The story of architecture- an outline of the styles in all countries (1896) (14580045327)

Identifier: storyofarchitect00math (find matches)
Title: The story of architecture: an outline of the styles in all countries
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Mathews, Charles Thompson, 1863-
Subjects: Architecture -- History
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN



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forth bridges to either shore.These bridges were many hundred yards in lengthand were bordered with parapets of hydra-headeddragons, supported at intervals by grotesque statues. Scores of domical towers, terminating in tecs,bristled into an eccentric sky line, sculptured allover, and frequently embossed with colossal humanheads, as in the forty-two towers of Angcor-Baion(Plate VII). A long line of loggias usually ran round the ex-terior, belting in an entire collection of temple build-ings, all of which were linked together by stone pas-sages accentuated at intervals by lions and Laernianmonsters. Windows Avere square, crossbarred with stone,and doors were triumphal arches topped with fan-tastic towers; while piers, tall, lithe, and straight,curved into capitals plumed with petrified leafage,wedding a certain dignity with grace. And yet with all this patient pursuance after effect,the Western mind instinctively balks at accepting somuch elaboration without adequate cause, and it must
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JAVANESE ARCHITECTURE. 6r be acknowledged that the multiplicity of spiky towerssuggests a circus where it should suggest a temple,and advertisement rather than magnificence. JAVA. With Brahmanism and Buddhism Javanese archi-tecture began, and with Brahmanism and Buddhismit ended. For after the Moslem invasion in thefifteenth century architecture practically ceased, andlittle or nothing remains save ruins, and they are com-paratively few. These ruins are divided into three principal groupssituated at Gumong Prau, Brabanum, and Boro-Bud-dor, and as monuments of patience may almost becompared to those of Egypt. Boro-Buddor (or Great Buddha) is the most im-portant of the three. It is also the most extraordi-nary building in Java, and, so far as is generallyknown, the most elaborately decorated in the world.Not that this need give it a very high place in archi-tecture, for decoration brings the responsibility ofdistribution, one of the most difficult problems ofthe profession; but it holds