Byzantium and British Heritage: Byzantine Influences on the Arts and Crafts Movement 0815359748, 9780815359746

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Byzantium and British Heritage

Byzantium was a very influential part of the development of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1880–1910) in Britain, and although the influence of the Gothic Revival (1830–80) is well known, that of the Byzantine Revival (1840–1910) is not. This volume is about the people and the movements that created the Byzantine Revival and shows how they influenced British heritage from architecture to the decorative arts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The central pillars of the volume are the architects and scholars who created the Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive, a unique collection of architectural drawings and photographs of numerous monuments across the Byzantine world, and the social and professional networks in which they circulated. The BRF members, an eclectic and little-known group, who based themselves at the newly founded British School at Athens, established the research of Byzantium in Britain and Greece. They were trained in the traditions of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which sought authenticity in design and decoration in reaction to the styles that had developed through industrialisation. Their work, uniting a distinctively British design tradition with Byzantine arts and crafts, represents a highly significant and under-researched link between Britain and the Hellenic world. This volume is the first contribution to try to fill this knowledge gap. Byzantium and British Heritage will appeal to all those interested in the relation between Byzantine and British culture and Byzantine art. Amalia G. Kakissis is Archivist at the British School at Athens.

British School at Athens – Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies Volume number X Series editor: Professor John Bennet Director, British School at Athens, Greece

The study of modern Greek and Byzantine history, language and culture has formed an integral part of the work of the British School at Athens since its foundation. This series continues that pioneering tradition. It aims to explore a wide range of topics within a rich field of enquiry which continues to attract readers, writers, and researchers, whether their interest is primarily in contemporary Europe or in one or other of the many dimensions of the long Greek post-classical past. Byzantium and British Heritage Byzantine Influences on the Arts and Crafts Movement Edited by Amalia G. Kakissis

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com

Byzantium and British Heritage

Byzantine Influences on the Arts and Crafts Movement Edited by Amalia G. Kakissis

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Amalia G. Kakissis; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Amalia G. Kakissis to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kakissis, Amalia G., editor. Title: Byzantium and British heritage : Byzantine influences on the arts and crafts movement / edited by Amalia G. Kakissis. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: British School at Athens – Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies ; volume number 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022014277 (print) | LCCN 2022014278 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815359746 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032286730 (paperback) | ISBN 9781351119825 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Byzantine Empire—Study and teaching—Great Britain. | Byzantine Empire—Research—Great Britain. | Byzantinists—Great Britain. Classification: LCC DF505.82.G7 B99 2023 (print) | LCC DF505.82.G7 (ebook) | DDC 932/.02300710941—dc23/eng/20220517 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014277 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014278 ISBN: 978-0-8153-5974-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-28673-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-11982-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To Ruth Macrides, Gavin Stamp, and Ian Jenkins, who gave of their time and shared their knowledge wholeheartedly, and to my mother, Georgia, the incarnation of human sunshine, who could always find beauty in the simple things in life.

Contents

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Preface Editor’s Note on Transliteration

Prelude to the Byzantine Revival 1 The Byzantine Revival in Europe

ix xiv xv xvii xxi

1 3

J. B. BULLEN

2 The Discovery of Byzantium by British Visitors to Greece and What They Saw

26

ROBIN CORMACK

3 The Restoration of Byzantine Monuments in Nineteenth-Century Greece: In Search of the Anti-Restoration Movement’s Impact

57

E L E N I - A N N A C H L E PA

Pioneers and Patronage 4 ‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’: The Byzantinism of the Third Marquess of Bute

79 81

†RUTH MACRIDES

5 ‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’; W.R. Lethaby and the Byzantine Revival JULIAN HOLDER

110

viii Contents 6 ‘A Piece of Sherlock Holmes Inference’ (sic): Byzantine Recordings in Nineteenth-Century Greece and the Art and Crafts Architects of the Byzantine Research Fund Archive of the British School at Athens

138

DIMITRA KOTOULA

7 Walter S. George and the Byzantine House: Ruskin’s Greek Shadow

159

KOSTIS KOURELIS

8 Schultz Revisited

189

† G AV I N S TA M P

Byzantium and Modernism: Britain and Beyond 9 Sidney Barnsley, Byzantium, and Furniture-Making

215 217

M A RY G R E E N S T E D

10 The Mosaic Landscape of Westminster Cathedral

240

CLAUDIA TEDESCHI

11 The Byzantine Research and Publication Fund Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): His Academic Studies and His Architecture

