pre-Columbian art and architecture, works of art and structures created in Central and South America before the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere. For many years the regions that are now Mexico and Guatemala and the Andean region of South America had been the cradle of indigenous civilizations whose remains bear witness to an exceptional degree of artistic advancement.

For Native American art in North America, see North American Native art.

The Cultures of Central America

The Maya

The Maya occupied the general area of Yucatán and adjacent parts of Central America from very early times. Their roots were in the Archaic period (c.2000 B.C.), but it was only during the Late Preclassic (300 B.C.-A.D. 150) and the Protoclassic (A.D. 150-300) periods that the traits associated with the Classic Maya were developed. Their greatest artistic achievements included their elaborate calendar, writing, palaces and temple pyramids with vaulted rooms made of limestone, polychrome pottery, stone stelae, and stylized wall paintings and bas-reliefs.

The Classic Maya (A.D. 300-900) was the apex of Maya civilization and is described as that period when the Maya inscribed the "Long Count Calendar" on their monuments. The remains of Bonampak, with its famous murals, can be dated to shortly after 800. Maya cities were ceremonial centers, and some of the edifices may be more properly identified as sculptured monuments. Maya architectural styles are found in three main regions: the Petén district (Uaxactún and Tikal); the cities of the river valleys, such as Piedras Negras and Palenque; and the cities of central and N Yucatán (Uxmal).

In the valley of the Motagua River to the south are Copán and Quiriguá, where sculpture flourished in the form of huge, elaborately carved stone stelae; more delicate forms and a refined spatial sense are evident in the famous stucco sculpture of Palenque and in the airiness and grace of its buildings. In the flat, dry country of N Yucatán, Maya architecture underwent changes in style. The erection of stone stelae was largely abandoned, and decoration, notably at Uxmal, became geometric. The cause of the collapse of the Maya civilization is not precisely understood. The culture persisted over so long a period that it is easier to understand the rest of Mesoamerican art and culture from the framework of Maya chronology.

The Olmec

The Olmec civilization, to the west, in the area of Veracruz and Tabasco, Mexico, was developing in the Preclassic period. Specifically, the period 800 to 400 B.C. marks the finest period of Olmec art as typified by the finds made at the site of La Venta. It is believed that the Olmec devised the Long Count Calendar and invented writing and that they may well be the source of these developments among the Maya. Noted for the excellence of their stone carving—ranging from small, finely detailed jade objects to colossal, often realistic basalt heads—the Olmec frequently used a motif combining human and jaguar features.

Teotihuacán

Teotihuacán is much to the west of the Olmec and Maya areas and dates from the 1st cent. A.D. to A.D. 700. The major part of the site and the height of its artistic expression belong to the periods Teotihuacán II and Teotihuacán III (c.300-700). Teotihuacán is an urban center, perhaps the greatest in Mexico; its monumental pyramids, temples, and royal processional roads are an extraordinary architectural achievement.

In the latter part of Maya Early Classic (c.A.D. 400-c.A.D. 600) there is evidence of great influence from Teotihuacán, as exemplified at the site of Kaminaljuyú and in varying degrees at other sites, including Tikal and Uaxactún. Erected on high land above the surrounding swamps, the latter two sites reveal their massive, richly decorated temples in the midst of tropical jungles. The site of Teotihuacán apparently was deliberately destroyed by invaders c.700 and thereafter ceased to be a factor in Maya civilization.

The Toltec

After the fall of Teotihuacán, a period of nearly two centuries (700-900) seems to have ensued during which there was no single dominant force, but a number of warring factions. One of these, the Toltec, made their capital at Tula (c.900-1200), northwest of Teotihuacán. The Toltec achieved power and dominated much of N and central Mexico until they were vanquished in 1156 or 1168. They invaded Maya country, principally Chichén Itzá (c.987). There they had a profound influence as revealed by the pyramids at Tula and Chichén Itzá, with their deep colonnades (an unusual feature in Mesoamerican architecture) and their decorative bas-relief and sculptured structural elements, e.g., the 15-ft-tall (4.5 m) caryatids at Tula. Toltec occupation has also been identified at other sites in the Yucatán. Indications are that Chichén Itzá was abandoned by the Toltec around 1224.

The Aztec

The final great native conquest in Mesoamerica was by the Aztec, who rose to power following a period of anarchy after the destruction of the Toltec's Tula. By 1344 the Aztecs had founded their magnificent capital, Tenochtitlán, at the site of present-day Mexico City in the Valley of Mexico, which became one of the architectural wonders of ancient America. Aztec art was eclectic, drawing on the traditions of conquered areas; but under the influence of the harsh Aztec religion, it developed a unique character. The importance of human sacrifice in the cult of the war god, Huitzilopochtli, permeated life and art, and representations of skulls, hearts, hands, and sacrificial scenes were common.

Much of the stone sculpture was huge and elaborate, a remarkable example being the statue of the earth goddess Coatlicue. Masses of intertwined serpents dominate the statue, which bears a necklace of human hearts and hands. Less ominous subjects, such as the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl, and various animals, were often beautifully carved in a smooth, compact style. Featherwork, jade carving, goldwork, extraordinary ceremonial vases, and superb textiles were produced by the artisans of subjugated groups, especially the Mixtec. Aztec power over Central Mexico extended until the arrival of Cortés in 1519.

Other Mexican Cultures

The area of the Mixtec and Zapotec in Oaxaca, Mexico, was not completely conquered by the Aztecs. The Zapotec originally occupied the site of Monte Albán from late Olmec times (c.600 B.C.) until about A.D. 900. Then a new seat of Zapotec civilization was founded at Mitla. Later the Mixtec began to infiltrate, intermarry with, occupy, and absorb the Zapotec. Apart from architecture, the Mixtec also excelled at the minor arts: goldwork, jewelry, vessels fashioned with semiprecious stones, turquoise and feather mosaics, extremely fine polychrome pottery, and painted books known as codices.

Many of the Mexican cultures produced ceramic figurines and pottery, often of superior artistic merit. The site of Tlatilco, in the Valley of Mexico, has yielded famous ceramics of remarkably early date, about 500 B.C. Delicacy of detail characterizes the figurines of Teotihuacán, and the finely decorated funerary urns of Monte Albán (c.400 B.C.) are particularly well wrought. In the western states of Nayarit, Jalisco, and Colima, early cultures produced an enormously varied array of fanciful and often grotesque terra-cotta figurines and pottery during the Classic period, A.D. 300 to 900. The Tarascan of Lake Pátzcuaro were one of these groups; they still produce excellent lacquerware. In the jungle states of Veracruz, Campeche, and Tabasco many sites, particularly Remojadas, have yielded fine examples of clay sculpture.

The Cultures of South America

Ancient Peru

The first great art style of the geographical area that is now Peru was that of the civilization that flourished at Chavín de Huántar in the northern highlands c.900 to 200 B.C. A more or less contemporaneous culture of the north coast produced a style of pottery known as Cupisnique. The Paracas culture of the south coast, of the same era, left some of the most beautiful textiles of pre-Inca Peru as well as fine pottery decorated with resin paint. Excellent painted ceramics and beautiful weavings were also characteristic of the Nazca civilization (c.200 B.C.-A.D. 600) to the south, which also produced the huge and mysterious "Nazca lines."

The Nazca's contemporaries on the north coast, the Mochica, surpassed them in the art of painted pottery. Battle scenes, rituals, animals, and mythological beings were masterfully depicted. Their ceramic "portrait vessels" in the form of human heads are the high point of realism in pre-Columbian art. They were also master builders, the Mochica Pyramid of the Sun being the largest in South America. During the following period (c.600-800), the Tiahuanaco culture gained ascendancy. With the decline of Tiahuanaco the kingdom of the Chimu flourished. Their capital, Chan Chan, has long been considered one of the great centers of ancient Peru.

The Inca

Chan Chan was surpassed only by the colossal achievements of the Inca, who conquered the Chimu in the latter part of the 15th cent. As engineers the Inca were unsurpassed in ancient America. Their agricultural terraces are still in use, and the extensive network of roads and bridges that spanned their empire would merit the envy of modern road builders. However, their cities and fortresses remain their towering achievement. The great cities of Cuzco and Machu Picchu and the imposing fortresses of Sacsahuamán and Ollantaytambo are typical examples of their skill. The Inca also excelled at stone carving and metalwork, achieving in this latter art a degree of perfection comparable to that reached anywhere in the world. Their civilization fell to the Spanish invaders in 1538.

orders of architecture. In classical tyles of architecture the various columnar types fall, in general, into the five so-called classical orders, which are named Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite. Each order comprises the column with its base, shaft, and capital and the supported part or entablature, consisting of architrave, frieze, and cornice. Each order has its own distinctive character, both as to relative proportions and as to the detail of its different parts. The entablature height is generally about one quarter that of the column; a pedestal, when used, is about one third the height of the column. For the Doric order, the Ionic order, and the Corinthian order, originally developed by the Greeks, the Roman writer Vitruvius attempted to formulate the proportionings of their parts. In Greece the Doric was the earliest order to develop, and it was used for the Parthenon and for most temples. The Corinthian was little used until the Romans adapted it. They employed it more than they did any other order and introduced brackets, or modillions, in its cornice. The Roman orders made greater use of ornament than the Greek, and their column proportions were more slender. In the 15th cent. Alberti revived an interest in the work of Vitruvius. At the same time, architects made drawings of Roman ruins and applied the Roman orders rather arbitrarily to building design. In the 16th cent. a more systematic use of orders was practiced. Architectural writers, notably Serlio, Scamozzi, Vignola, Palladio, and Sanmichele crystallized the Roman versions and additions (Tuscan and Composite) into the five definitely formulated orders, with minute rules of proportion. Philibert Delorme, Claude Perrault, Abraham Bosse, and Sir William Chambers were among those who composed treatises on the subject. Using the classical orders as a basis, the designers of the Renaissance and of subsequent periods created many variations. However, during the classic revival, a strict adherence to the proportions of the original Greek and Roman models became the rule. Though 20th-century architects are aware of the orders, they no longer use them.

naval architecture, science of designing ships. A naval architect must consider especially the following factors: floatability, i.e., the ability of the ship to remain afloat while meeting the requirements of the vessel's service under normal and abnormal weather and water conditions or after being damaged by collision or grounding; strength sufficient to withstand loads for which the vessel is intended; stability, i.e., the capability of the vessel to return to an upright position after being inclined by wind, sea, or conditions of loading; speed, which is affected by the outline of the hull and the type of engines, boilers, and propellers; steering, i.e., the design of the rudder and the hull structure to effect efficient turning; living conditions, including adequate ventilation and other health and safety considerations; and the arrangement of the structure and equipment to facilitate handling of cargoes. Additional problems are faced in the design of warships. Heavy, concentrated loads in the form of gun turrets, the protective armor, and other factors make warship design a field in itself. The three principal plans made for the construction of a ship are the sheer plan, a profile of the ship, showing the outline of the intersection of a series of vertical longitudinal planes with the shell of the ship and including the location of the transverse bulkheads, decks, and main structures; the body plan, a view showing sections made by vertical transverse planes; and the half-breadth plan, indicating the outline of a series of horizontal longitudinal planes. In addition, innumerable general and detail drawings are made, which include all the internal and external equipment.

modern architecture, new architectural style that emerged in many Western countries in the decade after World War I. It was based on the "rational" use of modern materials, the principles of functionalist planning, and the rejection of historical precedent and ornament. This style has been generally designated as modern, although the labels International style, Neue Sachlichkeit, and functionalism have also been used.

Development of the Style

Since the mid-19th cent. there had been repeated attempts to assimilate modern technology in practice and theory and to formulate a modern style of architecture suitable to its age. A functionalist approach eventually replaced the formerly eclectic approach to design. Technical progress in the use of iron and glass made possible the construction of Sir Joseph Paxton's celebrated Crystal Palace in London (1851), in which a remarkable delicacy was achieved. In the ensuing years iron, steel, and glass enabled architects and engineers to enclose the vast interior spaces of train sheds, department stores, and market halls, but often the structural forms were clothed with irrelevant ornament.

As late as 1889 the exposed, iron skeleton of the newly erected Eiffel Tower in Paris was met with public outrage. In Chicago, William Le Baron Jenney pioneered the use of a complete steel skeleton for the urban skyscraper in his Home Insurance Building (1883-85). His contemporary, Louis Henry Sullivan, first articulated the theory of functionalism (see functionalism), which he demonstrated in his numerous commercial designs. In addition, experiments in concrete construction were being carried out in France by François Hennebique and Auguste Perret, and in the United States by Ernest Ransome.

As a result of these advances, the formal conception of architecture was also undergoing a profound transformation. Frank Lloyd Wright, a pupil of Sullivan, experimented with the interpenetration of interior and exterior spaces in his residential designs. In Holland, where Wright's work was widely admired, the architects of de Stijl sought to organize building elements into new combinations of overlapping and hovering rectangular planes.

Form and Materials

By 1920 there was an increasingly wide understanding that building forms must be determined by their functions and materials if they were to achieve intrinsic significance or beauty in contemporary terms, without resorting to traditional ornament. Instead of viewing a building as a heavy mass made of ponderous materials, the leading innovators of modern architecture considered it as a volume of space enclosed by light, thin curtain walls and resting on slender piers. The visual aesthetic of modern architecture was largely inspired by the machine and by abstract painting and sculpture.

In giving form and coherence to modern architecture, Le Corbusier's book Vers une architecture (1923, tr. 1927) played an important role, as did the writings of the Dutch architect J. J. P. Oud and the German architect Walter Gropius, who also headed the Bauhaus in Dessau. Other early leaders of the modern movement included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, and Ernst May in Germany and Raymond Hood, Albert Kahn, Richard J. Neutra, William Lescaze, and George Howe in the United States.

In 1932 the label "International style" was applied to modern architecture by the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, anticipating its growing acceptance around the world. The United States became a stronghold of modern architecture after the emigration of Gropius, Mies, and Breuer from Germany during the 1930s. By the mid-20th cent. modern architecture had become an effective instrument for dealing with the increasingly complex building needs of a global society. Large architectural firms such as Harrison and Abramovitz and Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill did much to popularize modern architecture around the world after World War II.

At the same time new technological developments continued to influence architects' designs, particularly in the realm of prefabricated construction, as seen in the works of R. Buckminster Fuller and Moshe Safdie. The development of sophisticated air conditioning and heating systems also allowed modern architecture to spread from the temperate climates of Europe and North America to countries with extremely varied weather conditions.

The Style Evolves

Increasingly, during the 1950s, modern architecture was criticized for its sterility, its "institutional" anonymity, and its disregard for regional building traditions. More varied and individual, as well as regionalist, modes of expression were sought by architects of the next generation, although the basic emphasis on structure and materials continued. This tendency was evident in the works of Louis Kahn, Edward Durell Stone, and Philip Cortelyou Johnson in the United States, and the architects of the so-called New Brutalism movement in England. A dynamic sculptural unity distinguished the buildings of Eero Saarinen and the late works of Le Corbusier. Other leading architects of this generation include Alvar Aalto of Finland, the Italians Pier Luigi Nervi and Paolo Soleri, and in Central and South America, Lúcio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Juan O'Gorman, and Felix Candela.

Development of Postmodernism

After 1960, a less evolutionary and more revolutionary critical reaction to modern architecture, first articulated in the writings of Robert Venturi, began to form. Architects have become more concerned with context and tradition. Ornament, once banished by modernism, has returned, often in the form of overtly historical revivalism, although it has just as often been reinterpreted in high-tech materials. This has resulted in a stylistic eclecticism on the contemporary scene. Prominent architects working in the postmodern mode include Philip Johnson in his later projects, Michael Graves, Ricardo Bofill, and Aldo Rossi.

See also articles on individual architects, e.g., Walter Gropius.

cast-iron architecture, a term used to designate buildings that incorporate cast iron for structural and/or decorative purposes. After 1800 cast-iron supports were exploited as an alternative to masonry, and with the introduction of wrought-iron beams at mid-century, an efficient, prefabricated method of skeletal construction was possible, of which the most notable example was Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace (1851) in London. Iron and glass canopies were used to cover such diverse structures as shopping arcades, library reading rooms, and the vast new railway terminals. In the United States, James Bogardus pioneered the use of cast-iron commercial facades, which combined utility with the easy replication of attenuated classical orders in repeated bays.

architecture, the art of building in which human requirements and construction materials are related so as to furnish practical use as well as an aesthetic solution, thus differing from the pure utility of engineering construction. As an art, architecture is essentially abstract and nonrepresentational and involves the manipulation of the relationships of spaces, volumes, planes, masses, and voids. Time is also an important factor in architecture, since a building is usually comprehended in a succession of experiences rather than all at once. In most architecture there is no one vantage point from which the whole structure can be understood. The use of light and shadow, as well as surface decoration, can greatly enhance a structure.

The analysis of building types provides an insight into past cultures and eras. Behind each of the greater styles lies not a casual trend nor a vogue, but a period of serious and urgent experimentation directed toward answering the needs of a specific way of life. Climate, methods of labor, available materials, and economy of means all impose their dictates. Each of the greater styles has been aided by the discovery of new construction methods. Once developed, a method survives tenaciously, giving way only when social changes or new building techniques have reduced it. That evolutionary process is exemplified by the history of modern architecture, which developed from the first uses of structural iron and steel in the mid-19th cent.

Until the 20th cent. there were three great developments in architectural construction—the post-and-lintel, or trabeated, system; the arch system, either the cohesive type, employing plastic materials hardening into a homogeneous mass, or the thrust type, in which the loads are received and counterbalanced at definite points; and the modern steel-skeleton system. In the 20th cent. new forms of building have been devised, with the use of reinforced concrete and the development of geodesic and stressed-skin (light material, reinforced) structures.

See also articles under countries, e.g., American architecture; styles, e.g., baroque; periods, e.g., Gothic architecture and art; individual architects, e.g., Andrea Palladio; individual stylistic and structural elements, e.g., tracery, orientation; specific building types, e.g., pagoda, apartment house.

Architecture of the Ancient World

In Egyptian architecture, to which belong some of the earliest extant structures to be called architecture (erected by the Egyptians before 3000 B.C.), the post-and-lintel system was employed exclusively and produced the earliest stone columnar buildings in history. The architecture of W Asia from the same era employed the same system; however, arched construction was also known and used. The Chaldaeans and Assyrians, dependent upon clay as their chief material, built vaulted roofs of damp mud bricks that adhered to form a solid shell.

After generations of experimentation with buildings of limited variety the Greeks gave to the simple post-and-lintel system the purest, most perfect expression it was to attain (see Parthenon; orders of architecture). Roman architecture, borrowing and combining the columns of Greece and the arches of Asia, produced a wide variety of monumental buildings throughout the Western world. Their momentous invention of concrete enabled the imperial builders to exploit successfully the vault construction of W Asia and to cover vast unbroken floor spaces with great vaults and domes, as in the rebuilt Pantheon (2d cent. A.D.; see under pantheon).

The Evolution of Styles in the Christian Era

The Romans and the early Christians also used the wooden truss for roofing the wide spans of their basilica halls. Neither Greek, Chinese, nor Japanese architecture used the vault system of construction. However, in the Asian division of the Roman Empire, vault development continued; Byzantine architects experimented with new principles and developed the pendentive, used brilliantly in the 6th cent. for the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

The Romanesque architecture of the early Middle Ages was notable for strong, simple, massive forms and vaults executed in cut stone. In Lombard Romanesque (11th cent.) the Byzantine concentration of vault thrusts was improved by the device of ribs and of piers to support them. The idea of an organic supporting and buttressing skeleton of masonry (see buttress), here appearing in embryo, became the vitalizing aim of the medieval builders. In 13th-century Gothic architecture it emerged in perfected form, as in the Amiens and Chartres cathedrals.

The birth of Renaissance architecture (15th cent.) inaugurated a period of several hundred years in Western architecture during which the multiple and complex buildings of the modern world began to emerge, while at the same time no new and compelling structural conceptions appeared. The forms and ornaments of Roman antiquity were resuscitated again and again and were ordered into numberless new combinations, and structure served chiefly as a convenient tool for attaining these effects. The complex, highly decorated baroque style was the chief manifestation of the 17th-century architectural aesthetic. The Georgian style was among architecture's notable 18th-century expressions (see Georgian architecture). The first half of the 19th cent. was given over to the classic revival and the Gothic revival.

New World, New Architectures

The architects of the later 19th cent. found themselves in a world being reshaped by science, industry, and speed. A new eclecticism arose, such as the architecture based on the École des Beaux-Arts, and what is commonly called Victorian architecture in Britain and the United States. The needs of a new society pressed them, while steel, reinforced concrete, and electricity were among the many new technical means at their disposal.

After more than a half-century of assimilation and experimentation, modern architecture, often called the International style, produced an astonishing variety of daring and original buildings, often steel substructures sheathed in glass. The Bauhaus was a strong influence on modern architecture. As the line between architecture and engineering became a shadow, 20th-century architecture often approached engineering, and modern works of engineering—airplane hangars, for example—often aimed at and achieved an undeniable beauty. More recently, postmodern architecture (see postmodernism), which exploits and expands the technical innovations of modernism while often incorporating stylistic elements from other architectural styles or periods, has become an international movement.

Tibetan art and architecture have been almost entirely religious in character (see Tibetan Buddhism). The art of Tibetan Lamaism retains strong elements drawn from the forms of both Hinduism and Buddhism in India and Nepal, and was later influenced by the arts of China. In architecture, the chorten, or Tibetan stupa, was derived from Indian prototypes and was composed of one or more square bases, a square balcony, a bulbous dome, and a mast upholding umbrellas, surmounted by a flame finial. Tibet is famed for its gigantic monastery-cities, which house thousands of monks. The one at Tashi Lumpo, built in the 15th cent., is the headquarters for the Tashi Lama. A labyrinthian complex, it is composed of long streets of cells, which surround courtyards. At the center is a shrine. The 17th-century monastery at Lhasa includes the Potala palace, residence of the Dalai Lama, and a series of monastic skyscrapers that echo the forms of the surrounding mountain peaks. Tibetan sculpture, often in the form of gilt bronze statuettes, consists of slim, elegant figures with heart-shaped heads, resembling the Indian Pala or Nepalese figures and frequently ornamented with elaborate jewels. Tibetan paintings appear most frequently in the form of tankas, or temple banners, usually in brilliant colors on cotton or silk. The central figures of tankas may follow Nepalese or Indian types, but their decorative details, such as cloud scrolls, flowers, and architectural motifs, are often of Chinese origin. It is difficult to date these paintings, since the text, canons of proportion, and technical rules for making them have been almost unvaried for centuries. The symbolism is highly complex. Strongly schematized paintings portray ritual diagrams, scenes of the pantheon of divinities, and the wheel of life. There are representations of Buddha in his myriad aspects and saints such as Padmasambhava or Atisa (Tsong-Kha-pa). There are also images of ferocious deities, accompanied by their female counterparts. Among the most famous of these are the fearsome-faced goddess Lhamo and Yamantaka, with a bull's head. Religious significance is invested in several glorious emblems, e.g., the white parasol, two fishes, the lotus, and the seashell, and countless symbols of tantric and nontantric origin. Tantric manifestations are generally fierce. Fine examples of Tibetan art may be seen at the British Museum; Musée Guimet, Paris; the City Art Museum of St. Louis; the Newark (N.J.) Museum; the Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Arts, Staten Island, New York City, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Spanish colonial art and architecture, fl. 16th-early 19th cent., the artistic production of Spain's colonies in the New World. These works followed the historical development of styles previously established in Spain, but developed original features in different regions. The main centers were in Peru and Mexico, where there were skilled native artisans and relatively strong political organization. The style, with its unique mix of Spanish and indigenous elements, flourished until the last quarter of the 18th cent. when a current of neoclassicism invaded Latin America along with the official academies, and the great days of Spanish colonial architecture were over.

Colonial Architecture in Central America

The earliest buildings, constructed of impermanent materials, have disappeared, but by the end of the 16th cent. durable monumental architecture had been achieved. Most of the buildings of this time, including the cathedrals, were built for military purposes and were consequently massive and plain. This was a period of transition from Spanish Gothic to Spanish Renaissance, with many buildings reminiscent of the plateresque style, with contrasting bare walls and ornamental doorways, and others of the austerity of the Escorial.

Although elaborate and intricate ornamentation was often employed, particularly in later times, a strong strain of simple, solid construction ran through the colonial period, as exemplified in the Spanish missions of California and the 18th-century Jesuit missions of Paraguay. The earliest cathedral in the New World, in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1512-41), has a plateresque portal on the west facade. In 16th-century Mexico the great builders were the Augustinian, Franciscan, and Dominican monastic orders. They introduced the open chapel, as in the monastery of San Francisco Tlalmanalco, which was built with only three walls in order to speed construction and to accommodate more people. The cathedrals of Puebla, Mérida, and Guadalajara were also begun in this period.

During most of the 17th and 18th cent. the baroque style held sway, and in the 18th cent. the sumptuous Churrigueresque ornamentation (see under Churriguera) of Spain was exported to the colonies. In addition to employing the large forms and curving lines of the traditional European baroque, Spanish colonial buildings maintained the contrast between decorated and plain surfaces of the earlier period. A more conservative trend was manifested in Colombia, where churches and public buildings were simple and severe.

Baroque features, combined with the inventiveness of native artisans, reached a climax in the cathedral in Mexico City. It has been called ultrabaroque because of its strong light-and-shade patterns, richly carved columns and entablatures, and violent alternations of curves and angles. In the late 1960s much of the cathedral was damaged by fire and had to undergo restoration. In the Puebla region glazed tiles were sometimes placed on the whole facade of a building, as in the Church of San Francisco Acatepec. Central American buildings were generally provincial versions of the Mexican, but in Guatemala structures were lower and of heavier proportions as a protection against earthquakes.

