masonry were more commonly felt, we should not lose the dignity of it by
smoothing surfaces and fitting joints. The sums which we waste in
chiselling and polishing stones which would have been better left as
they came from the quarry would often raise a building a story higher.
Only in this there is to be a certain respect for material also: for if
we build in marble, or in any limestone, the known ease of the
workmanship will make its absence seem slovenly; it will be well to take
advantage of the stone's softness, and to make the design delicate and
dependent upon smoothness of chiselled surfaces: but if we build in
granite or lava, it is a folly, in most cases, to cast away the labor
necessary to smooth it; it is wiser to make the design granitic itself,
and to leave the blocks rudely squared. I do not deny a certain splendor
and sense of power in the smoothing of granite, and in the entire
subduing of its iron resistance to the human supremacy. But, in most
cases, I believe, the labor and time necessary to do this would be
better spent in another way; and that to raise a building to a height of
a hundred feet with rough blocks, is better than to raise it to seventy
with smooth ones. There is also a magnificence in the natural cleavage
of the stone to which the art must indeed be great that pretends to be
equivalent; and a stern expression of brotherhood with the mountain
heart from which it has been rent, ill-exchanged for a glistering
obedience to the rule and measure of men. His eye must be delicate
indeed, who would desire to see the Pitti palace polished.
XII. Next to those of the masonry, we have to consider the divisions of
the design itself. Those divisions are, necessarily, either into masses
of light and shade, or else by traced lines; which latter must be,
indeed, themselves produced by incisions or projections which, in some
lights, cast a certain breadth of shade, but which may, nevertheless, if
finely enough cut, be always true lines, in distant effect. I call, for
instance, such panelling as that of Henry the Seventh's chapel, pure
linear division.
Now, it does not seem to me sufficiently recollected, that a wall
surface is to an architect simply what a white canvas is to a painter,
with this only difference, that the wall has already a sublimity in its
height, substance, and other characters already considered, on which it
is more dangerous to break than to touch with shade the canvas surface.
And, for my own part, I think a smooth, broad, freshly laid surface of
gesso a fairer thing than most pictures I see painted on it; much more,
a noble surface of stone than most architectural features which it is
caused to assume. But however this may be, the canvas and wall are
supposed to be given, and it is our craft to divide them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account