The Poetry of Architecture/The Villa/Chapter 1

by John Ruskin

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I. The Italian Villa.

We do not think there is any truth in the aphorism, now so frequently advanced in England, that the adaptation of shelter to the corporal comfort of the human race is the original and true end of the art of architecture, properly so called: for, were such the case, he would be the most distinguished architect who was best acquainted with the properties of cement, with the nature of stone, and the various durability of wood. That such knowledge is necessary to the perfect architect we do not deny; but it is no more the end and purpose of his application, than a knowledge of the alphabet is the object of the refined scholar, or of rhythm of the inspired poet. For, supposing that we were for a moment to consider that we built a house merely to be lived in, and that the whole bent of our invention, in raising the edifice, is to be directed to the provision of comfort for the life to be spent therein; supposing that we built it with the most perfect dryness and coolness of cellar, the most luxurious appurtenances of pantry; that we build our walls with the most compacted strength of material, the most studied economy of space; that we leave not a chink in the floor for a breath of wind to pass through, not a hinge in the door, which, by any possible exertion of its irritable muscles, could creak; that we elevate our chambers into exquisite coolness, furnish them with every ministry to luxury of rest, and finish them with every attention to the maintenance of general health, as well as the prevention of present inconvenience; to do all this, we must be possessed of great knowledge and various skill; let this knowledge and skill be applied with the greatest energy, and what have they done? Exactly as much as brute animals can do, by mere instinct; nothing more than bees and beavers, moles and magpies, ants and earwigs, do every day of their lives, without the slightest effort of reason; we have made ourselves superior as architects to the most degraded animation of the universe, only insomuch as we have lavished the highest efforts of intellect, to do what they have done with the most limited sensations that can constitute life. The mere preparation of convenience, therefore, is not architecture in which man can take pride, or ought to take delight; but the high and ennobling art of architecture is, that of giving to buildings, whose parts are determined by necessity, such forms and colours as shall delight the mind, by preparing it for the operations to which it is to be subjected in the building: and thus, as it is altogether to the mind that the work of the architect is addressed, it is not as a part of his art, but as a limitation of its extent, that he must be acquainted with the minor principles of the economy of domestic erections. For this reason, though we shall notice every class of edifice, it does not come within our proposed plan, to enter into any detailed consideration of the inferior buildings of each class, which afford no scope for the play of the imagination by their nature or size; but we shall generally select the most perfect and beautiful examples, as those in which alone the architect has the power of fulfilling the high purposes of his art. In the villa, however, some exception must be made, inasmuch as it will be useful, and, perhaps, interesting, to arrive at some fixed conclusions respecting the modern buildings, improperly called villas, raised by moderate wealth, and of limited size, in which the architect is compelledto produce his effect without extent or decoration. The principles which we have hitherto arrived at, deduced as they are from edifices of the noblest character, will be but of little use to a country gentleman, about to insinuate himself and his habitation into a quiet corner of our lovely country; and, therefore we must glance at the more humble homes of the Italian, preparatory to the consideration of what will best suit our own less elevated scenery.

First, then, we lose the terraced approach, or, at least, its size and splendour, as these require great wealth to erect them, and perpetual expense to preserve them. For the chain of terraces we find substituted a simple garden, somewhat formally laid out; but redeemed from the charge of meanness by the nobility and size attained by most of its trees; the line of immese cypresses which generally surrounds it in part, and the luxuriance of the vegetation of its flowering shrubs. It has frequently a large entrance gate, well designed, but carelessly executed; sometimes singularly adorned with fragments of exquisite ancient sculpture, regularly introduced, which the spectator partly laments, as preserved in a mode so incongruous with their ancient meaning, and partly rejoices over, as preserved at all. The grottoes of the superior garden are here replaced by light ranges of arched summer-houses, designed in stucco, and occasionally adorned in their interior with fresco paintings of considerable brightness and beauty.