Colonial Art in Central America

Colonial artists, many of them indigenous people, devoted themselves principally to the depiction of religious subjects from the New Testament. Native sculptors, notably in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, but also in the Jesuit missions of Paraguay, developed a powerful folk art; polychromed wood, terra-cotta, and bas-relief work in the walls and columns of churches were widely used media. A favorite subject of sculptures was the agony of Jesus; these figures, often given native features, are characterized by extraordinary pathos. In painting, the conceptions were frequently original and charged with remarkable intensity and piety. By 1600 numerous European artists had emigrated to the New World and contributed their talents, but the indigenous people, who had excelled at wall painting, books, and mosaics before the conquest, were chiefly responsible for giving colonial art its unique flavor. (For the history of painting and sculpture in Middle America, see Mexican art and architecture).

Colonial Arts in the Andes

In the Andean region Flemish and Italian influences are evident in the great painting centers of Bogotá and Quito, but Cuzco was the main center of pictorial productivity, and here the contribution of the native artist was of paramount importance. Native strains were also noticeable in the design of broadsides and aleluyas of the 18th and 19th cent. This art form, often called folk lithography, was common in Mexico and Venezuela and was often political in nature.

Andean Architecture

In the architecture of the Andean region, as in Mexico, there was richness and inventiveness, but with some significant variations. One of the most important 16th-century buildings was the Church of San Francisco in Quito, Ecuador, in which Spanish and Italian styles were blended. In Peru architects preferred heavier and more massive forms. Huge curving forms projected over doors and windows in many buildings of Lima. Columns in Mexico were freely carved with great fantasy; in Peru they were heavy and often spiral. Peruvian wall surfaces were divided into a series of large compartments rather than covered with shallow carving, as were those of Mexico.

The Church of San Agustín (1720), with a statue in the central niche dominating the whole facade, illustrates a distinctive type developed in Lima. In S Peru and in Bolivia native influence in ornamentation, in both technique and representation, pervaded the basic European architectural forms. On the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo (1728-44) in Potosí, richly decorated native figures function as caryatids or spiral columns.

Spanish art and architecture, works of art and architecture produced in what is now the European country of Spain. Open to a wide variety of cultural influences, the art and architecture of Spain have had an unusual and exciting heritage.

Early Works

Aside from important prehistoric remains, including cave paintings at Altamira and at Cogul, near Lleida (see Paleolithic art), the earliest monuments date from the Roman occupation (3d cent. B.C.-5th cent. A.D.). Little remains of the works of the Visigothic period (6th-7th cent.), although crude classical motifs were used, especially in the decorative sculpture. Such Visigothic monuments as the Church of San Juan de Baños in the province of Palencia (A.D. 661) suggest a possible Middle Eastern influence in the use of a flattened horseshoe arch.

Moorish and Asturian Influences

The full horseshoe arch introduced by the Moors (8th cent.) and extensively employed in the famous mosque at Córdoba (8th-10th cent.). In their palaces and mosques the Moors developed certain architectural features that have remained part of the Spanish tradition down to the present day. Moorish interiors, subdivided into isolated units, are cool and graceful and utilize intricate effects of light and shadow, as in the famous Court of the Lions in the Alhambra (Granada). This tendency to enframe space is reflected in the enclosed choirs of almost all Spanish cathedrals and collegiate churches. Other Moorish elements, such as multifoil and intersecting arches, influenced the Christian buildings of medieval Spain, as did the Moorish love of reiteration and multiplicity of small motifs in luxuriant flat ornament (exemplified in the Alhambra).

By 850 the Moors had conquered all Spain except the Asturias region. Characteristic of Asturian churches (9th cent.) is a basilican plan with square apses, rounded arches, and balustered windows. In Santa Maria de Naranco (mid-9th cent.) is found one of the earliest uses of barrel vaulting in the Middle Ages. The art and architecture of the Mozarabs (9th-11th cent.), combining Asturian and Moorish features, produced some of the most original and interesting European buildings of the time.

The Romanesque Period

During the Romanesque period (11th-12th cent.) Christian Spain in general exhibited characteristics common to the Romanesque style of Europe, but with traces of Middle Eastern influence. The cathedral at Santiago de Compostela (11th-12th cent.) reveals striking analogies in both architecture and sculpture to Burgundian works.

The Gothic Period: Architecture

With the gradual unification of the Spanish kingdoms, there was increased prosperity and artistic activity during the Gothic period (13th-mid-16th cent.). Castilian architecture was basically French-inspired, although a distinctly native taste can be felt in the proportions and more ornate decorative features. Outstanding examples include the cathedrals of Burgos, Toledo, and León, the last remarkable also for its stained glass. Catalan Gothic architecture, exemplified in the cathedrals at Barcelona and Palma de Majorca, made distinctive use of wide naves with two side aisles instead of the usual four; they have heavy interior buttresses and lateral chapels. At Girona the aisles were suppressed altogether, so that the cathedral had one of the widest vaulted spans of medieval Europe.

A pervasive element in Spanish architecture is the Mudéjar style, whose influence lasted well into the 18th cent. The favorite materials of the Mudéjar builders were brick, plaster, and wood, which they employed with singular versatility. Their decoration is distinguished by the use of the elaborate geometrical configurations and stylizations associated with most Islamic art. Gothic churches, particularly in the south, are frequently crowned by Mudéjar artesonados, or wooden roofs.

The Gothic Period: Art

Early Gothic sculpture was predominantly influenced by French models. In the 15th and early 16th cent. there were strong Flemish and German trends. Retables and choir stalls were elaborately sculptured and polychromed, the former being sometimes made of alabaster. Remarkable examples include those in the cathedrals of Tarragona, Seville, and Toledo. At the end of the 15th cent. Gil de Siloe executed the magnificent retable and royal monuments in the church of Miraflores (near Burgos), representative of a late Gothic realism.

In painting of the 13th and 14th cent. there was a diffusion throughout Spain of the elegant and courtly style of French and Sienese artists, although strikingly expressive and original works of art were created by masters such as Ferrer Bassa and Luis Borassá. Extensive trade with the Netherlands in the 15th cent. encouraged the emergence of a Hispano-Flemish style, exemplified in the paintings of Jaume Huguet. A successful combination of Moorish and Flemish elements was developed in the works of the painter Fernando Gallego.

The Renaissance and Mannerism

In the 16th cent. Italian sculptors working in Spain, such as Jacopo Fiorentino, Domenico Fancelli, and Pietro Torrigiano, did much to popularize Renaissance motifs, which were combined with Gothic and Mudéjar in works of the plateresque style. An outstanding monument of the plateresque style is the cathedral of Granada by Diego Siloe. Its rotunda in particular, designed on the model of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, also reflects the humanistic aspirations of its architects, who were classically inclined. Typical of the more ornamental plateresque are the facade of the Univ. of Salamanca (c.1520-30) and that of the Convent of San Marcos (León). A more developed High Renaissance style appears in such works as the unfinished palace of Charles V (Granada), designed by Pedro Machuca, and the Escorial, designed by Juan Bautista de Toledo and finished by Juan de Herrera.

Outstanding native sculptors, such as Alonso Berruguete, Juan de Juni, and Gregorio Fernández, were strongly influenced by the more tortuous creations of Donatello and Michelangelo. Italianate painters, such as Luis de Vargas and Luis de Morales, and later Juan de Juanes, developed eclectic and mannerist styles. It was only toward the end of the century that a genius appeared who truly incarnated the dark, mystical Spanish idiom—El Greco. With roots in the Byzantine and Venetian traditions and in his very personal version of mannerism, El Greco translated aspects of Italian form in terms of his own highly spiritual, incandescent vision.

The Baroque Period

The baroque period (17th-mid 18th-century) was marked by decisive affirmation of native taste and individual genius in all the arts. Polychrome religious sculptures by Juan Martínez Montañés, Alonso Cano, and Pedro de Mena exemplify characteristic effects of extreme realism and an inward spirituality. Similarly in painting, sobriety of color and insistent naturalism, as well as dramatic contrasts of light and shade, were typical of such masters as Ribalta, Ribera, Navarrete, and Zurbarán, who are sometimes linked with Caravaggio and the Italians known for their dark palettes, termed tenebrosi [gloomy]. However, the outstanding master of the period was Velázquez, one of the greatest figures in the history of art. His paintings are admired as much for their display of technical virtuosity as for their profundity of characterization. The works of Murillo revealed a tendency to lyricism and decorative effects.

In architecture an extreme reaction against the severity and restraint of Renaissance forms manifested itself in the Churrigueresque style (see under Churriguera), which was characterized by animation of surface, play of light and shade effects, and an exaggeration and sumptuousness of ornament. Examples of Churrigueresque architecture include the Transparente in Toledo cathedral and the sacristy of the Cartuja (Granada). The style was imported into the American colonies (see Spanish colonial art and architecture), where many examples of the style can still be seen.

Under the Bourbons there was strong reaction against the individualism and exuberance of late baroque art. The founding in 1752 of the first of the Spanish academies of art resulted in a wave of sterile academic neoclassicism that tended to discourage creativity in the arts for nearly two centuries. The great exception to the general decline was Francisco Goya, who detailed in his works the corruption and brutality of this era in Spanish history.

The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: The Classic, Romantic, and Modern

Among 19th-century painters, José de Madrazo y Agudo belonged with the school of Jacques-Louis David and Mariano Fortuny with French romantic and historical painters. The foremost architect working in the neoclassical style was Juan de Villanueva. At the turn of the century the architect Antonio Gaudí designed a number of startling and enormously original structures in Barcelona, including the Expiatory Church of the Holy Family.

The foremost of modern painters, Pablo Picasso, though born a Spaniard, is permanently associated with the school of Paris, as are the cubist Juan Gris, the surrealists Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí, and the sculptor Julio González. Nonetheless, each has in his style something that is distinctively Spanish in origin. In the 1950s there was an outburst of abstract expressionism in Spain represented in the works of Antonio Tapies and Luis Sáez, among many others. Eduardo Chillida is a major modern Spanish sculptor, as are Francisco Barón, José Luis Sánchez y Gabino, and Martin Chirino. Notable contemporary painters include Luis Ficto José Francés, and Rafael Canogar.

The Decorative Arts

In general, Spanish minor arts exhibit characteristics analogous to those of the major arts in the corresponding periods. Rich mineral resources in Spain and later in the colonies made for extensive development of wrought metalwork. Luxuriantly decorated iron church screens or rejas (see rejería) are characteristically Spanish. Moorish influence encouraged development of filigree and enamel as well as tooled leather. Flemish influence encouraged the establishment of tapestry works. In the 18th cent. Buen Retiro porcelains (named for the palace at Madrid) were among the finest ceramics produced in Europe.

Southeast Asian art and architecture includes works from the geographical area including the modern countries of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The area is also known as Indochina. The art of this region draws from three major sources: indigenous traditions, China, and India.

Early History

As Hinduism and Buddhism were introduced to Southeast Asia, their traditions were altered to conform to the traditions of the indigenous peoples. Works predating outside influence were generally made of perishable materials and have not survived. Neolithic sites in the area produced stone tools, baskets, and pottery. The Bronze age in Southeast Asia dates from about 800 B.C.; by c.500 B.C. there were recognizable divisions between those cultures influenced by China and those influenced by India.

The Dongson (or Dong Son) culture, which was centered around the Tonkin gulf in present-day Vietnam, was notable among those drawing influence from China. From this culture various artifacts of great beauty have been excavated such as bronze dagger hilts, ornaments, lamps, and tomb furnishings. Typical of Dongson style are spirals and Greek key ornamentation. Massive bronze drums for burial with the dead are also part of Dongson culture. Such drums are thought to have been part of rituals to create rain. Han China conquered much of the Dongson area in 111 B.C. after which Chinese taste and techniques became predominant in the area.

Opportunities for trade between W Indochina and India flourished and brought with commerce an influx of Indian expertise in mechanical engineering, social hierarchies, and a pantheon of deities both Hindu and Buddhist. The ancient kingdom of Fou Nan (or Funan, a name given by Chinese historians) spreading into Indonesia was a commercially based and powerful force in the area. Stone temples after the Indian prototypes are found dating back to Fou Nan in the 6th cent. The Fou Nan kingdom eventually moved up the Mekong and united with the Chen La (or Chenla) kingdom and flourished in the middle area of the Mekong. Its early monuments which anticipate Khmer art are for the most part statues of gods and goddesses whose smooth and gracefully sinuous bodies are clothed in draperies of extreme thinness.

Khmer Art

The late 8th cent. saw the disintegration of Chen La, and beginning in the early 9th cent. the Khmer empire of present-day Cambodia began to flourish. Indravarman (877-89), the first Khmer king, began construction of Angkor, a remarkable temple-city which utilized a grid system of canals and large reservoirs to control the river (see Angkor for descriptions of Angkor, Angkor Wat, and Angkor Thom). The temples and palace complex derived much of their architectural style from Indian sources, but much of the style of carving on the deities and supporting figures is uniquely Khmer, with voluptuous figures and serenely smiling faces. So richly decorated were most of the monuments that entire building complexes become a sculptural whole. The empire spread and its wealth increased into the 11th cent.

The most famous of Khmer monuments is Angkor Wat (or Vat), a vast temple-complex built in the early 12th cent. under Suryavarman II. It is an enclosure built of numerous shrines and courtyards the entirety of which represents the cosmic order in architectural sculpture. The Champa kingdom invaded Angkor in the 12th cent., and although it was reclaimed by Khmer kings it no longer had the same splendor. Angkor Thom and Bayon, built in the early 13th cent. under Jayavarman VII, shows the movement away from grace and lyrical carvings toward a more monumental style. From the 15th until the 18th cent. most of the art of Cambodia was wood sculpture, which due to climatic conditions has with rare exception not survived. Later works mostly follow the inspiration of Thai sculpture.

Vietnamese Art

The Champa kingdom which was situated in Annam, lower Vietnam, was roughly contemporary with Chen La. Champa art is best typified by the sculpture associated with architecture, in which lavish ornament is paired with vigorous sensuality. Champa art declined altogether after the 13th cent. China held the Tonkin gulf area as a vassal state until the 10th cent. when the Vietnamese in 938 seized power from the T'ang. Much of the art owes its influence to Chinese models and neighboring Champa styles. Of particular note are ceramics similar to some provincial Sung Chinese wares.

Thai Art

In the 13th cent. the Thai peoples began to amass their considerable power in western Southeast Asia and by the 15th cent. were the dominant force. Siamese bronze sculpture of Buddhist figures in the 14th and 15th cent. showed an interest in an exaggerated elongation of limbs, a serene countenance and an interest in the pose known as the "walking Buddha." In the 16th cent. Buddhist figures adorned with jewels were widespread. Most extant Siamese paintings are of Buddhist subject matter and owe much to Chinese models, yet include a graceful linear quality and affection for brilliant color. The establishment of the capital at Bangkok and consequent increase in trade with the West brought other influences to bear on Thai art.

Laotian and Burmese Art

Laotian art was heavily influenced by neighboring Siam. Thai kingdoms were established there in the latter 14th cent., and in art and architecture Thai and Burmese models were followed. A few temples of stucco and brick survive but for the most part the typical Laotian architectural medium was and is wood, encompassing the quintessential Southeast Asian roof line of graceful upward sweeping curves. In Myanmar the lower Ayeyarwady valley was the most populous area, and Buddhist art forms merged with native beliefs in Nats. In Pagan a 9th-century Nat temple is among the earliest examples of Burmese architecture. Many examples of later date have the typical Burmese flame element, either above the windows or as part of the roof ornamentation. In their sculptural tradition, the Burmese were conservative, initially following Indian styles and later Khmer and Thai models. Burmese lacquerware, made for use in temples and monasteries, is one of the most celebrated of Burmese arts.

Indonesian Art

On the islands of Indonesia, there have been found artifacts from the Dongson culture, including the famous bronze drum known as the "Moon of Bali," the largest of the "rain drums." The culture of the Indonesian islands was strongly influenced by India. The great dynasty of Shailendra (776-864) from central Java made its influence known as far north as Cambodia. Sculptures from 9th-century Hindu temples in central Java show the influence of Indian models. Chandi Mendut, c.A.D. 800, is a Buddhist shrine incorporating many bas-reliefs which show the Javanese interest in sinuous forms and elegant composition.

The supreme achievement of Indonesian art is the monument of Borobudur, an architectural monument and cosmic diagram in one, built in the 8th cent. Receding terraces mount skyward and support on their walls bas-relief sculptures of great beauty and refinement. Buddhas appear at intervals along the walls, and the highest terraces house 72 Buddhas in stone latticework stupas. Bronze sculptures of Buddhist figures made after the 8th cent. continue the style of Borobudur. In the 11th cent. rock-cut reliefs continue the Javanese sculptural tradition. With the advent of Islam in the 15th cent., figural sculpture was abandoned and ornamentation of mosques took over the Indonesian interest in architectural embellishment. Modern Indonesia has taken a renewed interest in traditional crafts and art forms.

Siamese art and architecture: see Southeast Asian art and architecture.

Scandinavian art and architecture, works of art and structures created in the Scandinavian area of Europe.

Early History

The Scandinavian countries are rich in artifacts and objects of archaeological interest dating from the end of the Ice Age through the Bronze Age, the Celtic and Germanic Iron Ages, and the Viking period. Viking art (c.800-c.1050) is characterized by dynamic geometric design of considerable complexity and sophistication and the ingenious use of animal forms. It bears a clear relationship to other European trends, particularly to Hiberno-Saxon illumination. Numerous fine examples of early Scandinavian art are in the collections of the museums of Copenhagen and Stockholm.

The Early Christian Period

Church building became the principal artistic activity when Scandinavia was Christianized in the 11th cent. The wooden stavkirke, a medieval church decorated with grotesque figures, is unique to this region; examples remain only in Norway, where it was most prevalent. The cathedral at Lund, Sweden, begun in 1085, reveals Lombard influence; Gothic elements predominate in the cathedrals of Linköping and Skara. The island of Gotland produced numerous sculptural and architectural masterworks of the Gothic period. The cathedral at Trondheim, begun in the 12th cent., bears a resemblance to English Gothic architecture, particularly to Lincoln Cathedral. Uppsala Cathedral was built by French architects.

The Renaissance and Baroque Period

Foreign stylistic influence persisted through the Renaissance and baroque periods, the North German school of Lübeck becoming more and more the chief source for Scandinavian styles. Castles such as Gripsholm exemplify this borrowing habit. Great castle-building activity was instigated by the Danish and Swedish rulers of the 16th to 18th cent.; outstanding examples include Kronborg (c.1570-1590) and Fredriksborg (c.1560-1620) castles and the rebuilt castle of Stockholm (1690-1708; 1727-53).

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

In the 18th and 19th cent. native artists began to gain international prestige. From Denmark the neoclassicist sculptor A. B. Thorvaldsen taught and worked in Rome, wielding enormous stylistic influence. The painters Christoffer Eckersberg and N. A. Abildgaard were prominent, as were the architects C. F. Harsdorff and C. E. Hansen. The academy of Copenhagen attracted students from Germany, including the painters P. O. Runge and C. D. Friedrich.

Norway produced its best-known artists late in the 19th cent.—most notably the sculptors Stephan Sinding and A. G. Vigeland and the protoexpressionist painter Edvard Munch. Significant Swedish artists included the sculptor J. T. Sergel and, in the late 19th and early 20th cent., the painters A. L. Zorn and Carl Larsson.

The Twentieth Century

The Swedish sculptor Carl Milles, who worked extensively in the United States, was among the most notable Scandinavian artists of the early part of the century. Since World War II various strains of abstraction have been developed by a number of Scandinavian artists.

The inventive use of traditional and regional forms within the plain vocabulary of brick construction led to a rejuvenation of Scandinavian architecture in the early 20th cent. with the works of P. V. J. Klint of Denmark and Ragnar Ostberg, Sigfrid Ericsson, and, above all, E. G. Asplund of Sweden. The Finnish architects Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto influenced Scandinavian design profoundly and have international acclaim for establishing an unquestionably new architecture. Modern Scandinavian furniture and applied arts, particularly glassmaking, metalwork, woodwork, and ceramics, have been widely imitated for their simplicity and purity of line.

Russian art and architecture, the artistic and architectural production of the geographical area of Russia.

Early Christian Works

With the Christianization of Russia in the late 10th cent. the Russian church and its art became subject to Constantinople (see Byzantine art and architecture). Major artistic centers developed in Kiev, Novgorod, and Pskov. Although the early churches were made largely of wood (with strong Norse stylistic influences), stone was already in use in the Cathedral of St. Sophia (1018-37) in Kiev. A distinctive Russian style soon emerged, marked by steeply sloping roofs and high walls, a proliferation of domes, and later a compartmentalization of interior space into many aisles and apses. The typical onion-shaped dome made an early appearance (mid-12th cent.) in the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Sancta Sophia in Novgorod. In the 12th cent. the Vladimir-Suzdal region became an important cultural center. There the Western Romanesque was combined with Byzantine elements, as in the palace of Andrei Bogolyubsky.

The Art of the Icon

The earliest painters of religious art in Russia were Greeks or Greek-trained Russians, who generally followed the form and iconography of the Byzantine school (see icon). Within the framework of the highly schematic Byzantine rendering of the human figure, Russian art (11th-14th cent.) ranged from an extremely hieratic and intellectual concept to a softer, more devotional image. The Russians added a number of saints to the Byzantine hierarchy. Among those frequently depicted were saints Vladimir, Olga, Boris, Gleb, and later Alexander Nevsky. From the mid-13th through the 14th cent. little art flourished under the Tatar invaders except in Novgorod and Pskov, which remained free and were the dominant cultural centers until the rise of Moscow at the end of the 15th cent.

Icon painting was brought to its highest achievement as a Russian art form in the late 14th and 15th cent. with the expressive frescoes of the Greek painter Theophanes, in the church of the Transfiguration in Novgorod (1378), and with the Hellenized works of the Russian artist Andrei Rublev (e.g., Trinity, c.1410; Tretyakov Gall., Moscow). The master Dionysius introduced new iconographical motifs, scenes of miracles, which he imbued with great vitality. A high level of quality was maintained in icon painting until the 17th cent., when it deteriorated into an ornate, extremely detailed, convention-ridden art.

The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Russian church became independent of the Greek Orthodox faith, and the Moscow school of art and architecture became the official liturgical and court art of Russia, maintaining this status until the 18th cent. In the 16th cent. art was first pressed into the service of the government. Frescoes such as The Heart of the Czar Is in the Hand of God decorated the palace walls of Ivan IV.

In architecture a new period began in the 15th cent., when the first of many Italian architects were invited to work on the Kremlin in Moscow (see under kremlin). The Cathedral of the Dormition (1475-79), planned by Aristotele Fioravanti, is notable for a new rationality of proportions, and Italian High Renaissance elements can also be seen in the decoration (pilasters, scallop shells, and arches) of the Cathedral of St. Michael (1505-9), built by Alevisio Novi. On the other hand, the Russo-Byzantine style was still very much in favor under Ivan IV. The Cathedral of St. Basil (1555-60) was designed by two Russian architects, Postnik and Barma, who combined several chapels into one unique and splendid church. With its profusion of oddly shaped cupolas, gilt and polychrome arches, and air of fairy-tale fantasy, it served as a model for Russian churches until the 17th cent.

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

During the 17th cent. influences from Lithuania and Poland brought about a humanistic interest in classical antiquity that was to culminate in the Westernization of Russia under Peter the Great. In 1712 Peter moved his capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg and began the transformation of a mud flat on the coast of Finland into a sparkling European city. A host of Western architects was imported for the enterprise and continued to work under successive reigns. The outstanding architect of the period was Conte Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli. Working in a rococo style, he designed the Winter Palace (now part of the Hermitage), Smolny Cathedral, and the facade at Peterhof, one of the most beautiful buildings in St. Petersburg.

Catherine the Great preferred a more dignified manner. The Italian Antonio Rinaldi (c.1709-c.1790), the French architect Jean Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (1729-1800), and the Scottish Charles Cameron (c.1740-c.1815) were responsible for the neoclassical architecture that Catherine promoted as the official court style. Prominent Russian architects during her reign included V. I. Bazhenov (1737-99) and I. Y. Starov (1744-1808); the latter built the splendid Tauride Palace in St. Petersburg.

In the 18th cent. the infiltration of European painting styles began, and for the first time since the introduction of Christianity sculpture became a major Russian art form. European artists such as Falconet and Vigée Le Brun, came to St. Petersburg while Russian artists started to receive their training abroad. Portrait and historical painting predominated. Under Alexander I foreign architects were still imported, including Thomas de Thoman (1754-1813), who built the Bolshoi Theatre. The Greek revival style also came into vogue, and is revealed in the buildings of M. F. Kazakov (1733-1812), A. D. Zakharov (1761-1811), and V. P. Stasov (1769-1848).

The Nineteenth Century

During the 19th cent. there was a revival of medieval Russian architecture. A romantic school of painting arose in the early years of the century, and pictorial epics were produced by Karl Briullov (1799-1852), F. A. Bruni (1800-1875), and A. A. Ivanov (1806-58). The second half of the 19th cent. saw the introduction of ideological realism, particularly in the works of V. G. Perov (1833-82) and I. Y. Repin, who is now hailed as one of the first artists of the revolution. Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910), a tormented original and one of the foremost modern Russian masters, painted a remarkable series of decorations for the monastery of St. Cyril at Kiev.

