Conclusion
In the preceding pages an attempt has been made to show that in the treatment of rooms we have passed from the golden age of architecture to the gilded age of decoration.
Any argument in support of a special claim necessitates certain apparent injustices, sets up certain provisional limitations, and can therefore be judged with fairness only by those who make due allowance for these conditions. In the discussion of æsthetics such impartiality can seldom be expected. Not unnaturally, people resent any attempt to dogmatize on matters so generally thought to lie within the domain of individual judgment. Many hold that in questions of taste Gefühl ist alles; while those who believe that beyond the oscillations of fashion certain fixed laws may be discerned have as yet agreed upon no formula defining their belief. In short, our civilization has not yet developed any artistic creed so generally recognized that it may be invoked on both sides of an argument without risk of misunderstanding.
This is true at least of those forms of art that minister only to the æsthetic sense. With architecture and its allied branches the case is different. Here beauty depends on fitness, and the practical requirements of life are the ultimate test of fitness.
If, therefore, it can be proved that the old practice was based upon a clearer perception of these requirements than is shown by modern decorators, it may be claimed not unreasonably that the old methods are better than the new. It seems, however, that the distinction between the various offices of art is no longer clearly recognized. The merit of house-decoration is now seldom measured by the standard of practical fitness; and those who would set up such a standard are suspected of proclaiming individual preferences under the guise of general principles.
In this book, an endeavor has been made to draw no conclusion unwarranted by the premises; but whatever may be thought of the soundness of some of the deductions, they must be regarded, not as a criticism of individual work, but simply of certain tendencies in modern architecture. It must be remembered, too, that the book is merely a sketch, intended to indicate the lines along which further study may profitably advance.
It may seem inconsequent that an elementary work should include much apparently unimportant detail. To pass in a single chapter from a discussion of abstract architectural laws to the combination of colors in a bedroom carpet seems to show lack of plan; yet the transition is logically justified. In the composition of a whole there is no negligible quantity: if the decoration of a room is planned on certain definite principles, whatever contributes line or color becomes a factor in the composition. The relation of proportion to decoration is like that of anatomy to sculpture: underneath are the everlasting laws. It was the recognition of this principle that kept the work of the old architect-decorators (for the two were one) free from the superfluous, free from the intemperate accumulation that marks so many modern rooms. Where each detail had its determinate part, no superficial accessories were needed to make up a whole: a great draughtsman represents with a few strokes what lesser artists can express only by a multiplicity of lines.
The supreme excellence is simplicity. Moderation, fitness, relevance—these are the qualities that give permanence to the work of the great architects. Tout ce qui n’est pas nécessaire est nuisible. There is a sense in which works of art may be said to endure by virtue of that which is left out of them, and it is this “tact of omission” that characterizes the master-hand.
Modern civilization has been called a varnished barbarism: a definition that might well be applied to the superficial graces of much modern decoration. Only a return to architectural principles can raise the decoration of houses to the level of the past. Vasari said of the Farnesina palace that it was not built, but really born—non murato ma veramente nato; and this phrase is but the expression of an ever-present sense—the sense of interrelation of parts, of unity of the whole.
There is no absolute perfection, there is no communicable ideal; but much that is empiric, much that is confused and extravagant, will give way before the application of principles based on common sense and regulated by the laws of harmony and proportion.
Footnotes
1 Charming as the Italian villa is, it can hardly be used in our Northern States without certain modifications, unless it is merely occupied for a few weeks in mid-summer; whereas the average French or English country house built after 1600 is perfectly suited to our climate and habits. The chief features of the Italian villa are the open central cortile and the large saloon two stories high. An adaptation of these better suited to a cold climate is to be found in the English country houses built in the Palladian manner after its introduction by Inigo Jones. See Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus for numerous examples.
2 The plan of the Hôtel Voguë has been greatly modified.
3 Cabinets retained this shape after the transporting of furniture had ceased to be a necessity (see Plate III).
4 It must be remembered that in describing the decoration of any given period, we refer to the private houses, not the royal palaces, of that period. Versailles was more splendid than any previous palace; but private houses at that date were less splendid, though far more luxurious, than during the Renaissance.
5 “Si l’on dispose un édifice d’une manière convenable à l’usage auquel on le destine, ne différera-t-il pas sensiblement d’un autre édifice destiné à un autre usage? N’aura-t-il pas naturellement un caractère, et, qui plus est, son caractère propre?” J. L. N. Durand. Précis des Leçons d’Architecture données à l’École Royale Polytechnique. Paris, 1823.
