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Some old masters of Greek architecture

Chapter 2: PREFACE
By Harry Douglas
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ArchitectureArtHistory - Ancient

About This Book

The author surveys the lives, legends, and surviving attributions of ancient Greek architects, tracing developments from mythical and archaic builders through the originators of the three classical orders, the Periclean golden age, and the later Alexandrian and Roman periods. Presented as a series of biographical sketches and historical notes, the work collects traditions, architectural principles, and examples of sculptural ornament, while lamenting the obscurity that has hidden many creators' names. It functions as a compact catalogue of individual practitioners and epochs, intended as an introductory, selective overview rather than exhaustive history.

PREFACE

The temptation to wander, with all the recklessness of an amateur, into the traditions of the best architecture, which necessarily could be found only in the history of early Hellenic art, awakened in the author a desire to ascertain who were the individual artists primarily responsible for those architectural standards, which have been accepted without rival since their creation. The search led to some surprise when it was found how little was known or recorded of them, and how great appeared to be the indifference in which they were held by nearly all the writers upon ancient art, as well as by their contemporary historians and biographers. The author therefore has gone into the field of history, tradition and fable, with a basket on his arm, as it were, to cull some of the rare and obscure flowers of this artistic family, dropping into the basket also such facts directly or indirectly associated with the architects of ancient Greece, or their art, as interested him personally. The basket is here set down, containing, if nothing more, at least a brief allusion to no less than eighty-two architects of antiquity. The fact is perfectly appreciated that many fine specimens may have been overlooked; that scant justice has been done those gathered, and that the basket is far too small to contain all that so rich a field could offer.

This book, therefore, aims at nothing more than a superficial glance at the subject, and the author will be content if he has accomplished anything toward bringing those great geniuses of a noble art into a little modern light, who have been left very much to themselves in one of the gloomiest chambers of a deep obscurity.