The Twentieth Century

Around the turn of the century Mir Iskusstva (World of Art Group) was initiated, a movement akin to art nouveau. It served as the background for some of the first truly abstract artists who prevailed briefly in Russia after the 1917 revolution (see constructivism and suprematism). Among the more radical modern artists were Casimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin, Chaim Soutine, Aleksey von Jawlensky, Antoine Pevsner, Naum Gabo, Wassily Kandinsky, Mikhail Larinov, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Archipenko. Most of them left the country after 1923 and settled in Western Europe and the United States.

The Ministry of Culture soon took over the direction of Russian art, and a standardized literal style known as socialist realism was enforced while abstraction was renounced as decadent. Socialist realist artists include Georgi Nisski and Vera Mukina. Only with the death of Stalin was there a slight relaxation of government strictures, although artists working in an abstract idiom continued to be rarely exhibited and harshly criticized. From the mid-1950s to the decline of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s, so-called nonconformist art was widely practiced in the USSR. This late Soviet art encompassed a number of styles, met with official disapproval, was infrequently seen by the public, and often dealt with the harshness of life in the USSR. Among the leading artists of the period were Ilya Kabakov, Leonid Lamm, and Yevgeny Rukhin. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's leadership and with the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union, artistic freedom has increased markedly. Russian architecture in the 20th cent., after a brief phase of constructivist experimentation in the 1920s, tended toward an unimaginative combination of neoclassicism and skyscraper construction.

Romanesque architecture and art, the artistic style that prevailed throughout Europe from the 10th to the mid-12th cent., although it persisted until considerably later in certain areas. The term Romanesque points to the principal source of the style, the buildings of the Roman Empire. In addition to classical elements, however, Romanesque architecture incorporates components of Byzantine and Eastern origin.

Romanesque Architecture

The specific character of the Romanesque style can be understood only in the light of the development of early medieval architecture in the West, notably its Carolingian and Ottonian phases. Certain of the most characteristic features of Romanesque structures—the massive west facade crowned by a tower or by twin towers, the complex design of the eastern part housing the sanctuary, the rhythmic alternation of piers and columns in the nave—represent only the advanced stages in a lengthy and complex formal evolution marked by considerable trial and error.

The development of Romanesque architecture owes much to the primacy accorded to vaulting. Masonry vaulting (see vault) since the beginning of Christian architecture had been confined to buildings of relatively small scale and to crypts. Large basilican structures, in a continuation of a tradition inaugurated by the early Christian basilica, were topped by wooden roofs. Romanesque churches, on the other hand, with notable exceptions in Normandy and Italy, sustained massive barrel vaults, making mandatory the reinforcement of load-bearing walls in order to parry the lateral outward thrust. The frequent presence of galleries above the aisles, sometimes with half-barrel vaults, is in all probability rooted in structural considerations connected with the problem of abutment. The limitation of wall openings to a minimum, related to the same concern, contributed to the sober yet somberly impressive character of the light.

The major share of architectural activity was sponsored by the great monastic communities. The Cluniac order, at the peak of its power, played a primary role in the patronage of construction. Thus a number of significant Cluniac churches connected with great 12th-century pilgrimages—St. Martin in Tours, St. Sernin in Toulouse, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain—show great similarity in plan and overall design. This sameness is especially notable in the presence of spacious ambulatories with radiating chapels designed to facilitate the pilgrims' access to the precious relics. The design of the third church of Cluny, dedicated in 1095, is reflected in a number of Burgundian churches. The basilica of San Marco in Venice and other Byzantine structures help to account for the presence of domed vaulting in a group of churches in French Aquitaine. German Romanesque architecture on the other hand remained strongly tied to the heritage of Ottonian art.

The following structures are noted works of Romanesque architecture: France—the abbey churches of St. Madeleine Vézelay (c.1090-1130) and Paray-le-Monial (early 12th cent.); Germany—the Cathedral of Speyer, dedicated in 1060, but largely reconstructed after 1082, and the Church of St. Mary on the Capitol in Cologne (1049); Italy—the cathedral (1063-92) and baptistery (1153) in Pisa, the Church of San Miniato al Monte (c.1070) in Florence, and the Cathedral of Monreale in Sicily (1174). From the last third of the 12th cent. certain features of the churches in N France and in England began to point toward the development of the Gothic (see Norman architecture). Similarly, architecture in the Ile-de-France, particularly the ambulatory (1140) of the abbey of St. Denis, reveals such an advance in unified design and construction as to be considered the first monument of Gothic architecture.

Romanesque Art

The art of the Romanesque period was characterized by an important revival of monumental forms, notably sculpture and fresco painting, which developed in close association with architectural decoration and exhibited a forceful and often severely structural quality. At the same time an element of realism, which parallels the first flowering of vernacular literature, came to the fore. It was expressed in terms of a direct and naive observation of certain details drawn from daily life and a heightened emphasis on emotion and fantasy. For many aspects of its rich imagery Romanesque art depended on the heritage of antiquity and of earlier medieval art, while the prestige of Byzantine art remained high in Western eyes. The pilgrimages and Crusades contributed to an unprecedented expansion of the formal vocabulary through the development of closer contacts between regional cultures and distant peoples.

Sculpture

The first important monuments of Romanesque sculpture were created in the last decade of the 11th cent. and the first decades of the 12th cent. The primary source of artistic patronage was provided by the monastic institutions, for whom sculptors executed large relief carvings for the decoration of church portals and richly ornate capitals for cloisters. Romanesque sculpture produced an art of extraordinary ornamental complexity, ecstatic in expression, and abounding in seemingly endless combinations of zoomorphic, vegetal, and abstract motifs.

In France themes portrayed on tympanums of such churches as Moissac, Vézelay, and Autun emphasized the awesome majesty of Christ as ruler and judge of the universe. They often depicted terrifying spectacles of hell. English sculpture showed a tendency toward geometric ornamentation. However, with the introduction in England of continental influences in the mid-12th cent. there also appeared gruesome renditions of the Last Judgment, e.g., at Lincoln Cathedral. In contrast with the demonic nature and animated quality of sculpture in France and in England, there was an assertion of more massive and ponderous figures in N Italy, with the narrative reliefs from Genesis designed by Wiligelmo in Modena and by Niccolò in Verona.

Metalwork

Another aspect of the Romanesque revival was the production of metalwork objects, of which many outstanding examples, such as crucifixes, reliquary shrines, and candlesticks, are still preserved in church treasuries. The most productive centers of this art were the regions adjacent to the Rhine and the Meuse rivers, where the art of bronze casting reached a level of technical mastery sufficient to permit the execution of works of considerable dimension. An outstanding example of Mosan bronze casting is the baptismal font of St. Barthelemy in Liège, a large vessel supported by 12 oxen and decorated with scenes in high relief, executed by Rainer of Huy between 1107 and 1118. It was during this same period that Limoges, in central France, became an extremely active center of metalwork production, specializing in enamelwork.

Fresco

Fresco painting has been more adversely affected by the accidents of time, but several large cycles, as well as numerous other fragments of Romanesque wall painting, have survived. The large and relatively unbroken expanses of wall space within Romanesque buildings presented an excellent ground for the work of the painter, and the basic forms of Romanesque fresco painting are typically monumental in scale and bold in coloristic effect. Among the foremost examples of this art still largely extant are the cycles of Saint-Savin in western France and Sant'Angelo in Formis in S Italy.

Manuscript Illumination

Manuscript illumination of the Romanesque period was characterized by a vast enlargement of the traditional fund of pictorial imagery, although in terms of overall execution and calligraphic quality Romanesque illuminated books often show a certain carelessness and lack of refinement. The Psalter, as in the early Middle Ages, continued to be the most widely read volume for religious use, and numerous sumptuously illuminated copies of this work were executed. The Romanesque scriptorium also produced large editions of the Bible, often extending to several volumes. A splendid example of such a work is the Winchester Bible, executed in the course of several generations and decorated with numerous scenes from the Old and the New Testaments. Romanesque manuscripts are enlivened by elaborate and highly inventive initial letters, on which the artists of this period lavished their bent for rich ornamental display.

Roman architecture, structures produced by the ancient Romans.

The Etruscans

The origins of Roman architecture can be traced to the Etruscans, who migrated from Asia Minor to Italy in the 12th cent. B.C. What little is known about their architecture has been ascertained from clay models and tomb interiors. Etruscan architecture is thought to have derived from prototypes found in the nearby Greek colonies in southern Italy established during the 8th and 7th cent. B.C. The Etruscans are thought to have used arches and vaults in their later architecture.

Structural Characteristics

Following the establishment of the Roman Republic in the 5th cent. B.C., Roman architects began to absorb and synthesize influences from both the Etruscans and the Greeks, adapting earlier building types to their specialized urban needs. A characteristic feature of Roman design was the combined use of arcuated and trabeated construction (employing arches and constructed with post and lintel). Although at first tentatively employed in the spaces between the classical columns, the arch eventually came to be the chief structural element. Flanking columns, usually engaged and superimposed (partly embedded into a wall and laid over it), served merely as buttresses or for decoration.

The cut-stone construction of the Greeks was largely replaced after the invention of concrete in the 2d cent. B.C. This enabled architects to cover vast interior spaces with vaults of increasing complexity and without interior supports. These included the barrel vault, the cross or groined vault, and the dome and semidome. Vault buttresses, instead of forming exterior projections, became an integral part of the interior support system. Although unfired brick was employed in all periods, under the empire baked bricks became popular as a facing for concrete walls. From early times stucco was used as a finish for important buildings. For the more luxurious finishing of exterior and interior walls, sheathings of alabaster, porphyry, or marble were used. Of the Republican period (c.500-27 B.C.), the great aqueducts outside the city of Rome are the most impressive remains.

Roman Landmarks and Building Patterns

The principal monuments of Roman architecture belong chiefly to the period between 100 B.C. and A.D. 300, including the Colosseum (A.D. 70-82), the Pantheon (A.D. 118-125; see under pantheon), and the Baths of Caracalla (c.A.D. 215). Beginning with the reign of Augustus (30 B.C.-A.D. 14), the Roman architectural output proceeded on a vast scale to accommodate the needs of the rapidly expanding empire. Provincial towns were laid out according to logical plans, particularly in North Africa. In Syria, arcaded streets were built.

Each town's focus was the forum, or open public square, surrounded by colonnades and the principal buildings in axial arrangement. The great forum in Rome itself was built in stages, as each emperor sought to glorify his achievements. The last large forum to be built was that of Trajan (2d cent. A.D.), and was the most extravagant. Within each forum, a temple, conforming to Etruscan type, was usually elevated on a high base with steps ascending to a deep portico. Since the temple was to be seen only from the front, the Roman architect utilized pilasters or engaged columns along its sides. This pseudoperipteral type is seen in the Maison Carrée (1st cent. A.D.) at Nǐmes, France. Examples of circular temples include the temple of Vesta at Tivoli (1st cent. B.C.) and the 3d-century temples of Jupiter at Split and Venus at Baalbek.

Roman Architectural Innovations

Most important among the structures developed by the Romans themselves were basilicas, baths, amphitheaters, and triumphal arches. Unlike their Greek prototypes, Roman theaters were freestanding structures. The auditorium was semicircular, with movable seats at the orchestra level. Distinctly Roman innovation were the uniting of stage and auditorium as a single structure and the rich architectural embellishment of the stage itself. For the oval amphitheaters such as the colosseum, there are no known Greek precedents. The monumental or triumphal arch was also a purely Roman invention. The basilica, probably a Roman development based on the Greek temple, provided a large and relatively open interior space. From its original use as a Roman law court, the basilica form was adapted by the Christians for their churches.

The baths, while probably derived from Greek gymnasia, were constructed on a totally unprecedented scale, the complexity of their plan competing with the luxury of their detail. In the typical Roman dwelling, the rooms were grouped about the atrium, which, by means of an opening in its roof, also served as a court. Multistory houses in the larger cities, called insulae, anticipated modern apartment buildings, as can be seen for example at Ostia (3d cent. A.D.). A third type of Roman dwelling was the luxurious country villa built by wealthy citizens to escape the congestion and squalor of the cities.

Renaissance art and architecture, works of art and structures produced in Europe during the Renaissance.

Art of the Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance

A radical break with medieval methods of representing the visible world occurred in Italy during the second half of the 13th cent. The sculptor Nicola Pisano evoked an interest in the forms of classical antiquity. In painting Giotto led the way in giving the human figure a greater sense of physical presence. He also worked toward a more realistic depiction of space, and his efforts were expanded during the 14th cent. in Siena by the Lorenzetti brothers. However, after the Black Death of 1348 came a marked decline in artistic activity as many artists and patrons died.

Florence became the great center of quattrocento (15th-century) art and art theory. The artist began to emerge from the role of artisan to participate in the active current of intellectual pursuits. Together with early humanists (see humanism), artists augmented their veneration of the purely celestial realm with an appreciation of all aspects of physical nature. They shared a growing esteem for the individual and a vital enthusiasm for classical antiquity. The architects Brunelleschi and Alberti and the sculptor Donatello were among the first to visit Rome in order to study the ruins of antiquity and to incorporate many of the ancient principles into their work.

At the same time artists were intensely preoccupied with problems of representing the dimensions of nature on a flat surface. With Masaccio they pioneered in developing a mathematically based illusion of space—the system of perspective. Masaccio and Uccello worked out a geometrical system, whereas Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi concentrated on a unifying color scheme. While the Florentines inclined toward an abstract simplicity of form, they never lost awareness of the visible world, particularly in their portrayal of the human figure. Antonio Pollaiuolo, Castagno, and above all Leonardo da Vinci were dedicated to the study of anatomy.

During the 15th cent. artists came to be supported not only by churchmen but also by private collectors. Besides commissioning paintings of the traditional sacred themes, these patrons created a new demand for pictures of secular subjects. For the embellishment of private palaces, painters adorned cassone (chest) panels, plates, and walls with allegorical and mythological episodes often derived from literary sources, such as the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio.

To fulfill the patrons' dreams of glory and perpetual fame, the art of portraiture began to flourish. In commemoration of notable citizens and events, medals were designed and struck by great metalworkers, such as Pisanello, in a revival of an ancient practice. Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, and Botticelli painted remarkable portraits of political leaders, at the same time emphasizing their individual characteristics and conveying an air of princely splendor. Chief among the Florentine patrons were the Medici, who fostered a group of poets, philosophers, and artists. Botticelli and Michelangelo were profoundly influenced by the Neoplatonic philosophy developed in the Medici circle.

Outside Florence there were bursts of artistic activity in Urbino, Mantua, Rimini, Milan, and Naples. Their courts attracted such artists as Piero della Francesca, Mantegna, Antonello da Messina, and Leonardo, as well as a number of Flemish artists who left their mark on N Italian painting. In the early 16th cent. the leadership in Italian art shifted from Florence to Rome. The works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were the culmination of the ideals of the period. These were the men who created the short-lived but glorious style now known as the High Renaissance (c.1490-1520), characterized by order, grandeur, grace, and harmony.

Their successors sought more diversified ideals, and the style known as mannerism followed. Meanwhile, by the beginning of the 16th cent., Venetian art had come into its full glory. The great colorists Giovanni Bellini and Giorgione were succeeded by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, who added a new freedom of brushstroke to the canvas.

The Flemish Renaissance

The superb coloring of the Venetians was achieved as the effects of the golden age of painting in the Low Countries were felt across Europe. In the 1420s Hubert and Jan van Eyck developed an extremely effective technique of oil painting, and with it the ability to render the most subtle variations of light and color. They did not practice the system of geometric perspective, but nonetheless created a convincing appearance of reality. An exquisite sensitivity is reflected in their minute detailing of objects of daily life, which were often symbolic. Robert Campin (often identified with the Master of Flémalle), Roger van der Weyden, and Hugo van der Goes were among the most remarkable masters of 15th-century Flanders. Netherlandish painting was enriched by the wild fantasies of Hieronymus Bosch and the spirited peasant scenes of Pieter Bruegel the elder (see under Bruegel family).

German Art

In Germany, Schongauer and above all Dürer made the first and greatest contributions in the media of woodcuts and engravings. Other important German painters of the 16th cent. included Grünewald and Hans Holbein the younger. In addition, Lucas Cranach the elder straddled the Renaissance and the Reformation, producing mainly court portraits, altar pieces, and paintings.

Renaissance Art Elsewhere in Europe

Many artists in France continued to paint fine altarpieces in the Gothic tradition. Under the influence of Flemish and Italian art, France produced admirable portraitists such as Fouquet and Clouet. Francis I invited Italian painters and architects to his court, including Leonardo and Andrea del Sarto. In the 1530s the influence of mannerism began to be felt, particularly at Fontainebleau (see Fontainebleau, school of). Artists in England and Spain were influenced by Netherlandish painting until the 16th cent., when the Italian Renaissance began to permeate Europe.

Architecture of the Renaissance

During the Renaissance the ideals of art and architecture became unified in the acceptance of classical antiquity and in the belief that humanity was a measure of the universe. The rebirth of classical architecture, which took place in Italy in the 15th cent. and spread in the following century through Western Europe, terminated the supremacy of the Gothic style.

Italian Renaissance Architecture

In Italy, there was a rediscovery and appropriation of the classical orders of architecture. Rome's structural elements, its arches, vaults, and domes, as well as its decorative forms, served as an open treasury, from which the designers of the 15th cent. unstintingly borrowed, adapting them to new needs in original combinations. Although built using Roman motifs, the churches, town halls, palaces, and villas showed new developments in plan and structure. The stone houses of Florence, of which the Medici-Riccardi Palace by Michelozzi is a principal example, are marked by a rugged simplicity. On the other hand, fondness for the free use of beautiful details led, particularly in Lombardy, to graceful designs, in which the more massive appearance of the building was submerged; the facade of the Certosa di Pavia exemplifies this spirit.

Brunelleschi, the earliest great architect of the Renaissance, produced its first examples (c.1420) in the Florentine churches of San Lorenzo and Santo Spirito and in the revolutionary plan for the dome of the Cathedral of Florence. Alberti was the first important architectural theoretician of the Renaissance. In his works he was strongly influenced by the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius; the books of both men served as a basic source of inspiration for later architects. In ecclesiastical building there was a trend toward the centralized structure. Brunelleschi, Filarete, Francesco di Giorgio, and Leonardo designed many variations on the theme, creating polygonal and Greek-cross plans. The greatest realization of the circular form was achieved by Bramante in his Tempietto (c.1502) in Rome.

Numerous palaces and churches erected in Rome gave the city architectural preeminence, and Raphael, Peruzzi, Vignola, and Michelangelo worked there, as well as Antonio da Sangallo the younger, whose Farnese Palace exemplifies the period's highest standards. Work on St. Peter's Church was begun by Bramante and carried on by a succession of the finest artists and architects that Italy produced. The classical orders, often on a monumental scale, now played the chief role in decoration. Palladio, Serlio, Vignola, and others codified the system of proportioning, and their ideas were extremely influential in the development of European architecture.

French Architecture

In France in the 16th cent., Renaissance taste made one of its first tentative appearances in the Louis XII wing of the château of Blois. In the first period Gothic traditions persisted in plan, structure, and exterior masses, onto which fresh and graceful Renaissance details were grafted. The movement was sponsored by Francis I, a prolific builder. Handsome and livable châteaus replaced grim feudal castles. Fontainebleau, Chambord, and Azay-le-Rideau are famous examples.

The beginning (1546) of the construction of the Louvre by Pierre Lescot usually serves as the opening date of the classical period. Classical proportions and methods of composition were assimilated, and the use of the orders became general. Although Italian models were followed, a distinctively French brand of classicism took form. The leading architects were Lescot, Philibert Delorme, and the Androuet du Cerceau family. Jean Goujon and others contributed fine sculptural adornments.

Renaissance Architecture Elsewhere in Europe

In England the Renaissance flowered in the middle of the 16th cent. The Elizabethan style and the Jacobean style applied classical motifs while retaining medieval forms. The move toward a pure and monumental classical style was largely the work of Inigo Jones, whose royal banqueting hall (1619) in London decisively established Palladian design in English architecture.

In Germany, about the middle of the 16th cent., the medieval love for picturesque forms still dominated, although transferred to classical motifs. Freely interpreted and resembling the Elizabethan work in England, these gave full play to originality and craftsmanship. The style, however, lacking truly great architects, failed to achieve full development as in France and England. Nuremberg and Rothenburg ob der Tauber are rich in works of the early period.

In the first period of the Renaissance in Spain, Gothic and Moorish forms (see Mudéjar) intermingled with the new classical ones. Under the leadership of Francisco de Herrera the younger, who imported strictly classical principles from Italy, the second period was one of correctness and formality. The palace of Charles V at Granada (1527) is its finest product.

Pilgrimage church architecture: see Romanesque architecture and art.

Persian art and architecture, works of art and structures produced in the region of Asia traditionally known as Persia and now called Iran. Bounded by fierce mountains and deserts, the high plateau of Iran has seen the flow of many migrations and the development of many cultures, all of which have added distinctive features to the many styles of Persian art and architecture. There are excellent collections of Persian art in Tehran; the Metropolitan Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Early Works

Although earlier civilizations are known, the first archaelogical finds of artistic importance are the superb ceramics from Susa and Persepolis (c.3500 B.C.). On tall goblets and large bowls are symmetrical designs that cover the surfaces with stylized abstractions of animals, particularly water birds and ibex. The choice of subjects from nature, simplified into almost unrecognizable patterns, may be called the formative principle of Persian art. Much of 4th-millennium Iranian art is strongly influenced by that of Mesopotamia. The 3d-millennium art of Elam, found at Sialk and Susa, also follows Mesopotamian styles, and this trend is continued in the less well-known Elam and Urartu art of the 2d millennium.

The art that comes from mountainous Luristan has aroused a good deal of controversy. Probably dated 1200-700 B.C., the many small bronze objects are thought to be mostly weapons and horse trappings—bits, bridle ornaments, rein rings, and pole tops. The treasure of Ziwiye (Sakiz), a hoard containing gold, silver, and ivory objects, included a few Luristan pieces. These provide a definite link with the art of the Scythians known as the animal style. The Ziwiye Treasure is roughly divided into four styles: Assyrian, Scythian, proto-Achaemenid (with strong Greek influences), and native, or provincial. Dated c.700 B.C., this remarkable collection of objects illustrates the heterogeneity of types and sources in early Iranian art.

The Achaemenid Period

A unified style emerges in the Achaemenid period (c.550-330 B.C.). Influenced by the Greeks, the Egyptians, and those from other provinces of the Persian Empire, the Achaemenids evolved a monumental style in which relief sculpture is used as an adjunct to massive architectural complexes. Foundations of the palace of Cyrus at Pasargadae, of Artaxerxes I at Susa, and above all extensive remains of the magnificent palace complex of Darius I and Xerxes I at Persepolis reveal plans that characteristically show great columned audience halls. In front of the halls were colonnaded porticoes, flanked by square towers and set on high terraces. The palaces were approached by double flights of steps converging at the top. Although there are marked analogies to Egyptian, Greek, and Assyrian architecture, the style as a whole and the feeling for space and scale are distinctive. The Persepolitan columns are slenderer and more closely fluted than those of Greece. Bases are high, often bell-shaped; capitals are composed of the foreparts of two bulls set back to back or of other animals above volutes with rosette ornament.

In the sculpture, of an ordered clarity and simplicity, heraldic stylization is subtly combined with effects of realism. Typical are the low stone reliefs of a procession of tribute bearers that adorn the great double staircase approaching the audience hall of Xerxes I (Persepolis) and the famous Frieze of Archers (Louvre, from the palace of Darius I at Susa), executed in molded and enameled brick, a technique of Babylonian-Assyrian origin. The great care lavished on every stone detail is also found in the fine gold and silver rhytons (drinking horns), bowls, jewelry, and other objects produced by this culture.

Parthian and Sassanid Contributions

After the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.), there was turmoil in Iran until the rise of the Parthians (c.250 B.C.). Theirs is essentially a crude art, synthesizing Hellenistic motifs with Iranian forms. Buildings of dressed stone and rubble and brick were decorated with sculpted heads and mural paintings. The larger-than-life-size bronze statue from Shami of a ruler is the most outstanding remaining Parthian monument.

Of far greater artistic importance is the contribution of the Sassanids, who ruled Iran from A.D. 226 to the middle of the 7th cent. Adapting and expanding previous styles and techniques, they rebuilt the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon. There a great palace with a huge barrel vault was constructed of rubble and brick. Sassanid architecture is decorated with carved stone or stucco reliefs and makes use of colorful stone mosaics. Beautiful gold and silver dishes, bowls, and ewers, often decorated with hunting scenes or animals in high relief, and textiles with symmetrical heraldic designs also remain. The Sassanids recorded their triumphs on immense outdoor rock reliefs scattered throughout Iran, often using the same sites that the Achaemenids had covered with reliefs and inscriptions.

In Afghanistan at Bamian are ruins that show the great impact of Iranian art forms on works from the 4th to the 8th cent. Frescoes and colossal Buddhas adorn Bamian's monasteries, revealing a fusion of Greco-Buddhist and Sassano-Iranian elements.

The Coming of Islam

Little remains from the early centuries of Islam in Iran, but the influence of Persia on Islamic art and architecture in Syria and Palestine is very strong. A significant innovation by the Persians is the raising of a dome over a square hall by means of squinches. Also influential was their use of cut-stucco decoration, various intricate motifs, and ever-apparent symmetry.

The earliest important Islamic monument extant in Iran is the mausoleum of Ismail the Samanid at Bukhara. Dated 907, it is a solid, square building in cut-brick style, covered by a dome. During this early period, ceramics were raised to a major art form. The finest were the "calligraphy wares" of Nishapur and Samarkand. The star-shaped tomb tower of Qabus (1006) presents a form with far-reaching influence. Both pottery and metalwork were further developed under the Seljuk Turks in the 11th and 12th cent. Luster and "minai" ceramics—using overglaze enamel colors including leaf gilding—both with intricate scenes of court life, were produced at Rayy, Kashan, and elsewhere.

