6 Paul's Cathedral, the probability is that he would be simply bewildered. Mr Scott makes the fantastic assertion that architectural art is the transcription of the body's states into terms of building,' and he produces as evidence of this the fact that certain of the Renaissance architects amused themselves by endeavouring to construct a system of design on the basis of the human figure. Villars de Honecourt had tried the same experiment long before, but this is no evidence at all. These men were not endeavouring to translate the functions of the body into terms of building, but were hoping to establish a canon of proportions based on the proportions of the human figure. This was the intention of Albert Durer's treatise on the symmetry of the human figure. Mr Scott's or Signor Croce's theory of æsthetic seems to me meaningless for any practical purpose; moreover, it leaves wholly untouched a very critical problem, namely, what goes on in the mind of the creative artist himself. Even Mr Scott admits that architects do not imagine themselves to be arches and buttresses when they set about designing—that is, before they translate their conceptions into terms or building-but he is misled by his own eloquence, and gives an actual objective existence to what is after all only metaphor and description. The valuable part of Mr Scott's book is his lucid and convincing exposure of the fallacies that made so much of 19th-century criticism of architecture worthless. He breaks boldly with the conventions and establishes architecture in its rightful place as an art sovereign and complete in itself. It is, he says, 'above all an art of synthesis, it controls the beauty of painting and sculpture and the minor arts. Its austerity orders even the beauty which is its own.' That is a description which all architects would endorse. Where we differ is in applying it to the Baroque, the very essence of which is to throw away all rule, reticence, and restraint. Till comparatively recently the Baroque was dismissed with contumely as merely decadent art. Now it is the fashion, and our enthusiastic young writers cast themselves for the rôle of fairy Godmother to the Baroque and aspire to rescue this Cinderella from the scullery sink. The difficulty is that they are rather uncertain who she really is. Sometimes she is the dashing young thing, Borromini in Italy, Churriguera in Spain, Pozzo at Venice, Fischer von Erlach at Vienna. Sometimes she is the sober housekeeper, even such an entirely respectable person as Vignola. Mr Scott, for example, classes together the Colonnade of S. Peter's, S. Andrea del Quirinale at Rome, and the Salute at Venice, but these buildings have little or nothing in common. The Colonnade is a straightforward piece of solid and unimpeachable classic, and in a wholly different category from either S. Andrea or Longhena's fine design at Venice. The guide-books label all buildings later than the middle of the 17th century as Baroque. The remarkable Church of the Jesuits, for example (1728), at Venice, is described in a popular handbook as built in the base style of the age.' As a matter of fact, except for its superabundance of figures, the actual design of the façade, and of that of San Lazaro dei Mendicanti (1673), is no more Baroque than that of San Giorgio or the Redentore. There is any quantity of Baroque design in the altar pieces of the Venetian churches, but it must be obvious that the calculated eccentricity of these designs is a thing apart, and has nothing in common with sober vernacular Classic. Mr Sitwell seems ready to sweep into the net of the Baroque any and every important building that existed in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, and his principle seems to be that any old thing will do. He jumps from China to Peru and one never quite knows where he is. In the preface to his book on 'Southern Baroque Art' he announces that he has taken it as his subject with the definite object of establishing a short circuit,' and by showing that one art is as good as another, to leave our generation free to follow out its own ideas.' There can be no doubt that 17th- and 18th-century art in Italy, and indeed elsewhere, was seriously under-rated by popular writers of the last century, but this complete indifference to any standard of values is something new. It enables Mr Sitwell to praise second- and third-rate artists and merely competent tradesmen such as Solimena, and to wax enthusiastic over some of the most deplorable efforts in architecture that have been perpetrated in modern Europe. Mr Sitwell seems to regard 'Baroque' as a general term for any effort of man that is at once unusual, grotesque, and sinister, and he concludes his volume of 300 pages on Baroque art with a lurid and even revolting description of a modern bull-fight in Mexico. He is not really concerned with art, Baroque or otherwise, except as a vehicle for word-painting, in which, to do him justice, he is very skilful. With the exception of one happy phrase describing Baroque as 'the only virtuoso architecture to be found in Europe," he makes no attempt at its critical analysis. On the other hand, he abounds in imaginary scenes from the Court life of some futile Hapsburg prince in the 17th or 18th centuries. For instance, after classing Il Greco with Bernini as 'one of the most typical spirits of the Baroque' regardless of dates, origins, technique, and temperament, he gives a rhapsody of twenty-five pages on the Knights of the Golden Fleece, under the romantic title of Les Indes Galantes.' In the same chapter ten pages are given to a description of the old seraglio in Constantinople and Solyman the Magnificent, interesting in its way and readable: Sed non nunc erat his