All this, however, has very little effect in introducing the eye to the villa itself, owing to the general want of inequality of level in the ground, so that the main building becomes an independent feature, instead of forming the apex of a mass of various architecture. Consequently, the weight of form which in the former case it might, and even ought to, possess, would here be cumbrous, ugly, and improper; and accordingly, we find it got rid of. This is done, first by the addition of the square tower, a feature which is not allowed to break in upon the symmetry of buildings of high architectural pretensions; but is immediately introduced, whenever less richness of detail, or variety of approach, demands or admits of irregularity of form. It is a constant and most important feature in Italian landscape: sometimes high and apparently detached, as when it belongs to sacred edifices; sometimes low and strong, united with the mass of the fortress, or varying the form of the villa. It is always simple in its design, flat-roofed, its corners being turned by very slightly projecting pilasters, which are carried up the whole height of the tower, whatever it may be, without any regard to proportion, terminating in two arches on each side, in the villa most frequently filled up, though their curve is still distinguished by darker tint and slight relief. Two black holes on each side, near the top, are very often the only entrances by which light or sun can penetrate. These are seldom actually large, always proportionally small, and destitute of ornament or relief. The forms of the villas to which these towers are attached are straggling, and varied by many crossing masses; but the great principle of simplicity is always kept in view, everything is square and terminated by parallel lines; no tall chimneys, no conical roofs, no fantastic ornaments are ever admitted: the arch alone is allowed to relieve the stiffness of the general effect. This is introduced frequently, but not in the windows, which are either squares or double squares, at great distances from each other, set deeply into the walls, and only adorned with broad flat
Fig. 32. borders, as in Fig. 32. Where more light is required they are set moderately close, and protected by an outer line of arches, deep enough to keep the noonday sun from entering the rooms. These lines of arches cast soft shadows along the bright fronts, and are otherwise of great value. Their effect is pretty well seen in Fig. 33; a piece which, while it has no distinguished beauty, is yet pleasing by its entire simplicity; and peculiarly so, when we know that simplicity to have been chosen (some say, built) for its last and lonely habitation, by a mind of softest passion as of purest thought; and to have sheltered its silent old age among the blue and quiet hills, till it passed away like a deep lost melody from the earth, leaving a light of peace about the grey tomb at which the steps of those who pass by always falter, and around this deserted and decaying, and calm habitation of the thoughts of the departed; Petrarch's, at Arquà. A more familiar instance of the application of these arches is the villa of Mecænas at Tivoli, though it

 

Fig. 32.

 

is improperly styled a villa, being pretty well known to have been nothing but stables.

The buttress is the only remaining point worthy of notice. It prevails to a considerable extent among the villas of the south, being always broad and tall, and occasionally so frequent as to give the building, viewed laterally, a pyramidal and cumbrous effect. a The most usual form is that of a simple sloped mass, terminating in the wall, without the slightest finishing, and rising at an angle of about 84°. Sometimes it is perpendicular, sloped at the top into the wall; but it never has steps of increasing projection as it goes down. By observing the occurrence of these buttresses, an architect, who knew nothing of geology, might accurately determine the points of most energetic volcanic action in Italy; for their use is to project the building from the injuries of earthquakes, the Italian having far too much good taste to use them, except in cases of extreme necessity. Thus, they are never found in North Italy, even in the fortresses. They begin to occur among the Apennines, south of Florence; they become more and more frequent and massy towards Home; in the neighbourhood of Naples they are huge and multitudinous, even the walls themselves being sometimes sloped; and the same state of things continues as we go south, on the coasts of Calabria and Sicily. Now, these buttresses present one of the most extraordinary and striking instances of the beauty of adaptation of style to locality and peculiarity of circumstance, that can be met with in the whole range of architectural investigation. Taken in the abstract, they are utterly detestable, formal, clumsy, and apparently unnecessary. Their builder thinks so himself: he hates them as things to be looked at, though he erects them as things to be depended upon. He has no idea that there is any propriety in their presence, though he knows perfectly well that there is a great deal of necessity; and, therefore, he builds them. Where? On rocks whose sides are one mass of buttresses, of precisely the same form; on rocks which are cut and cloven by basalt and lava dykes of every size, and which, being themselves secondary, wear away gradually by exposure to the atmosphere, leaving the intersecting dikes standing out in solid and vertical walls, from the faces of their precipices. The eye passes over heaps of scoriae and sloping banks of ashes, over the huge ruins of more ancient masses, till it trembles for the fate of the crags still standing round; but it finds them ribbed with basalt like bones, buttresses with a thousand lava walls, propped upon pedestals and pyramids of iron, which the pant and the pulse of the earthquake itself can scarcely move, for they are its own work; it climbs up to their summits, and there it finds the work of man; but it is no puny domicile, no eggshell imagination, it is in a continuation of the mountain itself, inclined at the same slope, ribbed in the same manner, protected by the same means against the same danger; not, indeed, filling the eye with delight, but, which is of more importance, freeing it from fear, and beautifully corresponding with the prevalent lines around it, which a less massive form would have rendered, in some cases, particularly about Etna, even ghastly. Even in the lovely and luxuriant views from Capo di Monte, and the heights to the east of Naples, the spectator looks over a series of volcanic eminences, generally, indeed, covered with rich verdure, but starting out here and there in gray and worn walls, fixed at a regular slope, and breaking away into masses more and more rugged towards Vesuvius, till the eye gets thoroughly habituated to their fortress-like outlines. Throughout the whole of this broken country, and, on the summits of these volcanic cones, rise innumerable villas; but they do not offend us, as we should have expected, by their attestation of cheerfulness of life amidst the wrecks left by destructive operation, nor hurt the eye by non-assimilation with the immediate features of the landscape: but they seem to rise prepared and adapted for resistance to, and endurance of, the circumstances of their position; to be inhabited by beings of energy and force sufficient to decree and to carry on a steady struggle with opposing elements, and of taste and feeling sufficient to proportion the form of the walls of even to the clefts in the flanks of the volcano, and to prevent the exultation and the lightness of transitory life from startling, like a mockery, the eternal remains of disguised desolation.

