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gruesome. Both of them depend for their success on elements which are irrelevant and often hostile to the art of architecture. Their justification is merely technical. It is, however, only fair to say that in the hands of the abler men the technical ability shown is undeniable. Bernini and Borromini performed prodigies in surmounting the difficulties of oval plans and curves in plan of all sorts. Even the lamentable Pozzo did unheard-of things in his High Altars and Baldachinos, and some of the Italians who crossed the Alps-Martinelli, for instance, at Vienna, or Solari at Salzburg-produced buildings of real distinction, if only their ornament could be shorn away. These men were never checked by any technical impasse in design, such as in less skilful hands leads to the abandonment of a promising idea, but they were artistic acrobats rather than artists. Mr Sitwell was right in describing Baroque as virtuoso architecture.' At its best it was the work of men of great technical ability, but of commonplace and even vulgar ideals, whose real anxiety was to display their skill. In the hands of inferior men, the results of their laborious ingenuity are simply childish. The altar-pieces in the Church of San Stefano, the High Altar and Baldachino of the Scalza at Venice, and several of the monuments in SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Padua, are characteristic examples. With rare exceptions one remains unconvinced that Baroque architecture is anything more than play-acting, and that any great art will grow on this barren soil.

It is a significant fact that the introduction of the Baroque idea was due to an artist, who, man of genius though he was, believed that he was a master of every art. Bernini (if I may repeat my own opinion of him given elsewhere) approached architecture from the wrong point of view. He was an impulsive artist of great ability who, if he made his point, and startled the spectator by calculated audacity, cared little how he made it. His instincts were essentially melodramatic, the worst possible temperament for an architect. By training a sculptor, he had little respect for his art, treating it as a vehicle for impressions which can only be conveyed rightly by other arts. He said of himself, I make the marble supple as wax, and in my works

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I have united the resources of painting and sculpture'and it is precisely for this reason that Bernini has never won a place among the greatest artists of the world. Bernini never really thought in any terms but those of the modeller's clay, and his weakness and that of his followers was that they never recognised the limitations of the arts. Mr Scott goes dangerously near to forgetting this fundamental principle of criticism, when he speaks of 'the triple pediment with its three repeated lines placed like the chords in the last bars of a symphony.'

Complete inability to realise that each art has its own peculiar province appears in the works of the illusionists, men such as Pozzo, Fumiani, and the Bibbiena family, the men who adorned the vaults of churches and the ceilings of palaces with painted architecture so skilfully treated in colour and perspective that, seen from below, it is almost impossible to say which is solid and which is paint. There are familiar instances in Rome. In the old University Church at Vienna, decorated by Pozzo, the second bay of the nave from the west end appears to be a coffered dome, and the illusion is complete till you look up westward from the east end, when the whole dome appears to have collapsed on its side like a jelly. Pozzo's vanishing point is taken close to the west end, and from anywhere but the one point of view the effect is absurd.

In the Palazzo Pisani at Stra, near Padua, the whole of the architecture of the great hall, except the exiguous Sicilian marble archways at either end, is painted on the surface of the wall, and the pediments of the painted Corinthian orders run out into the coves of the ceiling of the balcony round the hall. Even the genius of Tiepolo, the admirable satyrs painted above the cornice, the great macaw on the pilaster, and the stone pines in the centre panel, hardly redeem the ineptitude of Colonna's painted architecture and chiaroscuro. The final impression it leaves is one of boredom with makebelieve that does not convince. But the illusionist decorator was reckless in his search for 'la maraviglia.' In S. Pantaleone, at Venice, there is an amazing ceiling by Fumiani, covering the whole of the nave. The rules of perspective were conscientiously applied, the figures

supposed to be next the cornice are colossal, those high in the empyrean mere flies, the effect so far is interesting and even impressive, but then the deplorable cleverness of the illusionist asserts itself. Arms and legs and angels' wings, painted presumably on thin boards, are hung out below the soffits of window openings, and the whole thing becomes ridiculous. In the Collegien Kirche, at Salzburg, Fischer von Erlach filled up the lower part of his window with fat clouds modelled in stucco, which go wandering up the walls till they lose themselves in the vault. The impression this sort of thing leaves on the spectator is that of a confused kind of nightmare, in which the reason totters, because the evidence of the senses is no longer to be trusted. There can be no question of the dexterity of these artists, but was it worth doing and is it worth doing now? One regrets that, in the interesting attempts to reintroduce Baroque decoration, these silly tricks of the illusionist have been revived. Mr Scott is surely hard put to it when he has to defend this practice by reference to the optical refinements of the Parthenon. The object of those refinements was to correct optical illusions. For instance, if a long, straight line seemed to the eye to sag, the Greeks gave it an imperceptible convex curve in order to correct a wrong impression. The object of the Baroque decorators was to give that wrong impression and to make that appear solid which was, in fact, paint. There may be other justifications of this practice, but it has no sort of analogy with the refinements of the Parthenon.

