PART V: THE ARGUMENT OF DESIGN
EXEMPLIFIED: HISTORIES
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: GREEK ARCHITECTS AND
THE SCIENCE OF WASTE
Introduction
Garbett's
evaluation of the history of architecture proceeds against the background of
his normative ideas and takes up the whole of the second part of the Treatise. In this chapter which is
specifically concerned with the fifth chapter of the Treatise, we shall investigate one or two themes in his analysis of
Greek architecture, beginning with his attitude towards Vitruvius. The next
chapter is concerned with an evaluation of Gothic architecture and with the
projection of Garbett's theories into a prophecy concerning the future.
The obscurity of Vitruvius
Edward Lacy Garbett was
not sympathetic to Vitruvius.
[1]
But that is not saying very much. Vitruvianism has always been characterised by
a paradox
[2]
The health of Vitruvianism as a creed is fed by the obscurity and ambiguity of
the text on which it is based. It is the paradox of the bible. There are many
levels of meaning, some of which are not intended but extracted. Some
interpreters are even able to see nothing, or mere chaos.
Garbett's argument is familiar.
Vitruvius like Aristotle, were fine for their times but had become obsolete and
retrogressive in the face of nineteenth century science. The comparison with Aristotle is interesting in that
Vitruvius' domination of architectural theory since the Renaissance was felt to
be in every sense as complete and restrictive as Aristotle's domination of
philosophical speculation before the Renaissance. Both had outstayed their
welcome. As a result some theorists, including Garbett, felt compelled to cast
Vitruvius as the enemy of truth, if only to be able to break away from his
insistent hold. Garbett's criticism was particularly derisive when referring to
Vitruvius' search for what he called hidden
sympathies and aesthetic analogies in which Vitruvius revealed his
affiliation to a world-view which, with Garbett's newly found certainties, had
become a burden. Garbett's main objective in the Treatise was to
create a scientific setting for his aesthetics of architecture.
[3] Vitruvius'
ideas concerning proportion, for example, were dismissed as illustrative of the
fact that the assumptions upon which Vitruvius constructed his prescriptions,
were dismissed as infantile while the various harmonies, correspondences and
analogies to which Garbett adhered were based on the immovably solid and mature
scientific foundations of the early nineteenth century. This was a time when
the unceasing torrent of discoveries encouraged a view that the secrets of the
world would soon surrender to the probes of Herschel and others.
Garbett's dismissive treatment of
Vitruvius, when seen in relation to the latter's central role in Garbett's
definition of good architecture, and therefore in the whole of the normative
part of the Treatise, is problematic
and contradictory. The only way to explain it is to propose that the Vitruvius
Garbett dismisses is not the Vitruvius who formulated the conditions for
well-building in terms of the trinity firmitas, utilitas and venustas. This
point is emphasised by the fact that Garbett quotes Wotton rather than
Vitruvius when referring to that trinity.
In fact the brilliantly conceived Trinity, whether it was his or not,
has often been judged to be not really Vitruvian because of its universality.
That is like saying that Newton's laws of gravity are not his because we are
all subject to them. The point is that that which is universally accepted has
been removed from the domain of Vitruvius precisely because there are other
aspects to his theory which are, or which have been, so hotly contested; issues
such as the meaning of the six criteria for good architecture, his lack of national unity, his theories of origins, his
analogies of the human body etc. It is the Vitruvius directly contradicting
Garbett's own theories, whom he rejects. The Vitruvius who thinks differently
with regard to issues such as the origin and rational of the Doric order and the
authenticity of the timber hut as the paradigm for the Greek
temple.
[4]
This seems rather unfair as Vitruvius does not actually offer the primitive hut
as a model, while his theory on the origin of Doric is harmless to Garbett own
ideas. In fact, the Vitruvius Garbett dismisses is not the Vitruvius of the De architectura libri decem, but the one
covered over with layers of Vitruvianism. Maybe Garbett had not even read
Vitruvius properly. This would certainly help to explain his accusation against
Vitruvius of promoting musical proportions in architecture, which he in fact
does not. The idea of an original architecture was similarly not systematised
into a corpus of prescriptions until Laugier, Chambers and Milizia. Vitruvius
was, ironically like Garbett, very much more impressed with the height of Greek
civilisation and its buildings and not so much with its prototypes. Therefore,
one has to conclude that Garbett's reaction was not so much directed against
Vitruvius himself, but more against the latter's extensive and inventive nachleben.
