Goths obtained exclusive dominion in the city under Theodoric. In turn the Goths were expelled,* and succeeded by the Lombards in the year 568 A.c. But the Lombards were not united in one government until the year 590, under the administration of Queen Theodolinda, when the whole of Italy (with the exception of Rome and Ravenna), from Rhegium to the Alps, acknowledged their dominion. Theodolinda embraced the Christian faith, encouraged the arts, endowed numerous ecclesiastical establishments, and caused many edifices of this kind to be built all over the empire. But on account of the incessant state of hostility in which the country had hitherto been engaged, they were acquainted with no other style of building beyond what they had practised in erecting castles, and which they naturally transferred to their domestic architecture and religious edifices, with the same narrow windows, though somewhat higher, and with round arches to the heads.† This mode of construction was so established in Italy under the dominion of the Lombards, that it even predominated after their expulsion by Charlemagne in 774, and afterwards became, with different degrees of improvement, the prevailing style of architecture throughout Italy, Germany, and France, under the appellation of the Lombard style. Bede, Spandani, and others describe the religious buildings of the Lombards as most magnificent; but such splendour could only be comparative with the times, and consisted chiefly in the valuable Catholic ornaments with which they always adorned the interiors. ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. In the thirteenth century the darkness in which Rome and its provinces had been enveloped for nearly seven hundred years began to pass off, the arts and sciences again to dawn, and a new race of geniuses, that of the Italians, to spring up.|| Architecture afterwards, through Bramante, and under the patronage of Pope Julius II., continued to progress; and in the sixteenth century, during the * We shall pass over the architecture of the Goths, because they scarcely made any footing in Rome, and the classical style of architecture was still preferred.—(B.) + Their domestic edifices had generally attached to them lofty round towers, with overhanging conical-pointed turrets; and the towers had numerous small windows, finished with circular-headed arches at the top. The Château or Castle of Chillon, situated between Clarens and Villeneuve, rendered celebrated by Lord Byron in his poem, the "Prisoner of Chillon," is in this style of architecture, and the hanging tower at Pisa is also in the Lombard style. In fact, the Lombard was the prototype of the Norman architecture, which was introduced into England by William of Normandy and his followers, and also with little variation over the greater part of Europe by the feudal barons during the reign of darkness.—(E.) Such was the ignorance of those times, that this French monarch could not even write his own name.-(Hallam's Hist. of the Middle Ages.) § Previous to this period, says Murat, and about the year 1300, speaking of the age of Frederick II., the manners of the Italians were rude: a man and his wife ate off the same plate; there were only forks; no knives, nor more than one or two drinking-cups in a house; candles of wax and tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch during supper; the clothes of men were leather (jerkins) unlined; scarcely any gold or silver was seen on their dress; the common people ate flesh but three times a week, and kept their cold meat for supper; many did not drink wine in summer; a small stock of corn seemed riches; the portions of women were small, their dress even after marriage was simple; the pride of the men was to be well provided with arms and horses, that of the nobility to have lofty towers attached to their dwelling-houses, of which all the cities in Italy were full. (Murat, Dissert. 23.) In the original work of Crescentio, a native of Bologna, who composed a Treatise on Rural Affairs, about the year 1300,-illustrating the customs, and among other things the habitations of the agricultural class, the Italian farmhouse at that period, when built according to his plan, appears to have been somewhat commodious both in size and arrangement, and thatched; whereas at a later period they had tiled roofs. (Crescentius in Commodum Ruralium. Lovanicæ, absque anno, tom. iii. p. 127.) This old edition, containing many illuminations, or coarse wooden cuts, has been translated into French by M. de Palmy. In the Italian houses of the gentry the ground-floor was devoted to the servants, the upper part to the family; and there was the same arrangement in France. About the year 1388 or 1400 an Academy was formed at Florence, where there were great and noble men, of mind as well as genius, who by inspecting those magnificent and classic ruins of their predecessors which had escaped the fury of the Goths and Vandals, once more restored the arts; and amongst the foremost of these great men where the Medici family, and Arnolfo and Lorentio Ghiberto; but Filippo Brunelleschi, born in 1377, is generally considered as the restorer of ancient architecture, as well as the founder of the modern classical style of building. After having prepared his mind by studying the writings of ancient authors and the ruins of Roman edifices, which he carefully measured, he discovered the proportions of the orders, and recognizing the simple gracefulness of the ancients, founded a system upon lasting principles, whereby pontificate of Leo X., flourished those great masters Michael Angelo, Vignolo, Palladio, Scammozzo, Serlio, whose palaces and villas are, and will long continue to be, the admiration of connaisseurs and men of taste. To the unremitted assiduity of these distinguished artists in the study of the Roman edifices, and to their invaluable publications, the world has been chiefly indebted for the elucidation of the principles of ancient art, particularly Palladio.