Page:Alexis de Chateauneuf - The Country House.djvu/33

 be considered merely as the vehicle made use of by the artist, and may be employed in one style almost equally as well as in another. Another doubt suggested, is whether arches and vaulting can properly be admitted into the style above-named? Now, were you to consult the Delphic oracle, it would probably return you some such answer as the following: ''When the edge of an aperture in a wall forms a right angle, the may still descend to the base without being interrupted by an impost. In vaulting, the diagonal crossing lines must be considered as secondary ones.''

Perhaps this will but ill satisfy you, and you will say that, instead of solving one enigma, I have merely added another. Yet of one thing you may be assured, namely, that those difficult problems and mysteries in art, which have been expounded in formal terms, have been already actually decyphered, and explained more clearly by the practical solution of them in productions of art.

It seems you think I have not yet given you any satisfactory reason for my position, that the present improved state, both of painting and sculpture, renders it difficult to reconcile them with the conditions required by Gothic architecture. I admit this would be otherwise were we to go back to the hard dry style of the Van Eyck school. I can only say that such an attempt has been made by some of the best artists in Germany, and that after persisting in the trial for some time, they have now abandoned the imitation of the early German style, and have preferred the Italian. At any rate, my opinion is not contradicted by history, since the latter informs us that the powerful impression produced by the broad handling and simple masses of the ancient works of sculpture, then first discovered in various parts of Italy, had the effect of giving the representation of nature an entirely new direction. It is also a striking circumstance that, owing to the fresh impulse which both painting and sculpture hence received, not only the taste for Gothic architecture declined, but the system itself was opposed both by painters and sculptors, who attempted to make architecture subsidiary to their productions. Such being the case, as they alleged, in regard to ancient art. With what eagerness not only the learned men of Italy, and the architects who were urged on by them to the study of classical antiquity, but also both sculptors and painters, entered the lists against Gothic art, is sufficiently evident from Ghiberti's journal; and again afterwards, when a decided victory had been already obtained over it, from Raphael's report to Leo X. on the ancient edifices and other remains at Rome.

It is perhaps not so generally known, that in more northern countries it