Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1Scott, George Gilbert, Sir
History
Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1
Scott, George Gilbert, Sir
Architecture, Gothic; Architecture, Medieval
But London supplies _other_ facilities for the study of Mediæval art in
addition to its ancient buildings. In the first place, I may mention its
libraries, in which the student may devote his spare hours in studying
every work which has ever been published bearing upon the subject. The
library of the British Museum (including the print-room and the
manuscript-room) contains everything of that kind which the student
could desire, and I strongly recommend you to gain the privilege of
admittance and to make full use of that privilege. Your own library,
too, at the Royal Academy, and those of the Institute of British
Architects and of the Department of Art at South Kensington, offer every
facility for study. I would especially mention that last named as being
open in the evenings, and as being one of the most complete libraries of
works on art in existence. The Architectural Museum[77] and the South
Kensington Museum are absolutely invaluable as aids to the student; so
that you have ample employment for the dead season of the year in which
sketching tours are impossible, and it is your own fault if you do not
make full and ample use of the privileges you possess; for, believe me,
they are such as in former times it was impossible to obtain. I need
hardly mention the British Museum, which, though not rich in Mediæval
works, is the repository of those wondrous stores of Greek and other art
which the Mediæval artist knows as well how to value as those who devote
to them their more exclusive study.
You will perhaps wonder that I have said nothing as yet of _foreign_
travel. I have delayed this intentionally, and for this reason: the
facilities for travelling abroad are now so abundant, and so great a
stress has of late years been laid on the study of foreign examples,
that there is great danger of the student rushing headlong into foreign
travel before he has made himself acquainted, in any but the most
superficial manner, with the architecture of his own country.
You may possibly be disposed, after reading my former lectures, to say
that, as most of the developments of our art seem to have originated
abroad, it would be more systematic to study them in the first instance
where they originated, and then to trace their ramifications in other
countries. I would reply that, though when _writing_ on a subject one is
obliged to be systematic, it is by no means necessary that we should be
rigorously so in our studies. Effects have in all sciences to be
examined into before their causes are discovered, and it is often better
that each student should for himself go through the process of tracing
back familiar developments of art through the long course of
circumstances which led to them, rather than, beginning at the original
germ (which he must learn from others), to proceed--in a course not his
own--till he arrives at the result with which he is familiar from its
being at his own door.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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