* The Italians had materials in abundance, with eligible sites formed by nature, and ancient models at Rome were presented on every side. In such circumstances, and with such guides, who would not have expected to have seen architecture again carried to the highest perfection, and even the ideal, fair, and beautiful, so long conceived in theory, at length realized in practice? But such was not the result. Architects began to imagine that with so many advantages it would be mean to copy, and easy to surpass antiquity; they therefore departed from the ancient system of having public edifices of a single story in height, and began by placing column over column upon all occasions.† The Italians also sought in the luxuriancy of an irregular imagination, forms more fair, combinations more majestic, and even, as they thought, proportions more beautiful than the ancients could have beheld. They all made the attempt and have failed, and by this failure proved that in the same proportion as we follow or abandon the ancients, we approach or deviate from perfection.‡ It must be acknowledged, however-notwithstanding this disapprobation which we have ventured to pass upon Italian architecture, though based upon that of the ancients-that the fifteenth century has produced edifices inferior only to the models of antiquity,§ and still sufficiently great and numerous to render Rome the first of cities. The grandeur that results from these modern he was enabled to construct with beauty and solidity, and hence a general taste for the principles of the art began to show itself among the Italians. Leo Baptista Alberti, born A.D. 1398, was the first modern author who afterwards published a treatise on architecture, from which he has acquired great reputation, and is justly styled the modern Vitruvius. Following the steps of Brunelleschi, he reformed by his precepts and designs many of the abusive and barbarous practices which then prevailed among his countrymen.—(B.) * Palladio was born in 1518, and died in 1580; he has the exclusive glory of having collected from the writings and ancient edifices a canon of symmetry and proportion, and reducing Roman architecture under all its forms to a regular and complete system, combining them anew: there are in all the edifices erected under the direction or on the immediate plans of Palladio, a noble simplicity, and beauty, symmetry, and majesty, that abundantly compensate petty defects, and furnish all the ends of architecture by producing greatness of manner and elegance of design.-(R.) + The ancients in their classical architecture, with a single exception, never placed a column over a column; if height was required the columns were made loftier, by which a sublime grandeur was produced. In our country mansions, wherever the porticos are carried only to the height of one story, they have always a poor and mean appearance when compared with those porticos which are carried up to the height of the building, surmounted with a pediment. This division of columns has been condemned in the front of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, but I think unjustly, as it is this division of stories that constitutes the Italian style, to which character the building belongs.—(B.) In modern Rome the darling fault of architecture is excessive ornament, an excess more licentious in the sacred edifices than in the profane, and in sacred buildings more licentious in the most sacred part. Everywhere you see ornament making great edifices look little by subdividing their general surfaces into such a multitude of members as prevents the eye from recombining them. Sometimes indeed these decorations may favour neighbouring defects, but unfortunately the most fantastical practitioners have generally had the greatest success, for of all the modern architects at Rome, few have had more employment than the absurd Borromini. This man seems to have laid it down as a rule, that a straight line is a mark of deformity, and, of course, that the grand study of an architect is to avoid it upon all occasions. Hence cornices and pediments for ever broken, angles and curves in frequent succession, numerous little niches, twisted pillars, columns alternately divided by square blocks, perverted capitals, and all the freaks of a delirious imagination playing with the principle and materials of architecture. (Forsyth's Italy.) As it is always easier to imitate extravagance than simplicity in design, so have the nobler and more graceful studies of Bramante been neglected, and the despised fashionable deformities of Borromini been very generally copied, till it has affected the source of taste at Rome, and at last spread over Italy, Germany, and even many parts of England, which may be seen in the works of some of our provincial architects of the present day.