The Architect and His Art [pp. 72-84]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIE W.
amining the proposition before him in detail, to arrive at the
general combination of the whole he reverses the operation, he
discovers that until then he has had but a glimpse of the true
requirements of the structure, and finds that its various apartments and dependencies should be submitted to a new general
disposition, on a larger scale, affecting all their arrangements and
communications." In all this extraordinary combination of
geometrical figures-squares, rectangles, parallelograms, circles
or their segments, and what not-there has been not the first
inkling of architectural ideas. Both the architect and the engineer are thus far subordinated to the geometrician. "If," says
Le Duc, "during these studies, the architect thinks about the
orders, the works of the Greeks, the Romans, or the Goths, or
anything foreign to the interior development of his own conceptions, he is lost, and instinctively sacrifices some practical necessity of his plan to obtain a desirable architectural effect."
But his plan settled upon, "his elevations are a part and
expression of them, he sees how he should construct them, and
the dominating idea of the plan becomes the principal feature of
the elevations."
But while sketching this method of procedure I am not insensible of the fact that there is no arbitrary rule of composition or
growth in creations of art. Every artist forms his own habit, his
style, and he carries his peculiarities down to the very elements
of his art. Conversing once with a prominent architect on this
very subject-with reference to first conceptions-he declared
that the elementary methods varied with the character of the
artist; one may carefully determine the ground-plans, and adapt
to them the elevations; while another, as was not infrequently
the case, may conceive of the whole as a unit-plans and elevations fused under one general and dominating idea. Indeed, we
may draw an inference from Michael Angelo's looking upon
Brunelleschi's dome at Florence, and declaring that he would
suspend it in the air in his contemplated construction of that of
St. Peter's, at Rome: and I have no doubt that that dome was
the first as it was the last inspiration of his vast undertaking.
It is absurd, therefore, to prescribe as arbitrary the rules for
art, when we find ample evidence of their violation by the greatest masters-when we find Shakespeare violating Aristotle's
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