The Mongol and Timurid Periods

The Mongol invasions of the first half of the 13th cent. destroyed many towns and much art. We know little of Persian painting until the so-called Mongol school of the 14th cent. The most famous work of this period is the magnificent Demotte Shah Namah (The History of Kings). The book has been divided up, and many leaves are in American collections. The pictures are large, somber in color, and free and lively in execution, with landscape playing an important role. Small Shah Namahs have simple illustrations in yellow, red, blue, and gold.

Timurid painting of the 15th cent. employs smaller figures and more static compositions. Chinese influences have been integrated and patterned symmetry reemerges. Bihzad, the greatest painter in this style, is renowned for his fine, firm line and exquisite delicacy. The Blue Mosque at Tabriz, named for its brilliant faience casing, is contemporary. Mosaic faience-covered architecture reached its height in 16th-century Isfahan in the great building complex Maidan-i Shah.

The Safavid Dynasty

Under the Safavid dynasty (1499-1722) palaces were decorated with mural paintings, which have been heavily restored. Single-figure portraits and ink drawings were also made for the Safavids. In book illustrations, figures became sinuous, color and pattern ran riot, and, at best, the effect was that of ornate jewelry. A masterpiece of Safavid illumination was the Shah Namah of Shah Tamasp, which incorporates the greatest developments in painting of the early 1520s to the mid-1530s (published in facsimile as The King's Book of Kings, 1972).

Later Developments

In the 17th-century Persian art fell under European and Indian influences and rapidly degenerated. Under the Qajar dynasty (1779-1925) a distinctive, theatrical style was developed in architecture, painting, and the decorative arts. The so-called Neo-Achaemenid style, which characterizes the public buildings of modern Tehran, points to a conscious effort at reviving and integrating the ancient heritage in modern Iran.

Norman architecture, term applied to the buildings erected by the Normans in all lands that fell under their dominion. It is used not only in England and N France, but also in S Italy (Apulia) and in Sicily. The Norman buildings in England and France were largely Romanesque, chiefly based upon the Romanesque architecture of Lombardy in Italy. Churches, abbeys, and castles, the principal works, showed massive proportions, sparsely adorned masonry, and a frequent use of the round arch. The development of the style was confined chiefly to the period from 1066 to 1154, a period of tremendous building activity. Arising in Normandy, the style was quickly introduced into England, superseding the Saxon. It first appeared at Westminster Abbey, where only the foundations remain. In England and Normandy there was a closely parallel development. The great French works include the ruined abbey of Jumièges, near Rouen, the beginnings of the great fortified abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel, and the two abbeys at Caen that were founded by William the Conqueror, all belonging to the middle and late 11th cent. The greatest activity, however, was in England, where after 1070 the Normans built hundreds of parish churches and commenced most of the great cathedrals. All underwent later restorations; the only intact early Norman design is the small St. John's Chapel (c.1087), built by William the Conqueror, in the Tower of London. In both England and Normandy church plans were cruciform. Over the crossing of nave and transepts was a prominent square tower, one of the most effective Norman features. Blind arcades, sometimes with interlacing arches, were the common adornment for walls. Moldings carved with the beakhead, zigzag, or chevron, or alternating lozenges are especially identified with the style. Increased skill and the adoption of the chisel resulted in grotesque sculptured animal forms and in the sculptured reliefs of the tympanums over doorways. Certain elements of Anglo-Norman construction pointed toward the development of Gothic architecture. Whereas in early Norman buildings wooden roofs prevailed, the cathedral at Durham (commenced 1093) was the first to employ a ribbed vault system with pointed arches (the nave was finished c.1133). Other great English cathedrals tended away from the early massiveness of wall construction and showed an increasing verticality, including those at Winchester (begun 1079), Ely (1083-1109), and Peterborough (begun 1118). The austere grandeur of the English and French Norman style was modified in S Italy and especially in Sicily by the mingling of Byzantine and Arabic elements.

Mughal art and architecture, a characteristic Indo-Islamic-Persian style that flourished on the Indian subcontinent during the Mughal empire (1526-1857). This new style combined elements of Islamic art and architecture, which had been introduced to India during the Delhi Sultanate (1192-1398) and had produced great monuments such as the Qutb Minar, with features of Persian art and architecture. Mughal monuments are found chiefly in N India, but there are also many remains in Pakistan. This article discusses these distinctive forms of art and architecture as they developed under a succession of Mughal emperors.

Humayun

The school of Mughal painting began in 1549 when Humayun(1530-56) invited two Persian painters to his court, then at Kabul. They came to direct the illustration of the Amir Hamza, a fantastic narrative of which some 1,400 large paintings were executed on cloth.

Achievements under Akbar

In architecture the first great Mughal monument was the mausoleum to Humayun, erected during the reign of Akbar (1556-1605). The tomb, which was built in the 1560s, was designed by a Persian architect Mirak Mirza Ghiyas. Set in a garden at Delhi, it has an intricate ground plan with central octagonal chambers, joined by an archway with an elegant facade and surmounted by cupolas, kiosks, and pinnacles. At the same time Akbar was building his fortress-palace in his capital, Agra. Native red sandstone was inlaid with white marble, and all the surfaces were ornately carved on the outside and sumptuously painted inside.

Akbar went on to build the entire city of Fatehpur Sikri (City of Victory) in which extensive use was made of the low arches and bulbous domes that characterize the Mughal style. Built in 1571 the choice of the site of Sikri reflected Akbar's gratitude to a Muslim saint at Sikri for the birth of his son. Courtiers soon followed suit and built homes surrounding the palace and mosque. The new city became the capital of the empire, but in 1585 it was abandoned.

Under Akbar, Persian artists directed an academy of local painters. The drawings, costumes, and ornamentation of illuminated manuscripts by the end of the 16th cent. illustrate the influence of Indian tastes and manners in the bright coloring and detailed landscape backgrounds. Modeling and perspective also began to be adapted from Western pictures. Basawan, Lal, and Daswanth were Akbar's most famous painters.

Jahangir

Jahangir (1605-27) favored paintings of events from his own life rather than illustrated fiction. He encouraged portraiture and scientific studies of birds, flowers, and animals, which were collected in albums. Mansur and Manohar were among his famous painters. Jahangir, who resided at Lahore, built less than his predecessors but effected the significant change from sandstone to marble.

Shah Jahan

It was Shah Jahan (1628-58) who perfected Mughal architecture and erected at Agra its most noble and famous building, the tomb of his favorite wife, which is known as the Taj Mahal. A huge white marble building of simple, symmetrical plan, it is inlaid with colorful semiprecious materials and is set in an equally beautiful and symmetrical garden. The Taj Mahal continues the tradition of Mughal garden tombs, of which Humayun's tomb was the first. Shah Jahan established (1638) Delhi as his capital and built there the famous Red Fort, which contained the imperial Mughal palace. Painting also flourished during Shah Jahan's reign. Portraiture was most highly developed at his sophisticated court, and ink drawings were of high quality.

Decline under Aurangzeb

Under the orthodox Aurangzeb (1659-1707) the decline of the arts began, although his ornate Pearl Mosque (1662) at Delhi is worthy of mention. During his reign the Mughal academy was dispersed. Many artists then joined Rajput courts, where their influence on Hindu painting is clearly evident.

See Indian art and architecture.

Moorish art and architecture, branch of Islamic art and architecture developed in the westernmost lands of the Muslims, known as the Maghreb: N Africa and Spain. The Great Mosque at Al Qayrawan in Tunisia is the prototype of western Islamic religious edifices. Finished in the 9th cent., it comprised a large court surrounded by galleries and opening into a prayer room in the form of a hypostyle hall; the 9th-century mihrab is famed for its luster tile decorations. Another early monument is the Great Mosque at Córdoba (785-c.1000), begun by the Umayyad emir Abd ar-rahman i, who had escaped from Damascus. The building is noted for its complex interior consisting of a multitude of low, rounded arches made of alternating black and white stones. In the 12th cent. a closer contact between the art of Spain and that of N Africa was brought about by the Almohads. Under them the mosque of Tin-Mal, in the Atlas Mts., and that of Tlemcen in Algeria were completed. The Almohads also erected the mosque of Seville, known for its minaret, the Giralda. The apogee of Moorish architecture was reached in the 13th and 14th cent. with the luxurious palace-fortress, the Alhambra, the only large-scale domestic complex preserved from the first thousand years of Islam, and the madrasahs (schools) of Fès, celebrated for their delicately worked lacy wooden carvings. In these centuries when Spain wrested itself from Moorish domination, the Christians nevertheless showed their admiration of the great Islamic edifices and decoration in their development of Mudéjar art, work made by and for Christians in the Moorish style. An example is the 14-century alcazar of Seville, whose flat, intricately carved surfaces are typical of Moorish façades. In Moorish sculpture, stone and wood carving were used mainly as architectural ornament. Many charming ivory boxes remain, which are adorned with scenes of court life or floral and animal motives; boxes were also made of precious metals. Filigreed, inlaid, and enameled jewelry, as well as textiles and rugs, were produced in Moorish Spain. The steel of Toledo was famed throughout the Middle Ages. Moorish pottery was of high quality. Lusterware continued to be manufactured. The "Alhambra jars," distinguished by their wing handles, are decorated with golden-brownish designs on a white background with touches of blue. By the 15th cent. Málaga was noted throughout the Christian world for its gold lusterwares.

Mexican art and architecture, works of art and structures produced in the area that is now the country of Mexico. Such arts were already highly developed in the ancient civilizations flourishing before the conquest of Cortés. For the artistic achievements of the Aztec, the Maya, and other native cultures, see pre-Columbian art and architecture.

The Colonial Period

Folk arts, including the weaving of magnificent textiles, pottery making, and silver work have flourished in Mexico throughout its history, but with the coming of the Spanish to Mexico the native peoples were introduced to European art, especially painting, and building techniques. A good many Spanish paintings were brought there, and during the 17th cent. gifted native artists became adept at religious oil painting, modeling religious figures in wax, and the art of polychrome wood sculpture (see Spanish colonial art and architecture).

The serenity and sensitivity of the early native art combined with the Spanish influence to give to Mexican painting a mellowness and richness of color not yet achieved in Spain at that time. Fifty years or so before Murillo made his mark as a colorist, Mexican artists were already giving their works rich red and blue tones. This type of work is sometimes referred to as Mexican baroque to distinguish it from the more rigid European baroque.

Baltásar de Echave the elder (c.1548-1620) is considered to be the first great Mexican artist; he founded the first native school in 1609. His Agony in the Garden (begun 1582) is an example of a Renaissance work with a Spanish character. More important, however, was the work of Alonso Vázquez (c.1565-1608). Painting declined toward the middle of the 17th cent., and sculpture and architecture gained ascendancy; the dominant style in both was the Churrigueresque (named after José Churriguera), a fanciful form of the baroque, but Mexican plateresque art and architecture also appeared. The 18th cent. produced a large number of artists; outstanding among them were José Ibarra and Miguel Cabrera. A period of academic art followed, producing no very distinctive works; this period of imitation was broken at the close of the 19th cent. by the painter José María Velasco, whose landscapes again reaffirmed a national style.

Independence, Empire, and Revolution

Toward the end of the 19th cent. the political broadside became a popular and pungent native art. José Guadalupe Posada was famous for his satirical prints. With the coming of independence, architecture went into a general decline, but wealthy creoles were responsible for the erection of a profusion of luxurious mansions, some of them of great beauty.

In the latter half of the 19th cent., during the ill-starred regime (1864-67) of Emperor Maximilian, the heavy splendor of French Second Empire architecture was imported into Mexico. The famous gardens and castle at Chapultepec were beautified by the emperor and made even more lavish by the dictator Porfirio Díaz, under whose administration (1876-1911) the French accent became stronger, especially in the mansions along the famous Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. The influence of art nouveau is evident in the portentous and elaborately decorated Palacio de Bellas Artes, also commissioned by Díaz but not completed until 1930.

After the revolution of 1910 Mexican artists enjoyed unusually strong government patronage and were, as a result, committed principally to the expression of revolutionary ideals. The foremost were muralists employing broad techniques in the service of their political and social themes. The three internationally acclaimed painters Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros produced masterpieces of mural art and initiated a revival of fresco painting. Miguel Covarrubias attained international fame as a caricaturist and illustrator, and Dr. Atl (pseud. of Gerardo Murillo) was influential as a teacher and art critic as well as a painter. Francisco Goita was noted for his paintings stressing the hardships of Native American peasant existence.

Later Mexican Art and Architecture

Modern Mexican painters and sculptors continued to produce an extraordinary variety of works in many styles and techniques. Major figures included José Luis Cuevas, Jorge G. Camarena, Martínez de Hoyos, Frida Kahlo (Diego Rivera's wife), Enrique Echeverría, Leonora Carrington, Francisco Toledo, and Rodolfo Morales. Rufino Tamayo and Gunther Gerzo were outstanding figures in 20th-century abstract and semi-abstract easel painting.

Modern architecture has also flourished. Functionalism, expressionism, and other schools have left their imprint on a large number of works in which Mexican stylistic elements have been combined with European and North American techniques. In the great manufacturing center of Monterrey there are fine examples of industrial architecture. Perhaps the most outstanding achievement of contemporary Mexican architecture is the Ciudad Universitaria outside Mexico City, a complex of buildings and grounds housing the National Autonomous Univ. of Mexico. A cooperative venture, the project was directed by Carlos Lazo. A major structure is the central library, with a brilliant mosaic facade by the architect and painter Juan O'Gorman. Another architect of note is Felix Candela, who designed the expressionistic church Nuestra Señora de los Milagros.

See also National Museum of Anthropology.

Merovingian art and architecture. This period is named for Merovech, the founder of the first Germanic-Frankish dynasty (c.A.D. 500-A.D. 751). The Merovingian period was marked by the gradual decline of the classical tradition and by the absorption of a radically new element into the artistic mainstream—the abstract and brilliantly ornamental style of the barbarian tribes. The art of these tribes was confined to small and portable objects because of their nomadic way of life. The migratory waves of settlers from Central Europe and the East have been credited with the introduction into Western art of the cloisonné technique. They also excelled in several other types of enamelwork and metalwork. Merovingian architecture, monumental sculpture, and painting were dependent upon the legacy of the classical and Early Christian traditions. Little remains of the architecture of the Merovingian period, although contemporary sources, such as the writings of Gregory of Tours, indicate that building activity was substantial. Larger churches were timber roofed and adhered to the basilican plan. The most original aspect of Gallic churches was their use of a bell tower. Constructions of Merovingian date have been found in Auxerre, Jouarre, Lyons, and Poitiers. Merovingian stone sculpture was characterized by a simplification of antique forms, sometimes culminating in a rather crude graphic shorthand. Animal motifs, especially birds and lambs disposed in rows or within geometric patterns, were tirelessly repeated on sarcophagi. The human figure became an abstract sign. Illumination of manuscripts was almost entirely restricted to the elaboration of colorful initial letters based on animal forms, notably bird and fish motifs.

Japanese architecture, structures created on the islands that constitute Japan. Evidence of prehistoric architecture in Japan has survived in the form of models of terra-cotta houses buried in tombs and by remains of pit houses of the Jomon, the neolithic people of Japan.

Religious Architecture

The more highly developed religious architecture of China came to Japan with the introduction of Buddhism in the 6th cent. Late in the 7th cent. the great monastery of Horyu-ji, near Nara, was near completion. The gateway, temple, and pagoda remained practically untouched until the 20th cent., when they were faithfully restored. These buildings illustrate the first epoch of Japanese architecture (6th-8th cent.), which was characterized by gravity, frankness of construction, and simple, vital compositions, sparsely ornamented.

Wood has always been the favorite material, and wooden construction was brought to a structural and artistic culmination as complete as any of the great styles of masonry architecture. Interior wood columns receive the loads, while the thin exterior walls are of woodwork and plaster. As in Greek and Chinese architecture, little use is made of diagonal members, and the framing is almost exclusively a system of uprights and horizontals. Vitality and grace are contributed by the refined curvatures in the column outlines, in the shapes of rafters and brackets, and especially in the great overhanging roofs.

Throughout the 8th cent. the Japanese continued to emulate the architects of China. The gigantic monastery of Todai-ji was begun in 745. A great hall was built to house the gigantic statue of Buddha (daibutsu), in front of which stood twin pagodas, each seven stories high. A distinctly Japanese style of architecture was developed in the late Heian period (898-1185). The famous Phoenix Hall at Uji, near Kyoto, originally a nobleman's villa, was converted (c.1050) into a temple. It represents the apogee of Japanese design. Beautifully situated near a lotus lake, it has a new sense of airiness, with its open porch and lofty central roof.

The emergence of Zen Buddhism coincided with a renewed interest in Chinese architecture during the 13th cent. The plan of the Japanese temple adhered to the symmetrical simplicity of Chinese design. The hall of worship contained a spacious chancel with a flat ceiling, usually painted with the Zen theme of dragons in clouds. By the mid-14th cent. Buddhist architecture tended toward eclecticism and an emphasis on rich sculptural adornment.

Through the centuries Buddhist temples have varied little in general arrangement. In front of the main building, or honden, stands an imposing gateway. Accessory structures include the five-storied square pagoda (often omitted), the drum tower, and the holy font protected by a shed. The Shinto temple, whose pre-Buddhist type is perpetuated, is a small and extremely simple structure, roofed with bark thatch and devoid of color adornment. Greatest importance was attached to the landscape setting, a forested and picturesque hillside being the favored location.

Domestic Architecture

The regard for a natural environment is also consistently reflected in secular building. In the Heian period complex building schemes, known as shinden-zukuri, were devised for the court nobles. A number of elegant rectangular houses were joined by long corridors that surrounded a landscaped garden and pond. During the Kamakura period (late 12th-14th cent.), the shinden-zukuri was modified for the samurai class, and clusters of separate buildings were united under one roof. During this period the standard for domestic architecture was set and has been maintained to the present day.

The principal style of Japanese dwelling of the upper class is unexcelled for its refinement and simplicity. Interior posts form a supporting skeleton for the roof. The exterior walls usually consist of movable panels that slide in grooves. Wood panels (used at night or in rainy weather) alternate with screens of mounted rice paper (used in warm weather). The interior of the house is flexibly subdivided by screens (shoji) into a series of airy spaces. Important rooms are provided with a tokonoma, an alcove for the display of a flower arrangement and a few carefully chosen objects of art. Often a separate space is set aside for the tea ceremony, either incorporated within the house or constructed as a pavilion in the garden.

Castles and Palaces

An important development of the late 16th cent. arose as a result of feudal warfare. Fortified castles, of which one still exists at Himeji, were based on the European donjon and were erected on high bases formed of enormous stone blocks. In the Edo period (1615-1867) two particularly beautiful palaces were erected in and near Kyoto, both constructed on an asymmetrical and flexible plan. The Nijo palace is noted for its sumptuousness in terms of carved wood, black lacquer, gold decorations, and screen paintings. The Katsura palace is remarkable for its simplicity and elegance and its merging of outdoor and indoor spaces. Here Japanese taste is epitomized in the subtlety and delicacy of the landscaping, with an ingenious arrangement of rocks, pebbles, sand, plants, and water.

The Modern Era

The opening of Japan to the West in 1868 led to the adaptation of the European architectural tradition. After World War I the Japanese began to make their own original contributions to the development of the International style in modern architecture. Japanese architects incorporated Western technical innovations into buildings combining traditional and modern styles during the period following World War II. At first strongly influenced by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and, to a lesser degree, by Frank Lloyd Wright, by the mid-1960s major Japanese architects developed highly individual and imaginative visions that had worldwide following. Among the principal Japanese architects to gain international acclaim since 1950 are Kenzo Tange, Sutemi Horiguchi, Kunio Maekawa, Togo Murano, Yoshiro Taniguchi, Noriaki Kurokawa, and Arata Isozaki.

Italian architecture, the several styles employed in Italy after the Roman period.

The Romanesque

Italy's Romanesque architecture (12th cent.) reveals the first use of the groined vault with projecting ribs. It is also typified by the development of a type of basilica having side galleries. The style was especially pronounced in Lombardy and is superbly exemplified in Sant' Ambrogio, Milan. There are two regional forms of Italian Romanesque—Tuscan (including Florentine) and southern. The cathedral of Pisa (1063-1118), with its campanile (the "leaning tower"), admirably displays the Tuscan characteristics, chief of which is the decorative use of tier upon tier of columns. Tuscan architects of the period also made a specialty of using variegated marbles and followed the antique style in this rather closely. The Romanesque of the south, as in the cathedral of Monreale, is characterized by its rich mosaics and delicate carvings, which show Byzantine, Saracenic, and Norman influences.

Gothic Influences

Gothic architecture was not greatly developed in Italy; a notable exception is the cathedral of Milan, built in part by foreign architects. The Church of St. Francis in Assisi (begun 1228) and the cathedral at Siena (begun 1269), among others, also have Gothic elements—the ribbed vault and the pointed arch (see Gothic architecture and art). However, the Italians largely adhered to the native tradition of building in terms of simple basilican proportions with massive walls, a practice that was carried into the Renaissance.

The Renaissance

In the 15th cent. a conscious revival of classical antiquity began (see Renaissance art and architecture). Brunelleschi emulated the ancient Romans in his masterly construction (1420-34) of the dome of the Florentine cathedral, and Michelozzo used antique elements in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, Florence (begun 1444). Alberti borrowed freely from a Roman triumphal arch in his design (1450s) for the exterior of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. Bramante, Antonio da Sangallo, Peruzzi, and Raphael made Rome the center of spectacular architectural developments in the first half of the 16th cent., when St. Peter's was the most important project under way. Vignola did significant work in Rome in the latter part of the 16th cent., while in N Italy the formal classicism of Palladio was a potent factor in the spreading of Renaissance architecture throughout Europe. The monumental work of Michelangelo reflected elements of mannerism and his influence extended into the baroque period.

The Baroque

The beginning of the 17th cent. ushered in the drama of the baroque era with Maderno's nave and facade for St. Peter's, to which a magnificent colonnaded plaza was added, designed by Bernini, the foremost genius of the period. Other outstanding architects of the century included Borromini, Cortona, and Rainaldi. After their deaths, Carlo Fontana became the most influential architect in Italy, transmitting the ideas of the great baroque masters to many of the most important architects of Europe. Italy, however, no longer possessed the undisputed leadership in European architecture, although in the 18th cent. Piedmont in N Italy produced remarkable designers, such as Guarini, Juvarra, and Vittone.

The Modern Era

Nineteenth-century Italian architecture, such as Giuseppe Sacconi's Victor Emmanuel monument, shows a decline in quality and increased pomposity. In the 20th cent. Italy has followed the trends of modern architecture; its outstanding practitioners include Pier Luigi Nervi, Giuseppe Terragni, Gio Ponti, and Renzo Piano.

Islamic art and architecture, works of art and architecture created in countries where Islam has been dominant and embodying Muslim precepts in its themes.

Background

In the century after the death (A.D. 632) of the prophet Muhammad, his Arab followers spread his teachings through Egypt and N Africa, as far west as Spain, and as far east as Sassanid Persia. Because of their rapid expansion and the paucity of the earlier artistic heritage of the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslims derived their unique style from synthesizing the arts of the Byzantines, the Copts, the Romans, and the Sassanids. The great strength of Islamic art as a whole lies in its ability to synthesize native design elements with imported ones.

Abstract decoration of the surface is an important factor in every work of Islamic art and architecture, whether large or small. Curving and often interlaced lines, of which the arabesque is a typical example, and the use of brilliant colors characterize almost all of the finest productions, which are of greatly varied styles. Islamic art eschews the realistic representation of human beings and animals, and its floral designs are extremely distant from their original models. While the prohibition against depicting living forms is not contained in the Qur'an, it is widely thought that the non-representational character of Islamic ornament has its source in the traditional theological prohibition against imitating God's works.

Architecture

The earliest architectural monument of Islam that retains most of its original form is the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat al-Sakhrah) in Jerusalem, constructed in 691-92 on the site of the Jewish Second Temple. Muslims believe it to be the spot from which Muhammad ascended to heaven. It has mosaics depicting scrolling vines and flowers, jewels, and crowns in greens, blues, and gold. Similar in some aspects is the later Great Mosque of Damascus (built c.705-14) which was built by Al Walid over what was originally a Roman temple. The interior walls have stone mosaics that depict crowns, fantastic plants, realistic trees, and even empty towns. This is thought to represent Paradise for the faithful Muslim. Both the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the great Mosque of Damascus used the Syrian cut-stone technique of building and popularized the use of the dome (see mosque).

The 8th-century desert palace Khirbat al-Mafjar (in present-day Jordan) reveals a wealth of carved and molded stucco decoration, sculptured stone reliefs, and figural fresco paintings. In 750 the Abbasid dynasty moved the capital east to Baghdad, and from 836 to 892 the Abbasid rulers resided at Samarra. The Great Mosque of Samarra is an important example of the Iraqi hypostyle, noted for its massive size and spectacular minaret. In Iran few Islamic buildings erected before the 10th cent. are still standing. Sassanid building techniques, such as the squinch, were combined with the mosque form (see Persian art and architecture). Sassanid influence is also strong in many Umayyad dynasty residential palaces, built mostly in Syria. The most famous is the 8th-century palace of Mshatta; much of its delicately carved stone facade is now in Berlin.

