Lectures on Architecture and Painting
Lectures on Architecture and PaintingPREFACE.LECTURE I. ARCHITECTURE.LECTURE II. ARCHITECTURE.ADDENDA TO LECTURES I AND II.LECTURE III. TURNER AND HIS WORKS.LECTURE IV. PRE-RAPHAELITISM.ADDENDA TO THE FOURTH LECTURE.Copyright
Lectures on Architecture and Painting
John Ruskin
PREFACE.
The following Lectures are printed, as far as possible, just
as they were delivered. Here and there a sentence which seemed
obscure has been mended, and the passages which had not been
previously written, have been, of course imperfectly, supplied from
memory. But I am well assured that nothing of any substantial
importance which was said in the lecture-room, is either omitted,
or altered in its signification; with the exception only of a few
sentences struck out from the notice of the works of Turner, in
consequence of the impossibility of engraving the drawings by which
they were illustrated, except at a cost which would have too much
raised the price of the volume. Some elucidatory remarks have,
however, been added at the close of the second and fourth Lectures,
which I hope may be of more use than the passages which I was
obliged to omit.The drawings by which the Lectures on Architecture were
illustrated have been carefully reduced, and well transferred to
wood by Mr. Thurston Thompson. Those which were given in the course
of the notices of schools of painting could not be so transferred,
having been drawn in color; and I have therefore merely had a few
lines, absolutely necessary to make the text intelligible, copied
from engravings.I forgot, in preparing the second Lecture for the press, to
quote a passage from Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," illustrative
of what is said in that lecture (§ 52), respecting the energy of
the mediæval republics. This passage, describing the circumstances
under which the Campanile of the Duomo of Florence was built, is
interesting also as noticing the universality of talent which was
required of architects; and which, as I have asserted in the
Addenda (§ 60), always ought to be required of them. I do not,
however, now regret the omission, as I cannot easily imagine a
better preface to an essay on civil architecture than this simple
statement."In 1332, Giotto was chosen to erect it (the Campanile), on
the ground, avowedly, of theuniversalityof his talents, with the
appointment of Capo Maestro, or chief Architect (chief Master I
should rather write), of the Cathedral and its dependencies, a
yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of
citizenship, under the special understanding that he was not to
quit Florence. His designs being approved of, the republic passed a
decree in the spring of 1334, that the Campanile should be built so
as to exceed in magnificence, height, and excellence of workmanship
whatever in that time had been achieved by the Greeks and Romans in
the time of their utmost power and greatness. The first stone was
laid, accordingly, with great pomp, on the 18th of July following,
and the work prosecuted with vigor, and with such costliness and
utter disregard of expense, that a citizen of Verona, looking on,
exclaimed that the republic was taxing her strength too far, that
the united resources of two great monarchs would be insufficient to
complete it; a criticism which the Signoria resented by confining
him for two months in prison, and afterwards conducting him through
the public treasury, to teach him that the Florentines could build
their whole city of marble, and not one poor steeple only, were
they so inclined."I see that "The Builder," vol. xi. page 690, has been
endeavoring to inspire the citizens of Leeds with some pride of
this kind respecting their town-hall. The pride would be well, but
I sincerely trust that the tower in question may not be built on
the design there proposed. I am sorry to have to write a special
criticism, but it must be remembered that the best works, by the
best men living, are in this age abused without mercy by nameless
critics; and it would be unjust to the public, if those who have
given their names as guarantee for their sincerity never had the
courage to enter a protest against the execution of designs which
appear to them unworthy.Denmark Hill,16th April 1854.
LECTURE I. ARCHITECTURE.
1. I think myself peculiarly happy in being permitted to
address the citizens of Edinburgh on the subject of architecture,
for it is one which, they cannot but feel, interests them nearly.
