Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/196

 180 THE BUILDING NEWS. Maren 1, 1872. Annibal Caro for the guidance of Zucchero, amusing extracts from which are to be found in Vasari’s life of that painter. Besides these remarkable works, all of great excellence, and some of unusual beauty, are to be seen in the hall of Jupiter, perspective views of buildings drawn by Vignola himself, and painted by his son-in-law. But Vignola was no less versed in engineering than in archi- tecture and painting, and by him the great ‘Canale del naviglio” at Bologna was de- signed, than which, as Vasari says, ‘‘no more useful undertaking has ever been executed.” This eminent architect and able and good man, after a life constantly spent in the practical and theoretical advancement of his art, died at Rome in 1573, and was interred with special honours in that mausoleum of the greatest artists, the Pantheon at Rome. We have come now to a time when it is almost unnecessary to give an opinion on the style of the artists under notice : their merit is incontestable and their character well known. The most fastidious critics have always agreed in praising the simplicity and elegance of Vignola’s works, his fine sense of proportion and fitness, and the judicious carefulness of his purely-architectural ornament. As a writer on architecture he stands in the highest rank, and his principles have been adopted by a large and distinguished series of followers. He may be said, indeed, to have been to France what Palladio has been to England—the special lawgiver: and both of these great masters have their special merits as theoretical teachers; but as affording prac- tical proof of the results thence arising, Palladio, owing to greater opportunities en- joyed by him, has left us a far greater number of examples, as models of style. The life and works of Andrea Palladio are so well known that we propose to give the briefest notice of him and them ¢ompatible with a proper understanding of the place he occupies in the history of architecture. He was born at Vicenza in the year 1508, at a time when the revival of ancient architecture was already well established, and, therefore, might have been spared much of the personal labour which his predecessors in the art had forced upon them: but he chose to work out his studies for himself. Com- mencing life as a sculptor, he soon for- sook it for the more congenial studies of mathematics and architecture, and visited Rome five several times in order to draw and measure for himself its principal antiquities. These studies are to be found in his published work under the head of ‘ Mirabilia Rome.” When about twenty-nine years of age he com- menced the practice of architecture, his first great works being the ‘“ Castello” at Udine, and the Collonades surrounding the Basilica or Town Hall of Vicenza. Let us take this last as a characteristic example of the master, and one, moreover, of which he himself, in Book IIL, c. 20, of his ‘ Architecture ” speaks most approvingly. We can give our own impression as to its merits, which was one of the greatest pleasure and admiration ; its simplicity, breadth, proportion, general effect, and power of light and shade, seize and affect the mind most powerfully, and had Palladio left no other work behind him to judge him by, this alone would place him amongst the greatest of artists. ‘To the posture-makers of modern art, who are nothing if not eccen- tric, and in order to attract attention be- dizen themselves all over with ornament, and would stand topsy-turvy rather than not be noticed at all, the grand and manly sim- plicity of such a work as this will be deemed uninteresting and monotonous, just as plain and wholesome food is despised and unappreciated by palates vitiated through a long course of spiced dishes, or as a devotee of Wagner or Offenbach in music may speak contemptuously of some of the simple, but most exquisite melodies of the great Ger- man and Italian masters of the past. But to return to Palladio: these works brought him into such notice that commissions flowed in upon him from every quarter—from the Car- dinal of Trent, from Emanuele Filiberto, Duke of Savoy ; from the cities of Bologna, Vicenza, and Brescia, and from the Great Republic of Venice, to which his services as a citizen were above all due. Vicenza itself bears the impress of his genius more espe- cially: its palatial architecture is mainly of his design, and amongst the buildings there which are more particularly to be no- ticed, are the porticoes of the Basilica, the palaces Barbarano and Chiericati, the Villa Capra, andthe Theatre, which last was com- menced by him in the year 1580 for the Ac- cademica Olympica, a society instituted in 1555, of which he was a promoter and a member. He died at Vicenza in the same year, having seen the foundations of the theatre only laid, and was buried with special honours in the Church of La Santa Corona, leaving the superintendence of the theatre to his son Scilla, the coloured scenes in perspec- tive, which can scarcely be said to adorn it, being by Scamozzi. At Venice also the genius of Palladio is equally to be studied as at Vicenza, especially in numerous churches erected there from his designs; but which, we think, hardly bear that witness to his powers as an artist which the Vicentine buildings do; to our mind they are cold and cheerless. But his great secular works are characterised by the highest merit; they are simple, grand, harmonious, and effective, and a distinguished critic has well said that if it is allowable to compare buildings with men, Palladio’s edifices present the idea ‘of per- sonal dignity well dressed.” We now bring our notices of some of the great Italian archi- tects of the Revival to a close; our object has not been to give biographies of them, but to bring them under the notice of students as models both as artists and professional men, whom they will do well to study and follow. To draw attention to that Italian style of architecture which was formed by them, and which they brought to perfection ; to show the necessity of education, of discipline, of principles, and of rules, of a reigning law and order in the art of architecture, without which, whatever may be the fluctuating fashion of the day, architecture itself can be but imperfectly understood, and will be badly practised ; to plead for simplicity, grandeur and good taste, in an age when exaggerated aims, a meretricious love of ornament, and an unregulated, and too frequently an