In the middle of the 8th cent. the last of the Umayyads escaped to Spain and refounded his dynasty there. The great Mosque of Córdoba was begun in 785 and is famous for its rows of double-tiered arches. The mosque was extended three times. The culture of Islamic Spain reached its apogee in Moorish art and architecture. Faïence and lacy pierced-stone screens are the hallmarks of its decoration. The same style prevails in N Africa and is seen at its best in Fès, Morocco, where much elaborately carved wood is used. The Mudé jarstyle of Spain, employed throughout the 18th cent. and influential until much later, is based on this architecture.

Late in the 9th cent. the governor of Egypt, Ibn Tulun, initiated the high period of Egypto-Islamic art with the building of his famous mosque in Cairo. In the 10th cent. the Fatimids introduced into Egypt the decorative stalactite ceiling from Iran and placed emphasis on decorative flat moldings. The most important Fatimid buildings are the Cairo mosques of al-Azhar and al-Aqmar. The cruciform Mosque of Hasanin Cairo, built by a Mamluk sultan in 1536, still reflects Persian influence.

In India a distinct style, preserved mainly in architecture, developed after the Delhi Sultanate was established (1192). This art made extensive use of stone and reflected Indian adaptation to Islam rule, until Mughal art replaced it in the 17th cent. (see Mughal art and architecture). The square Char Minar of Hyderabad (1591) with large arches, arcades, and minarets is typical.

In Turkey the mosque form was also derived from Persia, as was most Turkish art. The great Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia, adapted for use as a mosque, greatly influenced Turkish architects. The most famous among these is Sinan, chief architect in the Ottoman court from 1539 until his death in 1588. He constructed or designed most of Sulayman I's buildings, the most noted of which is his mosque (c.1557) in Istanbul, where he is buried. It has four minarets and stained-glass windows flanking the mihrab. The mosque (1614) of Sultan Ahmed I is similarly distinguished by its dome lit by numerous windows, and wall surfaces covered with green and blue tiles. Fine ornate buildings were erected in Turkey until the middle of the 17th cent.

The Decorative Arts

Among the ceramic types are unglazed wares, molded pieces with the lead glaze of Hellenistic tradition, and most famous, the lusterware fragments. In 9th-century Islam the technique of tin-glazed ware was perfected. Lusterware was imported into Egypt and later made there. The Great Mosque of Al Qayrawan (c.862) is decorated with square luster tiles set in a lozenge pattern around the pierced marble prayer niche. The 9th cent. also saw the development of metalwork in a distinctive and powerful style under the Umayyads in Egypt. Skilled craftsmanship can be seen in rock-crystal carving, a continuation of Sassanid art, using floral motifs that became increasingly abstract.

From the 10th to the mid-13th cent. great strides were made in the arts; Egypt became a center of these arts and of calligraphy, which was of prime importance all over the Islamic world. Arabic script represents the expression of the will and strength of Allah, and as such is regarded as sacred by the faithful. One of Islam's most renowned calligraphers was Ibn Muqlah (d. 940) of Baghdad who invented the six most prominent cursive scripts. Certain scripts were favored for specific uses, such as Kufic for copying the Qur'an. The Kufic script, often executed in gold on parchment, was further animated by floral interlaces. Calligraphy was not used exclusively for two-dimensional works but also appears in architectural ornament, ceramics, textiles and metalwork. During this period calligraphy, bookbinding, papermaking, and illumination were developed and were held in highest esteem throughout Islam. The sloping cursive script most commonly used today, Nastaliq, was perfected in the 15th cent.

Before the 13th cent. rugs, silks, linens, and brocades were produced throughout the Islamic world, but only fragments remain; the same is true of delicate and highly refined carvings in wood and ivory. Early in the 13th cent. a school of secular manuscript painting arose in the Baghdad area. The pictures may be divided into two types: those that illustrate scientific works, descending directly from late Hellenistic models, and those that illustrate anecdotal tales and whose miniatures display lively detail.

In the middle of the 13th cent. the Mongol invasions devastated Iran and deeply scarred all Islam as far west as the Mediterranean Sea. However, after a period of acclimatization, the Chinese taste and artifacts imported by the Mongols revitalized the art of Iran, where book illustration reached great heights. With the arrival of the Seljuks in Iran came a new ceramic technique, fritware, similar to certain Chinese porcelains. The unique qualities of this ware enabled artists to create richly colored glazes such as deep blues from cobalt and turquoise from copper. Syria and Iraq continued to manufacture fine black-and-turquoise pottery. Textiles and rugs of great beauty were again manufactured throughout Islam, and in the 15th cent. Mamluk carpets were renowned for their designs of great complexity and their asymmetrical knots. Turkish ceramics reached their peak in the "Iznik" ware of the 16th and 17th cent. Distinctive green tiles are frequently used in the decoration of Turkish architecture.

Indian art and architecture, works of art and architecture produced on the Indian subcontinent, which is now divided among India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In the Western world, notable collections of Indian art can be seen in the British Museum, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Introduction

Although a great deal of Indian secular art was produced, it was essentially made of perishable material and has not survived. What has survived in the medium of stone is religious art. In both Buddhist and Hindu art, symbolism in gesture, posture, and attribute contains many levels of meaning. In images of the Buddha, different hand positions (mudras) signify religious states, such as the Enlightenment (Nirvana), Meditation, and Preaching. In Hindu sculpture, deities (see Vishnu, Krishna, and Shiva) are frequently represented with many hands to indicate their power to perform multiple deeds at the same time, and the hands each carry their characteristic attributes. With the exception of Mughal art and architecture, which demands separate treatment, the major trends in Indian art-Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain-are discussed within this article.

Indus Valley Civilization

The earliest Indian art emerged from the valley of the Indus River during the second half of the 3d millennium B.C. The best-known sites are Harappa, destroyed in the 19th cent., and Mohenjo-Daro; these are among the earliest examples of civic planning. Houses, markets, storage facilities, offices, and public baths were arranged in a gridlike scheme. There was also a highly developed drainage system.

The Indus civilization produced many statuettes made of steatite and limestone. Some statuettes resemble the hieratic style of contemporary Mesopotamia, while others are done in the smooth, sinuous style that is the prototype of later Indian sculpture, in which the plastic modeling reveals the animating breath of life (prana). Also found in this region are square steatite seals adorned with a range of animals, including naturalistically rendered bulls; ceramic storage jars with simple, stylized designs; toys with wheels; and figurines, which may be mother goddesses. Bronze weapons, tools, and sculptures indicate a sophistication in craftsmanship rather than a major aesthetic development.

Post-Indus Civilization through the Maurya Dynasty

Of the period from the end of the Indus civilization (c.1500 B.C.) until Alexander the Great crossed (325 B.C.) the Indus, few traces remain. However, the principles of Indian architecture were developed in wooden buildings, long since disintegrated.

From the great Maurya dynasty the most famous remains are the edict pillars, erected throughout N India by the Emperor Asoka to proclaim his devotion to Buddhism. The monolithic, smooth columns are over 50 ft (15 m) high and are surmounted by lotus capitals and animal figures. Some of the pillar capitals reveal forms that suggest Persepolitan influences. Also dating from the reign of Asoka is the earliest stone ogival chaitya window, found on the portal of a small rock-cut sanctuary near Bodh Gaya. The chaitya halls were monastic sanctuaries hewn out of rock. As they evolved, from the 3d cent. B.C. through the 1st millennium A.D., they became elaborate colonnaded halls, or walls embellished with painting or sculpture.

Sunga and Andhra Dynasties

The earliest extant stupas date from the Sunga dynasty (2d-1st cent. B.C.) and early Andhra dynasty (1st cent. B.C.). These relic mounds are surrounded by railings and gateways covered with carved ornament. One of the main stupas is at Bharhut, where the sculpture is archaic in character. Relief medallions of the Buddha's life or of the jatakas (tales of his previous lives) are shallow cut, with all the incidents of each story arranged within a single composition. The bodies of semidivine beings including yakshis (female tree spirits) are flattened against the pillar of which they form part; prana is still emphasized.

The important stupa at Sanchi shows a similar style. Important carvings on the gateways of another stupa at Sanchi date from the early Andhra period. The yakshis have acquired full, graceful forms, and high-relief compositions are frequently conceived in a continuous method of narration. The carved railing from Bodh Gaya, the place of the Buddha's enlightenment, and the earliest surviving wall paintings are also early Andhra; paintings in the rock-cut cave at Ajanta narrate the Buddha's birth as an elephant and the entire synopsis of historic life. In the far south, in the Deccan, the later Andhra dynasty continued to flourish into the 1st cent. A.D. Its greatest monument is the carving at the Great Stupa at Amaravati, c.A.D. 200. The complex but coherent composition, the chiaroscuro, and the liveliness of the crowded surfaces distinguish these bas-reliefs.

Gandhara and Mathura

Under the Kushans, conquerors from central Asia, two of India's most important styles were developed between the 2d and 5th cent. A.D.: Gandhara art and art of Mathura. Gandhara art, named after the region of Gandhara now in Pakistan, presents some of the earliest images of the Buddha. Earlier at Bharhut and Sanchi, the Buddha's presence was represented by symbols, such as the pipal tree, the wheel of life, footprints, and an empty throne. The Gandhara style was profoundly influenced by 2d-century Hellenistic art and was itself highly influential in central and eastern Asia. Ivories and imported glass and lacquerware attest to the cosmopolitan tastes and extensive trade that characterized the period. Stupas and monasteries were adorned with relief friezes, often carved in dark schist, showing figures in classical poses with flowing Hellenistic draperies.

Farther east and south, contemporary Mathura, also under Kushan rule, created a wholly Indian sculptural art. Reddish limestone was the usual medium. More sensuous, heavier Buddhas whose limbs are created according to canonical instructions, smile directly at their worshipers. Reliefs of the yakshis carved against railing pillars are more frankly sensual and erotic than those at Sanchi. Buddhist iconography was developed in Gandhara. Mathura, however, preserved and developed Indian forms for three centuries.

The Gupta Period

Buddhist art flourished during this period, which has often been described as a golden age. A famous rock-cut monastery at Ajanta consists of several chaitya halls and numerous residential viharas. Both facades and interiors contain elegant relief sculpture, while interiors are covered with painted murals that feature superb figures drawn with a gracefully sinuous line. As in all periods, there is little difference in the images of the major Indian religions, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain. Large stone figures, stone and terra-cotta reliefs, and large and small bronzes are made in the refined Gupta style; the level of production is uniformly high. After the 7th cent., although the rulers of the Pala and Sena dynasties (730-1197) were Hindu, significant Buddhist art was created. Images in bronze and in hard black stone from Nalanda and elsewhere reveal a development of the Gupta manner, with extensive attention to ornamental details.

Architecture and Sculpture of the Hindu Dynasties

From the 6th cent. on, with the resurgence of Hindu dynasties throughout India, a characteristic temple plan was developed. An entrance portico led to a pillared hall (mandapa) into the cella. The shrine was often crowned by a large tower known as the shikhara. In S India the Dravida tower rose in a series of terraces, each symbolizing a different divinity; in the north, nagara spires ascended in a massive conical shape.

Innumerable temples were built that were so exuberantly embellished with sculpture that their style is called "sculptural architecture." The Khajuraho temples in central India (c.1000) represent one of the high points of the nagara buildings, and the damaged Temple of the Sun at Konarak (c.1250) reveals, in its famous erotic sculptures, carvings that combine balanced mass with delicate execution. The Jain temples at Mt. Abu, constructed entirely of imported white marble and dating from the 10th and 13th cent., have plain exteriors but are ornately carved inside.

In S India the 7th-century Pallava dynasty introduced the dravida style temple in a number of pyramidal raths (temples) at Mahabalipuram; an enormous cliff-face at the site is carved with a life-size representation of gods, men, and beasts, including the elephant family. The dravida style plan was used also in the 8th cent. in the quarried temple at Ellora. The Chola dynasty of S India further developed this form in the 11th cent., when they probably also cast most of large numbers of S Indian bronzes, of which the Nataraja (dancing Shiva) images are perhaps the best known.

The dravida style culminated in a series of expanded "temple townships," of which the largest is Srirangam, consisting of seven concentric enclosures. These ended in the comparatively crude stucco sculptured architecture of 17th-century Mandura. Medieval bronze sculpture was highly developed in S India. The chief subjects were the deities, figures of whom were used for processional and home ritual. Skilled cire-perdue sculptures were produced until the late 19th cent. in many regions of India.

Indian Painting

Adverse climate and other conditions have injured what wall painting existed. The most famous surviving Buddhist paintings are from the caves at Ajanta. Little is known of Hindu wall painting except for fragments at Ellora and Tanjore (see Thanjavur). The earliest Indian manuscript paintings are Buddhist, of the Pala dynasty; they have a delicate color. The 13th- to 15th-century Jain manuscript illuminations, painted in vivid red, blue, and gold, are most easily recognized by the characteristic protruding farther eye. Rajput miniature painting, which was practiced in N India from the 16th through the 19th cent., is related both to Mughal painting and to earlier Indian styles. It illustrates a variety of Hindu subjects: the ragamala series (musical modes), the legendary epics and romances, and particularly Krishna's deeds. Rajput painting is characterized by lyrical landscapes, sinuous grace in the depiction of the human form, and an interest in perspective.

The Modern Era

Little of the glorious tradition of Indian artistic achievement survived British rule. Indian artists adapted Western techniques and produced gouache paintings to suit the tastes of European buyers. Patua scrolls, containing swiftly executed watercolor illustrations of many subjects, became one source for the revival of Indian themes during the 20th cent. A growing nationalist sentiment pervaded Indian art in the early decades of the 20th cent. along with the conscious assimilation of Western styles. Major modern artists include Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher Gil, N. S. Bendre, M. B. Samant, Francis Souza, Bhagwan Kapoor, M. F. Husain, Bhupen Khakhar, Ram Kinker, Dhanraj Bhagat, Amar Nath Seghal, Chintamoni Kar, and Amina Ahmad.

Hittite art and architecture, works of art and structures created by the ancient Hittites

Background

The Hittite invaders of central Anatolia (the area that is present-day W Turkey) came from the east c.2000 B.C. and by 1400 B.C. were masters of all of Asia Minor. Their most important period of artistic activity lasted from 1450 to 1200 B.C. The art of the Hittite Empire merged stylistically with Syrian art gradually, beginning in the 11th cent. B.C. The modern interest in Hittite culture was aroused in the mid-19th cent. by the Rev. Archibald Henry Sayre of Oxford, England.

Art of the Hittite Empire

Hittite art drew upon far earlier sources developed in Sumer and Babylon (see Sumerian and Babylonian art) and upon local Anatolian culture of the 3d millennium B.C., characterized by elaborate gold and bronze ornamental work found at Alaça Hüyük and earlier neolithic remains found at Çatal Hüyük dating from the 7th millennium B.C. The Hittites quickly assimilated many aspects of the cultures they overran. They adopted a pantheon of Mesopotamian and N Syrian gods and represented them in their art—the males with high pointed hats, short-skirted robes, and boots with long, curling toes, and the females with long, pleated robes and square hats.

The Hittites were accomplished carvers and metalworkers. Among the most impressive late representatives of Hittite deities is a series of ornaments from Carchemish made to adorn a royal golden robe; they are carved in steatite and lapis lazuli and mounted in gold cloisons, each 5/8 in. (14.5 cm) high (7th cent. B.C.; British Mus.). The Hittites adapted the Babylonian cuneiform to their language and also employed an elaborate hieroglyphic script for the engraving of monuments.

Although animal figures are to be found in abundance in the artistic remains of the Hittites, their chief concern was human activity, particularly religious ritual. At the Great Sanctuary of Yazilikaya near Boğazköy is a magnificent series of mythological scenes in carved rock depicting lions and sphinxes attending gods and goddesses. At Ivriz another rock relief represents King Warbalawa praying before the god Tarhan, a capped and booted figure hung about with grapes and holding grain to symbolize fertility (8th cent. B.C.).

There remain fewer representations of royal domestic life, including a hunting scene from Alaça Hüyük (200 B.C., Archaelogical Mus., Ankara), a family procession with King Araras with his children and their nurse and pets from Carchemish (750 B.C.), and a few polychrome vase paintings from Bitik, near Ankara, one of which is thought to depict a marriage. Other vases were made in animal shapes (e.g., duck vase, c.1700 B.C., from Beycesultan, Archaeological Mus., Ankara) and in the form of domestic items (e.g., boot vase, 19th cent. B.C., from Kültepe, Archaeological Mus., Ankara). A minor art of considerable development was the signet seal, generally containing figures and a cuneiform inscription, which the Hittites used instead of the cylinder seal popular with neighboring cultures.

Hittite Architecture

The principal architectural remnant of the Hittite civilization is at Boğazköy, where temple structures and the city walls may be seen. The Hittites developed the bit-hilani, a porticoed entrance hall built with a stairway approach flanked by pillars. Another characteristic form was the double gateway with corbeled arch, decorated with friezes and protected on either side by a threatening beast figure. Among the best-known of these is the lion gate at Hattuşaş, the ancient Hittite capital (c.1600 B.C.). These gate figures were later to be copied and used in the churches of Western Europe. In building interiors wall painting was evidently practiced with considerable sophistication, but only a few fragments of this work remain, principally at Boğazköy and Atchana in N Syria.

See Assyrian art; Phoenician art.

Greek architecture the art of building that arose on the shores of the Aegean Sea and flourished in the ancient world.

Origins of Greek Architecture

Palaces of the Minoan civilization remain at Knossos and Phaestus on Crete. Of the later Mycenaean civilization, surviving examples are the Lion's Gate at Mycenae and palaces at Mycenae and Tiryns. When the Dorians migrated into Greece (before 1000 B.C.) true Hellenic culture began, and the architecture that eventually developed seems to have borrowed little from the preceding civilizations.

In Greece the Dorians developed their building forms with such rapidity that between the 10th and the 6th cent. B.C. a definite system of construction was established. However, prior to the creation of the great marble temples of the 5th cent. B.C., there were undoubtedly evolutionary stages in which walls were made of sun-dried bricks and roofs, columns, and uprights of wood. The Heraeum at Olympia, considered one of the most ancient temples yet discovered, represents such a stage; in its later alterations (7th cent. B.C.), it is illustrative of the beginnings of the Doric temple of stone.

The Flowering and Decline of Greek Architecture

Between 700 B.C. and the Roman occupation (146 B.C.) all the chief works of Greek architecture were produced. The period in which all the major masterpieces were erected extended from 480 B.C. to 323 B.C. That incredibly productive era includes the reign of Pericles in Athens, in which the architects Callicrates, Mnesicles, and Ictinus flourished and in which the Parthenon and other great works were produced.

After the passing of power from Athens and Sparta to Asia Minor the pure traditions of the mainland were lost. The products of the following Hellenistic period show a decline from the Athenian tradition and reveal Asian influences. The Hellenistic architecture (see Hellenistic civilization) that thus arose (4th-3d cent. B.C.), exhibits florid and opulent elements and more complicated design. City planning, ignored by the mainland Greeks, was cultivated by the Hellenistic architects, among them Hippodamus; from them the Romans doubtless acquired their concepts of monumental civic design.

The Orders of Greek Architecture

Of the three great styles or orders of architecture (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian), the Doric was the earliest and the one in which the noblest monuments were erected. Theories of the origin of the Doric order are numerous. The great remaining examples of the 6th cent. B.C. are found chiefly in Sicily and at Paestum in Italy. After 500 B.C. the archaic features of the Doric disappeared; harmonious proportions were achieved; and the final exquisitely adjusted type took form at Athens, in the Hephaesteum (465 B.C.), the Parthenon (c.447-432 B.C.), and the Propylaea (437-432 B.C.).

The Greek colonies of the Asia Minor coast had evolved their own special order, the Ionic order, stamped with Asian influences. This style appeared in temples in Greece proper after 500 B.C., challenging with its slenderly proportioned columns and carved enrichments the supremacy of the simple, sturdy Doric. The most magnificent Ionic temples were those at Miletus. In Greece proper the Ionic appeared in only one temple of major importance, the Erechtheum at Athens, and otherwise the form was restricted to minor buildings, as the temple of Nike Apteros, Athens (438 B.C.), and to interiors as in the Propylaea, Athens.

The third Greek order, the still more ornate Corinthian order, appeared in this period, reached its fullest development in the mid-4th cent. B.C., but was comparatively little used. The chief examples, both at Athens, are the choragic monument of Lysicrates (c.335 B.C.) and the Tower of the Winds (100 B.C.-35 B.C.). Later, the Romans used the Corinthian order extensively and adapted it into their widely used composite order.

Ancient Greek Construction Methods

The Greeks laid their masonry without mortar but with joints cut to great exactness. Marble was not generally used until the 5th cent. B.C. Where coarse stonework or crude bricks were used, a coating, composed of marble dust and lime rubbed and highly polished, was applied to them. Even marble itself was sometimes so treated. Although it was long thought that buildings in ancient Greece retained the unbroken white of the marble, in fact colors and gilding were customarily applied to emphasize decorative sculpture and certain details; remaining traces of these have been found. Having discovered in the simple column and lintel an adequate method of construction, they used it exclusively, drawing from it the maximum of dignity and beauty.

The Greek Temple

Greek cities were often built in the vicinity of a steep hill called an acropolis that served as a citadel and upon which the principal temples were located for safety. The Acropolis at Athens is the most celebrated example. Throughout Greece numerous temples were built. Many illustrated the most rudimentary temple type—a simple rectangular chamber called the naos, the side walls extending to the front to form terminations for an open entrance porch containing two columns. This loggia was sometimes repeated at the other end. The next stage was the forming of freestanding porticoes, then a continuing of columns, flanking sides and ends, the naos thus being completely surrounded by a colonnade. This type was termed peripteral and was exemplified in most of the important monuments of the great period. In dipteral temples the surrounding colonnade was doubled.

No public mass worship took place within the temples, the naos being designed primarily to house the statue of the deity. The structures of the culminating period are unique for the subtle proportionings and refinements of all the members, which are integrated into a superbly adjusted whole. To prevent an appearance of sagging, as in the temple platform (stylobate), or of concavity, as in the outlines of columns, subtly curved or slanting lines were substituted for straight or vertical ones and served as optical corrections. To insure the desired proportions and delicate relationships, a body of traditional formulas was accumulated, using mathematical and geometrical devices.

Other Structures

In addition to temples, the Greeks also built a number of other kinds of structures. Their public spaces included monumental tombs; agoras, or public meeting places; stoas, or colonnaded shelters; stadiums; palaestrae, or gymnasiums for athletic training; propylaea, or entrance gateways to cities; and amphitheaters.

Gothic architecture and art, structures (largely cathedrals and churches) and works of art first created in France in the 12th cent. that spread throughout Western Europe through the 15th cent., and in some locations into the 16th cent.

The Nature of the Gothic

The essential character of the Gothic period, particularly at the outset, was the predominance of architecture; all the other arts were determined by it. The character of the Gothic visual aesthetic was one of immense vitality; it was spikily linear and restlessly active. Informed by the scholasticism and mysticism of the Middle Ages, it reflected the exalted religious intensity, the pathos, and the self-intoxication with logical formalism that were the essence of the medieval. Gothic style was the dominant structural and aesthetic mode in Europe for a period of up to 400 years.

Characteristics of Gothic Architecture

It is generally agreed that Gothic architecture made its initial appearance (c.1140) in the Île-de-France, the royal domain of the Capetian kings. However, the inception of the style owes much to several generations of prior experimentation, particularly in Normandy (see Norman architecture). Although individual components in Gothic architecture, such as ribbed vaulting and the pointed arch, had been employed in Romanesque construction, they had not previously received such a purposeful and consistent application. While the structural value of the Gothic rib has been contested, its formal significance cannot be overestimated. It served above all to delineate the vaults with a skeletal web that gave to the entire structure an articulation of impressive clarity.

Unlike Romanesque architecture, with its stress on heavy masses and clearly delimited areas, Gothic construction, particularly in its later phase, is characterized by lightness and soaring spaces. The overall effect of the Gothic cathedral combined this lightness with an innumerable subdivision and multiplicity of forms. The introduction (c.1180) of a system of flying buttresses (see buttress) made possible the reduction of wall surfaces by relieving them of part of their structural function. Great windows could be set into walls, admitting light through vast expanses of stained glass. Wall surfaces of High Gothic churches thus have the appearance of transparent and weightless curtains. The spiritual and mysterious quality of light is an important element of the religious symbolism of Gothic cathedrals.

In plan the High Gothic cathedral remained faithful to the traditional basilican form. It consisted of a central nave flanked by aisles, with or without transept, and was terminated by a choir surrounded by an ambulatory with chapels. These elements, however, were no longer treated as single units but were formally integrated within a unified spatial scheme. The exterior view was frequently dominated by twin towers. The facade was pierced by entrance portals often lavishly decorated with sculpture, and at a higher level appeared a central stained glass rose window. Additional towers frequently rose above the crossing and the arms of the transept, which often had entrance portals and sculpture of their own. Around the upper part of the edifice was a profusion of flying buttresses and pinnacles.

Landmarks of French Gothic Architecture

The first important example of Gothic architecture was the ambulatory of the abbey of Saint-Denis, constructed between 1140 and 1144. Saint-Denis embodies the first daring use of large areas of glass, coupled with a brilliant organization of space. Its influence was immediate, and the possibilities of the new style were eagerly explored in structures such as the cathedrals of Sens, Noyon, Laon, and Paris, begun in the ensuing decades of the 12th cent.

