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January 20-April 21 |
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Works selected by Art McLendon
The Triumphal Arch from the Grotteschi, 1750
The
Composite Order in
Treatise on Civil Architecture, London, 1759
Frontispiece in Essai sur l’architecture, 1755
visit the following sites:
www.vitrivio.com
www.greatbuildings.com
Architectural
Canons
and the Picturesque:
Imaging Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century
Architectural
imagery in popular eighteenth-century books and prints represented two
very different visual expressions of antiquity. Treatises and pattern
books illustrated the architectural canons in a highly linear form,
resulting in geometric masterpieces of great visual order and reason.
These starkly frontal images are models of idealized and perfected beauty
that transmit the authority, civic order, and achievement of the ancients
to eighteenth-century builders and patrons as worthy universal models
to be emulated.
In contrast, picturesque scenes of ancient ruins exploit the dramatic effects of oblique views and lighting contrasts to give the image three-dimensional presence and a strong individuality. Landscape and human figures introduce narrative content. With their comment on the passage of time, such scenes speak directly to the viewer’s imagination, evoking a subjective response to the meaning of antiquity.
