The Classical Language of Architectt1re

JOHN SUMMERSON The Classical Language of Architectt1re THE M.l. T. PRESS Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology Cambridge, Massachusetts I. The Essentials of Classicism I must begin by assuming some general knowledge. Like, development of the classical language of architecture but for instance, knowing that St. Paul's Cathedral is a classical about its nature and its use - its use as the common archi building while Westminster Abbey is not; that the British tecturallanguage, inherited from Rome, ofnearly the whole Museum is a classical building while the Natural History civilized world in the five centuries between the Renaissance Museum at South Kensington is not. That all the buildings and our own time. round Tra&J.gar Square - the National Gallery, St. Martin's Very well- from now on we can be more precise. Let us in-the-Fields, Canada House and even Gust) South Africa look at this word 'classical' as applied to architecture. It is a House are classical, that all the public buildings in White mistake to try to define classicism. It has all sorts of useful hall are classical; but that the Houses of Parliament are not. meanings in different contexts and I propose to consider two Elementary distinctions, and you may think at once that I meanings only, both of which will be useful throughout am going to deal in superficialities. When is a classical build these talks. The first meaning is the most obvious. A classical ing not a classical building ~ Does it really matter? Are not building is one whose decorative elements derive directly or the important qualities ofarchltecture deeper than and inde indirectly from the. architectural vocabulary of the ancient pendent ofsuch stylistic nomenclature? They are. Neverthe world - the 'classical' world as it is often called: these ele less, I cannot reach all the things I want to say in these talks ments are easily recognizable, as for example columns offive without first isolating all the buildings which are, prima standard varieties, applied in standard ways; standard ways jacie, classical from all the others. I shall be talking about of treating door and window openings and gable ends and architecture as a language and all I want to assume at the standard runs of mouldings applicable to all these things. moment is that you do recognize the Latin of architecture Notwithstanding that all these 'standards' are continually when you hear - that is, see - it. departed from they do remain still recognizable as standards The Latin of Architecture - that brings me to another throughout all buildings that may be called classical in this general knowledge assumption. Classical architecture has its sense. roots in antiquity, in the worlds ofGreece and Rome, in the That, I think, is one fair description ofwhat classical archi temple architecture ofthe Greek world and in the religious, tecture is, but it is only skin-deep; it enables you to recognize military and civil architecture of the Romans. But these the 'uniform' worn by a certain category of buildings, the talks are not going to be about the architecture of Greece category we call classical. But it tells you nothing about the and Rome - they are not going to be about the growth and essence ofclassicism in architecture. Here, however, we have 7 got to be r~ther careful. 'Essences' are very elusive and are ify as a 'classical' building? The answer must, I think, be 'no'. often fOWld, on enquiry, not to exist. Nevertheless, embed You can say, in describing such a building, that its propor ded in the history ofclassical architecture is a series ofstate tions are classical, but it is simply confusing and an abuse of ments about the essentials of architecture and these are in terminology to say that it is classical. The porches ofChartres agreement over a long period, to the extent that we may Cathedral are, in distribution and proportion, just about as say that the aim ofclassical architecture has always been to classical as you can get, but nobody is ever going to call them achieve a demonstrable harllJony ofparts. Such harmony has anything but Gothic. And one could cite plenty of other been felt to reside in the buildings ofantiquity and to be to examples of the Gothic system being closely analogous to a great extent 'built in' to the principal antique elements the classical. It is, by the way, a great mistake to think of especially to the five'orders' to which we shall come pre Gothic and Classic as opposites; they are very different but sently. But it has also been considered in the abstract by a they are not opposites and they are not wholly unrelated. series oftheoreticians who have demonstrated that harmony It is nineteenth-century romanticism which has made us put analogous to musical harmony in a structure is achieved ~y them in totally different psychological camps. People who proportion, that is to say by