Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/876

ARCHITECTURE. through a middle stage of crude brick walls, •nooden colunuis, architraves, and gables, with terra-cotta re'etment and decoration, into the final tj-jje of stone temple which was reached as early as the Seventh Century B.C. It is in Sicily and Southern Italy that the earliest works of the Doric style are to be found (Syracuse, Selinus, JNIetapontum), while the earliest Ionic temples were in Asia Jlinor, at Samos and Ephesus: but these hardly rival the Doric in age, and their ruins do not belong, like those of the Doric temples, to the primitive structure. The normal type of these temples was a building raised on a three-storied basement, and consisting of one main cella- chamber (naos) usually supplemented at one end by a smaller chamber (opisthodomos), and pre- ceded at the other end by a pronaos, the whole being surrounded by a colonnade on all four sides, surmounted by an entablature and crowned on the two short ends by gables. The oesthetio Greeks did not plan great columnar halls or courts like those of the Egj'ptian temples, but relied on external effects almost entirely; on re- fined beauty of outline and proportion. Never, until the period of decadence, was there any at- tempt at impressive size or picturesqueness. The Doric style was. hea^-y in proportion and plain in ornament, in comparison with the Ionic, but provided for more considerable figured sculpture in the friezes, metopes, and gables. It prevailed at first over nearly the entire Hellenic world, gaining gradually in delicacy and lightness, espe- cially when handled by artists with Ionian blood, as was the case at Athens, which contains in the Parthenon and the Theseuni the two finest works of the developed Periclean Age, though they are almost rivaled by some Italian and Sicilian works, such as the temples of Pa'stum (q.v. for illustration) and Girgenti. At this time other works, such as the Propylnea at Athens, became worthy to stand lieside the temples, and here the two styles — Doric and Ionic — were for the first time combined. The originality and daring of this Attic school were also shown in the Porch of the JIaidens in the Erechtheum (q.v. for illustra- tion). The succeeding Age of Praxiteles, and the Alexandrian Pciiod brought even slimmer Doric proportions, increased favor for the more decora- tive Ionic style (temples of lliletus and Ephe- sus), invention of the still richer Corinthian (see article Column), and the development of colossal forms of public. ■ civil, and sepulchral architecture ( such as the propylaeas, theatres, odeons, stoas, the altar at Perganius, the mauso- leum of Halicarnassus), in which Oriental splen- dor and love of the colos.sal overruled Hellenic reticence.

Rome. This prepared the way for Roman architecture. In the Royal and Early Republican Periods, Rome had followed the Etruscan and Latin types : ooden tem])!es with terracotta revetments in the Doric style and civil struc- tures of stone, vaulted and arched. These two types remained fundamental, except that before the close of the Republic stone had replaced wood and terra-cotta in the temples, the Ionic style had been introduced by (Jreek artists, and the Greek orders, with their lintels and columns, had been added as a surface decoration and framework to the constructive arcades in secular buildings. The Greek spirit informed the Roman in the sphere of art. without conquering it, for ordi- narily it is not difficult to distinguish the two styles. The Roman temples are not peristyles, but in antis, with a very deep colonnade in front, and this alone would be sutticient to make their appearance differ fundamentally, even without the substitution of the heavier Corinthian and eomposite forms for the Doric and Ionic. But the true nature, of Roman architecture appears in its civil structures: in theatres and amphi- theatres, aqueducts, triumphal arches, palaces, villas, and, above all, in the baths and thermae. The Roman genius for composition shines in such great combinations of structures as the Villa of Hadrian, the Palace of the Osars, the Forum of Trajan (see article FoEUM), and the r.aths of Caracalla and Diocletian. And the great vaulted interiors of some of these buildings, such as the Basilica of Maxentius and the Baths of Caracalla, surpass anything previously conceived of in architecture. With the Greeks, architecture had been plastic: with the Romans, who devel- oped the ideals of the Alexandrian Greeks, it was pictorial. It also combined, in the highest degree, utility and comfort with showincss and imposing and costly appearance. The whole civilized world was filled with the monuments of this art — which fell heir to the cultures of both the Orient and CJreece;

Eablv Christian. When religion again be- came paramount, with the advent of Christianity, architectural law and development coincided with the building and decorating of churches. The scheme involved the development of large inte- riors for a crowd of worsliipers — quite a different problem from that confronting pagan architects. Th^ public basilica of the Roman fora and the basilical halls of private houses offered models for such a type. The early Christian architecture, with thin brick walls, wooden ceil- ings, and long colonnaded interiors, at first pre- vailed everywhere, the poverty of architectural form and detail being partly concealed by rich mosaic and marble ornamentation. Byzantine and Basilral Styles. But as early as the Sixth Century the Oriental con- structive spirit asserted itself once more in the Hellenic Provinces, and two sharply contrasted styles henceforth flourished side liy side: the Byzantine domical architecture in the Empire of the East, and the wooden-roofed Latin basilical architecture in the West, especially in Italy. Rome, Ravenna, Salonica, Central Syria, North Africa, are full of early basilicas. Constanti- nople with Saint Sophia (q.v. for illustration) and others, Ravenna, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria possess numerous Byzantine churches. While the Byzantine style underwent, in the course of. suc- ceeding centuries, certain changes, such as the heightening of the drums of the domes, the deco- ration of the exterior with marble or alternate courses of stone and brick, the use of accessories like porches, colonettes, etc., these differences were of minor importance.

Mohammedan. In the West, on the contrary, the new civilization resulting from the awakening of the northern races in the Eleventh Century and their fusion with the old stock, created for itself a new architecture of which the first phase is called Romanesque, the second Gothic. But before describing its characteristics, a phase of Oriental architecture which arose in the meantime must not be omitted — that of the Moham-