Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum in Eighteenth-Century

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Ghent University Academic Bibliography Books Sigrid de Jong first uncertain whether he was seeing attractively reproduced here. Through this Rediscovering Architecture: Paestum rocks or ruins. And Antoine Vaudoyer, evidence, she shows how visitors’ engage- in Eighteenth-Century Architectural visiting Paestum in the summer of 1787, ment with Paestum often developed in sev- Experience and Theory found the temples “of heavy and clumsy eral stages, marked by the interactions of New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, character,” with “the form, the grace and theory and experience. De Jong’smainhy- 2015, 352 pp., 100 color and 185 b/w illus. subtlety of Hercules” (47). The temples pothesis is that the perception of Paestum $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 9780300195750 were the subject of captivating drawings did not alter as a result of changing archi- and paintings, as in Thomas Hardwick’s tectural ideas; rather, architectural thought ’ Sigrid de Jongs Rediscovering Architecture is sketchbooks and William Turner’s dra- evolved alongside and on the basis of the about several things at once. Most evi- matic watercolors (many of which pro- experience of Paestum. dently, it is a book about a group of three vide beautiful illustrations for this book), The third layer of Rediscovering Architec- famous, if not iconic, archaic Greek-Doric and of lavish publications. Between Gabriel- ture concerns architectural experience. De ’ ’ temples: Paestums Temple of Hera I, built Pierre-Martin Dumont’s Suitte [Suite] de Jongs emphasis on varied encounters with around 530 BCE, the oldest and most idio- plans (ca. 1750) and Paolo Antonio Paoli’s and perceptions of Paestum is what makes syncratic of the three, commonly referred Paesti (1784), mid-eighteenth-century au- this book different from earlier treatments. to in the eighteenth century as the Basilica thors produced no less than seven mono- It is also what makes the book stand out because visitors could not believe such a graphs on the temples of Paestum. from most other scholarly publications on peculiar building had been a temple; the De Jong’sbookisalsoaboutthelifeof eighteenth-century architectural discourse; Temple of Athena, constructed ca. 520 BCE, the temples in eighteenth-century architec- its significance extends far beyond the time the smallest of the three; and the Temple of tural thought. Rather than starting from an period under consideration. Obviously, the Hera II, built ca. 460 BCE, the largest and analysis of built forms, it unfolds from the book investigates an era in which the direct the most conventional. At the time of their human responses to them. Paestum gener- experience of architecture acquired a cen- rediscovery around the middle of the eigh- ated half a century of controversy, mainly in tral position in architectural theory, as in teenth century, these structures were met France, England, and Italy. These debates the ideas and writings of Jacques-François with a variety of reactions, including vivid revolved around the central concerns of Blondel, Julien-David Le Roy, and Sir John and often dismissive descriptions expressing eighteenth-century architectural, artistic, Soane, to name a few. The oeuvre of Giam- everything from astonishment to distaste. and aesthetic thinking, among them ideas battista Piranesi, who was also involved These temples did not resemble any build- about primitivism, the beginnings of civili- with Paestum, would be unthinkable with- ings with which eighteenth-century visitors zation, and the origins of architecture. One out these developments. The impact of ar- were familiar; Paestum turned accepted could argue, and De Jong does convinc- chitecture on the beholder became an ideas of classical architecture upside down. ingly, that Paestum functioned as a test- essential component of the value placed on De Jong notes, for instance, that it is known ing ground for eighteenth-century a building. De Jong’s meticulous analysis of that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, upon ar- architectural discourse. Some themes this process provides insights that have im- riving on the site of these porous limestone even originated there, often because pre- portant implications for architecture well temples with their rough columns, was at conceptions were overturned in light of beyond the eighteenth century. Such stud- Paestum’s unusual buildings. De Jong re- ies of architectural experience are rare. ’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians constructs the site s preeminent and cru- The structure of the book, which is 77, no. 2 (June 2018), 223–233, ISSN 0037-9808, cial role in architectural aesthetics and divided into three parts, each comprising electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2018 by the Society artistic debates by considering visitors two chapters, reflects the diversity of trav- of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please who encountered Paestum in very different elers’ responses to Paestum. The first part, direct all requests for permission to photocopy or ways. She offers extended and detailed ex- “Aesthetic Experiences,” analyzes written reproduce article content through the University of aminations of a diverse range of sources, and visual records of visitors’ impressions California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints, or including letters, diaries, books, drawings, in light of two prominent aesthetic con- via email: [email protected]. DOI: https:// paintings, and engravings—many of them cepts of the period: the sublime and the doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2018.77.2.223. rarely or never before published and all picturesque. Many accounts of “sublime” 223 experiences drew on the immediate sensa- be reconstructed in the mind. One could the process of “exporting” Paestum, its ex- tions evoked on the spot and were in fact actually feel the spatiality in the monu- periential dimension was stripped away: ahistorical. This book is unusual in the ment an sich” (135). In this part of the “Paradoxically, while in one sense knowl- prominence it gives to such feelings, which book, De Jong shows how entering the edge increased, in another genuine com- were the result not of established knowl- ruins in the flesh, as opposed to occupying prehension of Paestum . disappeared in edge but of the intense reactions of over- them in the mind, resulted in something the process of abstraction, and the version whelmed viewers, whether they were entirely different from the eighteenth- disseminated to the public . was emascu- architects, writers, or sculptors. The author century theoretical discourse on ruins, in lated and generalized” (261). proves that in architecture, much as in which the remains of architecture caused Thiswonderfullyeditedandrichly Tu rn er ’s watercolors, the sublime cannot spectators to reflect on themselves, their illustrated book points to some thought- exist except through experience. Yet being lives, and their character. She then turns to provoking contradictions in eighteenth- there in the flesh did not lead to immediate the artist who pictured the temples most century architectural thinking, while comprehension, nor did carefully con- realistically, Piranesi, and argues that his stimulating rumination about our rela- structed prior knowledge help visitors to etchings “eventually made explicit what tionship with—our experience of—any understand the site. Rather, as De Jong eighteenth-century visitors actually knew but built architecture. By using architectural states, on encountering Paestum, “every- had not expressed before: real Greek build- experience as a focal point, Rediscovering thing [one] knew no longer seemed rele- ings had very little to do with the Renaissance Architecture not only extends our under- vant” (48). Moreover, “the architecture of version of classical architecture” (166). standing of Paestum and of complex Paestum could not be taken in at a single This argument is further developed in trends in eighteenth-century thought but gaze, as in the classical theories—on the the third part, “Contextualising Experien- also elucidates the cultural meaning of contrary. The vastness and infinity so ces.” Here De Jong investigates reflections buildings and the impact of a building on clearly delineated in the theories of Burke on the past to which Paestum gave rise and the beholder while stimulating reflection were to be experienced in the extent and the influence of the site on a rethinking of on our own contemporary engagement spatiality of Paestum. Knowledge from classical architecture as a design model. with architectural space. books and engravings was not useful when She starts from an investigation into the DIRK DE MEYER it came to experience of the reality: . It concepts of primitivism and of origin as Ghent University had no place in the powerful impressions of invention in the context of architecture, is- the sublime that Paestum imprinted on sues she has also addressed in an earlier Note [the] mind” (48). publication titled “Piranesi and Primitiv- 1. Sigrid de Jong, “Piranesi and Primitivism: Ori- In the second part of the book, “Expe- ism.”1 Next, she discusses the temples as gin as Invention,” in Aspects of Piranesi: Essays on ” riences of Movement, De Jong follows possible, or rather impossible, examples for History, Criticism and Invention,ed.DirkDeMeyer, travelers as they entered the temples and modern—that is, late eighteenth-century— Bart Verschaffel, and Pieter-Jan Cierkens

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