The Seven Lamps of Architecture
Encyclopedia
The Seven Lamps of Architecture, published in May 1849, is an extended essay written by the English art critic and theorist John Ruskin
. The 'lamps' of the title are Ruskin's principles of architecture, which he later enlarged upon in the three-volume The Stones of Venice
. To an extent, they codified some of the contemporary thinking behind the Gothic Revival. At the time of its publication A.W.N. Pugin and others had already advanced the ideas of the Revival and it was well under way in practice. Ruskin offered little new to the debate, but the book helped to capture and summarise the thoughts of the movement. The Seven Lamps also proved a great popular success, and received the approval of the ecclesiologists
typified by the Cambridge Camden Society
, who criticised in their publication The Ecclesiologist lapses committed by modern architects in ecclesiastical commissions.
may take the observer:
Writing within the essentially British tradition of the associational values
that inform aesthetic appreciation
, Ruskin argued from a moral stance with polemic tone, that the technical innovations of architecture since the Renaissance
and particularly the Industrial Revolution
, had subsumed its spiritual content and sapped its vitality. He also argued that no new style was needed to redress this problem, as the appropriate styles were already known to man. The 'truest' architecture was therefore, the older Gothic
of medieval cathedrals and Venice. The essay sketched out the principles which Ruskin later expounded upon in the three-volume The Stones of Venice
published between 1851 and 1853. Practically, he suggested an 'honest' architecture with no veneers, finishes, hidden support nor machined mouldings and that beauty must be derived from nature and crafted by man.
Ruskin drew upon Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790–1810) for some of his principles, such as the requirement of leisured poise as the best state for appreciating beauty, the thought that the natural countryside is more conducive to producing an artist than the city, that the glory of architecture lies in its age. The Seven Lamps was reduced to the status of a "moral gloss on Alison" by George L. Hersey, in High Victorian Gothic.
He had an abiding confidence in the natural, untutored instinct for rightness and beauty in the average person: "all men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they would only use and apply this sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when he does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it." There is an easily perceived contrast here with the thread of modernism
that holds that people must be taught to appreciate good design. Another contrast with modernism is in the aesthetic of functionality: Ruskin saw no beauty in well-designed tools: beauty is out of place where there is not serene leisure, or "if you thrust it into the places of toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop; put it on domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft." It will be sensed, even in so brief a quotation, that for Ruskin, Beauty was not an inherent characteristic but a thing that could be applied to an object or withheld from it.
The importance of authentic detail to Ruskin is exemplified in the daguerreotype
s from which he made drawings of details too high to see clearly, and his urgent plea to amateur photographers in the Preface to the Second Edition, which presages the formative role that photography of architectural details was to play during the next decades, not only in Gothic Revival buildings:
. Effects such as the polychromy of High Victorian Gothic architecture may be traced to him, in a genre of "Ruskinian Gothic" that was practised in Britain and colonies like New Zealand and Canada, and in Anglophile strata of the United States.
Ruskin had made his debut as a critic of architecture with The Poetry of Architecture (1839), an essay in the picturesque
that he later rejected, The Seven Lamps were still tentative steps for Ruskin's architectural criticism and offered a moral creed for architects. He later went on to disclaim the essay as a 'wretched rant'.
The first effect of the book was almost immediate in the influence it had upon William Butterfield
's All Saints, Margaret Street
Church. Beresford, Hope and Butterfield had agreed upon the general details just a month after Ruskin's book was published and by August they had revised their plans to encapsulate the principles it espoused. All Saints is considered the first Ruskinian building due to its use of brick 'honestly' employed as a structural system rather than for surface decoration.
Ruskin's writings became a significant influence on William Morris
and the Arts and Crafts Movement
in the latter half of the 19th century. In the United States, Ralph Waldo Emerson
's expectations of a new, authentic American style had prepared the ground: Ruskin's Seven Lamps were quickly assimilated into the aesthetics of Transcendentalism
.
In 1899 Marcel Proust
read a translation of Ruskin's chapter The Lamp of Memory in a Belgian magazine. He projected the transforming experience onto the narrator of Du côté de chez Swann, who describes himself as a boy reading the piece in the garden at Combray
. Later Proust, who translated some works of Ruskin, claimed to know The Seven Lamps of Architecture by heart.
Seven Lamps of Architecture and other of Ruskin's writings on architecture are summarized and extensively quoted in John Unrau, Looking at Architecture with Ruskin (Toronto: University of Toronto), 1978.
The following illustrations are from the third edition where the situation had been much improved.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
. The 'lamps' of the title are Ruskin's principles of architecture, which he later enlarged upon in the three-volume The Stones of Venice
The Stones of Venice (book)
The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,...
