R. Blomfield: Ancient Greek Architecture

Page 8

Many attempts have been made to discover the secret of this wonderful perfection of proportion. That the Greeks had a system of their own, that they worked to definite ratios of dimension and number, and employed graphic methods of determining their proportions, such as the use of triangles and the like to determine the limits of their designs, seems certain. But no contemporary account of any such system remains; and all the explanations that are given are ex post facto, made by theorists analysing existing buildings, not by architects designing new ones. Some four or five hundred years later Vitruvius compiled a treatise on architecture, in which, following the doctrines of the school of Alexandria, he expounded a Greek theory of proportion on the basis of the human figure. Vitruvius is obscure, and does not seem to have been certain himself whether the proportion of the parts of a design were to bear a relation to the whole, analogous to that of members of a human body to the body as a whole, or whether the proportions of the order were to be taken from the actual proportions of the human body; and he complicates the position by reference to the 'perfect numbers' of the Greeks. But here again he was uncertain whether the 'perfect number' was ten or six. After which, and having, in his reference to the human figure as the canon of proportion, unwittingly set a trap for the scholars and artists of the Renaissance, he drops the subject and digresses into a general classification of temples, with formal rules for the placing and dimensions of columns, which have formed the staple of treatises on classical architecture ever since. One should speak with gratitude of the labours of Vitruvius, because, after all, his is the only technical treatise left us on the subject; but he applied to the pure Greek temples a system evolved centuries later by critics and theorists; he was thinking chiefly of Roman versions of Greek architecture, and he was more interested in technical rules and precepts for the use of architects than in that abstract beauty which was all the Greek cared for. No classification, however laborious, will reach the mystery of Greek architecture. Its beauty is too subtle to be reduced to any formula.

The Doric order reigned supreme throughout the great period from the sixth till the end of the fifth century B. C. It failed with the failure of the high ideals of Athens. Other forces came into play to which it no longer responded, and later Greek critics even found fault with the Doric order for certain 'mendosae et inconvenientes symmetriae';[133] but that order, the true symbol of the sons of Heracles, was one of the most momentous contributions ever made to the art of architecture. It was the keynote of Greek architecture throughout its finest period. Later it was superseded by the Ionic order, and when Rome became paramount in the western world, that, in its turn, yielded its place of pride to the Corinthian order, opulent, luxurious, a little vulgar, a true register of the lowering of the sense and standard of beauty that followed the downfall of Athens.

[133] Vitruvius, iii. 1. The difficulty was, that if the triglyph was placed on the angle of the building (the practice of the Greeks) and the next triglyph was placed over the axis of the column, the metope (or panel) between these two triglyphs would be larger than the metopes between the triglyphs axial over the other columns. The Greeks solved it by reducing the width of the end intercolumniation, but later critics disliked this, and solved it by removing the end triglyph from the angle and placing it axial over the end column.

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R. Blomfield
Ancient Greek Architecture

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R. Blomfield Ancient Greek Architecture

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R. Blomfield
Ancient Greek Architecture