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Handout L1 – Architectural ideas between 1750 and 1800:
The new image of Antiquity / The Sublime / The Picturesque
CS2
Lecture 1
3 March, 2015
Christoph Schnoor
“Enlightenment thinkers of the mid-18th century often emphasized people’s right to self-determination
through a system of representative government. In this they expressed a hostility to the repressive forces –
clerics, aristocrats and absolute monarchs – that still reigned supreme throughout Europe in the 18th
century. Fuelled by poverty, inflation and food shortages, and inspired by the successful revolution of
American colonists against the British, the discontent was soon to erupt.”1
1. Ideas about architecture and structure – the new image of
Antiquity: Piranesi, Laugier, Soufflot
Until ca. 1750, no precise knowledge of the Greek antiquities was available amongst architects: “…though
Greek architecture was long regarded as the basis of all excellence, and though there were attempts to
conjure up and explore its visual forms, almost nothing was known about it. It remained, largely, a literary
ideal.”2
It was only then, around 1750, that architects and historians started to excavate, precisely research and
measure Greek classical buildings on a grand scale. These investigations led to a number of unsettling
findings that shook the foundations of general belief about classical architecture, f. ex. that classical
architecture of Greece and Rome was of one standard manifestation, of one style:
“The French architects Soufflot and Dumont took measurements of the Greek temples at Paestum during
a trip to Italy in 1750. The squat proportions, tapering profile, and ‘primitive’ detailing of the Doric order
there differed dramatically from the svelte Roman Doric on which Renaissance theories of beautiful
proportions were based, and contributed to the rising crisis of faith in a timeless classical ideal.”3
Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–80)
In the controversy of Greece vs. Rome Piranesi, architect and engraver, took a stand for the quality and
special origin of Roman architecture, arguing that the Romans had taken their architecture directly from
the Etruscans, an older race than the Greek – and to Piranesi’s mind superior to the weak, exhausted
qualities of Greek architecture. We would not want to follow his argumentation because it is historically
not correct, but he makes a convincing point of the power of the Roman masonry structures: He made a
number of fantastic engravings like the series of the Carceri (prisons), which are completely free of any
Greek columns. Instead, they are built up from Roman masonry arches etc., and are magnificent, sublime
– and thus frightening – underground structures. When he was an old man, Piranesi travelled to Paestum
in Italy to make drawings of the Greek Doric temples. Bergdoll notes:
“Perhaps the ultimate irony is that the forceful proportions and volumetric presence of the Greek Doric
were to have their greatest influence only a decade after the battle of the Greeks and Romans had
subsided, inspired […] [first and foremost] by Piranesi’s brilliant engravings of the Greek temples in
Paestum, first issued in 1778” 4 – although he had so much argued for the power of the Roman
architecture.
John Haywood, Cassell Atlas of the 19th Century World (Oxford: Andromeda, 1998), p. 5.07.
Robin Middleton and David Watkin, Architecture of the Nineteenth Century (Milan: Electa, 2003), p. 65.
3 Barry Bergdoll: European Architecture 1750–1890 (Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 16.
4 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 23.
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Marc Antoine Laugier (1713–69)
Laugier was a French Jesuit priest who wrote two important treatises on architecture, the first being: Essai
sur l’architecture, published in 1753. Laugier was one of the first to argue for structural truth in
architecture. Through his idea of a – fictive – primitive hut and his rules about truthful, “natural”
construction, his essay has influenced many architects in the 19th and 20th century, not least of all Le
Corbusier. Laugier said:
“Let us keep to the simple and natural, it is the only road to beauty”. And: “It is by approaching the
simplicity of this first model that fundamental mistakes are avoided and true perfection is achieved.”5 His
drawing of the primitive hut is not historically correct, and it was not intended to be so. It represents a
theoretical idea, basing architecture in reason, in structural logic.