. To an extent, they codified some of the contemporary thinking behind the Gothic Revival. At the time of its publication A.W.N. Pugin and others had already advanced the ideas of the Revival and it was well under way in practice. Ruskin offered little new to the debate, but the book helped to capture and summarise the thoughts of the movement. The Seven Lamps also proved a great popular success, and received the approval of the ecclesiologists
Ecclesiology
Today, ecclesiology usually refers to the theological study of the Christian church. However when the word was coined in the late 1830s, it was defined as the science of the building and decoration of churches and it is still, though rarely, used in this sense.In its theological sense, ecclesiology...
typified by the Cambridge Camden Society
Cambridge Camden Society
The Cambridge Camden Society, later known as the Ecclesiological Society from 1845 when it moved to London, was a learned architectural society founded in 1839 by undergraduates at Cambridge University to promote "the study of Gothic Architecture, and of Ecclesiastical Antiques." Its activities...
, who criticised in their publication The Ecclesiologist lapses committed by modern architects in ecclesiastical commissions.
The 'Lamps'
The essay was published in book form in May 1849 and is structured with eight chapters; an introduction and one chapter for each of the seven 'Lamps', which represent the demands that good architecture must meet, expressed as directions in which the association of ideasAssociation of Ideas
Association of Ideas, or Mental association, is a term used principally in the history of philosophy and of psychology to refer to explanations about the conditions under which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers...
may take the observer:
- Sacrifice – dedication of man's craft to God, as visible proofs of man's love and obedience
- Truth – handcrafted and honest display of materials and structure. Truth to materials and honest display of construction were bywords since the serious Gothic Revival had distanced itself from the whimsical "Gothick" of the 18th century; it had been often elaborated by Pugin and others.
- Power – buildings should be thought of in terms of their massing and reach towards the sublimitySublime (philosophy)In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...
of nature by the action of the human mind upon them and the organization of physical effort in constructing buildings. - Beauty – aspiration towards God expressed in ornamentation drawn from nature, his creation
- Life – buildings should be made by human hands, so that the joy of masons and stonecarvers is associated with the expressive freedom given them
- Memory – buildings should respect the culture from which they have developed
- Obedience – no originality for its own sake, but conforming to the finest among existing English values, in particular expressed through the "English Early Decorated" Gothic as the safest choice of style.
Writing within the essentially British tradition of the associational values
Association of Ideas
Association of Ideas, or Mental association, is a term used principally in the history of philosophy and of psychology to refer to explanations about the conditions under which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers...
that inform aesthetic appreciation
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, Ruskin argued from a moral stance with polemic tone, that the technical innovations of architecture since the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
and particularly the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, had subsumed its spiritual content and sapped its vitality. He also argued that no new style was needed to redress this problem, as the appropriate styles were already known to man. The 'truest' architecture was therefore, the older Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
of medieval cathedrals and Venice. The essay sketched out the principles which Ruskin later expounded upon in the three-volume The Stones of Venice
The Stones of Venice (book)
The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,...
published between 1851 and 1853. Practically, he suggested an 'honest' architecture with no veneers, finishes, hidden support nor machined mouldings and that beauty must be derived from nature and crafted by man.
Ruskin drew upon Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790–1810) for some of his principles, such as the requirement of leisured poise as the best state for appreciating beauty, the thought that the natural countryside is more conducive to producing an artist than the city, that the glory of architecture lies in its age. The Seven Lamps was reduced to the status of a "moral gloss on Alison" by George L. Hersey, in High Victorian Gothic.
He had an abiding confidence in the natural, untutored instinct for rightness and beauty in the average person: "all men have sense of what is right in this matter, if they would only use and apply this sense; every man knows where and how beauty gives him pleasure, if he would only ask for it when he does so, and not allow it to be forced upon him when he does not want it." There is an easily perceived contrast here with the thread of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
that holds that people must be taught to appreciate good design. Another contrast with modernism is in the aesthetic of functionality: Ruskin saw no beauty in well-designed tools: beauty is out of place where there is not serene leisure, or "if you thrust it into the places of toil. Put it in the drawing-room, not into the workshop; put it on domestic furniture, not upon tools of handicraft." It will be sensed, even in so brief a quotation, that for Ruskin, Beauty was not an inherent characteristic but a thing that could be applied to an object or withheld from it.
Ruskin's choice of examples
Though Ruskin expressly disavowed any attempt to present an essay in the course of European architecture, he noted that "The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of buildings to which reference has been made." His nine pencil drawings that illustrate the principles he examines are all drawn from Tuscan and Venetian Romanesque and Gothic and northern French Gothic examples and the example in his text range to the north of England, following his experience and affection, avoiding the "impure schools" of Spain and of Germany. By the time of the second edition (1855), Ruskin had fixed his exemplars more certainly:"I have now no doubt that the only style proper for modern northern work, is the Northern Gothic of the thirteenth century, as exemplified, in England, pre-eminently by the cathedrals of LincolnLincoln CathedralLincoln Cathedral is a historic Anglican cathedral in Lincoln in England and seat of the Bishop of Lincoln in the Church of England. It was reputedly the tallest building in the world for 249 years . The central spire collapsed in 1549 and was not rebuilt...
and WellsWells CathedralWells Cathedral is a Church of England cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, who lives at the adjacent Bishop's Palace....
