The architecture of humanism; a study in the history of taste

220 THE

ARCHITECTURE OF

HUMANISM

—

^beaserious

obstacletoourtheoryif

theconception

of

architecture,asanartof

designbasedonthehuman

body and

its states, had been

wholly alien to the

architectsofthe

past. Butthisisnotaltogetherthe

case. The Renaissance

architectswere,infact, fre-

quently

curioustofoundtheirdesign

uponthe

human

body,or,rather,to

understandhowthehumanbody

enteredintothecurrent

traditionsofdesign. Among

their

sketches may be found some where the pro-

portionsofthe

maleformarewovenintothoseofan

architecturaldrawingand madeto

correspond

with

its

divisions. Anelaborate,thoughuninspired,render-

ingoftheTuscan,Ionic,and

CorinthianOrdersinto

human forms waspublished by John Shutein the

earliest

printed work on architecture in England.

And inthis

connectionthe ancient,

thoughseldom

felicitous, habit of actuallysubstituting caryatides

and

giantsforthecolumnitselfisnotwithoutsignifi-

cance. Itwas

realised

thatthe

human

bodyinsome

wayenteredintothequestionofdesign. Buthabits

ofthought

wereatthattime

tooobjectivetoallow

menanyclearunderstandingofaquestionwhichis,

after

all,oneofpurepsychology.

Whattheyinstinc-

tivelyapprehended

they

hadnomeansintellectually

to state

;

and that correspondence of architecture

to the body, which was true

in abstract principle,

they sometimes vainly

sought to prove in concrete

detail. Thus they looked in

architecture for

an