locus.' The purple patch flares on every page, and Mr Sitwell indulges freely in the fashionable mannerism of describing things in terms of something else: Moonlight, for example, which is described as 'brittle' in one paragraph, in the next becomes a 'sharp-pointed sword.' The façade of the Provincial Hospital at Madrid by Churriguera is said to show up in the sun with the white glare of the moon, and at night his façade was honeyed and golden like the sunlight.' Contradictions in terms seem to be an accepted device of our young prose-writers. The pillars of Hercules are described as the lintels to the Mediterranean.' Of course one may expect anything in Baroque art, but even in Baroque a pillar can hardly be a lintel at the same time as it is a column. Mr Sitwell has a great admiration for Churriguera, and gives an illustration of his work in the Cartuja at Granada, in which the surface is so completely covered with quips and cranks and 'colifichets' that the design is unreadable. It is a work characteristic of an architect who probably possessed the worst taste ever known in the history of Western architecture. The façade of the church of S. Croce at Lecce seems to me to possess almost every conceivable fault which it is possible to combine in one composition, but Mr Sitwell finds it to be of 'dazzling beauty.' If this is his conception of the true Baroque, how can he classify as Baroque Vanvitelli's dignified staircase in the palace of Caserta? In point of fact Lecce like S. Moise and S. Zobenigo at Venice is not so much Baroque as barbaric, and Caserta is not Baroque at all, but reasonable Classics. But so catholic is this writer's taste that he is able to include among his examples of Baroque art the work of an Indian architect, a certain Ceferino Gutierrez, who practised in Mexico in the latter part of the 19th century. This architect, he says, could not draw, but used to scratch his design in the sand, so that all the workmen had to do was to look down from the scaffolding and see what Gutierrez wanted. The result, presumably in the Baroque manner, is described by Mr Sitwell as a barbaric and tropical interpretation of the icy pinnacles and dripping grottoes of the North' inspired by the early Victorian steel engravings of Northern Europe.' The result must indeed have been prodigious, but Mr Sitwell should really go on to the scaffolding of some building in course of erection and see how it is actually done. I would remind him of the advice of Horace : 'Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, æquam He has written a picturesque book, but it leaves Baroque art where it was, and he does himself less than justice when he says there is a total lack in his generation of 'self-confidence and fluency.' It must be admitted that it is not very easy to define Baroque' art. Corrado Ricci in his useful if somewhat uncritical collection of examples, says that the term was either Portuguese for an irregular pearl, or was derived from 'verruca,' a wart. The term appears to have come into common use by the end of the 18th century, and Ricci quotes a description of it from a dictionary as а pretentious and eccentric style which came into vogue at the end of the 16th and lasted throughout the 18th century,' but it has been applied very loosely to include buildings which are not Baroque at all. Bernini's Church at Ariccia is quite simple and severe, the interior of his S. Andrea dell Quirinale is an exceedingly skilful design on an oval plan. There is nothing of the Baroque in his design of the Palazzo di Montecitorio at Rome. On the other hand, the famous altar of S. Theresa, with the broken and reversed curve curve of its entablature, is a characteristic example of Baroque design. The Porta Pia at Rome with its double pediment and awkward treatment of the consoles and pilasters is Baroque, if it is anything but Michael Angelo's exasperated reply to the impossible demands of his client. An Italian poet of the 17th century, the Cavaliere Marino, asserted that the object of art is 'la maraviglia,' and its aim is to astonish at all costs. It is to be ready for any sacrifice, if only it can leave the spectator gasping, and this, in fact, seems to me to be one meaning of the Baroque in art. It is an affair of the footlights from first to last. Where greater men have been content to pursue the even tenor of their way, careless of the applause of the public and intent only on realising their own ideals, men of inferior calibre have felt it necessary to scream, even if it is only gibberish, in order to be heard at all. Thus the Spaniard and the Portuguese and the Southern Italians cover their buildings with preposterous ornament. The infallible rule is to invert the normal method. Angles of buildings which should be square are round. Pediments which should protect openings are broken in half, turned back to back, doubled or tripled, or, as in Santa Stae on the Grand Canal at Venice, are cut into three separate blocks which act as corbels for figures. The object is at all costs to create a sensation, and Mr Robertson, the advocate of the sensational and dramatic in his 'New Architecture,' and Mr Geoffrey Scott, the defender of the old, find themselves for once on common ground. Baroque is not a style at all, in the sense say that Perpendicular or First-pointed are styles of architecture—that is, methods of architectural expression which were natural and inevitable to those who used them. Baroque is, on the one hand, an affair mainly of detail, and on the other a matter of temperament, of the point of view from which the artist approaches his work. It is the complement, let us say, to the macabre, cheerful, amusing, and absurd, where the macabre is deliberately |