We have always considered these circumstances as most remarkable proofs of the perfect dependence of architecture on its situation, and of the utter impossibility of judging of the beauty of any building in the abstract: and we would also lay much stress upon them, as showing with what boldness the designer may introduce into his building, undisguised, such parts as local circumstances render desirable; for there will invariably be something in the nature of that which causes their necessity, which will endow them with beauty.

These, then, are the principal features of the Italian villa, modifications of which, of course more or less dignified in size, material, or decoration, in proportion to the power and possessions of their proprietor, may be considered as composing every building of that class in Italy. A few remarks on their general effect will enable us to conclude the subject.

We have been so long accustomed to see the horizontal lines and simple forms which, as we have observed, still prevail among the Ausonian villas, used with the greatest dexterity, and the noblest effect, in the compositions of Claude, Salvator, and Poussin; and so habituated to consider those compositions as perfect models of the beautiful, as well as the pure in taste; that it is difficult to divest ourselves of prejudice, in the contemplation of the sources from which those masters received their education, their feeling, and. their subjects. We would hope, however, and we think it may be proved, that in this case principle assists and encourages prejudice. First, referring only to the gratification afforded to the eye which we know to depend upon fixed mathematical principles, though those principles are not always developed, it is to be observed, that country is always most beautiful when it is made up of curves, and that one of the chief characters of Ausonian landscape is, the perfection of its curvatures, induced by the gradual undulation of promontories into the plains. In suiting architecture to such a country, that building which least interrupts the curve on which it is placed will be felt to be
Fig. 34. most delightful to the eye. Let us take then the simple form a b c d, interrupting the curve c e. Now, the eye will always continue the principal lines of such an object for itself, until they cut the main curve; that is, it will carry on a b to e, and the total effect of the interruption will be that of the form c d e. Had the line b d been nearer a c, the effect would have been just the same. Now, every curve may be considered as composed of an infinite number of lines at right angles to each other, as m n is made up of o p, p q, &c. (Fig. 34), whose ratio to each other varies with the direction of the curve. Then, if the right lines which
Fig. 35.form the curve at c (Fig. 35) be increased, we have the figure c d e, that is, the apparent interruption of the curve is an increased part of the curve itself. To the mathematical reader we can explain our meaning more clearly, by pointing out that, taking c for our origin, we have a c, a e, for the co-ordinates of e, and that, therefore, their ratio is the equation to the curve. Whence it appears, that, when any curve is broken in upon by a building composed of simple vertical and horizontal lines, the eye is furnished, by the interruption, with the equation to that part of the curve which is interrupted. If, instead of square forms we take obliquity, as r s t
Fig. 36., we have one line, s t, an absolute break, and the other, r s, in false proportion. If we take another curve, we have an infinite number of lines, only two of which are where they ought to be. And this is the true reason for the constant introduction of features which appear to be somewhat formal, into the most perfect imaginations of the old masters, and the true cause of the extreme beauty of the groups formed by Italian villages in general.

Thus much for the mere effect on the eye. Of correspondence with national character, we have shown that we must not be disappointed, if we find little in the villa. The unfrequency of windows in the body of the building is partly attributed to the climate; but the total exclusion of light from some parts, as the base of the central tower, carries our thoughts back to the ancient system of Italian life, when every man's home had its dark, secret places, the abodes of his worst passions; whose shadows were alone intrusted with the motion of his thoughts; whose walls became the whited sepulchres of crime; whose echoes were never stirred except by such words as they dared not repeat;^[1] from which the rod of power, or the dagger of passion, came forth invisible; before whose stillness princes grew pale, as their fates were prophesied or fulfilled by the horoscope or the hemlock; and nations, as the whisper of anarchy or of heresy was avenged by the opening of the low doors, through which those who entered returned not.

The mind of the Italian, sweet and smiling in its operations, deep and silent in its emotions, was thus, in some degree, typified by those abodes into which he was wont to retire from the tumult and wrath of life, to cherish or to gratify the passions which its struggles had exited; abodes which now gleam brightly and purely among the azure mountains, and by the sapphire sea, but whose stones are dropped with blood; whose vaults are black with the memory of guilt and grief unpunished and unavenged, and by whose walls the traveller hastens fearfully, when the sun has set, lest he should hear, awakening again through the horror of their chambers, the faint wail of the children of Ugolino, the ominous alarm of Bonatti, or the long low cry of her who perished at Coll-Alto.

Oxford, July, 1838.

1. Shelley has caught the feeling finely:—"The house is penetrated to its corners by the peeping insolence of the day. When the time comes the crickets shall not see me."—Cenci.