Of all the cities in the British Islands, Edinburgh is the one
which presents most advantages for the display of a noble building;
and which, on the other hand, sustains most injury in the erection
of a commonplace or unworthy one. You are all proud of your city;
surely you must feel it a duty in some sort to justify your pride;
that is to say, to give yourselves arightto be proud of it. That you were
born under the shadow of its two fantastic mountains,—that you live
where from your room windows you can trace the shores of its
glittering Firth, are no rightful subjects of pride. You did not
raise the mountains, nor shape the shores; and the historical
houses of your Canongate, and the broad battlements of your castle,
reflect honor upon you only through your ancestors. Before you
boast of your city, before even you venture to call ityours, ought you not scrupulously to
weigh the exact share you have had in adding to it or adorning it,
to calculate seriously the influence upon its aspect which the work
of your own hands has exercised? I do not say that, even when you
regard your city in this scrupulous and testing spirit, you have
not considerable ground for exultation. As far as I am acquainted
with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in
simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and
brightness of effect, equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But
yet I am well persuaded that as you traverse those streets, your
feelings of pleasure and pride in them are much complicated with
those which are excited entirely by the surrounding scenery. As you
walk up or down George Street, for instance, do you not look
eagerly for every opening to the north and south, which lets in the
luster of the Firth of Forth, or the rugged outline of the Castle
Rock? Take away the sea-waves, and the dark basalt, and I fear you
would find little to interest you in George Street by itself. Now I
remember a city, more nobly placed even than your Edinburgh, which,
instead of the valley that you have now filled by lines of
railroad, has a broad and rushing river of blue water sweeping
through the heart of it; which, for the dark and solitary rock that
bears your castle, has an amphitheater of cliffs crested with
cypresses and olive; which, for the two masses of Arthur's Seat and
the ranges of the Pentlands, has a chain of blue mountains higher
than the haughtiest peaks of your Highlands; and which, for your
far-away Ben Ledi and Ben More, has the great central chain of the
St. Gothard Alps: and yet, as you go out of the gates, and walk in
the suburban streets of that city—I mean Verona—the eye never seeks
to rest on that external scenery, however gorgeous; it does not
look for the gaps between the houses, as you do here; it may for a
few moments follow the broken line of the great Alpine battlements;
but it is only where they form a background for other battlements,
built by the hand of man. There is no necessity felt to dwell on
the blue river or the burning hills. The heart and eye have enough
to do in the streets of the city itself; they are contented there;
nay, they sometimes turn from the natural scenery, as if too savage
and solitary, to dwell with a deeper interest on the palace walls
that cast their shade upon the streets, and the crowd of towers
that rise out of that shadow into the depth of the
sky.Fig. 1.Fig. 3.Fig. 5.Plate I.2.Thatis a city to be
proud of, indeed; and it is this kind of architectural dignity
which you should aim at, in what you add to Edinburgh or rebuild in
it. For remember, you must either help your scenery or destroy it;
whatever you do has an effect of one kind or the other; it is never
indifferent. But, above all, remember that it is chiefly by
private, not by public, effort that your city must be adorned. It
does not matter how many beautiful public buildings you possess, if
they are not supported by, and in harmony with, the private houses
of the town. Neither the mind nor the eye will accept a new
college, or a new hospital, or a new institution, for a city. It is
the Canongate, and the Princes Street, and the High Street that are
Edinburgh. It is in your own private houses that the real majesty
of Edinburgh must consist; and, what is more, it must be by your
own personal interest that the style of the architecture which
rises around you must be principally guided. Do not think that you
can have good architecture merely by paying for it. It is not by
subscribing liberally for a large building once in forty years that
you can call up architects and inspiration. It is only by active
and sympathetic attention to the domestic and every-day work which
is done for each of you, that you can educate either yourselves to
the feeling, or your builders to the doing, of what is truly
great.3. Well, but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in
architecture: you do not care about it, andcannotcare about it. I know you
cannot. About such architecture as is built nowadays, no mortal
ever did or could care. You do not feel interested inhearingthe same thing over and over
again;—why do you suppose you can feel interested inseeingthe same thing over and over
again, were that thing even the best and most beautiful in the
world? Now, you all know the kind of window which you usually build
in Edinburgh: here is an example of the head of one (fig.1), a massy lintel of a single stone, laid across from side to
