The beautiful necessity; seven essays on theosophy and architecture . ance, the great Frenchcathedrals appear like crouchingmonsters, half beast, half human:the two towers stand like a manand a woman, mysterious and gigantic, looking out across the city or plain. The campaniles of Italy riseabove the churches and houses like the sentinels of a sleeping camp,—nor is their strangely humanaspect wholly imaginary:these giants of mountainand campagna have eyesand brazen tongues; risingfour square, story abovestory, with a belfry orlookout, like a head, atop,their likeness to a man isnot infrequentl
The beautiful necessity; seven essays on theosophy and architecture . ance, the great Frenchcathedrals appear like crouchingmonsters, half beast, half human:the two towers stand like a manand a woman, mysterious and gigantic, looking out across the city or plain. The campaniles of Italy riseabove the churches and houses like the sentinels of a sleeping camp,—nor is their strangely humanaspect wholly imaginary:these giants of mountainand campagna have eyesand brazen tongues; risingfour square, story abovestory, with a belfry orlookout, like a head, atop,their likeness to a man isnot infrequently enhancedby a certain identity ofproportion: of ratio, thatis, of height to width—Giottos beautiful tower w,^^-^,^, _,._^ , is an example. The THgVEjIGArWCLf .-j • —- I caryatid is a supportmg ^^ member in the form of a woman; in the Ionic column we discern her stiffened, like Lots wife, into a pillar, with nothing to show her feminine but the spirals of her beautiful hair. The columns which uphold the pediment of the Parthenon are as. 54 THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY IV unmistakably masculine: the ratio of their breadth to their height is theratio of the breadth to the height of a man (Illustration 40). At certain periods of the worlds history, periods of mystical enlighten-ment, men have been wont to use the human figure, the souls temple, as asort of archetype for sacred edifices (Illustration 41). The colossi, withcalm, inscrutable faces, which flank the entrance to Egyptian temples; the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksub, booksubjectarchitecture