, and, in France, by those of Paris, AmiensAmiens CathedralThe Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens , or simply Amiens Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral and seat of the Bishop of Amiens...
, Chartres, RheimsReims CathedralNotre-Dame de Reims is the Roman Catholic cathedral of Reims, where the kings of France were once crowned. It replaces an older church, destroyed by a fire in 1211, which was built on the site of the basilica where Clovis was baptized by Saint Remi, bishop of Reims, in AD 496. That original...
, and Bourges, and by the transepts of that of RouenRouen CathedralRouen Cathedral is a Roman Catholic Gothic cathedral in Rouen, in northwestern France. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Rouen and Normandy.-History:...
."
The importance of authentic detail to Ruskin is exemplified in the daguerreotype
Daguerreotype
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process. The image is a direct positive made in the camera on a silvered copper plate....
s from which he made drawings of details too high to see clearly, and his urgent plea to amateur photographers in the Preface to the Second Edition, which presages the formative role that photography of architectural details was to play during the next decades, not only in Gothic Revival buildings:
"...while a photograph of landscape is merely an amusing toy, one of early architecture is a precious historical document ; and that this architecture should be taken, not merely when it presents itself under picturesque general forms, but stone by stone, and sculpture by sculpture."
Gothic Revival
By 1849, A.W.N. Pugin and others had already advanced the ideas of the Gothic Revival and its popularity was secured. Ruskin offered little new to the debate, but the book helped to capture and summarise the thoughts of the movement, proved a great popular success, and received the approval of The ecclesiologists, the influential newsletter of architectural criticism published by the Cambridge Camden SocietyCambridge Camden Society
The Cambridge Camden Society, later known as the Ecclesiological Society from 1845 when it moved to London, was a learned architectural society founded in 1839 by undergraduates at Cambridge University to promote "the study of Gothic Architecture, and of Ecclesiastical Antiques." Its activities...
. Effects such as the polychromy of High Victorian Gothic architecture may be traced to him, in a genre of "Ruskinian Gothic" that was practised in Britain and colonies like New Zealand and Canada, and in Anglophile strata of the United States.
Legacy
Picturesque
Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...
that he later rejected, The Seven Lamps were still tentative steps for Ruskin's architectural criticism and offered a moral creed for architects. He later went on to disclaim the essay as a 'wretched rant'.
The first effect of the book was almost immediate in the influence it had upon William Butterfield
William Butterfield
William Butterfield was a Gothic Revival architect and associated with the Oxford Movement . He is noted for his use of polychromy-Biography:...
's All Saints, Margaret Street
All Saints, Margaret Street
All Saints, Margaret Street is an Anglican church in London built in the High Victorian Gothic style by the architect William Butterfield and completed in 1859....
Church. Beresford, Hope and Butterfield had agreed upon the general details just a month after Ruskin's book was published and by August they had revised their plans to encapsulate the principles it espoused. All Saints is considered the first Ruskinian building due to its use of brick 'honestly' employed as a structural system rather than for surface decoration.
Ruskin's writings became a significant influence on William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
and the Arts and Crafts Movement
Arts and Crafts movement
Arts and Crafts was an international design philosophy that originated in England and flourished between 1860 and 1910 , continuing its influence until the 1930s...
in the latter half of the 19th century. In the United States, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
's expectations of a new, authentic American style had prepared the ground: Ruskin's Seven Lamps were quickly assimilated into the aesthetics of Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism
Transcendentalism is a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society, and in particular, the state of intellectualism at Harvard University and the doctrine of the Unitarian...
.
In 1899 Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
read a translation of Ruskin's chapter The Lamp of Memory in a Belgian magazine. He projected the transforming experience onto the narrator of Du côté de chez Swann, who describes himself as a boy reading the piece in the garden at Combray
Combray
Combray is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.Combray is also an imagined village in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu , a book which was strongly inspired by the village of his childhood, Illiers, which has now been renamed...
. Later Proust, who translated some works of Ruskin, claimed to know The Seven Lamps of Architecture by heart.
Seven Lamps of Architecture and other of Ruskin's writings on architecture are summarized and extensively quoted in John Unrau, Looking at Architecture with Ruskin (Toronto: University of Toronto), 1978.
Gallery
Writing in the preface to the first edition Ruskin remarks;Every apology is, however, due to the reader for the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates. Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively describes as sublime or beautiful features which the plates represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not to the illustrations.
The following illustrations are from the third edition where the situation had been much improved.
See also
- The Stones of VeniceThe Stones of Venice (book)The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,...
- Writings of A.W.N. Pugin