6 It must not be forgotten that the so-called “styles” of Louis XIV, Louis XV and Louis XVI were, in fact, only the gradual development of one organic style, and hence differed only in the superficial use of ornament.
7 There is no objection to putting a fireplace between two doors, provided both doors be at least six feet from the chimney.
8 Not rattan, as the models are too bad.
9 A Complete Body of Architecture, Book II, chap. iii.
10 See the saloon at Easton Neston, built by Nicholas Hawkesmoor (Plate XIII), and various examples given in Pyne’s Royal Residences.
11 See Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Architecture française, under Porte.
12 This painting has now been restored to its proper position in the Scuola della Carità, and the door which had been painted in under the stairs has been removed to make way for the actual doorway around which the picture was originally painted.
13 See the doors of the Sala dello Zodiaco in the ducal palace at Mantua (Plate XVI).
14 Some rooms of the rocaille period, however, contain doors as elaborately carved as those seen in France (see the doors in the royal palace at Genoa, Plate XXXIV).
15 See the doors at Vaux-le-Vicomte and in the Palais de Justice at Rennes.
16 Only in the most exaggerated German baroque were the vertical lines of the door-panels sometimes irregular.
17 The inlaid doors of Houghton Hall, the seat of Sir Robert Walpole, were noted for their beauty and costliness. The price of each was £200.
18 See a room in the Ministère de la Marine at Paris, where a subordinate door is cleverly treated in connection with one of more importance.
19 As an example of the extent to which openings have come to be ignored as factors in the decorative composition of a room, it is curious to note that in Eastlake’s well-known Hints on Household Taste no mention is made of doors, windows or fireplaces. Compare this point of view with that of the earlier decorators, from Vignola to Roubo and Ware.
20 In Italy, where the walls were frescoed, the architectural composition over the mantel was also frequently painted. Examples of this are to be seen at the Villa Vertemati, near Chiavenna, and at the Villa Giacomelli, at Maser, near Treviso. This practice accounts for the fact that in many old architectural drawings of Italian interiors a blank wall-space is seen over the mantel.
21 It is to be hoped that the recently published English translation of M. Émile Bourgeois’s book on Louis XIV will do much to remove this prejudice.
22 It is curious that those who criticize the ornateness of the Louis XIV style are often the warmest admirers of the French Renaissance, the style of all others most remarkable for its excessive use of ornament, exquisite in itself, but quite unrelated to structure and independent of general design.
23 It is said to have been put at this height in order that the porcelain vases should be out of reach. See Daviler, “Cours d’Architecture.”
24 Examples are to be seen in several rooms of the hunting-lodge of the kings of Savoy, at Stupinigi, near Turin.
25 In France, until the sixteenth century, the same word—plancher—was used to designate both floor and ceiling.
26 For a fine example of an English stucco ceiling, see Plate XIII.
27 The flat Venetian ceilings, such as those in the ducal palace, with their richly carved wood-work and glorious paintings, beautiful as they have been made by art, are not so fine architecturally as a domed or coved ceiling.
28 For an example of a wooden ceiling which is too heavy for the wall-decoration below it, see Plate XLIV.
29 Burckhardt, in his Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, justly points out that the seeming inconsequence of mediæval house-planning in northern Europe was probably due in part to the fact that the feudal castle, for purposes of defence, was generally built on an irregular site. See also Viollet-le-Duc.
30 “Der gothische Profanbau in Italien... steht im vollen Gegensatz zum Norden durch die rationelle Anlage.” Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, p. 28.
31 See the stairs of the Riccardi palace in Florence, of the Piccolomini palace at Pienza and of the ducal palace at Urbino.
32 For a fine example of a hall-niche containing a statue, see Plate XXX.
33 In large halls the tall torchère of marble or bronze may be used for additional lights (see Plate XXXII).
34 Much of the old furniture which appears to us unnecessarily stiff and monumental was expressly designed to be placed against the walls in rooms used for general entertainments, where smaller and more delicately made pieces would have been easily damaged, and would, moreover, have produced no effect.
35 The ornate boudoir seen in many XVIIIth-century prints is that of the femme galante.
36 “A little study would probably show that the Ptolemaic era in Egypt was a renaissance of the Theban age, in architecture as in other respects, while the golden period of Augustus in Rome was largely a Greek revival. Perhaps it would even be discovered that all ages of healthy human prosperity are more or less revivals, and have been marked by a retrospective tendency.” The Architecture of the Renaissance in Italy, by W. J. Anderson. London, Batsford, 1896.