It Should Be Noted Here That Pugin's Work As Well As That Of Many Other ...
It should be noted here that Pugin's work as well as that of many other architects across Britain and Europe was profoundly influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin and his two seminal works The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (Ruskin, 1854). Ruskin's ideas were inspired by the architectural forms that he had seen in Italy and particularly in Venice; Ruskin thus argued that Gothic was the supreme form of architecture due to the 'sacrifice' made by stonemasons in detailing every stone of a building. Ruskin thus exalted Doge's Palace as 'the central building in the world' (Ruskin, 1854) -- arguing that Pugin's programme of Gothic Revival in churches should be extended to government buildings also. Moreover, Ruskin himself by his teachings extended the Gothic Revival further by promoting a 'polychromatic' style of work inspired by Italian Gothic architecture. This work in turn inspired buildings such as Butterfield's All Saint's Church, Keble College in Oxford and Rugby School. In short, by the end of the eighteenth century the Gothic Revival had been transformed from what began as a Romantically inspired fondness for majestic ornamentalism, into a style of architecture grounded upon powerful moral and philosophical principles as well as an intricate and comprehensive awareness of Gothic form.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Greek Revival, a growth out of the neoclassicism movement, flourished in the years 1750-1830, and was in many ways the antithesis of the Neo-Gothic form of architecture with which it was contemporaneous. As we have seen, whatever its later manifestations, the Gothic Revival had been a product of Romanticism and of the passions and emotions; the Greek Revival, in complete contrast, exalted reason, the intellect and rationality above all else. Neoclassicism sought as its highest aim to realize architectural and intellectual purity and truth -- in stark contrast to what it perceived to be the ornamentalism and illusory truth of the Neo-Gothic style. 'Neo'-classicism was founded upon a corpus of work that had in antiquity achieved canonical status, that is, it was based upon the observation of 'classic' art and classic form. In the words of Crook (1995) 'Ideally and neoclassicism is essentially an art of the ideal an artist, well-schooled and comfortably familiar with the canon, does not repeat in a lifeless reproductions, but synthesizes the tradition anew in each work'.
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