utterly bad taste, disfigure our most important works. We call on students not to be led astray by the eloquently-expressed fallacies of our mo- dern fashionable writers on art, but to return to the school of severe discipline, and that regular systematic education, without which no genius can be turned to good account, or be properly developed; and to one and all we recommend, as a good course of reading, the lives and practice of the great Italian Architects of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, and to the study of that style of Italian architecture which, of all others, is best adapted to the requirements and inven- tions of the age in which we live. ———_>———_- OXFORD ARCHITECTURAL AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. TUE first walk this term took place on Tuesday week, when Magdalen College was visited. The Rey. Dr. Millard, Viear of Basingstoke, who was formerly one of the secretaries of the Society, accompanied the party over the College. With re- gard to the history of Magdalen College, he observed that as early as 1448, Waynflete gathered together a body of students in the High-street, near the eastern end, probably near or on the spot where the Angel Hotel stood, and which is now the site of the proposed new schools. Waynflete subsequently ob- tained the site of the Hospital of 8. John, which by some was supposed to have existed as early as the reign of King John, but there was no real evidence of its being quite so ancient as that, and it was more likely that it dated from the reign of King Henry II. He then drew attention to a charter bearing the date of 1231, in which King Henry III. made special provision for the Jews not to be de- prived of a place of burial which was assigned to them in the garden on the other side of the road. Referring to two other charters bearing a similar date, he observed that it appeared that a garden or orchard was on the present site of the Botanic Garden, and in connection with the Hospital of S. John. Dr. Millard was of opinion that the Founder’s Chapel was not completed until 1480, and in the following year Edward IV. was a worshipper within its walls. Since then great alterations had taken place, and they must all, he said, deplore the re- moval of the ancient wooden roof of the hall in which they were assembled. The company then left the hall, and visited the Common Room (for- merly the Sacristy) and the Bursary. The Library was next visited, and here was shown, among other curiosities, a portion of the Founder’s episcopal vest- ment. This portion of the College Dr. Millard ex- plained had also suffered from the devastation of the architect, Mr. Wyatt. The party next inspected the splendid State apartments, which were restored some few years ago by Mr. Gilbert Scott. The beautiful Chapel, with its magnificently-carved reredos and stalls, was next visited, and attracted a great deal of attention. The various alterations the Chapel had undergone were explained at some length. After quitting the Chapel the front quad- rangle was visited, and the well-known stone pulpit in the corner, from which a sermon used to be preached on S. John the Baptist Day, was scanned with much interest. The various figures above the Chapel doorway in this quadrangle, and other curiosities, having been pointed out, the company next proceeded to the Chaplain’s Quadrangle. Here some little time was spent in inspecting the tower, which rises to the height of 145ft. Dr. Millard said that it was believed that S. John’s Hospital stood by this spot, and that here, if anywhere, a portion of it might still be found. The College kitchen, and “The Pilgrim’s Gate,” having been in- spected, a most pleasant walk was brought to a close. Many of those present then ascended the tower, from the top of which a splendid view of the city and surrounding country can be obtained. ———>—_—— MODERN RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION. TUNNELLING MACHINERY. T a meeting of the Civil and Mechanical Engi- neers’ Society, on the 16th ult., the President, Mr. Arthur C. Pain, Assoc. Inst. C.E., in the chair, a paper was read by Mr. G. J. Morrison, Assoc. Inst. C.E., “On some of the Peculiarities of Modern Railway Construction.” The author, in commencing, pointed out that great changes had taken place in the construction of railways since the time of the early railway engineers. Cuttings and embankments were, however, to all intents and purposes, the same as ever, and were constructed in precisely the same manner. It had always been considered that in ordinary eases the proper way of making a railway bank was to tip the material from the cutting at the end of the bank to such a height that when it had settled it would lie at the height required for the line, and that it was a waste of labour to take any trouble with arailway bank such as is necessarily taken with the banks of areservoir, for instance. In tunnels, how- ever, there were changes as to the method of carrying them out, and in bridges both as to their design and as to their erection. The original tunnels were, of course, constructed entirely by hand labour, and this was still employed to a considerable extent, but the system of machine tunnelling was fast coming into vogue, and before long we might expect to see most tunnels through rocks constructed in that manner. As far as the author was aware, all the machines which yet had progressed so far as to deserve mention aimed at constructing a heading only—i.e., a tunnel from 6ft. to 9ft. square or round, the work of enlarging this being carried on by hand labour as before. The advantage of the machines was generally considered to cousist in ‘the saving of time in the construction of these headings more than in the saving of expense. In these aims all the machines seemed to agree, but in the method of effecting their objects the machines differed considerably, They might be divided into two classes—firstly, those which proposed to drive the headings by cutting or breaking away all the rock by mechanical means into pieces of greater or less size, but at all events sufficiently small to be filled at once into waggons and drawn to the surface; and, secondly, those which did their work by boring holes in the face of the heading, the rock being afterwards broken out by means of powder or some other explosive. e were entirely distinct, and though the time had hardly arrived when any one could pass an impartial opinion on their several merits, it might be safely assumed These two classes _