DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29898#0040
4
HISTORY OP ARCIilTECTURE.
Paet I.
A great cleal of tlie confusion of ideas existing on the subject of
Architecture arises from the fact that writers have been in the habit
of s|>eaking of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as three shnilar
fine arts, practised on the same principles. This error arose in the
16th century, when in a fatal hour painters and sculptors undertook
also the practice of architecture, and builders ceased to be architects.
This confusion of ideas has been perpetuated to the present hour, and
much of the degraded position of the art at this day is owing to the
mistake then made. It cannot therefore be too strongly insisted upon
that there is no essential connection between painting and sculpture on
the one hand and architecture on the other.
The two former rank among what are called Phonetic arts. Their
business is to express by colour or form ideas that could be—generally
have been—expressed by words. With the Egyptians their hiero-
glyphical paintings were their only means of recording their ideas.
With us, such aseries of pictures as Hogarth’s £ Mariage a la Mode ’ or
‘ The Rake’s Progress ’ are novels written with the brush ; and many of
our Mediseval cathedrals possess whole Bibles carved in stone. Poetry,
Painting, and Sculpture are three branches of one form of art, refined
from Prose, Colour, and Carving, and form a group apart, interchanging
ideas and modes of expression, but always dealing with the same class
of irnages ancl appealing to the same class of feelings.
Distinct and separate from these Phonetic arts is another group,
generally known as the Technic arts, comprising all those which
minister to the primary wants of mankind under such various heads
as food, clothing, and shelter. Between these two groups is a third
called the PEsthetic arts, forming, as it were, a flux between the
Technic and Phonetic arts, fusing the whole into one homogeneous
mass. They take their rise from the fact that to every want which
the technic arts are designed to snpply, Nature has attached a grati-
fication which is capable of refining all the useful arts into fine arts.
Thus the Technic art of agriculture is capable of supplying food
in its simple form; but by the refinements of cookery and of wine-
making, simple meats and drinks are capable of affording endless
gratification to the senses. Simple clothing to keejD out the cold
requires little art, but embroidery, dyeing, lace-making, and fifty
other arts employ the hands of millions, and the gratification
afforded by their use, the thoughts of as many more. Shelter, too, is
easily provided, but ornamental and ornamented shelter, or in other
worcls architecture, is one of the most prominent of the fine arts.
Music, though hardly known as a useful art, is the most typical of
the HEsthetic arts, and, ££ married to immortal verse,” steps rrpwards
into the region of the Phonetic arts, just as building, when used for
ornament, is raised out of the domain of the Technic arts.
Like music, colour and form may be so arranged as to afford
HISTORY OP ARCIilTECTURE.
Paet I.
A great cleal of tlie confusion of ideas existing on the subject of
Architecture arises from the fact that writers have been in the habit
of s|>eaking of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture as three shnilar
fine arts, practised on the same principles. This error arose in the
16th century, when in a fatal hour painters and sculptors undertook
also the practice of architecture, and builders ceased to be architects.
This confusion of ideas has been perpetuated to the present hour, and
much of the degraded position of the art at this day is owing to the
mistake then made. It cannot therefore be too strongly insisted upon
that there is no essential connection between painting and sculpture on
the one hand and architecture on the other.
The two former rank among what are called Phonetic arts. Their
business is to express by colour or form ideas that could be—generally
have been—expressed by words. With the Egyptians their hiero-
glyphical paintings were their only means of recording their ideas.
With us, such aseries of pictures as Hogarth’s £ Mariage a la Mode ’ or
‘ The Rake’s Progress ’ are novels written with the brush ; and many of
our Mediseval cathedrals possess whole Bibles carved in stone. Poetry,
Painting, and Sculpture are three branches of one form of art, refined
from Prose, Colour, and Carving, and form a group apart, interchanging
ideas and modes of expression, but always dealing with the same class
of irnages ancl appealing to the same class of feelings.
Distinct and separate from these Phonetic arts is another group,
generally known as the Technic arts, comprising all those which
minister to the primary wants of mankind under such various heads
as food, clothing, and shelter. Between these two groups is a third
called the PEsthetic arts, forming, as it were, a flux between the
Technic and Phonetic arts, fusing the whole into one homogeneous
mass. They take their rise from the fact that to every want which
the technic arts are designed to snpply, Nature has attached a grati-
fication which is capable of refining all the useful arts into fine arts.
Thus the Technic art of agriculture is capable of supplying food
in its simple form; but by the refinements of cookery and of wine-
making, simple meats and drinks are capable of affording endless
gratification to the senses. Simple clothing to keejD out the cold
requires little art, but embroidery, dyeing, lace-making, and fifty
other arts employ the hands of millions, and the gratification
afforded by their use, the thoughts of as many more. Shelter, too, is
easily provided, but ornamental and ornamented shelter, or in other
worcls architecture, is one of the most prominent of the fine arts.
Music, though hardly known as a useful art, is the most typical of
the HEsthetic arts, and, ££ married to immortal verse,” steps rrpwards
into the region of the Phonetic arts, just as building, when used for
ornament, is raised out of the domain of the Technic arts.
Like music, colour and form may be so arranged as to afford