ARCHITECTURE - Karatunov.net

CH. xxix] BYZANTINE AND ROMANESQUE 267the art of the day to satisfy and express it. In novel Reasonrequirements, in new and better appliances, the architect lecture 1 "finds his happiest sources of inspiration, and the mostfertile suggestionsfor artistic invention. The old Romanarchitecture had become impossible in the 5th and 6thcenturies and indeed sooner than that,had to do the best they could in other ways.and the buildersNew modesof construction had to be devised, and this necessarilyled to new forms of design:for at the root of all radicalchanges in architecture will be found some reason ofconstruction.Arch con-Adopting the arch as the main element of design themasters of the new style carried it much farther than theRomans, from whom they took it. Instead of reducingit to a passive weight-carrying feature they made it anactive member of the structure, opposing vaultto vault,thrust to thrust, and thus beginning that method ofconstruction by equilibrium of forces which was themotive principleof allsucceeding architecture during themiddle ages. This new motive pervaded the architectureso as to remodel Its outward form. The old Roman Romanr j. ordersuse of the orders as an unmeaning surface decoration abandonedwas forgotten.The column, from being a mere surfacedecoration as at the Colosseum, was again brought intoservice, and we see itdoing duty as a working memberof construction in the arcades of S. Sophia, the colonnadesof the basilicas at Salonica and Ravenna, and thechurches of Pisa, Lucca, and Genoa. This again gaveway to a different form of construction as the art of The vaultvaulting wider spaces was gradually acquired, and strongerpiers and wider arches replacedthe basilican colonnade.Thenceforth the vault was the dominant factor in all theschools of Romanesqueart and of the Gothic that followed,