones, nor in its gold Its glory is in its Age, and in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy, nay, even of approval or conde been washed by the passing waves of huainst men, in their quiet contrast with the transitional character of all things, in the strength which, through the lapse of seasons and ti of the face of the earth, and of the limits of the sea, maintains its sculptured shapeliness for a ties with each other, and half constitutes the identity, as it concentrates the syolden stain of tiht, and colour, and preciousness of architecture; and it is not until a building has assumed this character, till it has been entrusted with the fame, and hallowed by the deeds of , and its pillars rise out of the shadows of death, that its existence,as it is than that of the natural objects of the world around it, can be gifted with even so e and of life
For that period, then, we ht of present co to follow such portions of character as hest perfection of which they are capable, even although we may know that in the course of years such detailscare that for work of this kind we sacrifice no enduring quality, and that the building shall not depend for its i that is perishable This would, indeed, be the law of good coereater importance than the treatment of the smaller; but in architecture there is much in that very treatment which is skilful or otherwise in proportion to its just regard to the probable effects of time: and (which is still more to be considered) there is a beauty in those effects the else can replace, and which it is our wisdoh, hitherto, we have been speaking of the sentie only, there is an actual beauty in the reat as to have beco certain schools of art, and to have impressed upon those schools the character usually and loosely expressed by the term ”picturesque”
Now, to return to our immediate subject, it so happens that, in architecture, the superinduced and accidental beauty is inal character, and the picturesque is therefore sought in ruin, and supposed to consist in decay Whereas, even when so sought, it consists in the etation, which assimilate the architecture with the work of Nature, and bestow upon it those circumstances of colour and form which are universally beloved by the eye of man So far as this is done, to the extinction of the true characters of the architecture, it is picturesque, and the artist who looks to the ste out infreedom the debased sculptor's choice of the hair instead of the countenance But so far as it can be rendered consistent with the inherent character, the picturesque or extraneous sublimity of architecture has just this of nobler function in it than that of any other object whatsoever, that it is an exponent of age, of that in which, as has been said, the greatest glory of the building consists; and, therefore, the external signs of this glory, having power and purpose greater than any belonging to theirpure and essential characters; so essential tocannot be considered as in its prime until four or five centuries have passed over it; and that the entire choice and arrangement of its details should have reference to their appearance after that period, so that none should be admitted which would suffer , or the radation which the lapse of such a period would necessitate
It is not my purpose to enter into any of the questions which the application of this principle involves They are of too great interest and complexity to be even touched upon within my present limits, but this is broadly to be noticed, that those styles of architecture which are picturesque in the sense above explained with respect to sculpture, that is to say, whose decoration depends on the arrangement of points of shade rather than on purity of outline, do not suffer, but coain in richness of effect when their details are partly worn away; hence such styles, pre-eminently that of French Gothic, should always be adopted when the radation, as brick, sandstone, or soft liree dependent on purity of line, as the Italian Gothic,ranite, serpentine, or crystalline marbles There can be no doubt that the nature of the accessible materials influenced the formation of both styles; and it should still more authoritatively deter to th the second head of duty of which I have above spoken; the preservation of the architecture we possess: but a feords iven, as especially necessary in modern times Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of publicof the word _restoration_ understood Itcan suffer: a destruction out of which no reathered: a destruction acco destroyed Do not let us deceive ourselves in this important matter; it is _impossible_, as i that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture That which I have above insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workiven by another ti; but the spirit of the dead workman cannot be sumhts And as for direct and si can there be of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down? The whole finish of the as in the half inch that is gone; if you attempt to restore that finish, you do it conjecturally; if you copy what is left, granting fidelity to be possible (and what care, or watchfulness, or cost can secure it,) how is the neork better than the old? There was yet in the old _soestion of what it had been, and of what it had lost; soht There can be none in the brute hardness of the new carving Look at the aniiven in Plate XIV, as an instance of living work, and suppose the s of the scales and hair once worn away, or the wrinkles of the brows, and who shall ever restore theain and again--seen it on the Baptistery of Pisa, seen it on the Casa d'Oro at Venice, seen it on the Cathedral of Lisieux,) is to dash the old work to pieces; the second is usually to put up the cheapest and basest imitation which can escape detection, but in all cases, however careful, and however laboured, an imitation still, a cold model of such parts as _can_ be modelled, with conjectural supplements; and my experience has as yet furnished me with only one instance, that of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, in which even this, the utree of fidelity which is possible, has been attained, or even attempted[166]
