File:American art and American art collections; essays on artistic subjects (1889) (14783133615).jpg

Identifier: americanartamer01mont (find matches)
Title: American art and American art collections; essays on artistic subjects
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Montgomery, Walter
Subjects: Art Artists Art
Publisher: Boston, E.W. Walker & co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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uffered an incur-able dislocation. The same sortof multiplication of horizontalfeatures which characterized thetreatment of the basement ofGiotto, if applied to this lowerstage, would have contributed toredeem the design as a compo-sition of architecture. But, stilljudging this interesting designfrom a purely architectural stand-point, and without regard to itsfitness as a memorial to Wash-ington, it was to be noted that inthe composition of the shaft prop-er the prevalence of vertical linesshould have been counterbalanced,for the sake of repose, by a morejudicious use of interrupt-ing horizontal belts, suchindeed as seem to giverepose and massiveness tothe great original. If thedesign had been drawnso as to expose two ofits sides at once, the ab-sence of the technicaldevices which we havenamed, and more espe-cially of that variety ofdetail which alone can J: ft excuse and give a character ofart to a composition of this sort,would have been more keenlyMoreover, from an aesthetic felt.
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point of view, what was to be saidof an envelope so enormous andso costly as this, which dependedfor its character entirely uponthe disposition of forty-four blankwindows, each divided by thesame attenuated shaft into twoparts, and each having its headfilled with the same form of round-arched tracery, and that of themost conventional and uninterest-ing kind? Like all the other de-signs to which we have referred,if this had been reduced to onehalf its present dimensions, it wouldhave lost nothing essential to il£ ar-chitectural character. As judgedby this test, its treatment in re-spect to scale was fundamentallydefective; and here again the rareopportunity of using vast dimen-sions in a manner to enhancerather than to belittle them hadbeen lost. Considering that thisdesign was furnished by a sculptorof distinguished merit and a poetof recognized inspiration, and thathe has chosen an architecturalform which was invented for aninlay of rich marbles, the absenceof any suggestion of such

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