The High Gothic phase of architecture was ushered in by the Cathedral of Chartres, begun after 1194 and followed in rapid succession by the cathedrals of Bourges, Reims, Amiens, and Beauvais. These structures surged to unprecedented heights. A further reduction of opaque wall surfaces in favor of graceful screens of stone tracery and glass led toward the formation of the Gothic Rayonnant style around the mid-13th cent. The most striking achievements of Rayonnant design, the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris and the Church of St. Urban in Troyes, have walls almost entirely of glass, held in place by only a thin skeletal frame of masonry.

Gothic Architecture Outside France

The adoption of Gothic architecture in various parts of Western Europe resulted in interesting variations and developments of the style. The cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury typify the early English style (late 12th-early 13th cent.). They retain much of the ponderous mural quality of earlier Norman architecture. In Italy height was usually subordinated to width, in a perpetuation of Romanesque proportions. French models served as inspiration for German churches of the 13th cent., notably at the cathedral in Cologne. Spanish Gothic architecture of this period was also based largely on French monuments; the forms, however, were modified, as in Toledo and Burgos, in the direction of greater ornamental display, partly derived from Moorish precedents.

Late Gothic Styles

In the 13th cent. the newly founded orders of Franciscans and Dominicans erected large hall churches of unassuming sobriety. The simplicity and functional character of these buildings, shown in such structures as the interior of Santa Maria Novella in Florence or the Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, contrasts with the trend toward richness in ornamental elaboration apparent in later Gothic art. In the 14th and 15th cent., these tendencies culminated in intricate webs of tracery, as in the towers of the cathedrals at Ulm and Strasbourg in Germany and in the flamboyant style of the Church of Saint-Maclou in Rouen in France. In England the same exuberance of decoration is manifested in the Decorated style of Bristol and Ely cathedrals and the even more elaborate Perpendicular style, exemplified in the choir of the cathedral at Gloucester.

Building activity, however, was seriously affected by the economic crises of the 14th cent. and by the Black Death, and later Gothic constructions were far less ambitious in scope than those of the preceding period. However, the Gothic tradition never completely died out, and in the 19th cent. it enjoyed a revival in Europe and in the New World inspired chiefly by the romantic movement (see Gothic revival).

Gothic Sculpture

Sculpture and stained glass were formally and spiritually integrated within the Gothic cathedral to express a theological program or scheme. The Royal Portal at Chartres (mid-12th cent.) exemplifies the early achievements in the development toward a coherent sculptural scheme; the tympanum, archivolts, and jamb figures are newly united structurally and iconographically to emphasize the importance of Christ on earth. Images of Christ begin to reveal a tendency toward greater humanization.

By the first half of the 13th cent., the role of the Virgin Mary as the intermediary between God and humanity is stressed in the sculptural programs of Laon, Notre-Dame de Paris, and the north transept of Chartres. At the same time figures began to protrude more strongly from their architectural background. Whereas the jamb figures of the Royal Portal at Chartres were formally no more than splendid humanized columns, by the 13th cent. individual sculptural elements became more important and less united with the architecture. The portal figures of the cathedral at Reims provide an eloquent example of the trend toward sculptural independence.

From the mid-13th cent. onward, mannerisms in gesture developed, such as the "hip-shot" pose, notable in the statue of the Virgin and Child at Amiens. This swaying posture further separated sculpture from architecture. In the 14th cent., after the completion of the great cathedrals, sculpture became an independent artistic form. Mannerisms were exaggerated into an elegant style that continued into the 16th cent. There was a parallel trend toward greater realism, which had its origin in sepulchral portrait sculpture. The tendency toward realism reached monumental form in the Well of Moses (Dijon; 1395-1403) by Claus Sluter.

The influence of French Gothic sculpture spread throughout the Continent and England. The finest and most individual examples are found in Germany in the middle of the 13th cent. in the facades of Bamberg, Strasbourg, and Naumbourg cathedrals, the last showing evidence of a powerfully realistic, wholly German style. In Italy the late 13th-century works of Giovanni Pisano (see Nicola Pisano) in Siena and Pistoia and of Lorenzo Maitani at Orvieto reflect the heightened expressiveness found in French Gothic art.

Other Gothic Arts

Monumental fresco painting was rare in the Gothic period except in Italy, where the massive walls remained instead of yielding to the tall skeletal structure found elsewhere. In the rest of Europe stained glass and tapestry assumed greater importance and showed a stylistic development analogous to that of sculpture.

Another aspect of Gothic painting was manuscript illumination, in which text and pictures formed a united composition. From the beginning of the 13th cent., illuminations were done for the courts by lay schools. The Paris school achieved a perfection which made it the center of Gothic painting for nearly two centuries. English miniatures are often indistinguishable from the French in this period. The painters of the Avignon school flourished from 1309, when the papal court was moved there from Rome. This school produced one work, a Pietà from Villeneuve-lès-Avignon (Louvre; c.1460), of such originality of expression that it stands outside the established categories of Gothic painting.

The Waning of the Gothic Style

Toward the end of the 14th cent., many Flemish artists went to France, and a Franco-Flemish style was created, showing an elegance and interest in minute detail; so wide was its diffusion that it came to be known as the International Style. At about this time panel painting, under the lead of Flanders and Italy, achieved preeminence over all other forms of painting. In the 15th cent. individual painters, such as Stephan Lochner, Martin Schongauer, and Mathias Grünewald in Germany, mark the culmination of Gothic art. Others, such as Jean Fouquet in France and the Van Eycks in Flanders, point the way to the Renaissance, while retaining much of the Gothic spirit. In 15th-century Italy, where the Gothic style had never really taken root, the early Renaissance was already in full flower.

German art and architecture, artistic works produced within the region that became politically unified as Germany in 1871 generally followed the stylistic currents of Western Europe.

The Carolingian and Ottonian Periods

Carolingian architecture and art are commonly considered to have been the earliest manifestations of discernibly Germanic art. As the center of Charlemagne's empire, the Rhineland was the home of the massive palace chapel at Aachen (c.800), decorated with mosaics, and of contemporary churches such as the one at Fulda. Many of these show the revival of early Christian plans (see Early Christian art and architecture). Carolingian ivory book covers and diptychs were also notable.

The first outstanding examples of German painting and sculpture were created (c.960-c.1060) during the Ottonian dynasty. Splendid manuscripts, enriched by illuminations remarkable for their force of linear expression, issued from the school of Reichenau (e.g., the Gospels of Otto III, State Library, Munich), while in Cologne miniature painting exhibited a brilliant use of color. Fine craftsmanship is apparent in the metalwork of this period, from the small objects produced by the goldsmiths of Mainz to more massive achievements, such as the bronze doors (1015) for the Church of St. Michael at Hildesheim. The architecture of St. Michael's exemplifies a tendency in Ottonian buildings toward the development of a complex ground plan. A highly rational system was devised of dividing the church into a series of separate units, a method that was to be of consequence in Romanesque design.

The Romanesque and Gothic Periods

Romanesque architecture and art flourished in Germany, and the cathedrals in basilica form at Worms, Mainz, and Speyer typify the characteristic divisive style of the period. Little remains of Romanesque fresco painting, of which Regensburg and Salzburg were major Germanic centers.

With the diffusion of the French Gothic style throughout Europe (see Gothic architecture and art), notable contributions were made by the Germans. The magnificent sculpture of the portals for the cathedrals at Bamberg, Strasbourg, and Naumburg was executed during the first half of the 13th cent. French influence is most strongly revealed in the cathedral of Cologne (c.1250). Modifying the French emphasis on decoration, however, the Germans built simpler, unadorned piers and evolved a more unified, spacious form of church. This style may be seen in the Church of St. Sebald (c.1370), Nuremberg, or in the cathedral (c.1470) at Munich.

The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Outstanding German sculpture was created in the late 15th cent. with the powerfully realistic works, particularly in wooden altarpieces, of Peter Vischer the elder, Veit Stoss, Adam Kraft, and Tilman Riemenschneider. Active both as a sculptor and as a painter, Hans Multscher established the Swabian school. In the late 15th and early 16th cent., manuscript illumination and fresco painting declined as stained glass technique and panel painting became highly developed.

The refined paintings of Stephan Lochner are among those that reflect Flemish influence, particularly of the van Eycks and of Rogier van der Weyden. Martin Schongauer, painting at the same time, developed a more individual style, characterized by delicate and curving lines. Hans Holbein the elder, and Michael Pacher were among the other major 15th-century figures. The artistic genius of the century was Albrecht Dürer. His paintings, woodcuts, and engravings were produced at an unprecedented level of perfection, influencing all European art of the time. He visited Venice and was chiefly responsible for bringing elements of the Italian Renaissance style to Germany.

Painting in the 16th cent. was at its height in Germany and led all other arts. Hans Holbein the younger, Mathias Grünewald (creator of the last major Gothic altarpiece), Albrecht Altdorfer (who brought pure landscape painting into vogue), Lucas Cranach the elder, and Hans Baldung were the great masters of the age. Gothic architecture prevailed so long in Germany that when the Church of St. Michael's in Munich was built (c.1590), the Renaissance and mannerist periods had already ended, and early baroque churches, heavily influenced by Italian design, were being constructed.

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

Some of Germany's finest buildings date from the 17th and 18th cent.—exuberant baroque and rococo churches and palaces that are marvels of lightness and spatial complexity. Among the best are the works of the Austrian Fischer von Erlach. Ceiling decoration was widely practiced. The rococo style came to the fore c.1730, with the Tischbein family and Angelica Kauffmann its chief exponents in painting. At this time, too, small Dresden china figures and groups became very popular, with the workshops at Meissen producing exquisite miniature statuettes of genre subjects. A. R. Mengs's work marked the widespread revival of classicism modeled on the theories of J. J. Winckelmann and on the art of Rome. Meanwhile, the monumental sculptures of J. G. Schadow were regarded as the model for a century of subsequent German plastic art.

The Nineteenth Century

In the early part of the century J. F. Overbeck, Schadow-Godenhaus, Peter von Cornelius, and Schnorr von Carolsfeld banded together to form the group of Nazarenes active in Rome. Alfred Rethel became a leader of a school of German historical painting. He and the realist A. F. E. von Menzel executed woodcuts as well and were responsible for the 19th-century revival of the medium. The Biedermeier period brought to the fore such genre painters as Moritz von Schwind and Carl Spitzweg. In the late 19th cent. a new wave of romanticism emerged that had been foreshadowed by the desolate landscapes of C. D. Friedrich and the complex allegories of P. O. Runge. Romanticism was exemplified in architecture by K. F. Schinkel. Romantic painters who were influenced by Italian art included Anselm von Feuerbach and Hans von Marées.

The Twentieth Century

The sentimental genre scenes and derivative neoclassic artistic production of the 19th cent. were replaced in the 20th cent. by a fresh, more vital sensibility. In the early years of the century the influence of Gauguin was strong. At the same time, English art nouveau design innovations were adopted in the applied arts in Germany and termed jugendstil.

The wave of 20th-century masters that emerged from the Berlin secession, led by Max Liebermann, created an art known as expressionism for its purposeful distortion of natural forms. The expressionist movement came in three waves: the first, the Brücke (1905), included E. L. Kirchner and Emil Nolde; the Blaue Reiter (1911) attracted several foreign artists, such as Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, and Wassily Kandinsky; and in the 1920s Otto Dix and Max Beckmann were principal exponents of the disenchanted realism called the new objectivity. Artists working in related styles included Oskar Kokoschka and Käthe Kollwitz.

Several of these same artists also taught at the Bauhaus, led by Walter Gropius and later by Miës van der Rohe. This establishment became the chief breeding place of functionalism and encouraged experimentation and abstraction with the ideal of combining artistic beauty with usefulness. The Nazi regime, however, regarding abstract and expressionist works as degenerate, discouraged and destroyed any but heroic, propagandistic art, and the Germany of the 1930s and early 40s produced nothing of artistic significance. The Bauhaus aesthetic was taught and practiced in the United States by European expatriates and their disciples, while German architecture, massive and dull, glorified the Nazi style. In the period since World War II the dominant architectural designers have included Hans Scharoun, Helmut Striffler, Werner Duttmann, and Gottfried Bohm. The abstract movement has been led by Willi Baumeister, Theodore Werner, Fritz Winter, E. W. Nay, Winfred Gaul, and G. K. Pfaher.

Georgian architecture. It includes several trends in English architecture that were predominant during the reigns (1714-1830) of George I, George II, George III, and George IV. The first half of the period (c.1710-c.1760) was dominated by Neo-Palladianism (see Palladio). Colin Campbell, with his first publication of the Vitruvius Britannicus in 1715, inspired the patron-architect Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, and his protégé, William Kent, to return to a classicizing form of architecture, based on the works of Inigo Jones and Palladio. Campbell's Mereworth Castle, Kent (1723), is an outstanding example of this style. Another exponent of Palladian theory was Giacomo Leoni (1688-1746), who published an edition of the Architecture of A. Palladio in Four Books (c.1716-c.1720). The Palladian tradition exerted an obvious and powerful influence throughout the Georgian period both in England and America. During the first half of the 18th cent. there was a countercurrent of baroque architecture stemming from buildings by Sir Christopher Wren and carried on by Sir John Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and James Gibbs. From the second half of the 18th cent. new archaeological discoveries in Greece and Italy led architects to draw freely from antiquity and other sources (see classic revival). Neoclassicism had for its principal exponents Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam, George Dance II, and Sir John Soane. A vast increase in population and the birth of industrialism brought an increasing demand for formal mansions for the aristocracy and for dwelling houses for the middle classes. A purely English type of dwelling, somewhat standardized as to plan and materials, was produced for the needs of town and country. The use of brick had become common under William of Orange (William III), as an element of Dutch influence. The red brick house, with courses and cornices of white stone and trimmings of white painted woodwork, is what is popularly termed the Georgian style. New types of public, commercial, civic, and governmental architecture arose, examples of which are Queensberry House by Giacomo Leoni; the Old Admiralty, Whitehall, by Thomas Ripley; the treasury and Horse Guards buildings, by William Kent; Somerset House, by Sir William Chambers; the Bank of England, by Sir John Soane; and monumental street groupings, such as those by John Wood and his son at Bath and by the Adam brothers in London. Among notable churches are St. Martin-in-the-Fields and St. Mary-le-Strand, both by James Gibbs; other important architects of the period were James Gandon and Henry Holland. American buildings and arts of the period, which closely resemble their English prototypes, are also usually designated as Georgian.

French architecture, structures created in the area of Europe that is now France.

Early Architecture

The earliest surviving architecture in France dates to the Stone Age, as a number of prehistoric sites in Brittany attest. Classical architecture was introduced into the south of France during the Roman conquest in the 1st cent. A.D. Well-preserved examples of Roman architecture include the Maison Carrée and the Pont du Gard near Nǐmes. Scant traces remain of the early development of Gallic architecture, including Early Christian, Merovingian, and Carolingian buildings. The Roman basilica form predominated and, during the Carolingian period, was greatly enriched by design innovations.

The Flowering of French Architecture

Innovations manifested in Carolingian buildings gave rise to the architecture of the Romanesque period, when many fine works were executed in France, and to the great cathedrals of the Gothic style, of which France was the principal center (see Romanesque architecture and art, Gothic architecture and art). Many superb medieval monuments are still extant, including St. Sernin, Toulouse (1080-1120) and Chartres Cathedral (begun 1194).

The Renaissance

The revival of classical art and architecture during the Renaissance spread from Italy to France in the 15th and 16th cent., giving rise to the majority of the famous French châteaux, primarily in the Loire valley. During the first half of the 16th cent., Francis I established his court at Fontainebleau outside Paris, where he employed numerous Italian architects and artists, including Sebastiano Serlio, Il Rosso, and Francesco Primaticcio (see Fontainebleau, school of). At the same time native architects came into favor; they included Pierre Lescot, who built parts of the Louvre (begun 1546), and Philibert Delorme, who designed the Château of Anet (1547-55).

The Seventeenth Century

The Italian baroque style spread to France in the early 17th cent. A refined classicism distinguishes the French mode from its more exuberant Italian counterpart. This is revealed in the Château de Maisons (1642-46), Seine-et-Oise, by François Mansart, who added a steeply pitched roof of the form associated with his name. A turning point in French architecture occurred when Louis XIV rejected Giovanni Bernini's curvilinear design for the east facade of the Louvre in favor of Louis Le Vau and Claude Perrault's more classicizing design with its celebrated colonnade (1667-70). On a more colossal scale, Louis XIV commissioned Le Vau, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, and Charles Le Brun to remodel a hunting lodge outside Paris into the Palace of Versailles (begun 1669). The vast formal gardens and fountains were planned by André Le Nôtre.

The Eighteenth Century

After c.1700 the rococo style dominated interior decoration, with its characteristic curving forms and its gilded and mirrored surfaces. Architects who worked in the rococo style included Germain Boffrand and Juste-Aurèle Meissonier, whose published designs were instrumental in disseminating the rococo throughout the continent.

Jacques Ange Gabriel's Petit Trianon at Versailles (1762) signaled a return to the more restrained, rectilinear forms of classicism. The neoclassical style of the late 18th cent. transcended the period of political upheaval that was ushered in by the French Revolution and culminated with the rise of Napoleon I and the Empire style. J. G. Soufflot's Roman-inspired design for the church of Ste. Geneviève (now the Panthéon; 1755-92) emphasized the structural role of the column. Many important neoclassical monuments were erected in Paris under Napoleon, including Charles Percier and P. F. L. Fontaine's Arc du Carousel (1806-8).

The Nineteenth Century

In the mid-19th cent. the Gothic revival was ardently championed in France by the architect and theorist Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, restorer of many of the country's most cherished monuments, including Notre Dame in Paris (1842-68). During this period, the city of Paris was extensively remodeled under Napoleon III, who commissioned Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann to drive new boulevards through the heart of the city. At the head of one of these new boulevards stands the sumptuous neobaroque Paris Opéra (1861-75) by J. L. C. Garnier.

The French preference for classicism was institutionalized in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, whose curriculum was emulated around the world. Following a functionalist course, Henri Labrouste designed buildings utilizing cast-iron construction, such as the Bibliothèque Ste Geneviève (1843-50). French technological prowess culminated in the erection of the Eiffel Tower (1889; see under Eiffel, Alexandre Gustave).

Modern French Architecture

Engineers and architects, including François Hennebique, Auguste Perret, and Tony Garnier, pioneered the use of reinforced concrete construction in the late 19th and early 20th cent. The Swiss-born architect, Le Corbusier, applied the modern machine aesthetic to French architecture in such buildings as the Villa Savoye (1929) outside Paris.

Recent postmodern architecture in France ranges from Piano and Rogers's high-tech Centre Georges Pompidou (1970-77) in Paris to Ricardo and Emilio Bofill's sprawling neoclassical housing development in Marne-la-Vallée (1978-83). Under President François Mitterrand, several new cultural monuments were commissioned for Paris, including I. M. Pei's new pyramid-shaped entrance pavilion at the Louvre (1987-89) and Dominique's controversial Bibliothèque nationale (opened 1998).

Flemish art and architecture, works of art and structures produced in the region of Europe known for centuries as Flanders. Netherlandish art is another term sometimes used for these works. Art produced in Flanders achieved special eminence c.1200 and in the 15th and 17th cent. Flanders was among the most culturally productive regions at other times as well.

The Medieval Period

During the Middle Ages, Flemish art followed the contemporary early Christian, Carolingian, and Romanesque styles. In the 12th cent. Rainer of Huy, Godefroid de Claire, and Nicholas of Verdun, among others, were noted for their work in metal and enamel. In the same century an important late Romanesque cathedral was built at Tournai (see Romanesque architecture and art). In succeeding centuries, the metalworks of Dinant lent their name to the French word dinanderie, for metalwork, and Flemish brass workers and copper workers produced sophisticated pieces.

Splendid examples of secular architecture were executed in the 14th and 15th cent., including the Ypres cloth hall and the city halls of Brussels and Louvain. At Tournai painting, sculpture, and tapestry-making also flourished. Flanders followed the French in their adaptation of Gothic styles until the late 14th cent., when Flemish artists contributed vigorously realistic figures to the elegant, more fragile French manner of painting and manuscript illumination (see also Gothic architecture and art). Jean de Cambrai introduced similarly powerful and realistic forms into French sculpture, along with André Beauneveu and Jacques de Baerze. Jean Bondol of Bruges was a leading illuminator and tapestry designer.

The marriage in 1369 of the daughter of the count of Flanders to the duke of Burgundy led to a concentration of artists around the wealthy Burgundian court. It was the center of activity for such painters and manuscript illuminators as Melchior Broederlam, the Limbourg brothers, the Boucicaut master, Jean Malouel, and Jan van Eyck. Claus Sluter executed the famous sculpture at the court-sponsored Carthusian monastery of Champmol.

The Northern Renaissance and Its Aftermath

In Flanders Renaissance works of art took on a character quite different from those of Italy. The masterpieces of 15th-century Flemish painting are remarkable for their acute observation of nature, symbolism in realistic disguise, depiction of spatial depth and landscape backgrounds, and delicate precision of brushwork. The achievements in symbolism (see iconography) and realism of Robert Campin (identified with the Master of Flémalle) and the Van Eycks, who mastered the technique of oil painting in the first third of the century, were continued in the second third by Roger van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, and Petrus Christus. These artists refined the depiction of psychological expression, landscape, and space.

In the last third of the 15th cent. Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch were especially sensitive to complex emotional expression and fantastic subject matter, while Hans Memling, Gerard David, Joachim Patinir, Quentin Massys, Justus of Ghent, and Joos van Cleef produced paintings in a calmer mood, based on the achievements of earlier Flemings with occasional influences from Italian art. In general, with the exception of the brilliantly original Pieter Bruegel, the elder, late 15th-century Flemish art followed Italian models, although it preserved interest in genre realism and landscape painting as seen in the works of Paul Brill, Gillis van Coninxloo, and others.

Italy attracted many 16th-century artists, such as Jan Gossaert and Jan van Scorel, who returned to Flanders and imported Italian Renaissance forms and motifs into the North. At this time the center of Flemish artistic activity moved to Antwerp, where a school of mannerist artists arose, more clearly influenced by Southern European aesthetic development (see mannerism). Frans Floris was a leading representative of this trend. The 16th-century landscape style, emphasizing exquisite detail and brilliant color, persisted in the works of Jan Bruegel, the elder; Roelandt Savery; Joost de Momper; and Gilles de Hondecoeter, who worked in Holland.

Achievements of the Seventeenth Century

With Rubens, Flemish art again became preeminent in Europe, and his influence dominated painting throughout much of the 17th cent. The greatest patron of Flemish art remained the church, and Rubens's greatest influence was exerted through his religious paintings rather than his portraiture or his apotheoses of European rulers. Elements of his energetic line, brushwork, and understanding of form, his rich, warm color, and his ideal of robust beauty were emulated in the work of his pupil Jacob Jordaens and in that of his more consciously elegant and more highly individual follower Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

Still life and genre painting also flourished in 17th-century Flanders. Outstanding still-life painters included Jan Bruegel and Frans Snyders; genre painters included David Teniers and Adriaen Brouwer. The principal exponent of classicism, the painter Abraham Janssens, brought elements of Caravaggesque painting to the Flemish school (see Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da). The graphic arts also flourished in Flanders at this time. The principal Flemish sculptor was François Duquesnoy, who practiced in Italy. Architecture in the later 16th and 17th cent. blended heavy northern decorative taste and steeply pitched roofs with Italian mannerist and baroque forms; the Antwerp town hall (1561-65) and Rubens's house (c.1610) are characteristic buildings.

The Eighteenth through the Twentieth Centuries

In the 18th cent. French rococo taste predominated in Flanders, but in the 19th cent. a flourishing Belgian school of romantic painters arose (see romanticism). They included Gustave Wappers, Hendrik Leys, and the genre painter Henri de Braekeleer (1840-88). Two other noted Belgians, Alfred Stevens and Henri Evenepoel, worked chiefly in Paris.

A number of figures stand out as exemplars of modern Belgian art. Foremost is James Ensor, an individualistic painter of grotesque personal visions whose major works were created by 1900. Important artists of the 20th cent. include the founders of Belgian expressionism, Jakob Smits and Eugene Laermans; the sculptor and painter Rik Wouters and later expressionist painters Frits van den Berghe and Constant Permeke; the internationally recognized exponents of surrealism Paul Delvaux and René Margritte; and the later painters of the abstract school Anne Bonnet and Louis van Lint. Victor Horta and Henri van de Velde are the major 20th-century Belgians architects.

English art and architecture, the distinctive national art and architecture that art may be said to have evolved in the 12th cent. with the Norman style. Building before that time was in what is commonly called the Saxon or Anglo-Saxon style, which combined Roman and Celtic features; it is represented by sparse remains of monasteries, churches, and cathedral crypts, notable for the use of long-and-short ashlar stonework. These churches were small, relatively simple structures, having one or more towers and one or three aisles, with wooden or stone roofing.

See also articles on individual artists and architects, e.g., J. M. W. Turner; and styles, e.g., Decorated style; and the minor arts, e.g., Doulton ware.

Norman and Gothic Styles

The great impact of the Norman Conquest was manifested in the 12th-century Anglo-Norman churches, closely related to the Romanesque. They were built with extremely long naves, often with a rectangular east end, in contrast with the Gallic surge toward lofty, aspiring structures with a curved chevet. The cathedral at Durham (begun 1093) employs a complete system of ribbed vaulting, together with the pointed arch and concealed flying buttresses, which are thought to antedate these Gothic features in France.

England made a significant contribution in Gothic decorative styles. In phases known as the Decorated style (14th cent.; e.g., the cathedrals of Lincoln and Wells) and the Perpendicular style (late 14th-middle 16th cent.; e.g., Sherbourne Abbey and York Minster), exuberant and complicated networks of bar tracery and multiple ribbed vaults were devised, influencing the flamboyant style in France. In addition, a flourishing religious art of painting, sculpture, monumental brasses, stained glass, and embroidery enriched the medieval church in England. The splendid and unique Anglo-Saxon embroidery, known as the Bayeux tapestry (c.1066-77), attests to the English interest in dramatic narrative. It is thought to be one of the rare secular works of the period.

