The Language of Architectural Classicism: From Looking to Seeing,

These two very different books explore aspects of the same centuries long tradition in European architecture, which by extension into the colonies abroad, means worldwide. It is a tradition which has left its mark in many places in the form of classical style churches, which with many public buildings and private mansions, form an important part of Europe’s heritage.

Dr Roberts is the Research Keeper in the Department of Antiquities in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, and has long been involved in excavations of classical sites in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Here, however, he concentrates on the capital of the Roman Empire, and on its great monumental, religious, and memorial buildings.

In the days when the schools still did Latin and Greek many people would have had some recollection of what had been taught about the architecture of Greece and Rome which served to inform their later visits to places across Europe.

Some years ago I had the pleasure of spending a time studying an album of early photographs made by an Irish landed gentleman who was one of our pioneering photographers. This was largely devoted to images of ancient imperial ruins as they were then, just before the collapse of the Papal Estates. He revealed a very sad and semi-ruinous city – but then this was only the classical ruins. A new Rome, eventually the capital of the united Kingdom of Italy was arising around them.

Rome

In this book Dr Roberts avoids this disappointment felt by many on seeing the ruins of Rome as they now are by using not only images from paintings over the centuries, but a series of brilliant restorations of what the now barely standing edifices looked like in their heyday. These really bring ancient and Imperial Rome alive.

What a joy it is for this reviewer at least to see again the wonderful paintings by the remarkably talented Alan Sorrell, who brought such pleasure to my first readings in archaeology. But many other fine photographers and artists have also been assembled by the design team at the publishers.

These great public buildings for worship and public life as well as business”

It is important to emphasise the book is aimed at the general reader, but there is no writing down. Those who enjoy the notable works of Mary Beard will find this book an invaluable and illuminating companion to her texts.

The commentary is informative and enlightening. Here, for instance, is an image of the great drain in Rome, the cloaca maxima, which was illustrated in my Latin reader at school. The image is no mere commonplace photo from Alinari, but an engraving by Piranesi. It is like meeting an old, slightly shabby friend of one’s youth decked out in her Sunday best. But as a symbol of Roman civilization it was not inappropriate, seeing how important fresh water, baths, hygiene, and even central heating, were to the Romans.

The Rome displayed in these pages was raised on such foundations. It was an observation of the historian Suetonius (born circa 69AD) that the emperor Augustus found Rome a city of stone, but left it a city of marble.

These great public buildings for worship and public life as well as business, were not only those in which the great days of the Roman Empire were played out, but where the Church thanks to the martyrdom there of Sts Peter and Paul, was settled on as the chief city of Christendom.

Religion

But the author observes pagans, wealthy and devout, still existed in Rome and for a while under the Emperor Julian, the old Gods might have been revived. He alludes to the caution of even the all powerful Constantine about building churches within the walls of pagan Rome.

However the grandest and best preserved of the 5th Century churches is the Santa Maria Maggiore, dating from 432AD. This church remains “a glimpse of late antique Rome made a key to the original appearance of older, and incredibly even grander monuments”.

This continuity of an architectural form through many centuries is only a part of the theme pursued by Dr McParland”

But a century later the future lay with the popes. “The most famous of these Gregory the First, known as the ‘the Great’, reigned over a city transformed beyond all recognition from the Rome of only 50 years before.”

On page 58 there is a summary of what a basilica was to the Romans. The form was that which Dr McQuaid, when Archbishop of Dublin, thought was the only right and proper form for a Christian church. He has left the region a number of very imposing creations, such the church at Stillorgan, which parishes these days find difficult to fill at times.

But his taste opens up the theme of Dr Edward McParland’s book, the continuity of a taste for classicism which was ever changing and evolving. The decline of Imperial Rome is part of that story, yet the continuity of a style evolved by the Greeks, adopted and transformed by the Romans, and again transformed by the Renaissance and the 18th and more recent centuries, is a remarkable story.

This continuity of an architectural form through many centuries is only a part of the theme pursued by Dr McParland of Trinity College Dublin. For he is keen not merely to inform readers of the results of his research, but to suggest to them a more vital approach to their visiting, not merely to look at sites to ‘see’ them. Teaching people to really use their eyes to appreciate what is there, and so to derive even great enjoyment from it, will be a life enhancing experience for his readers.

His survey takes a very different form from Dr Roberts, as he is concerned not so much with individual buildings as with the vocabulary of a certain architectural language, which like all languages as its dialects, its slang, its moments of evocative quotation, and a sense of continuous change.  As I say, having led many tours in Europe exploring the classical building of the continent, he constantly urged his students to go beyond mere looking to engage in actually ‘seeing’.  This is a precept that applies elsewhere in life generally.

* * *

A comment or two on our own heritage of classical inspired churches is called for here.

Dublin

While a suburban church such as St Mary Immaculate, Rathmines, with its magnificent copper dome, flourishes in an increasingly lively area, others do not.

The classical style St Audeon’s is closed up, while beside it the original medieval church is in the care of the OPW, attracting visitors in season.  St Paul’s Aran Quay is used the St Gregorios Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, but has to be barred up most of the time. Both were designed by Patrick Byrne, who also designed the church at Merchant’s Quay for the Franciscans.

The mixed fates of some of these architecturally important churches are dismaying. It was recently reported that consideration was being given by the Catholic Diocese of Dublin to moving the function of the Pro-Cathedral from the church in Marlborough Street to St Andrew’s Westland Row, which shows signs of wear and tear, despite the parish clergy and a group of loyal lay people.

The extraordinary decline of central Dublin as a place of general living rather than growing  commercial exploitation has been the cause of these closures and changes.

The admirers of churches are left dismayed at the possible fate of them all in the future. But if the two books under review here show anything it is that no change seems to be fatal.

A admired style will somehow or other survive the changes, remaking itself in new social conditions,  just as the architecture of pagan Rome that Dr Roberts celebrates clearly has a vital life even to-day largely under Chrstian aegis as Dr McParland reveals so elegantly in his book. It is a lesson to us all to see and admire the interconnectivity of all things under heaven.

This church remains ‘a glimpse of late antique Rome made a key to the original appearance of older, and incredibly even grander monuments’”

Admirers of churches are left dismayed at the possible fate of them all in the future. But if the two books under review here show anything it is that no change seems to be fatal”