Jacques-Germain Soufflot: Ste-Geneviève, Paris (1757–89)
This church is important because Soufflot attempted to synthesize (= bring together in harmony)
Gothic and Classical Greek elements. He also used it as an experimental building for new and refined
construction techniques. In Ste-Geneviève, “Laugier’s call a few years earlier for an architecture in which
every element had a structural rationale was given monumental expression.”6
As Laugier had called for in his essay of 1753, Soufflot “set out to avoid the use of pilasters on both the
interior and exterior façades, using only a series of projections to articulate the transition of volumes in the
massing of his cross-shaped plan.”7 Soufflot’s intention was “to unite under one of the most beautiful
forms the purity and magnificence of Greek architecture with the lightness and audacity of gothic
construction.”8
And through his planning, Soufflot found a new solution for the old problem of ‘centralized vs.
longitudinal church’: “how to marry the image of the Christian cross inscribed in the Latin-cross floor
plan with a grand cupola which could represent the cosmos on earth and make the Christian temple an
experience of the infiniteness of creation in the perfect space contained within a dome.”9
2. The Sublime
The greatest impact that aesthetic philosophy had on architecture in the 18th century was to introduce
whole new categories of aesthetic experience. Thus, the scope of emotional appeal was widened and
the beautiful as the unique category of judgement was dethroned.10
“The literary concept of the sublime […] became a favourite topic and the most influential definition was
offered by Edmund Burke in his 1757 A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful. For Burke, attributes of the sublime – obscurity, power, privation, vastness and infinity –
could readily be experienced in nature, but required artful deception in architecture so that they might
have a stirring effect on the imagination.” 11 One might say: the sublime is the introduction of
categories of nature into architecture.
“Burke insisted that the imagination was an exact science: ‘Natural objects affect us, by the laws of that
connection which Providence has established between certain motions and configurations of bodies and
certain consequent feelings in our minds […]; architecture affects us by the laws of nature, and the laws of
reason’.”12
Marc-Antoine Laugier: Essai sur l’architecture, 1753. This book is available in an English language edition by
Wolfgang and Anni Herrmann, published: Los Angeles: Hennessey and Ingalls, 1977.
6 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 26.
7 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 26.
8 Quoted after Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 26.
9 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 29.
10 Cf. Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 83.
11 Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 83.
12 Philosophical Enquiry (Oxford Univ. Pr ess 1990), p. 149, after Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 83.
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Architecture parlante (French, ‘speaking architecture’):
… is “the notion that a building’s forms, either component volumes or decorative embellishments, so
closely portray aspects of the function that the building communicates its purpose, and thus meaning,
with the clarity of spoken language. Although generally used to refer to the search for symbolic forms in
relation to new building types by the French architects Boullée, Ledoux and their followers in the 1780s
and -90s, it seems the term was only coined, and initially in derision, in the 1840s.”13
Louis-Etienne Boullée, 1728–99
Project for a Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, 1784: Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton embodies the idea that
the citizen in the very moment – in history – that he wins his freedom, he finds himself standing directly
in front of the universe – with no state or church power as mediator. A Cenotaph – (Greek kenós: empty;
taphos: grave) – is an empty grave and a memorial building for dead (important) people that are buried
elsewhere or whose mortal remains are lost: a tradition, used since ancient times. Boullée’s Cenotaph for
Newton is a memorial for the English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727) who
discovered, among other things, the law of gravity, because in enlightenment times he was regarded as
something of a superior being himself.
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Boullée: Project for a Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, 1784
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Boullée: Project for the Royal French Library in Paris, ca. 1780
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Boullée: Interior of the Metropole on the feast of the Fête Dieu, ca. 1781
“Architecture to Boullée is ‘the art of combining masses’. The deployment of masses imparts character to
a building. Specifically, ‘Majestic nobility is the result of the simplicity of masses’. What brings out the
plastic value of these masses is the way the shadows are handled. Boullée is proud to be the inventor of
‘the architecture of shadows’. Now, to produce powerful shadows, broad surface planes must be
developed. The surfaces must be clear of unnecessary decoration […] For him, only ‘smooth masses
produce virile effects’. By following Boullée, one should be able to arrive at the ‘poetry of architecture’;
that is, he should succeed in producing an ‘expressive picture’ that speaks to the imagination and the
intellect.
Here, we have the two chief characteristics of late 18th century architecture – a taste for large, simple
masses, and for buildings whose very look expresses their purpose. The goals, however, were not without
contradictions, as Boullée was well aware. ‘When I used picturesque elements, as I did’, he writes, ‘I had to
beware of being what is called theatrical, thus deviating from the purity of architecture demands. Without
that purity any design fails hopelessly.’ And he adds, ‘I think I succeeded in avoiding this error.”14
Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806)
For posterity, the architect who called himself ‘l’architecte maudit’ – the cursed architect – became the
most famous of the French late 18th century architects: Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736–1806). He wanted
to make architecture speak. His architecture is talking indeed, using allegories, but in some cases it
becomes rather talkative.