266

RICHARD J. BUTLER

12 Scottish Byzantinists: Architects, Scholars, and Their Networks

290

ANNETTE CARRUTHERS AND SIMON GREEN

Notes on Contributors Index

313 316

Figures

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16

Leo von Klenze, Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, Munich, 1826–37 Ludwig Persius, Friedenskirche, Potsdam, 1843–8 Saint-Front, Perigueux, 1120–50 Paul Abadie, Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, Paris, 1875–1919 Léon Vaudoyer, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, Marseilles, 1853–70 Sara Losh, St Mary’s Wreay, Cumbria, 1842 Byzantine designs by Owen Jones Sculpture of Lord Byron in Athens by Henri-Michel Chapu and Alexandre Falguière, 1896 The Temple of Apollo at Bassae by Edward Lear, c. 1854–5 Stained-glass panel made by Thomas William Camm, c. 1880 Details of decorations in churches in Lower Mani, by Ramsay Traquair, c. 1905–9 Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi: plaque recording architects Rashtrapati Bhavan (previously Viceroy’s House), New Delhi: entrance gateway The Regal Theatre, Connaught Place, New Delhi, built in 1932 Church of St Thomas, New Delhi, built in 1931–2 Church of St Thomas, New Delhi, detail of ceiling moulding, built in 1931–2 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, completed 1941 Monastery of Daphni, photograph looking north-east in the nave, c. 1888–9 Christ in the dome, Monastery of Daphni, photograph possibly November 1889 Design for All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, 1909 Republican Palace Museum, formerly All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, south wall and transept, completed 1912 Furniture in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral, Khartoum Designs for a priest’s chair in the Memorial Chapel for General Gordon in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, 1909–12

6 8 11 13 15 18 20 29 33 35 36 38 39 41 42 43 44 46 47 48 50 51 52

x

Figures 2.17 2.18 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 5.1a 5.1b 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

Furniture in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral, Khartoum Sketch of church furniture in St Theodore, Athens, from Robert Weir Schultz’s notebook, 1888–90 Daphni Monastery, Katholikon, Pantocrator before conservation work, 1888–92 Daphni Monastery, exterior from the north after the reconstruction of the dome, 1891–2 Daphni Monastery, exterior from the east after the reconstruction of the dome, 1891–2 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, south elevation, 1888–90 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, north elevation, 1888–90 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, section through church looking east, 1888–90 Drawing of Tegea, Church of the Dormition of Theotokos (Palaia Episkopi), south elevation, 1888–90 Photograph of Tegea, Church of the Dormition of Theotokos, (Palaia Episkopi) exterior from the south, 1890 Drawing of Holy Apostles, Athens, 1888–90 Drawing of west and east elevations of Hagioi Theodoroi, Mistra, 1888–90 Drawing of the south elevation of the Katholikon, Daphni Monastery, 1888–90 Pickenham Hall, West Loggia, designed by R. W. Schultz, 1902–5 Photograph of Corpus Christi procession frieze, House of Falkland Lord Bute in Rector’s gown Manuel Laskaris Chatzikes, Pantanassa narthex, Mistra Pisello medal of John VIII Palaiologos Bronze statue of boy in Syntagma square given to the city of Athens, Greece, by Lord Bute Lord Bute’s sketch plan of St Sophia, Galston Dome, St Sophia, Galston Tympanon windows, St Sophia, Galston The Subterranean Chapel, exterior, at St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London Drawing of the dome of the buried ‘L’Église de la Grande Vierge’ (the Megali Panagia) in Athens, Greece, by A. Couchaud, 1842 Photograph of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople, 1897 Sketch of Sancta Sophia from Swainson’s notebook View of vaulted system of Sancta Sophia Measured drawing of balustrading in Sancta Sophia from Swainson’s notebook Westminster Cathedral – interior showing bare brickwork of arcade Bird’s-eye perspective of Liverpool Cathedral competition entry by Beresford Pite, 1902

53 54 59 61 61 63 64 65 66 67 69 71 72 73 83 84 88 89 91 95 97 98 100 101 111 111 112 118 122 124

Figures 5.6a 5.6b 5.7a 5.7b 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4a 6.4b 6.5a 6.5b 6.6a 6.6b 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5

