GREEK AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 265, 5 August 1937, Page 6

GREEK AND ROMAN ARCHITECTURE

Simplicity and Ornateness At the Trades Hall, Wellington, on Tuesday evening Dr. J. Nicol continued his couree of illustrated lecturer for the Workers’ Educational Association on art of Greek and Roman times, his subject being classical architecture. _ The natural endowments of Greece, said Dr. vc o*’ enabled her people under very favourable circumstances to develop beauty of form in public buildings. Besides a clear atmosphere and brilliant light, Greece had a plentiful supply of finely textured marble from the quarries of Pentelicus, Hymettus, Paros and Naxos, and the scanty rainfall and abundant sunshine encouraged the provision of covered walks and porches for ehade, and made possible the erection of great open-air theatres with attractive natural backgrounds. . Moreover the Greeks conceived their deities as idealised human beings, and religion thus promoted a love of dignified beauty, so that the history of architecture and ot the associated art of sculpture was marked by steady progress toward grace and delicacy of proportion. Greek architecture reached its highest standard m the temple, a fine example from the best period being the Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens. The only structural principle employed was that of the post and lintel, and temples were characterised by simplicity, but decorative effect was produced by statues, reliefs and the application of colotir—-in fact, a conspicuous feature ot Greet architecture was the admirable correlation of the arte of building, sculpture and painting. The workmen achieved great skill in stone-cutting, the marble blocks being carefully shape<l and fitted together without the use of cement or mortar. Attention was also given to optical refinements. Thus the low platform or stylobate on which columns stood was not in the best examples horizontal but m the form of an arc of very large radius, so as to counteract the appearance of sagging that a perfectly straight line would have produced. A similar rise occurred iu the entablature resting on the columns. An Illusion of stability was given by a slight inward inclination of the axes of columns, and the shafts themselves were made convex so that a vertical section was bounded not by straight, lines but by subtie curves’. The sculptures on pediments and friezes were executed with detailed attention to their position iii the completed building and with due regard to light and shade. . , ■ . The lecturer illustrated the characteristics of Doric and lonic columns and traced the development of the orders into Roman times. Roman architecture, he said, was massive and relatively ostentatious, and because of the great extent of the empire made its influence felt over a wide area, so affecting greatly subsequent developments. The Romans used the Doric and lonic orders to some extent, but adopted especially the Corinthian style and employed it with vigour. They also developer! the composite order from a combination of lonic and Corinthian. The ornate qualities of the Corinthian and composite styles appealed strongly to their love of display. But the extensive use of concrete as a building material and the general adoption of the areh were more important Roman contributions to architecture. The substitution of the Roman arch for the Greek lintel had been described as the greatest revolution in the history of the art, and the vault and dome enabled wide spaces to be covered over without sacrifice of stability and without internal support. The dome of the Pantheon, for instance, had a diameter of fully 142 feet. Roman public buildings were altogether on a grander and more imposing scale than those of Greece and exemplified a much greater variety of form. They showed, however, a definite decline from Attic standards of restraint, simplicity and grace. The concluding lecture of this series, to be given next Tuesday evening, will be on the subject “Our Inheritance from Rome.”