CONSTRUCTIVE & DECORATIVE USE OF ROUND ARCH & PILASTER FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE (COLOSSEUM) ROME.
(Ferguson).
The Romans borrowed all their architectural details from the Greeks, and varied and enriched them, adding many more members to the cornice mouldings, and carving stone garlands upon their friezes, to take the place of the primitive festal ones of leaves which were hung there, as in the relief of the visit of Bacchus to Icarius, a Romano-Greek sculpture in the British Museum.
HANGING OF THE FESTAL GARLAND,
FROM A GRÆCO ROMAN RELIEF IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
They (the Romans) fully realized the ornamental value of colonnades and porticoes, and they used the column, varying the orders, and translating them into pilasters freely as decorations on the façades and walls of their buildings, slicing up the peristyles of temples, as it were, for the sake of their ornamental effect, cutting down the columns into pilasters, and placing them, with intervening friezes, one on the top of the other, masking the construction of the real building, a favourite device with the Renascence architects.
USE OF DECORATIVE SCULPTURE IN ROMAN ARCHITECTURE: THE ARCH OF CONSTANTINE.
Roman architecture may be considered really as a transitional style. While its true constructive characteristic is the round arch, every detail of the Greek or Lintel architecture is used both without and with the arch, and in the latter case the column frequently becomes a wall decoration in the shape of a pilaster, as well as the cornice, and is no longer made use of, as in true lintel construction, to support the weight of the roof. In their viaducts and bridges and baths they were great builders with the arch, but, like some modern engineers, when they wanted to beautify they borrowed architectural ornament from the Greeks.
Nothing very fresh was gained for design in these adaptations except a certain heavy richness of detail in the sculptured cornices and friezes, and coffered ceilings. The use of the flat pilaster, however, led to the panelled pilaster with its elegant arabesque, which was afterwards revived and developed with such extraordinary grace and variety by the artists of the Renascence and carried from Italy westward.
With the round arch, too, several important decorative spaces were given to the designer, the spandrel, the panel, the medallion, all of which, with the frieze, may be seen utilized for the decorative sculpture on the arch of Constantine. The decorative use of inscriptions is also a feature in Roman architecture, and the dignity of the form of their capital letters was well adapted to ornamental effect in square masses upon their triumphal arches and along the entablature of their temples.
The Romans, too, brought the domed roof and the mosaic floor into use, and were great in the use of coloured marbles; also stucco and plaster work in interiors, the free and beautiful plaster work found in the tombs on the Latin Way being well known; so that on the whole we owe to them the illustration of the effective use of many beautiful arts, which the Italians have inherited to this day, though it must be said often with more skill than taste.
One might say, generally and ultimately, Roman art exemplified that love of show, and the external signs of power, pomp, splendour, and luxury which became dear as well as fatal to them, as they appear to do to every conquering people, until they are finally enervated and overcome as if by the Nemesis of their own supremacy.
MOSAIC, ST. APOLLINARE IN CLASSE, RAVENNA.
The art of Greece, one may say, on the other hand, at her zenith represented that love of beauty as distinct from ornament, and clearness and severity of thought which will always cling to the country from whence the modern world derives the germ of nearly all its ideas.
But when the seat of the empire was transferred to Constantinople, and Roman art, influenced by Asiatic feeling, and stimulated and elevated by the new faith of Christianity, became transfigured into the solemn splendour of Byzantine art, the architecture of the round arch and the dome and cupola rose to its fullest beauty, and such buildings as St. Sophia at Constantinople, and St. Mark's at Venice, with the churches of Ravenna, mark another great and noble epoch in the arts of design.
Byzantine design, whether in building, in carving, in mosaic, or goldsmiths' work, impresses one with a certain restraint in the midst of its splendour; a certain controlling dignity and reserve appears to be exercised even in the use of the most beautiful materials, as well as in design and the treatment of form.
The mosaics of the Ravenna churches alone are sufficient to exemplify this. The artists seemed fully to realize that the curved surfaces of the dome, the half dome of the apse, or the long flat frieze above the arch columns of the nave of the basilicas, like St. Apollinare in Classe, afforded splendid fields for a splendid material, the cross light from the deep-set windows enriching the effect, and that everything might well be secondary to it. The same principle or feeling is seen in St. Mark's where the architecture is quite simple, the arches and vaulting without mouldings, nothing to interfere with the quiet splendour of the gold or blue fields of mosaic varied with simple typical figures, bold in silhouette, placed frankly upon them, emblems, boldly curving scroll-work, and inscriptions. The execution, too, is as direct and simple as the design. Such design and decoration as this becomes an essential and integral part of the architectural structure and effect.
SKETCH OF PART OF INTERIOR OF DOME, S. MARK'S, VENICE.
MOSAIC OF THE EMPRESS THEODORA, T. VITALE, RAVENNA, SIXTH CENTURY.
Note the way in which the tesseræ are laid (in the head of the Empress Theodora from St. Vitale at Ravenna, for instance). The cube is used as much as possible, but the cubes vary much in size, and are set often with very open joints, the cement lines of the bedding showing quite clearly, and the surface of the work uneven, the tesseræ being worked, of course, from the front and in situ, presenting a varied surface of different facets which, catching the light at different angles, give an extraordinary sparkle and richness to the effect as a whole. In the head of Theodora the effect is enhanced by the discs of mother-of-pearl used for the head-dress.
In the laying of the tesseræ, too, note that the system is followed of defining the outlines with rows of cubes, and building up the masses (as in the nimbus) with concentric rows, as a rule, making the lines of the filling tesseræ follow as far as possible the line of the boundary tesseræ. This, of course, would naturally result as the simplest and most convenient, as well as most expressive, method of laying tesseræ, in defining form by means of small cubes, and is one of the conditions of the work, and when, as in these mosaics, so far from being refined away, or concealed, or any attempt being made (as in later times) to imitate painting, these conditions are boldly and frankly acknowledged, we see how its peculiar beauty, character, and the quality of its ornamental effect depends upon these very conditions.
This principle will be found to hold good and true throughout all art. Directly, from a false idea of refinement, or with the object of displaying mechanical skill, the craftsman is induced to try to conceal the fundamental conditions of his craft, and to make it ape the qualities of some totally different sort of work, he ceases to be an artist, at all events. The true artist in any material is he who in acknowledging its conditions and limitations finds in