Essais sur poutres. Peintures et inscriptions chez Montaigne

Abstract

the Formation of French Architectural Language in the Late Sixteenth Century: The Triumphal Arch as Commonplace," takes up the interesting parallel between commonplace books as a training device for young writers and the codices which came to function as architectural commonplace books for students of architecture.Neither conveyed the strict grammatical rules of their respective forms, but both conveyed the rhetoric that employed such rules, thus imparting an artistic quality to their respective discourses.Pauwels illustrates his point by discussing the writings of Philibert De L'Orme, and by considering the triumphal arch and the square as applications of the architectural commonplace.The last two essays bring us to the British Isles and to two cultures whose grasp of Renaissance style was more distinct than most.Drawing on her masterful command of the life and work of Inigo Jones, Christy Anderson explores the relationship of Jacobean neo-classicism as created by Jones to the neo-classical poetry of the same era, and with it the work of Jones in architecture and of his friend George Chapman in poetry.She sees their work as producing stylistic and intellectual watersheds in both fields, and thus in English high culture itself.Finally, we have Deborah Howard's important piece on "Languages and Architecture in Scotland, 1500-1600," valuable in its own right, and also because it adds to one of the less explored architectural traditions of this era.Howard very usefully examines the dialogue in Renaissance Scotland between native elements of architecture and neo-classical elements imported from abroad.In addition, she makes the important distinction between architectural language and architectural style, arguing that while Scotland may have recognized diverse contemporary architectural languages from abroad, its native climate and culture provided a constant and necessary consideration in determining style.The point resonates nicely with Alina Payne's observation about rules and exceptions in national cultural traditions.Given the virtually infinite possibilities for exploring the relations between architecture and language in the broad period at hand, it is too much to expect that any volume devoted to that task will produce an entirely cohesive result.This collection is no exception.But these essays do represent some of the most interesting work being conducted in this area at the present time; the volume very usefully ignores traditional disciplinary boundaries, and its contributors seem without exception to be at the cutting edge of their fields.

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