What is Architectural History

Organizing the past 47

Style is the pattern in the carpet – the unambiguous indica-

tion, to the informed collector, of place and time of origin. It

is also the marking on the wings of the butterfl y – the unmis-

takable signature, to the alert lepidopterist, of its species. And

it is the involuntary gesture of the witness in the dock – the

infallible sign, to the observant lawyer, of concealed evidence.

To unriddle the style, therefore, is to unriddle the man.^16

Between Ackerman and Wölffl in, then, we have two different
approaches to understanding style historically, each with
connotations for the writing of history. Wölffl in maintains
the idea that style is a visual revelation of the state of a work,
which is a product (and therefore an index) of its time. The
historian can understand a culture by understanding its art.
The periodic division of historical time follows this logic,
whereby the Renaissance, for example, is fi rst a social, politi-
cal and economic development, and secondarily a develop-
ment in the arts. As we might expect to fi nd with the passage
of decades, Ackerman’s position ameliorates Wölffl in’s and
comes closer to a fl exible working defi nition of style.

The word style defi nes a certain currency – distinguishable in

the work (or in some portion of the work) of an artist, a place,

or a time – and it is ineffi cient to use it also to defi ne the

unique traits of single works of art; uniqueness and currency

are incompatible. The virtue of the concept of style is that by

defi ning relationships it makes various kinds of order out of

what otherwise would be a vast continuum of self-suffi cient

objects.^17

Many art and architectural historians of the last century
found style a useful ‘protection against chaos’.^18 In his guide,
L’Art de reconnaître les styles, written around 1900, Émile
Bayard considers style across architecture, decoration, monu-
ments and (principally for him) furniture.^19 Style, he suggests,
is fundamentally physiognomic, and, for architecture and
furnishings as for animals and vegetables, one can trace
developments of new species and within species, each respond-
ing to the constraints of ‘nature’ and the inclination to ‘prog-
ress’. We can appreciate, of course, how the analogy of
‘recognizing’ styles as one recognizes the features of an indi-
vidual in relation to categories is a product of nineteenth-