A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revisedHamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
History
A Text-Book of the History of Architecture: Seventh Edition, revised
Hamlin, A. D. F. (Alfred Dwight Foster)
Architecture -- History
+THE GREEK REVIVAL.+ The Roman revival was, however, displaced in
England and Germany by the Greek Revival, which set in near the close of
the eighteenth century. This was the result of a newly awakened interest
in the long-neglected monuments of Attic art which the discoveries of
Stuart and Revett--sent out in 1732 by the London Society of
Dilettanti--had once more made known to the world. It led to a veritable
_furore_ in England for Greek Doric and Ionic columns, which were
applied indiscriminately to every class of buildings, with utter
disregard of propriety. The British taste was at this time at its lowest
ebb, and failed to perceive the poverty of Greek architecture when
deprived of its proper adornments of carving and sculpture, which were
singularly lacking in the British examples. Nevertheless the Greek style
in England had a long run of popular favor, yielding only during the
reign of the present sovereign to the so-called Victorian Gothic,
a revival of mediæval forms. In Germany the Greek Revival was
characterized by a more cultivated taste and a more rational application
of its forms, which were often freely modified to suit modern needs. In
France, where the Roman Revival under Louis XV. had produced fairly
satisfactory results, and where the influence of the Royal School of
Fine Arts (_École des Beaux-Arts_) tended to perpetuate the principles
of Roman design, the Greek Revival found no footing. The Greek forms
were seen to be too severe and intractable for present requirements.
About 1830, however, a modified style of design, known since as the
_Néo-Grec_, was introduced by the exertions of a small coterie of
talented architects; and though its own life was short, it profoundly
influenced French art in the direction of freedom and refinement for a
long time afterward. In Italy there was hardly anything in the nature of
a true revival of either Roman or Greek forms. The few important works
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were conceived in
the spirit of the late Renaissance, and took from the prevalent revival
of classicism elsewhere merely a greater correctness of detail, not any
radical change of form or spirit.
[Illustration: FIG. 198.--BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON.]
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