ensuring that the ratios in a say they 'prefer' Gothic to Classic or Classic to Gothic are, I building are simple arithmetical fWlctions and that the ratios suspect, usually the victims of this nineteenth-century mis of all parts of the building are either those same ratios or interpretation. The fact is that the essentials ofarchitecture related to them in a direct way. A vast amoWlt of preten as expoWlded by the Renaissance theorists - are to be fOWld tious nonsense has been written about proportion and I have expressed, consciously or Wlconsciously, throughout the ar no intention ofgetting involved in it. The Renaissance con chitectures of the world. And while we must incorporate cept ofproportion is fairly simple. The purpose ofpropor these essentials in our idea of what is classical we must also tion is to establish harmony throughout a structure - a accept the fact that classical architecture is only recognizable harmony which is made comprehensible either by the con as such when it contains some allusion, however slight, how spicuous use ofone or more ofthe orders as dominant com ever vestigial, to the antique 'orders'. Such an allusion may ponents or else simply by the use ofdimensions involving be no more than some groove or projection which suggests the repetition of simple ratios. That is enough for us to go the idea ofa cornice or even a disposition ofwindows which on with. suggests the ratio ofpedestal to column, column to entabla There is, however, one point about this rather abstract ture. Some modem buildings - notably those of the late conception of what is classical and it may be put as a ques Auguste Perret and his imitators - are classical in this way: tion. Is it possible, you may ask, for a building to display that is to say, they are thought out in modem materials but absolutely none of the trappings associated with classical in a classical spirit and sealed as classical only by the tiniest architecture and still, by virtue ofproportion alone, to qual allusive gestures. In the last talk. in this series I shall have 8 more to say about all this. In the meantime the thing which kind to have survived from antiquity and for that reason has it is quite essential for us to understand before we go any been accorded enormous veneration. Vitruvius was not him further is this question of the orders - the 'Five Orders of self a man of any great genius or literary talent or indeed Architecture'. Everybody has heard of them, but what ex for all we know - of architectural talent. The thing about actly are they~ Why are there five and not four, or sixteen his treatise is that it rounds up and preserves for us an or three hundred and twenty-six~ immense quantity oftraditional building lore - it is the code One thing at a time. First, what are the orders~ On the of practice of a Roman architect of the first century A.D. endpaper of this book you will frod a very clear diagram of enriched with instances and historical notes. the Doric order. It consists, you see, of a temple column In the course ofVitruvius' third and fourth book~ he des standing on a pedestal and carrying on its head the archi cribes three ofthe orders - Ionic, Doric and Corinthian - and trave, frieze and cornice, those elements which are collect gives a few notes on another, the Tuscan. He tells us in which ively called the entablature. Then, in Plates I and 2 you see part ofthe world each was invented. He relates them to his the Doric order again, with its four companions; it is the descriptions oftemples and tells us to which Gods and God second from the left, with the Tuscan to the left of it, the desses each order is appropriate. His descriptions are by no Ionic, Corinthian and Composite to the right. There are two means exhaustive, he gives no fifth order, he does not present sets here - one of 1540 on the left of the page (plate I), the them in what we think ofas the 'proper' sequence (Tuscan, other more than a hundred years later (Plate 2), but they are Doric, Ionic, Corinthian) and - most important - he does in principle the same thing. An 'order' is the 'column-and not present them as a set of canonical formulae embodying superstructure' unit ofa temple colonnade. It does not have all architectural virtue. That was left for the theorists of the to have a pedestal and often does not. It does have to have an Renaissance. entablature (columns are meaningless unless they support In the middle of the fifteenth century, fourteen hundred something) and the cornice represents the eaves ofthe build years after Vitruvius, the Florentine architect and humanist, ing finishing offthe slope ofthe roo£ Leon Battista Alberti, described the orders, partly with refer Now, why are there five orders~ This is a little more diffi ence to Vitruvius and partly from his own observations of cult and it is necessary to glance back to some origins.

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