-(B.) § Lanzi observes, that when the taste for magnificent edifices revived throughout Italy in the fifteenth century, that many public buildings and ducal palaces which still remain at Milan, Mantua, and Venice, in Urbino, Rimini, Pesaro, and Ferrara, were executed about this period; besides those buildings in Florence and Rome where magnificence contended with elegance. (Roscoe's Lanzi, vi. p. 104.) Previous to this period, in the cities of Italy the houses had glass windows and iron doors.(Æneas Sylvius. De Moribus Germanorum, p. 719.) structures, combined with the majesty of the ancient monuments, induced a French writer* to observe, that Rome was a map of the world in rilievo, presenting to the eye the united wonders of Egypt and of Greece, of the Roman, Macedonian, and Persian empires of the world, ancient and modern. "Omnia Romanæ cedent miracula terræ, But the glory of man, although consigned to marble and bronze, is doomed to perish; even those noble architectural features, which it was believed would last for ever and confer immortal honour and grandeur on the city of Rome, fondly entitled the Eternal, have all in their season flourished and faded away. Of the five eras of architecture in Rome, four have already departed, and left vast and shapeless heaps of ruin to mark the spot where these lofty structures, and not a few of its noblest temples, already forsaken and neglected, once stood. A century or two will probably strew the seven hills with its splendid embellishments, and the future traveller may have to admire and to deplore the ruins of the Medicean as of the Augustan age, the fragments of Pontifical as of Imperial grandeur. CONCLUSION. We have now traced the history of domestic architecture in England from its origin to the present period, and briefly noticed its rise, progress, and decline in those countries most renowned for learning, arts, and empire. It therefore only remains to be observed to those whose genius leads them to the sublime study of architecture, that they will find it an interesting as well as useful subject, and be led to see the great distinction there existed between the edifices of necessity and those of cultivated art; and that "every change in the dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, comfort, and magnificence.' However, while we stand amazed at the magnificent piles which have been raised by human art, we cannot help regretting the want of a fuller source of information on the subject; but the reader will have observed what changes and vicissitudes this art has undergone; what revolutions of opposing fates have occurred in the world; how many populous cities have escaped even the notice of history as to their domestic architecture; how many cities that were once the nursery of the arts and seats of learning, the residence of powerful and successive kings, are now laid prostrate and forlorn; while others have been entirely swept away by the hand of time, and not even their names transmitted to the present generation! We close this portion of our work in the beautiful and appropriate words of Vida: INTRODUCTION. THE QUALIFICATIONS REQUIRED TO FORM AN ARCHITECT. "To make an architect, there is required from nature as great and as true a genius as to make a consummate poet; and in the same manner, what is given by nature must be subjected and controlled by rules."-REYNOLDS. FOR the guidance of those gentlemen who may be about to build, we shall here point out the difference that exists between the architect and the mere builder, it having become a practice among the latter class of the present day to assume the title of architect, without possessing any of the necessary qualifications except that of making mechanical drawings. The duties of a builder and those of an architect are altogether distinct, the difference being as great as between those of a physician and an apothecary, or a counsellor and an attorney. The builder is a contractor for work; the architect a designer, planner, and director of that work, and an auditor of the accounts. But if both be united in the same individual, he cannot rank as an architect.* Who is to check him? His work is surveyed only by himself, and in his charges his employer is entirely at his mercy. Even under a contract, when the specification has been drawn by himself, which is generally the case, he can easily break it if he pleases, or manage matters to his own advantage by employing inferior materials of less value; or if so introduced at first into the specification, the employer is not a sufficient judge of their qualities and durability. But, on the other hand, there are some gentlemen who, at the outset, are very desirous of showing their taste and learning in architecture, and who confide too much in their own notions, though, at the conclusion of their undertaking, they often find themselves to have been mistaken, and to have involved themselves in heavy expenses.