that to a superficial view they are not recognizable in the resulting forms. The mediæval architects, through a long series of logical changes, growing out of their remarkable structural evolution, magnificently transformed the classic orders in a creative way. This the neo-classicists failed to perceive, and because the mediæval details and adjustments did not conform with those of Roman antiquity, they felt justified in calling them barbaric, while it was they themselves who were guilty of architectural barbarism.
The architects of the Renaissance were strangely inconsistent. While in practice constantly violating the principles of classic design, they were in theory ardently advocating these principles; and finding strict canons of proportion laid down in the writings of Vitruvius, they attached, as theorists, great importance to such canons. Thus arose the elaborate systems of rules for the orders embodied in the writings of Vignola, Palladio, and many others.
The influence of these short-sighted and mechanical Italian rules has been great in modern times. The formidable body of architectural dogma, contained in the literature of the Renaissance on this subject, has been so widely accepted as authoritative that modern art has been largely shaped by it. The so-called Palladian style of the seventeenth century was derived mainly from the Italian books, and the more recent teaching has been so implicitly based on the writings of Vignola and Palladio that few architects of academic training have thought of questioning the belief that the formulas of these writers constitute the only true basis of correct design. Yet the fact that these rules are arbitrary, and not in accord with the true principles of ancient art, has occasionally been recognized. Thus in a book of the eighteenth century, devoted in the main to the inculcation of the Palladian doctrines,[1] the following remarks occur: "As it was from the works of the antient architects that the several orders were deduced, those who had studied and found their different characters then became desirous of establishing from the same source their proportions. … Perceiving consummate beauty in what they saw, they sought to build upon that perfection certain fixed and invariable rules, by the observing of which others might be sure of attaining the
- ↑ A Complete Body of Architecture, by Isaac Ware, Esq., London, 1768.