side, with bold square-cut jambs—in fact, the simplest form it is
possible to build. It is by no means a bad form; on the contrary,
it is very manly and vigorous, and has a certain dignity in its
utter refusal of ornament. But I cannot say it is entertaining. How
many windows precisely of this form do you suppose there are in the
New Town of Edinburgh? I have not counted them all through the
town, but I counted them this morning along this very Queen Street,
in which your Hall is; and on the one side of that street, there
are of these windows, absolutely similar to this example, and
altogether devoid of any relief by decoration, six hundred and
seventy-eight.[1]And your decorations are
just as monotonous as your simplicities. How many Corinthian and
Doric columns do you think there are in your banks, and
post-offices, institutions, and I know not what else, one exactly
like another?—and yet you expect to be interested! Nay, but, you
will answer me again, we see sunrises and sunsets, and violets and
roses, over and over again, and we do not tire ofthem. What! did you ever see one
sunrise like another? does not God vary His clouds for you every
morning and every night? though, indeed, there is enough in the
disappearing and appearing of the great orb above the rolling of
the world, to interest all of us, one would think, for as many
times as we shall see it; and yet the aspect of it is changed for
us daily. You see violets and roses often, and are not tired of
them. True! but you did not often see two roses alike, or, if you
did, you took care not to put them beside each other in the same
nosegay, for fear your nosegay should be uninteresting; and yet you
think you can put 150,000 square windows side by side in the same
streets, and still be interested by them. Why, if I were to say the
same thing over and over again, for the single hour you are going
to let me talk to you, would you listen to me? and yet you let your
architectsdothe same thing
over and over again for three centuries, and expect to be
interested by their architecture; with a farther disadvantage on
the side of the builder, as compared with the speaker, that my
wasted words would cost you but little, but his wasted stones have
cost you no small part of your incomes.Fig. 2.PLATE II.4. "Well, but," you still think within yourselves, "it is
notrightthat architecture
should be interesting. It is a very grand thing, this architecture,
but essentially unentertaining. It is its duty to be dull, it is
monotonous by law: it cannot be correct and yet
amusing."Believe me, it is not so. All things that are worth doing in
art, are interesting and attractive when they are done. There is no
law of right which consecrates dullness. The proof of a thing's
being right is, that it has power over the heart; that it excites
us, wins us, or helps us. I do not say that it has influence over
all, but it has over a large class, one kind of art being fit for
one class, and another for another; and there is no goodness in art
which is independent of the power of pleasing. Yet, do not mistake
me; I do not mean that there is no such thing as neglect of the
best art, or delight in the worst, just as many men neglect nature,
and feed upon what is artificial and base; but I mean, that all
good art has thecapacity of pleasing, if people will attend to it; that there is no law against
its pleasing; but, on the contrary, something wrong either in the
spectator or the art, when it ceases to please. Now, therefore, if
you feel that your present school of architecture is unattractive
to you, I say there is something wrong, either in the architecture
or in you; and I trust you will not think I mean to flatter you
when I tell you, that the wrong isnotin you, but in the architecture. Look at this for a moment
(fig.2); it is a window actually existing—a window
of an English domestic building[2]—a
window built six hundred years ago. You will not tell me you have
no pleasure in looking at this; or that you could not, by any
possibility, become interested in the art which produced it; or
that, if every window in your streets were of some such form, with
perpetual change in their ornaments, you would pass up and down the
street with as much indifference as now, when your windows are
ofthisform (fig.1). Can you for an instant suppose that the architect was a
greater or wiser man who built this, than he who built that? or
that in the arrangement of these dull and monotonous stones there
is more wit and sense than you can penetrate? Believe me, the wrong
is not in you; you would all like the best things best, if you only
saw them. What is wrong in you is your temper, not your taste; your
patient and trustful temper, which lives in houses whose
architecture it takes for granted, and subscribes to public
edifices from which it derives no enjoyment.5. "Well, but what are we to do?" you will say to me; "we
cannot make architects of ourselves." Pardon me, you can—and you
ought. Architecture is an art for all men to learn, because all are
concerned with it; and it is so simple, that there is no excuse for
not being acquainted with its primary rules, any more than for
ignorance of grammar or of spelling, which are both of them far
more difficult sciences. Far less trouble than is necessary to
learn how to play chess, or whist, or golf, tolerably,—far less
than a school-boy takes to win the meanest prize of the passing