Sketch of ideas for Liverpool Cathedral competition, by William Lethaby, 1902 Design for a cathedral in the Byzantine style by Henry Wilson Photo montage of Henry Wilson group entry to Liverpool Cathedral competition Photograph of plaster model of Henry Wilson group entry to Liverpool Cathedral competition Church of St Basil, Birmingham, by Arthur Stansfield Dixon St Cuthbert Mayne, Launceston, Cornwall St John the Baptist, Rochdale, Lancashire Watercolour of unidentified unbuilt cathedral by J.H. Sellers William Harvey’s letter to Robert Weir Schultz from Athens, 3 June 1908 Engraving by Dominique Louis Papety from the frescoes of the Monastery of Lavra, Mount Athos Colour drawing of a mosaic by Robert Weir Schultz from the Monastery of Daphni, 1888–90 The Church of Hagioi Theodoroi in Athens (south elevation), 1842, as recorded by A. Couchaud The Church of Hagioi Theodoroi in Athens (south elevation), 1888–90, as recorded by British architects Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Apse decoration in the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Apse decoration of Hagia Eirene, Constantinople (Istanbul) Ground plan of All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral in Khartoum Ground plan of the Church of Hagios Demetrios, Thessaloniki Mistras, distant view, 1888–90 Section drawing of Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, Sparta, 1907 Plan of Mistras, by M. Henri Eustache, 1910 House No. 1, Mistras, plans, W.S. George, 1909 House No. 1, Mistras, sections, W.S. George, 1909 House No. 2, Mistras, elevation and section, W.S. George, 1909 Photograph of ‘House of Laskaris’, before restoration, 1893 Reconstruction drawing of ‘House of Laskaris’, 1937, by Anastasios Orlandos Excavations of Central Area, Corinth, 1930 Robert Weir Schultz in front of the Perivleptos Monastery, Mistra, Greece, 1888–90 St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London, Chapel seen from the Theological Library, c. 1896 St John’s Lodge: Schultz’s plan of the Subterranean Chapel House of Falkland Chapel, interior, c. 1896 Dumfries House, Ayrshire, 2013; the East Wing is to the right

xi 126 126 127 127 129 131 132 132 139 142 146 147 147 150 150 151 151 160 166 170 173 174 176 177 178 180 190 193 195 197 199

xii

Figures

8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8

Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Schultz’s contract drawing for the East Wing, 1899 Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Chapel, perspective view looking towards the altar drawn by Schultz, c. 1905 Edinburgh, Archbishop’s Chapel interior, 1980 Westminster Cathedral, Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, 2013 Westminster Cathedral, Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, back wall and stalls, 2013 Pantheon of the Five Dominions, model of unexecuted design Robert Weir Schultz (centre) and Sidney Barnsley (right) with an unknown man (left) in Greece, 1888–1890 Detail from Barnsley’s notes on the Church at Kaisariani, near Athens Sidney Barnsley wearing traditional Greek evzones outfit, Greece, 1888–90 Church of Hagios Vasileios at Arta, Greece, 1890 Exterior of the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Interior view of the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Detail of the painted ceiling, Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Fresco icon and frame, Zoodochos Pege Church, Samari, Messenia, 1888–90 Mirror frame designed and made by Sidney Barnsley for Kenton & Company, c. 1891 Walnut box inlaid with mother of pearl and abalone, designed and made by Barnsley, c. 1905 Photograph of inlaid icon stand in Elkomenos Christos Church, Monemvasia, 1888–90 Detail of Barnsley’s kneelers from St Andrew’s Chapel, Westminster Cathedral, London Design of the technique used in the construction of wall mosaic in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (fifth–sixth century) Map of the mosaic cathedral by St Ann’s Gate Architects Internal view The ‘gold’ background of the vault Mosaic and drawing of the tesserae shape, space between the tesserae, and andamento of the tesserae Tesserae and mortar taken from the background of the west wall Detail of the gold ground mosaics of the St Gregory and St Augustine Chapel The gold background of the vault of the St Andrew Chapel

200 201 203 204 205 209 219 222 223 225 226 227 228 229 231 234 235 236 241 245 246 248 250 252 254 256

Figures 10.9 10.10 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.10 11.11 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7a 12.7b 12.8 12.9 12.10 12.11