† In questions relating to any profession or calling, it is always referred to and decided upon by persons following that profession alone. We trust our health to a physician, and our property with a lawyer; but in architecture every man considers himself competent to judge, without either previous study or experience, nay, often without any consideration at all; as if to excel in architecture required neither mental acquirements nor studious reflection, or as if architects were merely inspired idiots, and their works the result of momentary impulse or chance. The royal architects in the reign of Henry VIII. were obliged to wear liveries, which custom continued as late as the reign of Charles I. Inigo Jones on his appointment as architect to the Board of Works, in the reign of James I., wore this badge.-(From a manuscript in the British Museum.) + In every period of our history we have had some of these experimentalists. Harrison the historian, who lived in the reign of Elizabeth, records some of their feats and penalties. "It is a world," says he, " to see moreouer how diuerse men being bent to building doo dailie imagine new deuises of their owne to guide their workmen withall. In the proceeding of their works how they set up, how they pull'd downe, how they inlarge, how they restreine, how they ad to, how they take from, whereby their heads are neuer idle, their purses neuer shut, nor their books of account neuer made perfect.” T Till this distinction is made, gentlemen must naturally expect to be drawn into those ruinous expenses in which they are so frequently involved. Neither should the young architect commence his profession until he is well grounded in the sciences he must be a proficient both in the theory and in the practical part, which will require a series of years, or he will bring disgrace on himself, and fail in establishing his reputation as an architect either for public or private works.* An architect is as necessary to the public service as the physician, and he should be equally learned in his own profession: not so the builder, between the architect and him there is no comparison; the first works with his mind, the latter with his hands; the work of one is the operation of genius; that of the other is only mechanical.† The architect, says Vitruvius, should not only have ingenuity but application; for being without industry, a fertile imagination never arrives at perfection. I shall not, however, he adds, here rank the builder with the architect; but call him an architect who from his earliest youth, by long and extensive study of the ancients, has acquired abilities to design, and judgment to execute great and useful works, and which edifices can be designed only by men of science and erudition. Further, he should, says he, be not only a draftsman, but understand geometry, arithmetic, and optics; be a good historian and natural philosopher; possessed of a great and enterprising mind, equitable, trustworthy, and totally free from avarice, without which it would be impossible to discharge the duties of his station with due propriety: ever disinterested, he should be less solicitous of acquiring riches than honour and fame by his profession. Alberti, a celebrated Italian writer, makes the same observation, but further insists on the necessity of an architect having a knowledge of geology and botany, for the purpose of enabling him to understand the nature of his materials, such as the qualities and durability of stones of different kinds, and of timber, minerals, calcined limes, cements, sands, loams, the qualities of water, and the nature and temperature of air, with the species and properties of the various trees which decorate the grounds around the mansion. Vignolo follows in the same strain, and tells us it is highly necessary for the architect to know geometry, to enable him to develope the various figures which occur in a building, and to delineate regular and irregular plans; to be a good mathematician, to furnish himself with reasons for the capacity of supporting weights (called stereometry), which will often require geometrical and mathematical constructions, to explain them to the operative mechanic, and enable him to describe by a scale the ichnography, or plan for the internal arrangement, and the external part of the fabric, called orthography or elevation, and the various internal sections; all of which are founded on the principles of geometry. He must also understand optics and perspective, to ascertain what part of his edifice will appear, and what recede or fall back, and be lost to the eye when his designs are erected, and also to be enabled to form a picture of the whole edifice before the commencement as if really existing; also a knowledge of landscape-painting, so that the rural mansion or country villa may harmonize with the surrounding scenery. He says further, that he must have such an idea of * In a MS. in the British Museum on architecture, written by John Aheron, dated 1751, in his preface is the following passage: "Before I begin or enter on the body of the work, I shall take into consideration the vast number of gentlemen who greatly suffer through the ignorance of unskilful pretenders to architecture, by being insensibly led into such vast expenses as not only to affect their fortunes and estates, but even disable them from finishing what they began."- (MS. King's Library.) +"Genius," says Locke, "is derived from those innate ideas which nature has implanted in some men; knowledge is acquired by refining and improving that genius." A refined taste in architecture was innate in the ancient Greeks, whose works we so much admire, but the Romans acquired their knowledge from observation and mental cultivation.--(A.) |