It was no barbaric taste, but a keen feeling for life and warmth
that induced the Greeks to paint their temples; and without their rose
windows, Gothic cathedrals are like faces from which the glow of life
is departing. The different colors have the same feelings in
architecture that they have in painting. The reds and purples of
ecclesiastical stained glass stimulate the passion of adoration, the
blues deepen it, and the yellows seem to offer a glimpse of heavenly
bliss. Sound, its presence or its absence, is another factor in
architectural expression: the quiet of the church in contrast with the
noise of the busy street outside, the peal of the organ, or the chorus
of young voices. Although architecture is a spatial art and music a
temporal art, they nevertheless go well together because the emotions
aroused by both are vague and voluminous, and the sounds, reverberating
from the walls and filling the inclosed spaces, seem to fuse with them.
Ornamental carving performs a diversifying and enlivening function
similar to that of color. So long as its lines follow those of the
architectural forms, it may well be rich and elaborate. It is fitting,
moreover, that buildings designed to be houses of the gods should
contain their images, and that the same spirit that expresses itself
in playful lines should become embodied in griffin and gargoyle.
Finally, erected in the open, with no shelter or enframement, a building
is, in large measure, a part of nature and possesses something of the
beauty of nature.
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