Design for the Chapel of Saint Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, Westminster Cathedral Pictorial draft in fake mosaic of the Virgin (left); G. Pownall at work in the apse (right) ‘Walter and Lena George, and an Indian man’, from the A.G. Shoosmith Album A house designed by Walter S. George for Whiteley Park, Surrey, 1914 View of the church of St Eirene, Constantinople (Istanbul) The south-west façade of Kashmir House, Delhi ‘After Lunch! At Laughar’, from the H.A.N. Medd Album ‘Afterglow: The Acropolis, Athens’, engraving by Lena George ‘Proposed hospital at Jodhpur: side elevation of one ward block (south-west)’ St Thomas’s Church, Delhi, interior view as it appeared in 1987 Lodi Housing Colony, Delhi, c. 1947 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, chapel, exterior view, 1952 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, chapel, interior view, 1952 St Sophia, Galston, Ayrshire, 1884–5 Design for the chapel at Dumfries House, Ayrshire, 1906 Chapel at the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s house in Morningside, Edinburgh, 1904–7 Interior of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Colinton, Edinburgh, 1906–8 United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, 1911–5 Interior of the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, 1911–5 Capital in the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, c. 1914–5 Capitals in the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, c. 1914–5 St Mildred’s (now St Peter’s), Linlithgow, West Lothian, 1926–8 St Ninian’s, Gretna, Dumfriesshire, 1917–8 Coloured drawing of St Theodore, Athens, from Schultz’s sketchbook, 22 March 1888 Drawing of Hagios Taxiarchos, Areopolis, Mani, 1909, by Ramsay Traquair

xiii 258 260 267 269 270 274 276 277 280 281 282 283 284 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 301 302 303 307 308

Abbreviations

BSA BRPF BRF SPAB RA RIBA

British School at Athens Byzantine Research and Publications Fund Byzantine Research Fund Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Royal Academy Royal Institute of British Architects

Acknowledgements

The Byzantium and British Heritage: Byzantine influences on the Arts & Crafts Movement conference and publication has been an incredible opportunity to demonstrate how archive collections, like the Byzantine Research Fund Archive, can still generate so much new discussion and research. I have been privileged to work with this remarkable collection, as the Archivist of the British School at Athens and it has been very rewarding to share its wealth with many others in the last few years. My sincere thanks to the participants of the conference, especially my co-organizer, Mary Greensted, and, especially, to the contributors of this volume for their exchange of ideas and enduring patience during, at times, a difficult road through to the final manuscript. I would like to thank: Professor Catherine Morgan, former director of the British School at Athens, for giving me the platform to expand archive engagement with our collections, the encouragement to develop this project and her support throughout it; Professor Roderick Beaton and Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith, former chairs of the School’s Committee for Society, Arts and Letters, for all their support to realise the conference and their advice on the publication; Professor John Bennet for seeing the publication through to completion; Professor Elizabeth James, Annette Carruthers and the late Dr Ian Jenkins and Dr Ruth Macrides for giving generously of their time to work on ideas and give me feedback; Robert K. Pitt for his incredible editorial support as well as Semele Assinder for her essential assistance at the beginning of the editorial process; BSA Librarians, Penny Wilson-Zarganis and Sandra Pepelasis, for their administrative and research support; BSA Administrative Staff, Tania Gerousi, Maria Papaconstantinou, and Vicki Tzavara, for their advice and administrative support; the staff of the Centre of Hellenic Studies and Kings College London for their administrative support for the conference; Elias Eliades for the impeccable photographs he took of the Byzantine Research Fund Archive; and to the anonymous reviewers of the volume for their comments and feedback. I will forever be grateful for all the moral support of my friends, my sister Joanna, and colleagues throughout this project, especially Robert, Penny, and Sandra.

xvi Acknowledgements Finally, I am indebted for the generous financial support for both the conference and publication to the sponsors: The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, The A. G. Leventis Foundation, The Goldsmiths’ Company, Matti and Nicholas Egon, and the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Amalia G. Kakissis Archivist British School at Athens