But there is another reason why
Garbett needed to reject Vitruvius on the basis of these points of detail.
Garbett emphatically did not pose as the inventor of a new knowledge. The idea
of invention could have no place in an aesthetic system which held up the Greek
and Gothic architects as pure rationalists who based themselves on the
necessary interpretation of the arcane language of nature. Furthermore, the
Greeks and the Goths played an important role in the historical justification
of Garbett's own principles. Garbett
saw himself as an intellectual archaeologist, as the discoverer of an old
knowledge, a lost knowledge. It was not his inventive powers, but specifically
his perspicuity which led him to improve upon the Greeks and the Goths, by
realigning their knowledge along the latest developments of modern science. To
do this he had to go to much trouble to discredit Vitruvius as the true source
of ancient architectural theory. If Vitruvius was allowed to represent the
voice of ancient architecture generally, then that automatically discredited
Garbett on a number of points which he felt to be central to his thesis.
To discredit Vitruvius
was made easy by a long tradition, starting with Alberti. Most detractors
pointed out that Vitruvius' language was confusing and obscure.
[5]
As a result of this the obscurity of Vitruvius had a huge creative impact on
the development of architectural theory. The reader was felt to be as
responsible as the author for the generation of meaning in the specifically
normative parts of De architectura libri
decem. That is why the various editions of Vitruvius' text are so fully
annotated. The influence of Vitruvius resides within the tension between the
lack of clarity of his prose and the apparent self-evidence and utility of his
divisions and categories. This created a situation where one could be a silent
Vitruvian while being a vociferous anti-Vitruvian. Such a self-reflecting
mutation was Garbett.
The status of Vitruvius as the
father of Western architectural theory
obliged every theorist to formulate an opinion with regard to his
theories. All Western architectural theory assembles around- and is perceived to
begin with Vitruvius, even though it would perhaps go too far to describe the
development of architectural theory as a mere footnote to De Architectura.
The division between the
pro-Vitruvians and anti-Vitruvians referred more than anything to different
ways of bypassing the problem of Vitruvius' obscurity. Acknowledging the danger
of over-simplification on could say that the pro's edited Vitruvius and simply
by-passed the problems of semantics by reading their own meaning into the
ambiguous parts of the text. They supplied the text with meaning where there
were only words, proposing corrections based on their own interpretations and
added huge commentaries full of complementall
phrases and such froth in which those interpretations were allowed to become more
and more autonomous.
[6]
With regard to these we may count such famous editions as that of Barbaro,
Rivius and many others.
The anti-Vitruvians cover a whole
spectrum of shades and qualifications, but their common denominator resides in
a rejection of Vitruvius on account of that same ambiguity. They confront the
problem of obscurity by consciously setting their own ideas up as reaction
against Vitruvius, generating their own theories in contradiction to those of
Vitruvius. In other words the difference between the pro's and the cons
consists only of a very slight shift in attitude and perspective. Both were
equally creative, both generate new meanings and new ideas, but the pro's
injected their meaning into Vitruvius while the cons set their meanings up as
confrontations.
One of the most interesting comparisons is between Vitruvius and
Alberti.
[7]
The latter is a good example of someone who dismissed Vitruvius on account of
his ambiguity and confusion:
It grieved me that so
many great and noble Instructions of Ancient authors should be lost by the
injury of Time, so that scarce any but Vitruvius has escaped this general wreck:
A Writer indeed of universal knowledge, but so maimed by Age, that in many
Places there are great Chasms, and many Things imperfect in others. besides
this, his style is absolutely void of all ornaments, and he wrote in such a
Manner, that to the Latins he seemed to write Greek, and to the Greeks Latin:
But indeed it is plain from the Book itself, that he wrote neither Greek nor
Latin, and he might almost as well have never wrote at all, at least with regard
to us, since we cannot understand him.
