PART VI. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE. LESSON I.—GRECIAN AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE. 1. ARCHITECTURE is the art of contriving and constructing buildings; and, when the term is used without a qualifying adjective, the designing and building of civil and religious edifices, such as palaces, mansions, theatres, churches, courts, bridges, etc., is intended; and it is called civil, to distinguish it from naval and military architecture. 2. The architecture of the Greeks, and of their successors the Romans, is generally divided into certain orders, whose names characterize the several modes in which these people constructed the façades,1 or fronts of their temples. Thus the Greeks had three prominent orders or styles of architecture, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian; each of which, as may be seen on the opposite page, may be represented by a single column, together with the base or platform on which it rests, and the roof-like covering which it aids in supporting. 3. Certain definite proportions, supposed to combine the highest degree of grace and beauty, were assigned to each. The crowning superstructure of an order is called the entablature, and is divided into architrave,3 frieze, and cornice (see opposite page). The Doric order, as used by the Greeks, and as seen in its best specimen, the famous Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, at Athens, was without a base; yet the Romans not only gave it a base, but, changing some of its features, they constructed from it another order, called the Tuscan. 4. The Ionic, the second of the Grecian orders, not only has a base, and a capital and entablature differing from the Doric, but the shaft of its column is lighter and more graceful in its proportions. The volutes, or curves of its capital, introduce a new element of beauty. Their design is said by some to have been suggested by the curls of hair on each side of the human face, and by others to have been taken from the curling of the bark of a rude upright post, caused by a crushing weight laid upon it. 5. The third Grecian order is the ornate Corinthian, which is conspicuous for the beauty of its capital, and the exceeding grace and symmetry of all its parts. The invention of this 5 order is attributable to Callimachus, an Athenian sculptor of the age of Pericles, who is said to have had the idea of its capital suggested to him by observing acanthus leaves growing around a basket which had been placed, with some favorite trinkets, upon the grave of a young Corinthian lady—the tops of the leaves, and the stalks which arose among them, having been turned down and formed into slender volutes by a square tile which covered the basket. 6. The Corinthian order was the one most extensively employed by the Romans in their public buildings; but they loaded every member with ornaments unknown to the inventors. They also combined the Ionic and the Corinthian, and formed a fifth order, which they ornamented to profusion, and named the Composite. Its chief distinguishing feature is the capital, which has four volutes, presenting the same face in four directions. (See p. 282.) 7. But to one important feature in architecture the Romans appear to have indubitable claim, and that is the arch. It is generally believed that the ancient Egyptians, Persians, and Hindoos were entirely ignorant of its construction; and it seems probable that the Greeks knew nothing of it previous to the Roman conquest-certain it is they knew not its advantages in architecture. The Romans made great use of it in their temples, in their famous aqueducts, and their triumphal arches; and when we now characterize any architecture as decidedly Roman, reference is had to that feature which is denoted by the perfected arch, or dome. 8. What is known as Gothic architecture sprung up in the Gothic nations of Europe when Christianity was introduced among them, and was generally used in church edifices during the Middle Ages. Based upon the Roman style, it adopted the rounded or semicircular arch as its distinguishing feature, and was at first exceedingly clumsy in form; but as a taste for the fine arts began to show itself, architecture assumed a different and novel aspect; the plain rounded arch gave place to a more pointed form and quaint mouldings; tall spires crowned the structure; windows of stained glass shed gorgeous lights over the profuse decorations of the interior; and the Gothic or Christian style was at length perfected, as scientific in its principles as it was grand and imposing in appearance. (See p. 289.) 1 FA-CADE' (fa-sāde"). 2 EN-TAB'-LA-TURE XRCH'-I-TRĀVE. 4 FRIEZE (freez). LESSON II.