year, would acquaint you with all the main principles of the
construction of a Gothic cathedral, and I believe you would hardly
find the study less amusing. But be that as it may, there are one
or two broad principles which need only be stated to be understood
and accepted; and those I mean to lay before you, with your
permission, before you leave this room.6. You must all, of course, have observed that the principal
distinctions between existing styles of architecture depend on
their methods of roofing any space, as a window or door for
instance, or a space between pillars; that is to say, that the
character of Greek architecture, and of all that is derived from
it, depends on its roofing a space with a single stone laid from
side to side; the character of Roman architecture, and of all
derived from it, depends on its roofing spaces with round arches;
and the character of Gothic architecture depends on its roofing
spaces with pointed arches, or gables. I need not, of course, in
any way follow out for you the mode in which the Greek system of
architecture is derived from the horizontal lintel; but I ought
perhaps to explain, that by Roman architecture I do not mean that
spurious condition of temple form which was nothing more than a
luscious imitation of the Greek; but I mean that architecture in
which the Roman spirit truly manifested itself, the magnificent
vaultings of the aqueduct and the bath, and the colossal heaping of
the rough stones in the arches of the amphitheater; an architecture
full of expression of gigantic power and strength of will, and from
which are directly derived all our most impressive early buildings,
called, as you know, by various antiquaries, Saxon, Norman, or
Romanesque. Now the first point I wish to insist upon is, that the
Greek system, considered merely as a piece of construction, is weak
and barbarous compared with the two others. For instance, in the
case of a large window or door, such asfig.1, if you have at your disposal a single large and long stone
you may indeed roof it in the Greek manner, as you have done here,
with comparative security; but it is always expensive to obtain and
to raise to their place stones of this large size, and in many
places nearly impossible to obtain them at all: and if you have not
such stones, and still insist upon roofing the space in the Greek
way, that is to say, upon having a square window, you must do it by
the miserably feeble adjustment of bricks,fig.3.[3]You are well aware, of course,
that this latter is the usual way in which such windows are now
built in England; you are fortunate enough here in the north to be
able to obtain single stones, and this circumstance alone gives a
considerable degree of grandeur to your buildings. But in all
cases, and however built, you cannot but see in a moment that this
cross bar is weak and imperfect. It may be strong enough for all
immediate intents and purposes, but it is not so strong as it might
be: however well the house is built, it will still not stand so
long as if it had been better constructed; and there is hardly a
day passes but you may see some rent or flaw in bad buildings of
this kind. You may see one whenever you choose, in one of your most
costly, and most ugly buildings, the great church with the dome, at
the end of George Street. I think I never saw a building with a
principal entrance so utterly ghastly and oppressive; and it is as
weak as it is ghastly. The huge horizontal lintel above the door is
already split right through. But you are not aware of a thousandth
part of the evil: the pieces of building that youseeare all carefully done; it is in
the parts that are to be concealed by paint and plaster that the
bad building of the day is thoroughly committed. The main mischief
lies in the strange devices that are used to support the long
horizontal cross beams of our larger apartments and shops, and the
framework of unseen walls; girders and ties of cast iron, and props
and wedges, and laths nailed and bolted together, on marvelously
scientific principles; so scientific, that every now and then, when
some tender reparation is undertaken by the unconscious
householder, the whole house crashes into a heap of ruin, so total,
that the jury which sits on the bodies of the inhabitants cannot
tell what has been the matter with it, and returns a dim verdict of
accidental death.7. Did you read the account of the proceedings at the Crystal
Palace at Sydenham the other day? Some dozen of men crushed up
among the splinters of the scaffolding in an instant, nobody knew
why. All the engineers declare the scaffolding to have been erected
on the best principles,—that the fall of it is as much a mystery as
if it had fallen from heaven, and were all meteoric stones. The
jury go to Sydenham and look at the heap of shattered bolts and
girders, and come back as wise as they went. Accidental death! Yes,
verily; the lives of all those dozen of men had been hanging for
months at the mercy of a flaw in an inch or two of cast iron. Very
accidental indeed! Not the less pitiable. I grant it not to be an
easy thing to raise scaffolding to the height of the Crystal Palace
without incurring some danger, but that is no reason why your
houses should all be nothing but scaffolding. The common system of
support of walls over shops is now nothing but permanent
scaffolding; part of iron, part of wood, part of brick; in its