[8]
The
mix between Greek and Latin languages in Vitruvius is a particular
preoccupation. This in itself is telling as it is taken as an instance of
confusion rather than as an instance of showing one's colours. Vitruvius was at
the time of Alberti not seen as a reactionary, harking back to Greece. Greece
had no architectural identity at that time. It was silent, only distantly known
to Alberti, Grecian architecture was not discovered
until much later, and it was not really incorporated into the body of
architectural thinking until the eighteenth century. Alberti was specifically
concerned with the deteriorating ruins of Rome, Virgil's Rome was the central
icon of the renaissance and as a result Vitruvius' sources could not be related
to anything more tangible than something lost or misty. Vitruvius confused
Alberti, and the latter saw him as linguistically impure. But all that was a
trick of perspective. Alberti's De Re
Aedificatoria generated a whole body of precepts, partly based on a common
sense approach, partly based on a Alberti's wide classical learning which
included Vitruvius, as well as a reversion to the stone remnants of Roman
civilisation itself. Alberti turned to Rome and its traces in the same way and
for similar reasons that Vitruvius had turned to Greece: for the purposes of
cultural affiliation and appropriation. It took a long time before it was fully
realised how Greek Vitruvius was
while it took even longer before the full implications of this were worked out.
Later theorists built on Alberti's
criticisms, they too saw that Vitruvius' theories on proportion did not match
the reality of ruined Rome. Desgodets and Perrault, were of course responsible
for the demythologising of Vitruvius with regard to this problem,
re-categorising the beauty of proportion as a beauty of custom, an arbitrary
thing. But with Greece only just emerging from the mists, Vitruvius was still
misunderstood. He was still seen as the voice of Rome and therefore as rather
stupid.
Nevertheless, the thinking exhibited
by most anti-Vitruvians characterises itself not only by its few antagonisms
and differences, but just as much by a wealth of deeper resemblances, showing
that their thinking is just as dependent for on the theories of Vitruvius as
that of the pro-Vitruvians. Much of Vitruvius was adopted freely, one may
almost say anonymously, in this respect. Everything that was uncontroversial in
Vitruvius, such as his brilliant definitions of architecture, became nameless
in their ubiquitous acceptance. That part became the foundation of
architectural theory in general, wove itself into the fabric of every treatise.
The political division with regard to Vitruvius between pro's and con's was
therefore confined to details.
During the Greek renaissance which
had gained momentum by 1750, the reading of Vitruvius concentrated on different
aspects. It dawned on William Wilkins for example, that it was significant that
Vitruvius based his theories on Greek sources and referred mostly to Greek
building practices. This had been realised before, but the implications had not
seeped through. Instead of the reactionary who had to be digested with heavy
commentaries and corrections, he became the only vehicle left for us to
approach the architectural theory of Greece. Instead of a reactionary he was
now seen as a historicist in the most respectable sense. I think I am right in
saying that this trend was to some extent led by the architect of the National
Gallery, William Wilkins, but I am not at all sure of it:
The first editors of Vitruvius, Accustomed
to the contemplation of the remains of Roman architecture, and wholly ignorant
of the existence of any early specimens of Grecian taste, have searched for
Illustrations of their author amongst the edifices of Rome; expecting, with
some appearance of probability, that the principles he promulgates would be
found to prevail in the buildings of the country which gave him birth. Engaged
in this task, they seem to have disregarded his uniform assertions, that, upon
the architectural monuments of Greece, or rather the writings descriptive of
them, the basis of his work was formed. Had these assurances availed, instead
of adopting in their editions variations from the text of the manuscripts,
which the discrepancy between the principles upon which the edifices of Rome
were constructed, and those detailed by Vitruvius, seemed to authorise, they
would have sought for that coincidence in the remains of Grecian architecture
which was not to be discovered amongst the vestiges of the art in Italy.
When it is remembered that Vitruvius is the only ancient writer upon the
science of architecture whose works have reached our times, an inquiry into the
authority for admitting the various readings and interpolations may not be
thought uninteresting: because, if that authority should be deemed insufficient,
and it be made to appear that the reading of the manuscripts is compatible with
his avowed practice of seeking amongst the edifices of Greece for the principles
he disseminates, the ancient readings may, in many instances, be restored, and
the text in some degree purified from the corruptions with which the early
editors have loaded it. Former translators, in following the text of the printed
editions, have propagated these errors, which, in many instances, are wholly
subversive of the principles of architecture our author intended to
inculcate.
[9]
The
usefulness and the relevance of Vitruvius could simply be transplanted from
Rome to Athens when Athens supplanted Rome as the cultural model of Europe.