Enough architectural and memorial sculpture has survived to provide evidence of centuries of achievement, from the Anglican crosses of Cumberland (7th cent.) to the 15th-century figures of Henry V's chantry in Westminster Abbey. A similar long tradition can be traced in stained-glass windows still adorning many churches. Very little church painting has survived, but there are many superb examples of illuminated manuscripts, which by the 10th cent. show a considerable skill in the French Carolingian fashion (see illumination). The high development of this art form influenced the growth of English sculpture, which abounds in fantasies and grotesqueries of the medieval period. Early reliefs at Chichester (c.1140), Lincoln (c.1145), and Malmesbury (c.1160-70) are particularly noteworthy sculptural works.

The Renaissance

The transition from Gothic to a classic Renaissance style was slow in England. Religious art of every kind had declined drastically by 1540, with the dissolution of the monasteries and the break with Rome. John Thynne and Robert Smythson were major builders of the 16th cent. at a time when secular art and architecture began to assume greater importance. Manor houses and palaces were designed for greater comfort than in previous eras and were often arranged according to a symmetrical plan, facing outward toward a splendid garden. Attention was paid to the paneling and stucco adornment of interiors. English builders inconsistently adapted Italian designs, particularly the published works of Sebastiano Serlio.

From the Renaissance onward numerous foreign artists were imported by the nobility, largely for portraiture. From Holbein to Rubens and Van Dyck, these men found few worthy followers in England and no rivals. Such painters as William Dobson and Robert Walker could hardly compete with the Dutch Lely or the German Kneller. However, with the Elizabethan portrait miniaturists Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac and Peter Oliver, an English art of exquisite delicacy came into being.

The Seventeenth Century

From the first quarter of the 17th cent., masterly interpretations of classical architecture were being produced in England. Initiated by Inigo Jones, who modeled his buildings directly after antique structures and designs by Andrea Palladio, the Palladian style spread throughout England. After the great fire of 1666 much of London had to be rebuilt. Influenced by Italian Renaissance architecture, Sir Christopher Wren, drawing upon diverse sources, created an English baroque through his original and grandiose plans for the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral and through the variety and ingenuity of his designs for 51 of the City churches. His successors were Nicholas Hawksmoor and Sir John Vanbrugh, whose massive country houses were the crowning expression of the English baroque.

In painting, the achievements of the 16th-century Elizabethan portraitists were followed in the next century by the delicate accomplishments of such miniaturists as Samuel Cooper and Richard Cosway. Late in the 17th cent. English sculpture was dominated by the celebrated artist Grinling Gibbons, who decorated parts of Westminster Abbey and other churches and palaces.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

During the 18th cent. a more restrained architectural style was developed and made popular in the works of Lord Burlington, Colin Campbell, James Gibbs, and William Kent. The Georgian style in architecture (see Georgian architecture), decoration, furniture, silver, and the minor arts was developed during the reigns of the Hanoverian kings (1714-1820). An outstanding architectural fantasy employing Chinese decor was manifested in the Regency style, of which George IV's Royal Pavilion at Brighton (1815-22) is an example.

Early in the 18th cent., after two centuries of foreign domination in the arts, the English school of painting was revitalized by William Hogarth's brilliant and biting pictorial satires. The graphic art of social commentary that he began has flourished in England ever since. It was superbly expressed in Rowlandson's drawings at the close of the century, a time when an opposite trend, toward the poetic and mystical in the graphic arts, also reached its height in the work of William Blake and his followers, notably Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert.

In portraiture the 18th cent. produced a number of outstanding artists. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who helped found the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768 and was the first Englishman to assert successfully the dignity of his profession, shares with Thomas Gainsborough the place of honor in English portraiture. Other major artists in this field include George Romney, Sir Henry Raeburn, and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Gainsborough is distinguished, too, for his landscape painting, a genre in which England has made contributions of the first order. Notable 18th-century landscape painters were Richard Wilson, George Morland, John Robert Cozens, and Thomas Girtin. A type of painting that enjoyed great popularity in the 18th and 19th cent. was the sporting picture depicting hunting and racing scenes, a particularly English form of art. George Stubbs was the outstanding painter and engraver of this genre.

From the 18th cent. on, considerable advances were made in city planning, with the schemes of John Wood I and John Wood II at Bath, and, in the 19th cent., with the efforts of John Nash in London. In the latter half of the 18th cent. England was engulfed by a wave of neoclassicism, characterized by the greater availability of and greater stress on archaeological finds than during the Palladian trend. The principal exponents of neoclassicism were Robert Adam, Sir William Chambers, George Dance II, and Sir John Soane, all of whom developed tasteful variations of the style. In the late 18th cent. a search for the picturesque led to the resurgence of earlier modes, including Gothic, Renaissance, and Greek styles. Among the architects who exploited several styles were Robert Smirke and Sir Charles Barry.

By the Victorian period, the Gothic revival predominated and was developed to great effect by A. W. N. Pugin, who worked under Barry in the design of the Houses of Parliament. Other imaginative variations of the Gothic style were conceived by William Butterfield, W. A. Nesfield, and R. N. Shaw. The latter two and Philip Webb also created remarkable plans for domestic architecture, as did C. F. A. Voysey and Sir Edwin Lutyens toward the end of the 19th cent. Coinciding with the mid-19th cent. Gothic revival, new structural and spatial possibilities were being explored with the use of such materials as iron and glass. Sir Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace for the exposition of 1851 was a landmark in the direction of modern architecture.

Among the most gifted landscape painters of the early 19th cent. were R. P. Bonington and the leaders of the Norwich school (1803-34), John Crome and J. S. Cotman, who also excelled in the medium of watercolor. Their achievement was dwarfed by the two great landscape artists John Constable and J. M. W. Turner; developing totally different styles, they both created rich coloristic effects and worked with a spontaneity that had a strong influence on subsequent French painting. The English romantic period, of which they were the greatest exponents in painting, was followed by the rise of the Pre-Raphaelite school of D. G. Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Sculpture did not parallel the development of English painting, although John Flaxman, Sir Richard Westmacott, Sir Francis Chantrey, John Bacon, and Alfred Stevens worked effectively in a classicizing manner.

The Twentieth Century

England played a minor part in initiating experimental and intellectual movements in art and architecture during the 20th cent. but was profoundly affected by them. In 1933, 11 painters, sculptors, and architects formed a short-lived group known as Unit One, which aimed at furthering the contemporary spirit in the arts. Among those who attained international fame were the sculptors Henry Moore and Dame Barbara Hepworth and the painters Ben Nicholson and Paul Nash. A touch of macabre fantasy can be seen in the works of three noted 20th-century painters, Sir Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland, and Francis Bacon. In 1954 the pop art movement originated in England in response to commercial culture. Well-known contemporary painters include Lucian Freud, David Hockney, Michael Andrews, Bridget Riley, and Christopher Wood; among notable sculptors are Reginald Butler, Lynn Chadwick, and Kenneth Armitage.

British art in the last two decades of the 20th cent., often called neoconceptual, has been quite eclectic and employed a variety of often mixed and sometimes surprising media. Much of the art deals with life's big questions, has a certain shock value, and shares a preoccupation with mortality and bodily decay. Probably the best known of England's post-Thatcher artists is Damien Hirst, whose images have included dot paintings, cabinets of pharmaceuticals, and, most famously, animals, sliced or whole, pickled in formaldehyde and displayed in glass vitrines. A wide range of other contemporary English works and artists include Chris Ofili's sparkling elephant dung-encrusted semiabstract paintings; Richard Billingham's deadpan photographic images; Rachel Whiteread's plaster casts and rubber sculpture of domestic objects; Jenny Savile's fleshy and disturbing nudes; Gary Hume's cool and brilliantly colored abstracts; Fiona Rae's jazzed-up abstractions; and Marc Quinn's controversial works, notably a cast of his head made with his own blood. Other notable English contemporaries include Ian Davenport, Gillian Wearing, Gavin Turk, Abigail Lane, Mona Hatoum, Marcus Harvey, and Sarah Lucas.

After World War II, there was an attempt to rebuild England in the modern spirit, and many urban buildings were influenced by the International Style. In addition, architects of the school dubbed "new brutalism" were inspired by Le Corbusier to search for new forms and textures. The cathedral at Coventry (consecrated 1962) is the setting for a synthesis of the arts, with a sculpture of St. Michael by Sir Jacob Epstein, a tapestry designed by Sutherland, and engraved glass walls; the new cathedral, designed by Sir Basil Spence, provides an effective contrast to the adjacent ruins of its Gothic predecessor. In more recent times, postmodernism has influenced a number of English architects. Among Britain's best-known contemporary architects are Lord Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Sir James Stirling.

The Decorative Arts

In the minor arts, English pottery became justly famous, and such wares as Chelsea, Derby, Doulton, Staffordshire, and the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood continue to be highly prized. The same can be said of furniture prior to the Victorian era and of the work of such famous designers and artisans as Chippendale, Sheraton, Hepplewhite, and the Adam brothers. William Morris did much to raise English standards in the applied arts, particularly in book design and interior decoration.

Egyptian architecture, the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, formulated prior to 3000 B.C. and lasting through the Ptolemaic period (323-30 B.C.).

Characteristics of Egyptian Architecture

Scant tree growth prevented the extensive use of wood as a building material, but because fine clay was deposited by the floodwaters of the Nile, the ceramic arts developed early. Both sun-dried and kiln-dried bricks were used extensively. Fine sandstone, limestone, and granite were available for obelisks, sculpture, and decorative uses.

A massive, static, and serene architecture emerged from primitive structures of clay and reeds. The incised and flatly modeled surface adornment of the granite buildings was apparently derived from mud wall ornamentation, and the slope given to the masonry walls suggests a method employed originally to obtain stability in the mud walls. The Egyptians developed post-and-lintel construction—the type exclusively used in their monumental buildings—even though the use of the arch was developed during the dynasty of Snefru (2780-2689 B.C.). Walls were immensely thick. Columns were confined to the halls and inner courts. Roofs, invariably flat, suited to the lack of rain, were of huge stone blocks supported by the external walls and the closely spaced columns.

The massive sloping exterior walls, containing only a few small openings, as well as the columns and piers that they concealed, were covered with hieroglyphic and pictorial carvings in brilliant colors. Many motifs of Egyptian ornament are symbolic, such as the scarab, or sacred beetle, the solar disk, and the vulture. Hieroglyphics were decoration as well as records of historic events. Egyptian sculptors possessed the highest capacity for integrating ornamentation and the essential forms of their buildings. From natural objects, such as palm leaves, the papyrus plant, and the buds and flowers of the lotus, they developed conventionalized motifs.

All dwelling houses, built of timber or of sun-baked bricks, have disappeared; only temples and tombs, constructed in durable materials, have survived. The belief in existence beyond death resulted in sepulchral architecture of utmost impressiveness and permanence. Even during periods of foreign rule Egyptian architecture clung to its native characteristics, adopting almost no elements from other cultures.

Historical Development

Egyptian architectural development parallels the chronology (see Egypt): Old Kingdom, 2680-2258 B.C.; Middle Kingdom, 2134-1786 B.C.; New Kingdom, 1570-1085 B.C. Old Kingdom remains are almost entirely sepulchral, chiefly the tombs of monarchs and nobles. The mastaba is the oldest remaining form of sepulcher; it is a rectangular, flat-roofed structure with sloping walls containing chambers built over the mummy pit. The pyramid of a sovereign was begun as soon as he ascended the throne. Groups of pyramids remain; those at Giza, which include the Great Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops), are among the best known. Many Middle Kingdom tombs were tunneled out of the rock cliffs on the west bank of the Nile, among them the remarkable group (c.1991-1786 B.C.) at Bani Hasan. New Kingdom temples in the environs of Thebes, such as those of Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum, derived their form from the funerary chapels of previous ages.

The New Kingdom years cover the great period of temple construction, those temples extant conforming to a distinct type. The doorway in the massive facade is flanked by great sloping towers, or pylons, in front of which obelisks and colossal statues were often placed. The more important temples were approached between rows of sculptured rams and sphinxes. A high enclosing wall screened the building from the common people, who had no share in the temple rituals practiced solely by the king, the officials, and the priesthood. Beyond the open colonnaded courtyard was the great hypostyle hall with immense columns arranged in a central nave and side aisles. The shorter columns of the latter permitted a clerestory for the admission of light. Behind the hypostyle hall were small sanctuaries, where only the king and priests might enter, and behind these were small service chambers.

The Great Temple of Amon at Karnak is a product of many successive additions; the central columns of its hypostyle hall are the largest known. In the temples that resulted from many additions, unity of design was often sacrificed to sheer size. New Kingdom temples were also excavated from rock. The temples of Abu-Simbel begun by Seti I (1302-1290 B.C.), have four colossal figures, sculptured from solid rock, of Ramses II, who completed the temples. (The temples were cut apart and removed from their position by the Nile previous to the completion of the Aswan dam and reassembled in 1966 at a point higher and farther inland.) The temple at Idfu (237 B.C.), by Ptolemy III, is the best preserved of the Ptolemaic period.

Early Christian art and architecture, works of art exhibiting Christian themes and structures designed for Christian worship created relatively soon after the death of Jesus. Most date from the 4th to the 6th cent. A.D. See also Christian iconography under iconography.

Earliest Works

Little is known about Christian art in the first two centuries after the death of Jesus. Among the earliest manifestations extant are the early 3d-century paintings on the walls of the catacombs in Rome. Whereas the style resembles that of secular Roman wall painting, the subject matter consists mainly of biblical figures. Jonah, Daniel, and Susanna appear in scenes of miracles through divine intervention. Among the motifs that symbolized the hope of resurrection and immortality are the fish and the peacock. Following the official recognition of Christianity after the Edict of Toleration (313), the scope of Early Christian art was radically enlarged.

Mosaics and Manuscript Illumination

Elaborate mosaic narrative cycles covered the upper walls, triumphal arch, and apse of basilican churches (see basilica. Some are preserved in Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Pudenziana in Rome and Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. The use of gold backgrounds heightens the effect of otherworldliness and transcendence. In contrast to paganism, the Christian faith was bound by the authority of sacred writings, and it placed increasing importance on the production of books and their illumination. Some fragments of the biblical text, written in silver and gold on purple vellum and sumptuously illuminated, are still preserved (see illumination). Foremost of these is the Vienna Genesis, a manuscript of the first half of the 6th cent.

Sculpture

The sculpture of the stone sarcophagus was extensively practiced in Roman art and was continued into the Christian era. In some cases subjects similar to those of the catacombs were used. In others, scenes of the life of Jesus or more ceremonious compositions were created, showing the enthroned Christ receiving the homage of the apostles. In addition, ivory carvers decorated book covers and reliquary caskets or larger objects, such as the throne of Maximianus in Ravenna, a work of the 6th cent.

Architecture

Before the legal recognition of the new faith in the early 4th cent., Christian places of worship were of necessity inconspicuous and had no fixed architectural form. Afterward, however, imposing cult edifices were erected in many parts of the Roman Empire, especially in its major cities, Rome, Constantinople, Milan, Antioch, and Ravenna. Early Christian builders adapted structures that had long been used in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. The basilican hall, consisting of a nave flanked by lower aisles and terminated by an apse, was adopted as the standard structure in Christian congregational worship. Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna and Santa Sabina in Rome still survive as largely unaltered examples of this type.

In Early Christian architecture a distinct emphasis was placed on the centralized plan, which was of round, polygonal, or cruciform shape. Baptisteries and memorial shrines (martyria) were based on the traditionally centralized Roman funerary monument. Martyria were erected on sites connected with certain events in the life of Jesus and other places held to be sanctified by the sacrifice of the martyrs. In such buildings as Saint Peter's in Rome and the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the martyrium structure and basilica were combined, creating a new formal synthesis of great significance for the religious architecture of the medieval period.

Eastern Traditions

A distinct type of Christian art and architecture was evolved in Egypt (see Coptic art). In the eastern part of the Roman Empire the development of the Early Christian tradition was continued under the auspices of the Byzantine emperors (see Byzantine art and architecture).

Colonial architecture: see American architecture.

Christian art and architecture: see especially the survey articles on Early Christian art and architecture, Byzantine art and architecture, Coptic art, Merovingian art and architecture, Carolingian architecture and art, Romanesque architecture and art, and Gothic architecture and art, as well as individual articles on abbey, church, and other topics.

Chinese architecture, the buildings and other structures created in China from prehistoric times to the present day.

Early Architecture

As a result of wars and invasions, there are few existing buildings in China predating the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Insubstantial construction, largely of wood and rice-paper screens, also accounts for the tremendous loss. However, evidence of early architectural development is provided by representations in Han dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 220) bronze vessels, tomb models, carvings, and tiles. One substantial early structure that remains is the Great Wall, begun in the 3d cent. B.C.

The background of Chinese architecture has been somewhat clarified as a result of the increase of archaeological activity since 1949. Discoveries in 1952 near Xi'an brought to light a complete Neolithic village near Banpo. Two kinds of mud-walled dwellings were found—of round and rectangular shapes. As in later construction, buildings were usually oriented to the south, probably as a protection against the north wind.

Structural Elements

As early as the neolithic period, a basic principle of Chinese architecture was already established, wherein columns spaced at intervals, rather than walls, provided the support for the roof. Walls came to serve merely as enclosing screens. Although the typical Chinese roof was probably developed in the Shang (c.1523-1027 B.C.) or the Chou (1027-c.256 B.C.) period, its features are unknown to us until the Han dynasty. Then it appeared in the form that we recognize today as a hallmark of Chinese architecture—a graceful, overhanging roof, sometimes in several tiers, with upturned eaves. The roof rests on a series of four-part brackets, which in turn are supported by other clusters of brackets set on columns. Decorative possibilities were soon realized in the colorful glazed tiling of roofs and the carving and painting of brackets, which became more and more elaborate.

The Chinese Ground Plan

During the Han dynasty a characteristic ground plan was developed; it remained relatively constant through the centuries, applied to palaces and temple buildings in both China and Japan. Surrounded by an exterior wall, the building complex was arranged along a central axis and was approached by an entrance gate and then a spirit gate. Behind them in sequence came a public hall and finally the private quarters. Each residential unit was built around a central court with a garden. Based on imperial zoos and parks, the private residential garden soon became a distinctive feature of the walled complex and an art form in itself. The garden was laid out in a definite scheme, with a rest area and pavilions, ponds, and semiplanned vegetation.

The Pagoda

In the first centuries A.D., the coming of Buddhism did not strongly affect the Chinese architectural style. Although there was considerable building activity, temples continued to be constructed in the native tradition. The only distinctly Buddhist type of building is the pagoda, which derived from the Indian stupa. Several masonry pagodas are extant that date from the 6th cent. In the T'ang period (618-906) pagodas were usually simple, square structures; they later became more elaborate in shape and adornment.

In the 11th cent. a distinctive type of pagoda was created in the Liao territory. Built in three different stages, with a base, a shaft, and a crown, the structure was surmounted by a spire. Its plan was often octagonal, possibly as a result of the influence of Tantric Buddhism in which the cosmological scheme was arranged into eight compass points rather than four. One of the finest Liao structures is the White Pagoda at Chengde.

Architectural Development: T'ang Dynasty and Thereafter

Through the T'ang and Sung dynasties, Chinese architecture retained the basic characteristics already developed in the Han, although there was a greater technical mastery and a tendency toward rich adornment and complexity of the system of bracketing. Though little survives of the wooden structures, our knowledge of their appearance comes from detailed representations in painted scrolls, especially by the Li school of artists in the T'ang period and their followers (see Chinese art).

Extant monuments in Japan, profoundly influenced by Chinese architecture, also reflect the progress of Chinese building techniques. Examples are the 7th-century monastery of Horyu-ji and the 8th-century monastery of Toshodai-ji. In the Ming period the complex of courtyards, parks, and palaces became labyrinthian in scope. Little remains of the imperial palaces at Nanjing, the capital of the Ming dynasty until 1421.

The Forbidden City

After 1421 Beijing became China's capital, and its group of imperial buildings, known as the Forbidden City, remains a remarkable achievement. Around its main courtyard and many smaller courts are grouped splendid halls, galleries, terraces, and gateways. White marble, wall facings of glazed terra-cotta, roofs of glazed and colored tiles, and woodwork finished with paint, lacquer, and gilding unite to create an effect of exceptional richness. Notable among these buildings is the group constituting the Temple of Heaven, including the Hall of the Annual Prayers (added in the late 19th cent.), a circular structure on a triple platform surmounted by a roof in three tiers covered with tiles of an intense blue glaze.

Modern Styles

Since the late 19th cent. the Chinese have adopted European architectural styles. When first under Communist rule they tended to imitate modern Soviet buildings. The trend has been toward the impressively massive and the clearly functional in public buildings (e.g., the Great Hall of the People, 1959; Beijing). In such buildings only in the detailing around window frames and doorways can traditional features still be seen.

Carolingian architecture and art, art forms and structures created by the Carolingians. Toward the beginning of the Carolingian Period, in the 8th cent., a gradual change appeared in Western culture and art, a change that later reached its apex under Charlemagne.

Carolingian Architecture

The new architecture, inspired by the forms of antiquity, abandoned the small boxlike shapes of the Merovingian period and used instead spacious basilicas often intersected by vast transepts. In some churches, such as Fulda and Cologne, the central nave ended in semicircular apses. An innovation of Carolingian builders, which was to be of incalculable importance for the later Middle Ages, was the emphasis given to the western extremity of the church. The facade, flanked symmetrically by towers, or simply the exterior of a massive complex (westwork), became the focal point of the structure. The function of the westwork is still debated. It had an elevation of several stories, the lowest a vaulted vestibule to the church proper, and above, a room reached by spiral staircases, which may have served as a chapel reserved for high dignitaries.

The outstanding structure of the Carolingian period still in existence is the palatine chapel at Aachen, dedicated by Pope Leo III in the year 805. It is centralized in plan and surmounted by an octagonal dome. The design of the palatine chapel appears to have been based in part on the 6th-century Church of San Vitale in Ravenna. Other important structures still partly preserved, or known through documentary evidence, include the churches of Corbie, Centula (Saint-Riquier), and Reichenau.

Carolingian Art

The best-preserved artistic achievements of the age are works of small dimensions—manuscript illumination, ivory carving, and metalwork. Besides the imperial court, at Aachen, the leading centers of art were the monasteries in Tours, Metz, Saint-Denis, and near Reims.

The earliest liturgical manuscripts of the Carolingian period, such as the Gospel book signed by the scribe Godescalc (written between 781 and 783), are characterized by a tentative and not always successful fusion of ornamental motifs of chiefly Anglo-Saxon and Irish origin and by figures derived from antiquity. Full-page portraits of the four evangelists were often designed. Later Carolingian miniatures show an increasing familiarity with the heritage of late antiquity and in some instances are perhaps influenced by Byzantine art. The manuscripts owe much of their beauty to the new minuscule form of writing, remarkable for its clarity and form. The most influential work was the Utrecht Psalter, illustrated in a mode of nervous and flickering intensity quite unparalleled in earlier Western art.

Closely allied in style to the miniatures were the ivory carvings, many of them originally part of book covers. Metalwork objects are rarer, although literary evidence shows that goldsmiths and enamel workers were active. The large golden altar of Sant' Ambrogio in Milan (executed in 835), the portable altar of Arnulf (now in Munich), several splendid book covers, and other sumptuously decorated objects provide insight into the artistic accomplishments of the period, which ended in the late 9th cent.

Canadian art and architecture, the various types and styles arts and structures produced in the geographic area that now constitutes Canada.

For a discussion of the art of indigenous peoples of Canada, see North American Native art.

The Colonial Period

Among the outstanding art forms of early colonial Canada was French-Canadian wood carving, chiefly figures of saints and retables for the churches. This art flourished from 1675 (when Bishop Laval established a school of arts and crafts near Quebec) until c.1850. The art reached its height after the separation from France when, freed from the French Renaissance tradition, it developed a local character beautifully exemplified in such work as that in the Church of the Holy Family on Orléans Island and in the Provincial Museum at Quebec. The two great Quebec families of carvers were the Levasseurs (18th cent.) and the Baillairgés (19th cent.).

The colonial period also produced fine embroidery (examples are kept at the Ursuline convent, Quebec) and several outstanding portraits executed in a naive folk-art style. Before 1880 most of the only other paintings and drawings produced in Canada were those by the colonial topographers, many of them English army officers. Most of this work is purely documentary.

Painting

Paul Kane, who painted Native Americans, and Cornelius Krieghoff, who depicted the life of the settlers, were the earliest genre painters. Thomas Davies produced vibrant landscapes in watercolor in the second half of the 18th cent. J. A. Fraser, known for his scenes of the Rockies, was instrumental in founding the Ontario College of Art at Toronto in 1875. Five years later the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (at Montreal) and the National Gallery of Canada (at Ottawa) were founded. Since 1910 the National Gallery has played an active part in Canadian life through its traveling exhibits. Its collection is the finest in Canada. Today there are art schools and galleries in all the major Canadian cities.

In the late 19th cent. the outstanding artists were the landscapists Daniel Fowler, F. M. Bell-Smith, and Robert Gagen; the portrait painters Robert Harris, Antoine Palamondon, and Théophile Hamel; and two great cartoonists, J. W. Bengough and Henri Julien. They were followed by a number of celebrated painters, including George A. Reid, Franklin Brownell, Florence Carlyle, F. McG. Knowles, Horatio Walker, M. A. de Foy Suzor-Côté, William Brymner, Maurice Cullen, and Tom Thomson. J. W. Morrice, who worked chiefly outside Canada, is perhaps the most celebrated of Canadian landscapists.

