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

74

THE ARCHITECTUREOF

HUMANISM

support.. They were inconvenient

rather

than

magical, and they opened, not on the

'

foam of

perilous

seas,'but, most often,

upon a landscape-

gardenlessfaerythanforlorn.

Certain images

of

architecture in their proper

context,
formal andpoetic, are

romantic.

Remove

themfrom
thatcontext,andrenderthemactual,and

itbecomesevident
that

thereis nothinginherentin

thearchitecture
itselfthatcanevokeanimaginative

response.
Again, there are actual works of archi-

tecture thatbythe lapseof time are almostfused

with Nature, and
by

the course of

history almost

humanisedwithlife.
These,too,areromantic. But

if they
arerepeated anew,it becomesevident that

the
romanticelementwasadventitious
to

thearchi-

tecturalvalue. The

formitself, whichmustinevit-

ably
be the object both of architectural art and

criticism,isfoundtobevalueless
altogether,or

valued

only

byavague analogyofthought. And this,in

effect,
isthe case withtheconsciousarchitectureof

romance. Sharplyconcrete,
divested ofthe charm

of age, it
lacksalike the material beauty and the

imaginativespell. Theformal
basisislackingwhich

alonecangiveit
power.

II

But the prejudice

against the

'

unnatural' style

of the
Renaissance was
something more than an