When Rome had been the great example to European culture, and Vitruvius was its
voice, the discrepancies between the quod significatur and the quod significat
mounted up, and as a consequence Vitruvius was found to be confusing and needed
to be exposed. A task which was reluctantly done by Alberti and later Perrault
whose interpretations immediately led to highly creative new theories of beauty
in architecture. But when Rome became the symbol of decline and decadence,
during the time of Gibbon, a trend so valiantly fought by Piranesi, attention
focused on Athens as the new architectural, cultural and indeed moral
Jerusalem, Vitruvius was given the opportunity to redeem himself, to become the
voice of Grecian architecture. But even this was an unhappy relationship. It
was realised all too soon that far from being the father of architectural
theory he was merely the stepfather. The result was that he started speaking
much more clearly in some respects, but tantalisingly little in other respects.
As the voice of Greece he now begged far more questions than he could answer.
Within the first half of the nineteenth century it is Peter Legh whose
interpretation of Vitruvius is one of the most creative and interesting. Legh
was an admirer, certainly, but only in so far as Vitruvius supplied a link to
the Greeks whose opinions he had compiled. He was thankful of the effort but
conscious of its shortfall. Vitruvius had confused the Greeks. Legh's answer was
to reconstruct that theory by supplementing it with a syncretic eclecticism as
defined by Diderot.
[10]
His ambition was to collect all the best theories and arrive at a final grand
synthesis of original truth. As a result found it quite legitimate to start
with Vitruvius' second chapter and to infuse his own interpretations of the six
fundamental principles of architecture loosely based on the meanings of the
Greek words Vitruvius uses. These words he argued had been badly translated
from the Greek into Latin and Vitruvius had in fact not understood them which
was shown by the fact that he was not in
the habit of making use of them himself. We find, that none except symmetria
can be traced in any other part of his work.[11]
This argument implied that they did have a specific meaning, which was lost:
I have been led to
Imagine, I have discovered an explanation of the six terms used in the 2nd
chapter of Vitruvius.
[12]
And
Legh goes on to write an occasionally highly imaginative interpretation of
those six words which deserves attention although it lies beyond the scope of
this book.
The opportunity
presented by Wilkins and exploited by Legh was not taken up by Garbett. Why?
Garbett's admiration of the Greek architects knew no bounds, it was equalled
only by his admiration for the Gothicists. He believed the Greeks to have
possessed that science which brought their art to a level of perfection, which,
during the whole of history was only reached twice, once by them and once in the
thirteenth century. It is therefore significant that the insight by Wilkins was
passed over or even ignored. Vitruvius, Wilkins rightly argues, mentioned his
sources in the preface of Book 7.
[13]
And most of those were Greek. Why was this ignored by Garbett? Why was
Vitruvius not allowed to be the voice of Grecian architecture? It could of
course be that Garbett simply had not read the book. Apart from the fact that
that is quite likely, it is the explanation of a spoilsport. If he had not read
the book, a highly respected book at the time, he simply had not done his
homework properly. There is another explanation.
The answer is simple. Garbett's
position with regard to Vitruvius is similar in many respects to that of Peter
Legh, but instead of being an imaginative pro-Vitruvian he is a creative
anti-Vitruvian, a small step for mankind. Garbett wanted to supplant the myths
provided by Vitruvius on origins with a scientific explanation which would
bypass the accretions of history to first and essential principles. That, in
intentions at least was similar to Laugier. Garbett, however, could not accept
Vitruvius as the true authority on Grecian architecture as that would have
contradicted his own highly creative scientific
solutions with regard to, for instance, the Doric genesis. For all the
resemblances between his thinking and that of Vitruvius, those points on which
they disagreed, such as the problem of proportions, the primitive hut theory as
embellished and applied by Laugier and Milizia; the design and origin of
columns etc. were all central to Garbett's fresh analysis of Greek architecture
and the idea that Grecian architecture had erupted from a complete and
self-consistent rational.
Vitruvius was simply not allowed to
be the true voice of Greece, for that would have made Garbett's analysis
necessarily wrong. Garbett was and had to be the only true interpreter of Greek motives and methods. At the same time the
Vitruvian basis of his doctrine must be plain to anyone. It is the corner stone
of his definition of architecture and because of that, of all his principles of
design. And many of those are no more than new explanations of old ideas. The
fact that Garbett quotes Wotton's opening sentence to The Elements of Architecture to introduce his organic definition of architecture rather than
the original text by Vitruvius, may be due to Wotton's undoubted way with words.