skeleton state awful to behold; the weight of three or four stories
of wall resting sometimes on two or three pillars of the size of
gas pipes, sometimes on a single cross beam of wood, laid across
from party wall to party wall in the Greek manner. I have a vivid
recollection at this moment of a vast heap of splinters in the
Borough Road, close to St. George's, Southwark, in the road between
my own house and London. I had passed it the day before, a goodly
shop front, and sufficient house above, with a few repairs
undertaken in the shop before opening a new business. The master
and mistress had found it dusty that afternoon, and went out to
tea. When they came back in the evening, they found their whole
house in the form of a heap of bricks blocking the roadway, with a
party of men digging out their cook. But I do not insist on
casualties like these, disgraceful to us as they are, for it is, of
course, perfectly possible to build a perfectly secure house or a
secure window in the Greek manner; but the simple fact is, that in
order to obtain in the cross lintel the same amount of strength
which you can obtain in a pointed arch, you must go to an immensely
greater cost in stone or in labor. Stonehenge is strong enough, but
it takes some trouble to build in the manner of Stonehenge: and
Stonehenge itself is not so strong as an arch of the Colosseum. You
could not raise a circle of four Stonehenges, one over the other,
with safety; and as it is, more of the cross-stones are fallen upon
the plain of Sarum than arches rent away, except by the hand of
man, from the mighty circle of Rome. But I waste words;—your own
common sense must show you in a moment that this is a weak form;
and there is not at this instant a single street in London where
some house could not be pointed out with a flaw running through its
brickwork, and repairs rendered necessary in consequence, merely
owing to the adoption of this bad form; and that our builders know
so well, that in myriads of instances you find them actually
throwing concealed arches above the horizontal lintels to take the
weight off them; and the gabled decoration, at the top of some
Palladian windows, is merely the ornamental form resulting from a
bold device of the old Roman builders to effect the same
purpose.8. But there is a farther reason for our adopting the pointed
arch than its being the strongest form; it is also the most
beautiful form in which a window or door-head can be built. Not the
most beautiful because it is the strongest; but most beautiful,
because its form is one of those which, as we know by its frequent
occurrence in the work of Nature around us, has been appointed by
the Deity to be an everlasting source of pleasure to the human
mind.Fig. 4.Fig. 6.Plate III.Gather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to which the
earth owes its principal beauty. You will find that every one of
its leaves is terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed
arch; and to that form owes its grace and character. I will take,
for instance, a spray of the tree which so gracefully adorns your
Scottish glens and crags—there is no lovelier in the world—the
common ash. Here is a sketch of the clusters of leaves which form
the extremity of one of its young shoots (fig.4); and, by the way, it will furnish us with an interesting
illustration of another error in modern architectural systems. You
know how fond modern architects, like foolish modern politicians,
are of their equalities, and similarities; how necessary they think
it that each part of a building should be like every other part.
Now Nature abhors equality, and similitude, just as much as foolish
men love them. You will find that the ends of the shoots of the ash
are composed of four[4]green stalks
bearing leaves, springing in the form of a cross, if seen from
above, as infig.5, Plate I.,
and at first you will suppose the four arms of the cross are equal.
But look more closely, and you will find that two opposite arms or
stalks have only five leaves each, and the other two have seven; or
else, two have seven, and the other two nine; but always one pair
of stalks has two leaves more than the other pair. Sometimes the
tree gets a little puzzled, and forgets which is to be the longest
stalk, and begins with a stem for seven leaves where it should have
nine, and then recollects itself at the last minute, and puts on
another leaf in a great hurry, and so produces a stalk with eight
leaves; but all this care it takes merely to keep itself out of
equalities; and all its grace and power of pleasing are owing to
its doing so, together with the lovely curves in which its stalks,
thus arranged, spring from the main bough.Fig.5is a plan of their arrangement merely, butfig.4is the way in which you are most likely to see them: and
observe, they spring from the stalkprecisely as a
Gothic vaulted roof springs, each stalk
representing a rib of the roof, and the leaves its crossing stones;
and the beauty of each of those leaves is altogether owing to its
terminating in the Gothic form, the pointed arch. Now do you think
you would have liked your ash trees as well, if Nature had taught
them Greek, and shown them how to grow according to the received
Attic architectural rules of right? I will try you. Here is a
cluster of ash leaves, which I have grown expressly for you on
Greek principles (fig.6, Plate III.) How do you like it?