-ATHENIAN ARCHITECTURE DURING THE AGE OF PERICLES. BULWER. It [The "Age of Pericles" embraced the latter half of the fifth century before Christ, when Pericles, at the head of Athenian affairs, raised Athens to the summit of her renown. was during this period that most of those famous structures which crowned the Athenian Acropolis, or surrounded its base, were either built or adorned by the direction of Pericles, under the superintendence of the sculptor Phidias The most famous of all these was the Parthenon, which crowned the summit of the Acropolis, and whose ruins are seen in the annexed engraving. The following extract from Bulwer's Athens will convey to the reader a vivid idea of the unrivaled grace and elegance of the Athenian edifices of the time of Pericles. See Historical Part, p. 507.1 MODERN ATHENS.-The above is a south view of Athens in its present state, from the left bank of the Ilissus, showing the Athenian Acropolis in the distance, surmounted by the ruins of the Parthenon in the centre. See also p. 308. 1. THEN rapidly progressed those glorious fabrics which seemed, as Plutarch gracefully expresses it, endowed with the bloom of a perennial youth. Still the houses of private citizens remained simple and unadorned, still the streets were narrow and irregular; and even centuries after, a stranger entering Athens would not at first have recognized the claims of the mistress of Grecian art. But to the homeliness of her common thoroughfares and private mansions, the magnificence of her public edifices now made a dazzling contrast. The Acropolis, that towered above the homes and thorough fares of men-a spot too sacred for human habitation-became, to use a proverbial phrase, "a city of the gods." The citizen was every where to be reminded of the majesty of the STATE his patriotism was to be increased by the pride in her beauty-his taste to be elevated by the spectacle of her splendor. 2. Thus flocked to Athens all who, throughout Greece, were eminent in art. Sculptors and architects vied with each other in adorning the young empress of the seas; then rose the master-pieces of Phidias,1 of Callicrates,2 of Mnesicles, which, either in their broken remains or in the feeble copies of imitators less inspired, still command so intense a wonder, and furnish models so immortal. And if, so to speak, their bones and relics excite our awe and envy, as testifying of a lovelier and grander race, which the deluge of time has swept away, what, in that day, must have been their brilliant effect-unmutilated in their fair proportions-fresh in all their lineaments and hues? For their beauty was not limited to the symmetry of arch and column, nor their materials confined to the marbles of Pentelicus and Paros.5 Even the exterior of the temples glowed with the richest harmony of colors, and was decorated with the purest gold; an atmosphere peculiarly favorable both to the display and the preservation of art, permitted to external pediments and friezes? all the minuteness of ornament, all the brilliancy of colors, such as in the interior of Italian churches may yet be seen; vitiated, in the last, by a gaudy and barbarous taste. 3. Nor did the Athenians spare any cost upon the works that were, like the tombs and tripods of their heroes, to be the monuments of a nation to distant ages, and to transmit the most irrefragable proof "that the power of ancient Greece was not an idle legend." The whole democracy were animated with the passion of Pericles; and when Phidias recommended marble as a cheaper material than ivory for the great statue of Minerva, it was for that reason that ivory was preferred by the unanimous voice of the assembly. Thus, whether it were extravagance or magnificence, the blame in one case, the admiration in another, rests not more with the minister than the populace. It was, indeed, the great characteristic of those works that they were entirely the creation of the people without the people Pericles could not have built a temple or engaged a sculptor. The miracles of that day resulted from the enthusiasm of a population yet young-full of the first ardor for the beautiful-dedicating to the state, as to a mistress, the trophies honorably won or the treasures injuriously extorted-and uniting the resources of a nation with the energy of an individual, because the toil, the cost, were borne by those who succeeded to the enjoyment and arrogated the glory. 1 PHID'-I-AS was a celebrated sculptor of Athens, whom Pericles appointed superintendent of all the public works, both of archi-6 tecture and statuary. 2 CAL-LIO-RA-TES, in conjunction with Icti- 3 MNES'-I-CLES, a celebrated architect, born 5 PA-ROS, an island in the Grecian Archi pelago, famous for the "Parian marble" 7 FRIEZE (freez), that part of the EN-TAB'- IR-REF -RA-GA-BLE, that can not be refuted; indisputable. |