In fact Wotton here represents Vitruvius' alter ego, his supplement. Wotton was
allowed to represent the acceptable Vitruvius, and disguise Garbett's Vitruvian
heritage so that the other Vitruvius could be used as a foil of
progress.
[14]
Greek architects
Above and beyond the
function of history as a way to justify and confirm the normative aspects of his
discourse, Garbett's analysis of history was a critique on previous scholarship.
With regard to Greek architecture he specifically developed a number of themes
introduced by the refined and picturesque interpretation of John B. Papworth's
"Essay on the Principles of Design in architecture."
[15]
In that essay a number of ideas were casually presented which Garbett quite
clearly set out to systematise.
It would be impossible to discuss
Garbett's evaluation of Papworth
without reference to the structural approach to style discussed in the previous
chapters. This hypothesis, to recapitulate, had decomposed the problem of
architectural style into a fan-like selection of factors with at its centre
that of structure. Structure combined both the idea of spatial organisation in
terms of convenience, and construction. This hypothesis, anticipated by
Robison, Ware and Bartholomew had its most fluent statement in Garbett's Treatise. Having discussed and set up
his principles in the first part of the Treatise,
Garbett now wanted to test them or rather exemplify
them in the works of the Greek and Gothic
architects. The process of exemplification should be judged on its
intention, which was to serve as proof that Garbett's principles pre-existed
their contemporary formulation and that he was really doing nothing more or
less than rediscovering the mind of
the Greeks.
Papworth's Essay, which relies on a strictly formal interpretation of style,
engages little more than the visual surfaces of architecture. As such the
approach may be called picturesque in the sense that it relies completely on
visual rather than structural sophistication to explain the motivations of
Greek architects; everything is interpreted according to light and shadow, tint
and colour. Form and material are related to a cultural causality informed by
geography, climate and the social and racial circumstances of the Greek, but not to a single structural principle. Papworth marvels at the mathematical and
sculptural refinement of the Greeks without wanting to explain them beyond the
invocation of a certain cultural refinement and its consequent visual
sophistication. His careful descriptions of these Greek refinements without an
explanatory principle which would have got in Garbett's way, were therefore
pre-eminently useful in supplementing Garbett's exegesis. He developed
Papworth's themes and integrated them with his own explanatory principle of
rational structuralism.
Waste, durability and the quality of
repose in Greek temples
The
cause of the feeling of power, eternity and repose in Greek temples is,
according to Garbett, the unadulterated application of the principle of
contrast. This principle is here based on a similar, but far more casual
treatment of it in Papworth's Essay.[16] Garbett, as we have seen earlier, made the concept of contrast
systematic to his interpretation of architecture generally, whereas Papworth
uses the word the concept of contrast only in passing and only in a
Payne-Knightian picturesque sense, that is to say the abstraction of meaning
into a disinterested aesthetic of formal play.
[17]
Nevertheless this conceptual proximity allowed Garbett to rely on much of
Papworth for the explanation of the visual sophistication of the Greek Temple.
This will become clear a little further down when dealing with flutings.
Another contributing factor to the
success of Greek architecture is the merciless and consistent subordination of
the different classes of form, where the gravest class is always reserved for
the principal elements. This principle led to a unity of general design.[18]
Again there is a conceptual overlap when Papworth explains Greek architecture
in terms of a unity of design aptly symbolised by the roof which, by covering the whole in one firm
act of geometry, unifies the separate elements of the cella and the peristyle,
deliberately creating a single whole.
[19]
This principle is gladly adopted by Garbett. Even so, the same phrase used for
different approaches to the same architecture at once shows up the nature of
Garbett's relationship to Papworth. Garbett wants to go much further by
attempting a structural explanation of the grand
repose of Greek temples:
Though the first style
of construction was the most unscientific and wasteful both of material and of
space, yet it did produce the most durable buildings, and also the most grand
and noble effects.
[20]
In
spite of appearances there is no contradiction or conflict in this statement
with regard to Garbett's program of establishing a science of architecture
exemplified by the works of Greek architects. The first style of construction, the depressile, an idea forwarded to Garbett
by Bartholomew, is the most durable precisely because it is the most wasteful in its use of materials. In fact
this style of construction needs waste.
