File:History of art (1921) (14596958087).jpg

Identifier: historyofar02faur (find matches)
Title: History of art
Year: 1921 (1920s)
Authors: Faure, Elie, 1873-1937 Pach, Walter, 1883-1958
Subjects: Art
Publisher: New York and London : Harper & brothers
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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f the individual,than for instinct and faith, the instruments of therace. We must face the fact that, save for the Roman-esque churches of the earliest period, with their pride,their warlike power, and their façade with its patina ofgold, the Italian cathedrals are ugly. To be sure, theyborrow a singular charm from the hard and lusty citieswhich mount tumultuously like an army rushing to theattack of the campanile that stands as straight as amast in a hurricane. It is a bewitching, perverse charmand one from which we cannot tear ourselves withoutmaking an effort to dominate its superficial sensations.But when the Gothic appears, the cathedrals are over-loaded with decoration and become mannered andgrandiloquent. The Romans had made the same errorin the old days when they emerged from their utilitarianarchitecture to erect temples to political parvenus.The Italians did not see that the use of ornament is todefine the indispensable organs of the architectural m H> n Wsa c« P-O 5. o
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il 394 MEDIiEVAL ART body by making them more slender or lighter—heavier or broader, and that this must be done by ac-centing directly along the lines of their function. Whenornament exceeds this role it becomes a source of ugli-ness. It masks the bone structure of the building whosecharacteristic projections are the only things that canjustify it. There is no monumental architecture with-out social cohesion. Here the bones come through theskin, there the garments hang loosely. All the archi-tecture of the Italian Renaissance, all the architectureof Europe since that period has been engulfed in a mis-understanding of this fundamental principle. And themisunderstood art of ornament of thirteenth-centuryFrance avenged Gothic architecture by invading aschool which had no other reason for existence thanthat of combating its own magnificent precepts. The municipal palaces were created for precise needsand defined the violent and free personality of the city;the private palaces defined th

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