In 1920 Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Franz H. Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and F. Horsman Varley formed the Group of Seven, dedicated to painting the Canadian landscape. Traveling and working all over the dominion, they did much to awaken the interest of the country at large. Their approach, which emphasized flat, strongly colored design, tended toward a poster style. The cultural center of the Seven was Toronto. In Montreal toward the end of World War II a new, radical group was formed, including Alfred Pellan, John Lyman, P. E. Borduas, and J. P. Riopelle. They evolved the automatiste movement, influenced by Matisse, Picasso, and surrealism.

Other major painters, working in a wide variety of styles, include David Milne, Emily Carr, Pegi Nicol MacLeod, B. C. Binning, J. L. Shadbolt, and Harold Town. In the late 1960s the op art movement flourished in Montreal. Canadian painters currently at work employ a variety of postmodern styles and cannot be grouped as a school.

Sculpture, Decorative Arts, and Graphics

After the decline of wood carving, little sculpture was produced until 1900. Philippe Hébert, Suzor-Côté, Alfred Laliberté, Tait McKenzie, and Walter Allward became well-established sculptors. Among the later sculptors, Emanuel Hahn, Louis Archambault, Elizabeth Wyn Wood, and Henri Hébert are notable. The French Canadians have an important tradition in such decorative arts and crafts as metalworking and rug hooking. In the graphic arts Clarence Gagnon, W. J. Phillips, and Albert Dumouchel are considered among the foremost Canadian print makers of the 20th cent.

Architecture

Canadian architecture adheres in the main to European and American trends, especially in the planning of public buildings. From the 18th to the 20th cent., French Renaissance, English Georgian, Neoclassical, and Gothic revival designs were successively dominant. A notable example of Gothic revival is found in the buildings of Parliament Hill, Ottawa (begun 1859), by Thomas Fuller and others. The Canadian Centre for Architecture (Montreal), a modern archive and research center created by Phyllis Lambert, opened in 1989. Based on the ideas of H. H. Richardson, well-known structures in the château style are the Château Frontenac (1890), Quebec City, and the Banff Springs Hotel (1913), Banff, Alberta.

Major modern buildings include the Electrical Building and Civic Auditorium, Vancouver, British Columbia, and the Shakespeare Festival Theatre, Stratford, Ontario. Church and domestic architecture in Canada have consistently shown originality. Particularly in Quebec during the colonial period, charming rural stone houses and churches were developed—typically low and rectangular, with steep pitched roofs and uptilting eaves. Moshe Safdie's remarkable "Habitat," a dynamic and original approach to housing, was erected in Montreal for Expo '67. Arthur Erickson is among the best-known of contemporary Canadian architects.

Cambodian art and architecture: see Angkor and Khmer Empire.

Byzantine art and architecture, works of art and structures works produced in the city of Byzantium after Constantine made it the capital of the Roman Empire (A.D. 330) and the work done under Byzantine influence, as in Venice, Ravenna, Norman Sicily, as well as in Syria, Greece, Russia, and other Eastern countries.

General History

For more than a thousand years, until the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Byzantine art retained a remarkably conservative orientation; the major phases of its development emerge from a background marked by adherence to classical principles. Artistic activity was temporarily disrupted by the Iconoclastic controversy (726-843), which resulted in the wholesale destruction of figurative works of art and the restriction of permissible content to ornamental forms or to symbols like the cross. The pillaging of Constantinople by the Frankish Crusaders in 1204 was perhaps a more serious blow; but it was followed by an impressive late flowering of Byzantine art under the Paleologus dynasty.

Byzantine Art

Mosaic

Byzantine achievements in mosaic decoration brought this art to an unprecedented level of monumentality and expressive power. Mosaics were applied to the domes, half-domes, and other available surfaces of Byzantine churches in an established hierarchical order. The center of the dome was reserved for the representation of the Pantocrator, or Jesus as the ruler of the universe, whereas other sacred personages occupied lower spaces in descending order of importance.

The entire church thus served as a tangible evocation of the celestial order; this conception was further enhanced by the stylized poses and gestures of the figures, their hieratic gaze, and the luminous shimmer of the gold backgrounds. Because of the destruction of many major monuments in Constantinople proper, large ensembles of mosaic decoration have survived chiefly outside the capital, in such places as Salonica, Nicaea, and Daphni in Greece and Ravenna in Italy.

Painting

An important aspect of Byzantine artistic activity was the painting of devotional panels, since the cult of icons played a leading part in both religious and secular life. Icon painting usually employed the encaustic technique. Little scope was afforded individuality; the effectiveness of the religious image as a vehicle of divine presence was held to depend on its fidelity to an established prototype. A large group of devotional images has been preserved in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai.

The development of Byzantine painting may also be seen in manuscript illumination. Among notable examples of Byzantine illumination are a lavishly illustrated 9th-century copy of the Homilies of Gregory Nazianzus and two works believed to date from a 10th-century revival of classicism, the Joshua Rotulus (or Roll) and the Paris Psalter.

Other Arts

Enamel, ivory, and metalwork objects of Byzantine workmanship were highly prized throughout the Middle Ages; many such works are found in the treasuries of Western churches. Most of these objects were reliquaries or devotional panels, although an important series of ivory caskets with pagan subjects has also been preserved. Byzantine silks, the manufacture of which was a state monopoly, were also eagerly sought and treasured as goods of utmost luxury.

Byzantine Architecture

The architecture of the Byzantine Empire was based on the great legacy of Roman formal and technical achievements. Constantinople had been purposely founded as the Christian counterpart and successor to the leadership of the old pagan city of Rome. The new capital was in close contact with the Hellenized East, and the contribution of Eastern culture, though sometimes overstressed, was an important element in the development of its architectural style. The 5th-century basilica of St. John of the Studion, the oldest surviving church in Constantinople, is an early example of Byzantine reliance upon traditional Roman models.

The most imposing achievement of Byzantine architecture is the Church of Holy Wisdom or Hagia Sophia. It was constructed in a short span of five years (532-37) during the reign of Justinian. Hagia Sophia is without a clear antecedent in the architecture of late antiquity, yet it must be accounted as culminating several centuries of experimentation toward the realization of a unified space of monumental dimensions. Throughout the history of Byzantine religious architecture, the centrally planned structure continued in favor. Such structures, which may show considerable variation in plan, have in common the predominance of a central domed space, flanked and partly sustained by smaller domes and half-domes spanning peripheral spaces.

Although many of the important buildings of Constantinople have been destroyed, impressive examples are still extant throughout the provinces and on the outer fringes of the empire, notably in Bulgaria, Russia, Armenia, and Sicily. A great Byzantine architectural achievement is the octagonal church of San Vitale (consecrated 547) in Ravenna. The church of St. Mark's in Venice was based on a Byzantine prototype, and Byzantine workmen were employed by Arab rulers in the Holy Land and in Ottonian Germany during the 11th cent.

Secular architecture in the Byzantine Empire has left fewer traces. Foremost among these are the ruins of the 5th-century walls of the city of Constantinople, consisting of an outer and an inner wall, each originally studded with 96 towers. Some of these can still be seen.

Arabian art and architecture: see Islamic art and architecture.

American architecture, the architecture produced in the geographical area that now constitutes the United States.

Early History

American architecture properly begins in the 17th cent. with the colonization of the North American continent. Settlers from various European countries brought with them the building techniques and prevailing forms of their respective homelands. Colonial architecture was subsequently adapted to the topography and climate of the chosen site, the availability of building materials, the dearth of trained builders and artisans, and the general poverty of the settlers.

Only in New Orleans, where the French government sent skilled architects and engineers, was anything produced that approached the sophistication of architecture in France. The comparatively short Spanish domination of Florida also produced highly complex structures, including the fort at St. Augustine (begun 1672). The Spanish impress was more permanent in the American Southwest, where settlers borrowed extensively from the Native American techniques of construction in adobe. Mexican baroque details and church forms appeared in a new and simpler guise, as in the Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California missions. The Dutch, who settled in New Amsterdam (now New York City), were traders for the most part, and examples of their residential work can be seen throughout the Hudson River Valley.

The English settlements were of two basic types: the small town in the North and the large plantation in the South. In New England settlers erected many-gabled houses of wood with prominent brick chimney stacks of late Gothic inspiration, such as the Parson Capen House in Topsfield, Mass. (1683). In the South, brick rapidly superseded wood as the chief building material, as for example, in St. Luke's Church in Smithfield, Va. (1632). The formality and classicism of 18th-century English architecture was almost immediately reflected in the colonies, as in the official buildings of Williamsburg, Va. or the Pennsylvania Statehouse in Philadelphia (begun 1731).

During this time a growing prosperity and widening commerce brought a new influx of well-trained artisans, and English architectural books became increasingly available. Many Protestant churches were adapted and simplified from contemporary English styles designed by such architects as Christopher Wren and James Gibbs. Among the American examples are Christ Church in Philadelphia (begun 1727) and St. Paul's Chapel in New York City (1764-66). Pioneer building techniques, however, persisted on the Western frontier where settlers often built cabins of logs or later of sod.

Neoclassicism

Toward the end of the colonial period, architectural styles based on a more precise study of ancient Roman and Greek buildings were beginning to appear in Europe. This shift in taste coincided with the American Revolution, and the neoclassical style became closely identified with the political values of the young republic. In interior decoration, the Adam style (see Adam, Robert), as it was then popularly known in England, was soon translated to American use through the pattern books of Asher Benjamin.

A more monumental aesthetic, which became known as the Federal style, was typical of the work of Charles Bulfinch in Boston and of Samuel McIntire in Salem, both of whom were among the growing number of native-born designers. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson gave serious thought to architecture and were deeply involved in the planning and building of Washington, D.C. Both statesmen looked to the classical world as the best source of inspiration. Jefferson's conception of the Roman ideals of beauty and proportion was elegantly expressed in his design for the Virginia state capitol at Richmond (1785-89).

Architecture, previously the domain of gentlemen amateurs and master builders, became increasingly professionalized in the first half of the 19th cent. The field was also greatly enhanced by the arrival of several European architects, including the English-born Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Architectural books continued to exert considerable influence as well. The later pattern books of Asher Benjamin and those of Minard Lafever spread the taste for classicism beyond the major cities of the east coast to the hinterlands.

The South built great mansions during the antebellum period, often with two-story colonnades, such as Dunleith Plantation in Natchez, Miss. (c.1848). In both port cities and small towns there was a subtle shift in taste from the earlier Roman-based classicism to Greek sources. Prominent Greek revival buildings of the period include William Strickland's Merchant's Exchange in Philadelphia (1832-34) and Robert Mills's Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. (1836-42).

Other Styles

Simultaneously, other revival styles began to compete nationally with classicism. In the Southwest, the Spanish tradition, occasionally modified by Eastern influences (as in California), remained dominant until the Mexican War. The English-based Gothic revival style became increasingly popular after 1835, especially for houses and churches. Prominent examples include A. J. Davis's Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, N.Y. (begun 1838) and James Renwick's St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City (1853-88). The widely distributed books of A. J. Downing on the picturesque cottage style and landscape gardening further advanced the trend. Other revival styles popular at the same time included the Italian villa and the Lombard Romanesque.

The writings of John Ruskin began to influence American architects at about the time of the Civil War, and a short-lived fashion for Victorian Gothic buildings ensued, such as Frank Furness's Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia (1872-76). The trend toward historical eclecticism intensified in the decades following the Civil War. Newly wealthy patrons commissioned buildings in styles characterized by unbridled ostentation, as for example Richard Morris Hunt's designs for the sprawling mansions of Newport, R.I. The highly influential Henry Hobson Richardson designed massive, dignified buildings in an abstracted Romanesque style that contrasted sharply with the surrounding eclecticism. During this period many architects went to Paris, if possible to the École des Beaux-Arts, to receive their training. Architectural schools were established in the United States along the model of the École, beginning with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1865.

The Birth of Modernism

Although divided by stylistic eclecticism, the United States took the lead in the development of advanced building technologies in the second half of the 19th cent. Engineering became a distinctly separate profession, and works such as the Brooklyn Bridge by John and Washington Roebling (1869-83) number among the most impressive of all American achievements. The technical innovations of this era included the use of cast iron, steel, and reinforced concrete in construction.

The trend toward functional design, which had been steadily growing, reached its greatest expression in the works of the so-called Chicago school of architecture led by Louis Henry Sullivan. Sullivan broke completely with historical eclecticism and used modern materials in such a way as to emphasize their function. The commercial buildings and skyscrapers of Chicago and other cities built under his influence were admired for their power and originality as well as for the rational organization of their parts.

Neoclassical Revival

Classicism triumphed once again, however, largely because of the 1893 Columbian World Exposition in Chicago. The major architectural firms that participated in the fair reinvigorated the classical tradition nationwide, often at an imperial scale, as for example in McKim, Mead, and White's Pennsylvania RR Station in New York City (1906-10). Despite the efforts of Sullivan and his pupil Frank Lloyd Wright, neoclassical doctrines adapted from the École des Beaux-Arts remained solidly entrenched for many decades after the turn of the 20th cent. There were noticeable exceptions to this, particularly in the domestic realm, where the English Arts and Crafts movement implemented by William Morris had a lasting influence in the United States.

Modern American Architecture

Wright, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest architects of the 20th cent., developed a highly original approach to residential design before World War I, which became known as the "Prairie Style." His early work, executed in and around Chicago, combined open planning principles with horizontal emphasis, asymmetrical facade elevations, and broad, sheltering roofs, as seen, for example, in his Robie House (1909). Wright, who stood apart from the European-derived modernist mainstream, continued to design buildings into his old age, producing some of his finest and most idiosyncratic works, such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1946-59).

The unornamented, machine-inspired aesthetic of European modernism was introduced to the United States through such foreign-born architects as Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, and William Lescaze during the 1920s. Later dubbed the International style, this functionalist mode of architecture became preeminent in the United States after World War II, particularly in the design of corporate office buildings. Notable examples include Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Lever House (1952) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building (1956-58), both in New York City. With the immigration to the United States of such prominent Europeans as Walter Gropius and Mies, the curricula of many American architectural schools were revamped along the lines of the Bauhaus in Germany.

Around 1960 a formal and theoretical reaction to the International style began to take shape as architects became increasingly disenchanted with the sterile aestheticism of much postwar building. Louis I. Kahn reintroduced axial planning and other Beaux-Arts principles, while Eero Saarinen experimented with dynamic sculptural forms. In addition, Robert Venturi argued for the value of studying the vernacular and commercial landscape, thus broadening the theoretical foundations of modern design and ushering in the postmodern era. By the early 1980s postmodernism had become America's dominant style, particularly for public buildings. At around this time, the United States, often an importer and interpreter of modernist architectural trends, became an exporter of postmodernist concepts. In postmodern design, architects such as Philip Johnson (in one of his many changes of architectural style), Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Charles Gwathmey, Robert A. M. Stern, Charles Moore, Helmut Jahn, Thomas Beeby, and others recombined ornament, historicism, technology, and often vivid color in diverse, eclectic, and often witty manners. Among postmodernism's most notable buildings are Graves's Portland Building (1982), Portland, Oreg., and Johnson's AT&T Building, now the Sony Building (1978-84), New York City. While postmodern architecture remained a dominant mode in the 1990s, some contemporary architects have created their own styles. Foremost among these is Frank Gehry, whose asymmetrical, sculptural buildings using both common and unusual materials, are an architectural world unto themselves. One of his finest works is the monumental and organic titanium steel Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (1997).

Process of arranging land, plants, and objects for human use and enjoyment, usually with long and close-up views. Cyclical growth and seasonal changes provide a continuous sense of time and natural rhythms that is absent in buildings and sculptures. Gardens and designed landscapes fill in the open areas in cities and create continuity between urban structures and open rural lands beyond. Landscape-gardening areas may be of any size, from small urban courtyards and suburban gardens to many thousands of acres in regional, state, or national parks. Every landscape garden reflects attitudes toward nature and humans, revealing much about a culture and a period.

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Type of medieval Norwegian wooden church. The stone foundation supports four horizontal wooden members, from which rise four corner posts, or staves, which are joined together by four upper crossbeams. From this boxlike frame, timbers extend outward, supporting a series of uprights, or masts. There may be four or more ranks of masts, with an equal number of triangular frames of diminishing size rising above them. The church at Borgund (circa 1150) is one of about 24 surviving examples. Its six tiers of double-sloped roofs, shell-like exterior shingles, and elaborate carvings of dragons and other motifs give it its remarkably picturesque and vigorous appearance.

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Type of church with side aisles approximately equal in height to the nave, unlike the typical basilica. The interior is lit by large aisle windows instead of a clerestory, with chapels sometimes arranged alongside the nave. Hall churches originated in Germany and were characteristic of the Late Gothic period there. Special features of German hall churches include lofty nave arcades and immense roofs. St. Elizabeth in Marburg (circa 1257–83) is an archetypal example.

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In music, any one of eight scalar modes employed for medieval liturgical melodies. The modal system was conceived for the purpose of codifying plainchant (see Gregorian chant); the names of the modes were borrowed from the system used by the ancient Greeks, though the Greek system was inadequately understood and the connection between the two is illusory. The modes are distinguished according to the note used as the final (last note) and the emphasis placed on another note, called the dominant. The Dorian mode's final is D, the Phrygian mode's is E, the Lydian mode's is F, and the Mixolydian's is G. Each of these four original modes had a parallel mode (Hypodorian, Hypophrygian, Hypolydian, and Hypomixolydian) with a lower range. Though they principally employ the tones A-B-C-D-E-F-G, some replace B with B-flat. In the 16th century, further modes were identified—the Aeolian, on A, and the Ionian, on C (corresponding to modern minor and major). The mode on B was ignored because of B's problematic tonal relationship within the scale.

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Relationship between religious and secular authority in society. In most ancient civilizations the separation of religious and political orders was not clearly defined. With the advent of Christianity, the idea of two separate orders emerged, based on Jesus's command to “Render unto Caesar what are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (Mark 12:17). The close association of religion and politics, however, continued even after the triumph of Christianity as emperors such as Constantine exercised authority over both church and state. In the early Middle Ages secular rulers claimed to rule by the grace of God, and later in the Middle Ages popes and emperors competed for universal dominion. During the Investiture Controversy the church clearly defined separate and distinct religious and secular orders, even though it laid the foundation for the so-called papal monarchy. The Reformation greatly undermined papal authority, and the pendulum swung toward the state, with many monarchs claiming to rule church and state by divine right. The concept of secular government, as evinced in the U.S. and postrevolutionary France, was influenced by Enlightenment thinkers. In western Europe today all states protect freedom of worship and maintain a distinction between civil and religious authority. The legal systems of some modern Islamic countries are based on Sharīaynah. In the U.S. the separation of church and state has been tested in the arena of public education by controversies over issues such as school prayer, public funding of parochial schools, and the teaching of creationism.

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In Christian doctrine, the religious community as a whole, or an organized body of believers adhering to one sect's teachings. The word church translates the Greek ekklesia, used in the New Testament for the body of faithful and the local congregation. Christians established congregations modeled on the synagogue and a system of governance centred on the bishop. The Nicene Creed characterized the church as one (unified), holy (created by the Holy Spirit), catholic (universal), and apostolic (historically continuous with the Apostles). The schism of Eastern and Western churches (1054) and the Reformation (16th century) ended institutional unity and universality. St. Augustine stated that the real church is known only to God, and Martin Luther held that the true church had members in many Christian bodies and was independent of any organization.

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officially Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity

Religious movement founded (1954) in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon. Influenced by yin-yang principles and Korean shamanism, it seeks to establish divine rule on earth through the restoration of the family, based on the union of the Lord and Lady of the Second Advent (believed to be Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han). It strives to fulfill what it asserts to be the uncompleted mission of Jesus—procreative marriage. The church has been criticized for its recruitment policies (said to include brainwashing) and business practices. Its mass marriage ceremonies have gained press attention. Its worldwide membership is about 200,000 in more than 100 countries.

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International movement established in the U.S. by L. Ron Hubbard in 1954. He introduced his ideas to the general public in Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950). Dianetics sought to free subjects from the destructive imprints of past experiences, called engrams. Later Hubbard moved toward a structured system of belief involving the human soul, or thetan (each person's spiritual self), and the origins of life and the universe. The organization has often been the subject of controversy.

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or Swedenborgians

Church whose members follow the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Swedenborg did not himself found a church, but he believed that his writings would be the basis of a “new church,” which he associated with the “new Jerusalem” mentioned in the Book of Revelation. In 1788, soon after his death, a group of his followers established a church in London. The first Swedenborgian society in the U.S. was organized in Baltimore in 1792. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the two sacraments of the church, and New Church Day (June 19) is added to the established Christian festivals. There are three New Church groups: the General Conference of the New Church, the General Convention of the New Jerusalem in the U.S.A., and the General Church of the New Jerusalem.

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or peyotism

Religious movement among North American Indians involving the drug peyote. Peyote was first used to induce supernatural visions in Mexico in pre-Columbian times; its use extended north into the Great Plains in the 19th century, and peyotism is now practiced among more than 50 tribes. Peyotist beliefs, which combine Indian and Christian elements, vary from tribe to tribe. They involve worship of the Great Spirit, a supreme deity who deals with humans through various other spirits. In many tribes peyote is personified as Peyote Spirit and is associated with Jesus. The rite often begins on Saturday evening and continues through the night. The Peyote Road is a way of life calling for brotherly love, family care, self-support through work, and avoidance of alcohol.

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also called Episcopal Church in the United States of America or Protestant Episcopal Church

Descendant of the Church of England in the U.S. Part of the Anglican Communion, it was formally organized in 1789 as the successor of the Church of England in the former British colonies. The church accepts both the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, as well as a modified version of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. The highest authority in the church is the General Convention, which is headed by the presiding bishop (elected by the House of Bishops). The Reformed Episcopal Church broke away from the main body in 1873. The church accepted the ordination of women in 1976. In 1988 the church elected its first woman bishop, and in 2003 an openly gay man was consecrated bishop of New Hampshire. These steps generated controversy within the church as well as among other churches of the Anglican Communion.

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English national church and the mother church of the Anglican Communion. Christianity was brought to England in the 2nd century, and though nearly destroyed by the Anglo-Saxon invasions, it was reestablished after the mission of St. Augustine of Canterbury in 597. Medieval conflicts between church and state culminated in Henry VIII's break with Roman Catholicism in the Reformation. When the pope refused to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the king issued the Act of Supremacy (1534), which declared the English monarch to be head of the Church of England. Under Henry's successor, Edward VI, more Protestant reforms were instituted. After a five-year Catholic reaction under Mary I, Elizabeth I ascended the throne (1558), and the Church of England was reestablished. The Book of Common Prayer (1549) and the Thirty-nine Articles (1571) became the standards for liturgy and doctrine. The rise of Puritanism in the 17th century led to the English Civil Wars; during the Commonwealth the Church of England was suppressed, but it was reestablished in 1660. The evangelical movement in the 18th century emphasized the church's Protestant heritage, while the Oxford movement in the 19th century emphasized its Roman Catholic heritage. The Church of England has maintained an episcopal form of government, and its leader is the archbishop of Canterbury. In 1992 the church voted to ordain women as priests. In the U.S., the Protestant Episcopal Church is descended from and remains associated with the Church of England.

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German Bekennende Kirche

Movement for revival within the German Protestant churches that developed in the 1930s in resistance to Adolf Hitler's attempt to make the churches an instrument of Nazi propaganda and politics. The Confessing Church, whose leaders included Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposed Hitler's “German Christians” and was forced underground as Nazi pressure intensified. The movement continued in World War II, though it was hampered by the conscription of clergy and laity. In 1948 the church ceased to exist when the reorganized Evangelical Church was formed.

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Any of various conservative Protestant churches found mainly in the U.S. Each congregation is autonomous in government, with elders, deacons, and a minister or ministers; there is no national administrative organization. These churches originated in the early 19th century with the Disciples of Christ movement, which relied on the Bible as the only standard of Christian faith and worship. Controversies split the movement, and the Churches of Christ designated those congregations that opposed organized mission societies and the use of instrumental music in worship. After their separation from the Disciples, the Churches of Christ continued to grow. Worship services consist of prayer, preaching, unaccompanied singing, and the Lord's Supper.

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African American Methodist denomination formally organized in 1816. It originated with a group of black Philadelphians who withdrew in 1787 from St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church (see Methodism) because of racial discrimination and built Bethel African Methodist Church. In 1799 Richard Allen became minister of Bethel, and in 1816 he was consecrated bishop of the newly organized African Methodist Episcopal Church. Limited at first to the Northern states, the church spread rapidly in the South after the Civil War. It founded many colleges and seminaries, notably Wilberforce University (1856) in Ohio. In the late 20th century the church claimed 3,500,000 members and 8,000 congregations. Its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.

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Art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. The practice of architecture emphasizes spatial relationships, orientation, the support of activities to be carried out within a designed environment, and the arrangement and visual rhythm of structural elements, as opposed to the design of structural systems themselves (see civil engineering). Appropriateness, uniqueness, a sensitive and innovative response to functional requirements, and a sense of place within its surrounding physical and social context distinguish a built environment as representative of a culture's architecture. Seealso building construction.

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World's most prestigious honour in the field of architecture. Established through the philanthropic efforts of the Pritzkers, a prominent Chicago business family, the prize, first awarded in 1979, bestows an annual award of $100,000 on an architect whose built contributions to the field and to society are judged worthiest. The international jury has included architects, artists, historians, academicians, critics, and business executives.

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