Greek architecture, as perceived by
both Garbett and Bartholomew stands in a particular place within the
development of the science of architecture as a whole, and can, in relation to
our greater knowledge, be excused on that point. The waste was made necessary
by the lack of science: the more efficient arch had not yet been discovered nor
could the strength of materials be accurately predicted. An element of
insurance had to be brought in with regard to the action of gravity.
But this is a negative explanation,
while Garbett is forwarding the Greek's lack of knowledge as having had a
positive and beneficial effect on architecture. Its character of grand repose is due to the fact that Greek temples
avoid all oblique pressures: each stone is independent of the one beside
it.
[21] All the pressures are vertical, there is no side thrusting, no
action.
[22]
Repose is the combined effect of a structural principle relying on a single
direction of thrust as well as the concomitant excess of mass needed to build
lastingly according to that principle. Massiveness, if subject to the correct
subordination of the five classes of form procures a sense of repose. Greek
architecture acquires its grand and noble effects, therefore, precisely because
of its lack of knowledge and its resultant need of surplus mass and strength.
The history of architecture in terms of
waste
There
is a fundamental paradox in Garbett's thinking when one extends that reasoning
to mean that the increase of science in architecture must necessarily have led
to buildings becoming less durable, less reposeful and less grand and noble.
That implication had already been noticed by Bartholomew:
It is a melancholy reflection,
writes Bartholomew, that in this age, in
proportion as the scientific knowledge of architectural construction advances,
as the chemical properties and the duration of materials become better known,
the actual practical building of this country, rich by nature and political
position, retrogrades sadly both in goodness and wisdom.[23]
The
use of materials is closely dependent on cultural value-systems. The connection
between matter and value is also what is so telling about the judgement on
Greek architecture and the relation between durability and waste.
As far as contemporary historians were concerned there had always been a
consumer-architecture. That is, an architecture which was used and disposed of
when it was no longer useful. The amount and nature of the materials used in
building had always in some way been made proportionate to the degree of
permanence desired for any particular (type of) building. Commercial
architecture had never been built to last an eternity. It was the same for the
domestic architecture for all but the most powerful in a society. Their social
and political position obliged them to play upon the psychology of power,
exuding permanence and stability whereby their palaces and strongholds
immediately acquired a public and therefore symbolic function. Thomas Hope makes
this explicit in his description of the origins of architecture, where only a
population's faith needed to be housed in temples aspiring to
permanence.
[24] To have built normal dwelling houses to a similar degree of permanence
would in itself have constituted a waste amounting almost to blasphemy. When
domestic architecture at some periods in history did achieve a disproportionate
permanence, that imbalance expressed itself in the fact that the dwelling became
indistinguishable from the place of burial.
[25]
Implying that the living were on a course of self-apotheosis.
It is only faith which demands
permanence, it is the dead who go on forever. That is the reason that
Bartholomew and Garbett, like Ruskin deplored modern practices with regard to
the application of stucco:
External stucco,
writes Bartholomew, may be proper for the
garniture of an old house, too old to be worth a more substantial
restoration: it may be proper, for a short-lived country pleasure-house, which
caprice may in a few years render unestimable: external stucco, may be very fit
for the investure of a theatre, which may be speedily consumed...but external
stucco, smeared over a cathedral, or other valuable national heirloom, is
profanation.[26]
Faith,
and this was a feeling which was at the time being confirmed by historical
projections, had to be protected by a sense of eternity and age. The outrage of
contemporary critics, especially the Ecclesiologists concerning the cheapness
of modern churches; Pugin's despair about his own flimsy religious structures,
become all the more understandable within this context.
As far as Garbett was concerned this
had everything to do with the rise of the
many. All building-types, not just temples and churches, not just palaces
and tombs, but all buildings were being asked to answer to the demands of Architecture with a capital A. There was
nothing wrong in that aspect of progress per sé, in fact it was the specific
aim of his program to raise the collective standard of architecture, to provide
for the mediocre rather than to attempt to teach genius. But the side-effect
which Garbett and his contemporaries deplored was that the demand calling for
an architecture for the millions, had started to corrode the ideals which had
been attached exclusively to those building-types which had a functional, that
is symbolic need to exude stability and permanence. The upward march of the many, their insistent claim to
architecture; the upward march of commercial buildings into the realms of
architecture necessarily compromised those buildings which traditionally
fulfilled that symbolic function for a society: Churches, monuments and public
buildings were being drawn into a consumerism previously reserved for domestic
and commercial buildings. That was traumatic.
