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THE QUARRY. 15
arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented
a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all
over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as
were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she
could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful
—but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet
radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which
flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
Bosphorus and the JEgean and the Adriatic Sea, and then
gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes
Corpse-fight. The architecture sinks into a settled form—a
strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it
expressed; and so would have remained for ever,—so does
remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.* But rough
wakening was ordained for it.
§ xxi. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided
into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at
Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early
Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is
distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for
the present, to class ;these two branches of art together in his
mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same;
that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence
of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down
from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found—Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece;
and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term
of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but
which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the
fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms.
And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various
* The reader will find the weak points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly
seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,—Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."
| Title | The stones of Venice - 1 |
| Creator | Ruskin, John |
| Publisher | J. Wiley |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Date | 1889 |
| Language | eng |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Title | 00000038 |
| Type | Books/Pamphlets |
| Transcript | THE QUARRY. 15 arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time, very fervid and beautiful —but very imperfect; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the Bosphorus and the JEgean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-fight. The architecture sinks into a settled form—a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained for ever,—so does remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.* But rough wakening was ordained for it. § xxi. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the reader, for the present, to class ;these two branches of art together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found—Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may conceive as extending in its various * The reader will find the weak points of Byzantine architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever opened,—Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant." |
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