LECTURE II.
john the pisan.
31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its chief energy, the adornment of tombs,—having the passionate function of doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted for it, in civil buildings.[1]
32. Civil, or civic, I say, as opposed to
- ↑ "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device: Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets, Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."—(Sagacius Gazata, of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's quotation.)