2.
For
Vitruvius in nineteenth century architecture Germann (1972) Part 1, "The
Gothic in Vitruvianism." & for the concept of Vitruvianism, see
Germann (1987).
3.
Vitruvius,
Aristotle and their contemporaries, with which, I presume, Garbett meant
Pythagoras among others, were accused of reasoning towards all manner of hidden sympathies between the mind and mathematical
ratios, which it perceived without being able to state, which it discovered and
yet did not discover. In: Treatise,
p. 37.
5.
F.
Granger's rather generalising translation in the Loeb Classical Library, has a
detailed introduction partly explaining the difficulties of Vitruvius'
language. Vitruvius (1970) On Alberti and Vitruvius see F. Choay, (n.d.) pp.
26-35. But here is Garbett's supplement for Vitruvius, namely Henry Wotton: Our principall master is Vitruuius (..) who
had this FELICITIE, that he wrote when the ROMAN EMPIRE was neere the pitch
(..) This I say was his good happe; For in growing and enlarging times, ARTES
are commonly drowned in ACTION: But on the other side, it was in truth an
UNHAPPINESSE, to expresse himselfe so ill, especially writing (as he did) in a
season of the ablest PENNES; and his OBSCURITIE; had this strange fortune; That
though he were best practised, and best followed by his owne COUNTRYMEN; yet
after the reuiuing and repolishing of good LITERATURE, (which the combustions
and tumults of the MIDDLE AGE had vnciuillized) he was best, or at least first
understood by, strangers. For of the ITALIANS that took him in hand, Those that
were GRAMARIANS seeme to have wanted MATHEMATICALL knowledge; and the
MATHEMATICIANS perhaps wanted GRAMER: till both were sufficiently conioyned, in
LEON-BATTISTA ALBERTI the FLORENTINE, whom I repute the first learned
ARCHITECT, beyond the ALPES; But hee studied more indeede to make himselfe an
AUTHOR, then to illustrate his MASTER. Therefore among his COMMENTERS, I must
(for my priuate conceite) yeild the chiefe praise unto the FRENCH, in PHILANDER;
and to the high GERMANS, in GUALTERUS RIUIUS: who besides his notes, hath
likewise published the most elaborate TRANSLATION, that I thinke is extant in
any VULGAR speech of the world: though not without bewayling, now and then,
some defect of ARTIFICIALL tearmes in his OWNE; as I must likewise; For if the
SAXON, (our MOTHER tongue) did complaine; as iustly (I doubt) in this point may
the DAUGHTER: LANGUAGES, for the most part in tearmes of ART and ERUDITION,
retayning their originall pouertie, and rather growing rich and abundant, in
complementall phrases and such froth. Wotton (1617) Preface.
8.
Alberti
(1955) Book VI, Chap. 1, p. 111.On the nationalist implications of this text
see Onians (1987) Chapter on Alberti.
14.
The sentence is: Well building
hath three conditions: Commodity, Firmeness, and Delight, Wotton (1624) p.
1. In the Preface he writes that his Principall
Master is Vitruvius. cf. Treatise,
p. 1.
15.
In a note at the beginning of Garbett's chapter on the application of the Foregoing Principles to
trabeated or beamed building by the Grecian architects, he acknowledges his
debt to John B. Papworth: In the
excellent Essay on Grecian Architecture, prefixed to his edition of Sir W.
Chambers, to which I owe much assistance in this inquiry. In: Treatise, p. 139. The essay served as an
introduction to the fourth edition of William Chamber's On the Decorative Part of Civil Architecture.. to which are added
copious notes, and An Essay on the Principles of Design in architecture by John
B. Papworth, J. Taylor, London 1826.
21.
Specifications, Chapter XLIV: "Of the
Principle of Simple Repose in the Construction of Building." esp. § 390
22.
Treatise, p. 132-33 & 136-137.
This quality was also pointed out by Bartholomew, Specifications, § 390.
26.
Specifications, § 303. Bartholomew
continues by quoting J.I. Hittorf on the same subject, referring to a pamphlet
by Hittorf published in 1838 on the restoration of the apex of the obelisk of
Luxor. He also quotes Ezekiel Chap. XIII verse 10 which is in fact quoted at
the beginning of the book: and when one
buildeth up a wall, behold they daub it with untempered mortar: say unto them
which daub it with untempered mortar, that it shall fall...