“To Ledoux enthusiasm is the supreme source of creativity. It excuses all liberties and even all
exaggerations; rules must not impede the drive of the genius.”15
This proves that Ledoux is very romantic: Romantic artists, authors etc. strongly believed in the idea of
the genius and they expressed, in novels, poems or paintings, strongest feelings about love, nature, God etc.
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Prison in Aix-en-Provence, planned 1776, works begun 1785, works stopped 1790
Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 293.
J-C. Lemagny: Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu (Houston: University of St. Thomas, 1968), p. 16.
15 Lemagny, Visionary Architects, p. 67.
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Château (= Castle) Eguière (without date, late 1700s)
Les salines de Chaux (city of the salt works at Chaux, France), 1773–79
Following buildings all form part of Salt works city: The woodcutter’s house, the house for the rural
caretakers, the inspector’s house at the source of the river Loue, the bridge over the river Loue, the
Cannon Foundry at Chaux.
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (1757–1825)
Lequeu’s life may be of partly fictitious nature. According to historian Philippe Duboy, parts of his life
seem to have been made up by the artist Marcel Duchamp (or someone close to Duchamp) in the early
20th century. But no matter what part of his life is real, Lequeu is probably one of the most extraordinary
architects of history, bursting with imagination. He takes the “architecture parlante”, the “speaking
architecture” to extremes.
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Southern Views of Cow’s Stable on a Cool Meadow
The Prince’s Hunting Gate
Temple of Divination at the Northern End of the Elysian Fields
Meeting place of Bellevue (all projects without date)
A link between the sublime and the picturesque
John Locke: Sensationalism (1689) – all knowledge is derived from experience through sensation (sensation
= what we sense, perceive)
“…the philosophy of sensation opened the way for exploring the hypothesis that architectural meaning
had a basis in nature and was embodied in a range of forms and configurations prior to, even outside of,
the range of the inherited classical language of architecture. (…) After 1750 the spectrum of aesthetic
categories was broadened and the precision with which aesthetic responses could be gauged and in
turn exploited was honed as never before.”16 Both the picturesque and the sublime explored the
possibilities of affecting the spectator (or visitor) in strong ways.
3. The Picturesque
“Over the course of the 18th century numerous attempts were made to turn the adjective picturesque into
a rigorous aesthetic category that might take its place, as William Gilpin and Uvedal Price argued, as a
mediating term between the beautiful and the sublime. By the time a heated debate emerged in the 1790s
among the writers Price, Richard Payne Knight, and the garden designer Humphrey Repton over the
precise use of the term and its validity in landscape design, the picturesque as a sensibility had spread
beyond the taste for making gardens in an informal, irregular or ‘natural’ way that found inspiration in the
pictures of Claude Lorrain or Salvator Rosa. In architecture it sanctioned asymmetry, jagged profiles,
and contrasting scales and textures at the same time as it gave rise to a way of composing in
harmony with nature and from multiple points of view, all of which made the picturesque a major
factor in the dissolution of the Classical system of Renaissance and Baroque architecture.”17
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Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 74.
Bergdoll, European Architecture 1750–1890, p. 125.
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Literature:
Bergdoll, Barry. European Architecture 1750–1890, Oxford/NY: Oxford University Press, 2000. Therein:
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Part I, chapter 1: “Neoclassicism, Science, Archeology and the Doctrine of Progress”, p. 9–42;
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Part I, ch. 3: “Experimental Architecture: Landscape Gardens and Reform Institutions”, p. 73–102;
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Part III, chapter 5: “Nationalism and Stylistic Debates in Architecture”, pp. 139–152;
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Part III, chapter 6: “Historicism and New Building Types”, pp. 179–195;
Lemagny, J-C.Visionary Architects: Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu, Houston: University of St. Thomas, 1968.
Exam essay question as homework for Thursday
Please write a short essay of exam-length (ca. one page) on the following two subjects:
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The idea of the “sublime” in architecture and of “speaking architecture”.
To answer this question, discuss relevant aspects of the development of architecture in Europe between
1750 and 1800 as presented in this lecture. Include references to significant ideas, events, architects,
publications and new technologies, as appropriate; and include illustrated examples of important buildings.
Try to keep in mind these questions:
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How is the architecture of the time 1750 – 1800 new and different from the architecture before?
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Why does this happen?
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What are the new aesthetic categories? Explain them.