DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9188#0097
Architecture
73
restoration), thought out in all its bearings, meant a real
advance in the range of architecture. It is useless to look for
the faultless beauty of the fifth century, but the resourceful-
ness and skill of the Hellenistic architects gave a new meaning
to the art; and indeed they might almost be said to have
established the first stage in the development of its modern
practice. It was from these able Hellenistic architects that
the Romans learnt the monumental planning of their cities,
and for centuries the architects most frequently employed were
Greeks of Asia Minor. At this point, Hellenistic architecture
merges into Roman, and loses its distinctive character. Through
Roman it passes on to modern architecture, and so in a sense
the chain is complete ; but between this later art and pure
Greek architecture there is a great gulf fixed, differences not
only of technique but of outlook, of ideal, and of temperament.
The mighty Doric of Paestum, Selinus, and Segesta, the
Theseion and the Parthenon, remains for all time the perfect
expression of the soul of ancient Greece.
It is one of the ironies of history that when in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries scholars and artists awoke to the fact
that there had been a great architecture in the past they
should have known of no other version of it but the Roman.
What splendid developments might have followed if the finer
spirits of the Renaissance, Alberti, Bramante, or Peruzzi, had
founded their theories of architecture on the temples of Sicily
and Magna Graecia, instead of on the debased examples of
Imperial Rome ! They, at least, would have caught a glimpse
of the beauty of abstract form and perfect harmony, the
secret of which seems to have been revealed to the Greeks
alone among the peoples of the world-—and to them for only
a transient period of their history. Unfortunately, when Greek
architecture was discovered in the second half of the eighteenth
century, it became the shibboleth of the ' virtuosi'. The
national traditions, both of France and England, were lost,
Greek architecture became the fashion, and the misguided
73
restoration), thought out in all its bearings, meant a real
advance in the range of architecture. It is useless to look for
the faultless beauty of the fifth century, but the resourceful-
ness and skill of the Hellenistic architects gave a new meaning
to the art; and indeed they might almost be said to have
established the first stage in the development of its modern
practice. It was from these able Hellenistic architects that
the Romans learnt the monumental planning of their cities,
and for centuries the architects most frequently employed were
Greeks of Asia Minor. At this point, Hellenistic architecture
merges into Roman, and loses its distinctive character. Through
Roman it passes on to modern architecture, and so in a sense
the chain is complete ; but between this later art and pure
Greek architecture there is a great gulf fixed, differences not
only of technique but of outlook, of ideal, and of temperament.
The mighty Doric of Paestum, Selinus, and Segesta, the
Theseion and the Parthenon, remains for all time the perfect
expression of the soul of ancient Greece.
It is one of the ironies of history that when in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries scholars and artists awoke to the fact
that there had been a great architecture in the past they
should have known of no other version of it but the Roman.
What splendid developments might have followed if the finer
spirits of the Renaissance, Alberti, Bramante, or Peruzzi, had
founded their theories of architecture on the temples of Sicily
and Magna Graecia, instead of on the debased examples of
Imperial Rome ! They, at least, would have caught a glimpse
of the beauty of abstract form and perfect harmony, the
secret of which seems to have been revealed to the Greeks
alone among the peoples of the world-—and to them for only
a transient period of their history. Unfortunately, when Greek
architecture was discovered in the second half of the eighteenth
century, it became the shibboleth of the ' virtuosi'. The
national traditions, both of France and England, were lost,
Greek architecture became the fashion, and the misguided