Do not let us talk then of restoration The thing is a Lie fro as you may of a corpse, and your model may have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast e I neither see nor care: but the old building is destroyed, and that more totally and mercilessly than if it had sunk into a heap of dust, or leaned out of desolated Nineveh than ever will be out of re-built Milan But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms It is a necessity for destruction Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place And look that necessity in the face before it comes, and you may prevent it The principle of modern times, (a principle which, I believe, at least in France, to be _systematically acted on by the masons_, in order to find themselves work, as the abbey of St Ouen was pulled down by the rants,) is to neglect buildings first, and restore them afterwards Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them A few sheets of lead put in time upon the roof, a few dead leaves and sticks swept in time out of a water-course, will save both roof and walls frouard it as best you may, and at _any_ cost, from every influence of dilapidation Count its stones as you would jewels of a crown; set watches about it as if at the gates of a besieged city; bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with tihtliness of the aid: better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly, and reverently, and continually, and eneration will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow Its evil day must come at last; but let it co and false substitute deprive it of the funeral offices of e it is vain to speak; my words will not reach those who commit them, and yet, be it heard or not, I ain no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past tiht whatever to touch the partly to those who built theenerations of ht in them: that which they laboured for, the praise of achieve, or whatsoever else it s they intended to be perht to obliterate What we have ourselves built, we are at liberty to thron; but what other th and wealth and life to accoht over does not pass aith their death; still less is the right to the use of what they have left vested in us only It belongs to all their successors It may hereafter be a subject of sorrow, or a cause of injury, to millions, that we have consulted our present convenience by casting down such buildings as we choose to dispense with That sorrow, that loss, we have no right to inflict Did the cathedral of Avranches[167] belong to the mob who destroyed it, any more than it did to us, alk in sorrow to and fro over its foundation? Neither does any building whatever belong to those mobs who do violence to it For a ed, or in deliberate folly; whether countless, or sitting in co causelessly are a mob, and Architecture is always destroyed causelessly A fair building is necessarily worth the ground it stands upon, and will be so until Central Africa and America shall have become as populous as Middlesex: nor is any cause whatever valid as a ground for its destruction If ever valid, certainly not nohen the place both of the past and future is too much usurped in our minds by the restless and discontented present The very quietness of nature is gradually withdrawn froed travel were subjected to an influence, fro fields, more effectual than known or confessed, now bear with the the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds upon the city gates The only influence which can in any wise _there_ take the place of that of the woods and fields, is the power of ancient Architecture Do not part with it for the sake of the foroodly street nor opened quay The pride of a city is not in these Leave them to the crowd; but remember that there will surely be some within the circuit of the disquieted walls ould ask for some other spots than these wherein to walk; for soht familiarly: like him[168] who sat so often where the sun struck from the west to watch the lines of the dome of Florence drawn on the deep sky, or like those, his Hosts, who could bear daily to behold, from their palace chambers, the places where their fathers lay at rest, at theof the dark streets of Verona
[162] May-day processions in honour of the Virgin
[163] _Genesis_ xi, 4
[164] See pp 225 ff
[165] In heartfelt trust Johannes Mooter and Maria Rubi had this house erected May dear God shi+eld us fro rest upon it during the journey through this wretched life up to heavenly Paradise where the pious dwell There will God reward them with the Crown of Peace to all eternity
[166] Baptistery of Pisa, circular, of h, embellished with numerous columns, is a notable work of the twelfth century The pulpit is a masterpiece of Nicola Pisano Casa d'Oro at Venice is noted for its elegance It was built in the fourteenth century The Cathedral of Lisieux dates chiefly from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and contains many works of art The Palais de Justice is of the fifteenth century It was built for the Parliament of the Province
[167] This cathedral, destroyed in 1799, was one of the most beautiful in all Normandy