The Greek built for eternity, the Italian of the end of the 17th century for about three generations. His vehicle was stucco, paint, and gilding. His most ambitious frontages scarcely turn the corner, and the stucco rapidly disintegrates, but the method was cheap and admitted of interminable reproduction. The Palazzo Pisani at Stra is a characteristic example. This enormous villa stands on the north bank of the Brenta in front of a large walled-in garden, furnished with many grilles and gateways. You come in through an imposing entrance and pass through an open loggia of columns between two courts to the garden beyond. In the centre is a long canal, or water-piece, flanked by what were once parterres, but are now planted with maize. Chestnut

avenues run down either side, with bosquets beyond. At the further end is a second building, apparently almost as large as the first, but this turns out to be little more than a screen shutting out the roadway beyond. One's first impression is that of an immense apparatus of house and grounds, but the inherent make-believe of the whole thing forces its way into one's consciousness. The scale and spaciousness of the design are fine, but the architecture is mean, and the final impression is that of melancholy effort to conceal fallen greatness by a sham. Stra and the Pisani, how are the mighty fallen!

Baroque architecture is at its worst in Spain and Portugal, and the countries under their influence. In its origin it was essentially the child of later 17thcentury Italy; not of the Prelates and Princes of the Renaissance, but of the Italians themselves, a lazy, laughter-loving people, impatient of sustained thought, and with an irresistible instinct for the spectacular and the dramatic. From Italy it spread like an epidemic to Southern or rather to South-Eastern Europe, and it found its abiding home in Austria, where it is seen at its best. It is as if in crossing the Alps it had shed some of its follies and developed into something approaching a vernacular style. It was introduced by Italians, architects such as Martinelli, ornamentalists and draughtsmen such as Pozzo, S.J., and the Bibbiena family of theatrical designers, but the Austrian took to it like a duck to the water, it exactly suited his temperament. Fischer von Erlach and Lucas von Hildebrand, both of whom had studied under Italian masters, assimilated the Baroque, and as neither of them possessed any taste, but were both of them able men, they produced the most extravagant designs which became models for Austrian architecture throughout the 18th century. Both these men, von Erlach in particular, could plan, but they made the mistake of planning for planning's sake, and of doing strange things for the sake of doing them. Austrian baroque is at its best in domestic architecture, and particularly in country houses, which are attractive because they have forgotten to be grandiose; some of the garden designs of the early 18th century are admirable, and possess a certain whimsical

charm not to be found in more accomplished work. There is a garden at Salzburg, laid out for the Prince Archbishop early in the 18th century, which suggest the groves of Blarney:

'Heroes standing that noble place in,
All heathen goddesses most rare,
Moses, Nero, and Nebuchodonezzar

All standing naked in the open air.'

You enter at one end between two gladiators, and a row of heroes or gods on either side of them. About twenty yards away, on the inner side of this forecourt, are two more gladiators and two more rows of goddesses, sixteen comic figures and four gladiators. In the centre of the garden is a water-piece, and four groups, Æneas and Anchises, Hercules and Antæus, Proserpine, a lady of most ample proportions, struggling stoutly in the arms of Pluto, and Venus in a chemise upheld by Mars, with a delicious smirk, suggesting, 'I know I oughtn't to like this sort of thing, but I do!' At the further end is a peculiar bronze horse in the centre of another waterpiece, and a flight of stairs to the left leading to a bridge (replaced by a modern affair), which gives access to a raised garden adorned with eight inimitable figures of dwarfs. There is also a maze cut in beech, and an aviary. It is impossible to resist a kindly feeling towards this cheerful, irresponsible, almost childish art, and I am convinced that the house of the Marquess of Carabas was designed and decorated by Bernard Fischer von Erlach.

The Baroque never established itself in France or England. Oppenord and Cuviliés brought it into fashion in France for a time, but it was laughed out of court in France by the middle of the 18th century. In England a sounder tradition was firmly established, and it made no appeal to English taste, so long as that taste existed. Nor is it ever likely to do so, except as a passing fashion. The last traces of Baroque in its most decrepit form are to be found in hotels and marine residences erected by speculative builders in the 19th century.

The result of our study is to leave us as we were. Mr Robertson wants no style. Mr Scott is all for one particular and quite peculiar style. Mr Robertson wants

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