Preface

This volume derives from a conference of the same title that took place at King’s College London in September 2013, organised by the British School at Athens in conjunction with the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College London. The purpose of that meeting was to open up a dialogue between specialists working on the Byzantine world and the British Arts and Crafts Movement, respectively. Its aim was to place in context an important, if shortlived, episode in Anglo-Hellenic relations at the turn of the twentieth century: a flowering of interest in Byzantine art and architecture that had an important influence on British design, particularly within the ecclesiastical realm. The chapters that follow discuss the individual characters and the artistic and philosophical movements that launched the Byzantine Revival in an attempt to trace and understand how elements of British heritage, from architecture to the decorative arts, came to be inspired by the Byzantine tradition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Various intellectual circles in Britain from the late 1880s to the mid-1930s, among them the Arts and Crafts architects, classicists, artists, historians, and archaeologists, produced great new developments in the area of Byzantine studies. And, it was the keen interest of the Arts and Crafts scholars to explore Byzantine lands that so greatly enhanced this aspect of Byzantine studies. Therefore, Byzantium played a prominent role in the development of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain (1880–1910), but the influence of the Byzantine Revival (1840–1910), the outcome of this artistic and philosophical exchange, does not enjoy the same level of familiarity in scholarship as that of the Gothic Revival (1830–80). The present volume aims to address this neglect and to highlight the importance of Byzantium for the practitioners and practices of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The central pillars of the volume are a group of architects and scholars whose works created the Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive, a unique collection of architectural drawings and photographs that forms part of the Archive collection of the British School at Athens. Between 1888 and 1948, these individuals meticulously studied monuments in many parts of present-day Greece and the eastern Mediterranean with the BSA as their institutional base. The material they produced remains an invaluable resource for researchers today. No less important than the

xviii Preface individuals are the social and professional networks in which they operated, which are also extensively explored in the chapters that follow. The BRF members, an eclectic and little-known group, were brought together almost by chance to establish the study of Byzantine visual and material culture in Britain and Greece. They had been trained in the traditions of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which sought authenticity in design and decoration in reaction to the styles that had developed through industrialisation. Their interaction with Greece and its monuments on their travels would prove critical to their thinking and creativity throughout their later careers. Since the volume deals with a very small network of people, biographical information may be traced through various chapters. These architects developed highly successful practices, undertaking major commissions for buildings, furniture, and fittings across Britain and the British Empire. Their work, uniting a distinctively British design tradition with Byzantine arts and crafts, represents a highly significant and under-researched link between Britain and the Hellenic world. This volume represents a first attempt to fill that gap in our knowledge. The volume is organised into three themes. The first chapters, under the heading Prelude to the Byzantine Revival, discuss the development of the idea of Byzantium through the literary, artistic, architectural, and social movements of Britain in the nineteenth century. They introduce our British travellers and investigate their perceptions of the Byzantine world that they encountered, and how these in turn transformed popular thinking back home. Focusing on art and architecture, the chapters discuss the important role that these architects played in the rediscovery of Byzantine monuments and the formation of the academic field of Byzantine Studies in the UK. Furthermore, they explore how the exchanges between these individuals and other scholars in Greece and elsewhere in Europe influenced the appreciation of Greece’s Byzantine monuments and the restoration practices of the time. The second theme, Pioneers and Patronage, highlights the work of key figures in the Arts and Crafts Movement who initiated the Byzantine Revival, such as William Lethaby, Robert Weir Schultz, and Sidney Barnsley, as well as the patrons who supported them, particularly the remarkable figure of John Crichton-Stuart, Third Marquess of Bute. Lethaby’s influential writings on art and architecture encouraged a generation of architects: his book on Hagia Sophia in Constantinople provided much of the inspiration for J.F. Bentley’s design for Westminster Cathedral. Schultz, one of Lethaby’s protégés, was, together with Sidney Barnsley, the first to undertake a systematic recording of the remnants of Byzantium; no researcher before them had made detailed plans and drawings of these monuments. It was Schultz who would later establish the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund that continued this work. Following on from his research in Greece, Schultz was taken under the wing of the Third Marquess of Bute, who already had an interest in medieval Greece and was a significant supporter of the expansion of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of St Andrews. Walter George, whose meticulous drawings for the Byzantine Research Fund Archive provide an outstanding record of Byzantine monuments

Preface xix now lost, was also important to the Revival as the first to document medieval domestic architecture employing this novel approach. Chapters under the third theme, Byzantium and Modernism: Britain and Beyond, discuss how the philosophies of the Byzantine Revival were put into practice in artistic works by revivalist enthusiasts. One important example is the transformation of mosaic production during the industrialisation of the technique; here, traces of Byzantine processes were retained, as can be seen in the mosaic programme for Westminster Cathedral. Walter George also applied techniques that he had developed while recording Byzantine monuments for the BRF in his work in New Delhi, India, where he helped to carry out the new city’s architectural plan together with the lead architects, Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker. Another example is Sidney Barnsley, the first of this eclectic group to build a Byzantine Revival church after his return from Greece, who later translated Byzantine designs into his furniture-making in the Cotswolds. This theme also brings to centre-stage a group of Scottish Philhellenes and leading architects who contributed to the Byzantine Revival with a series of experimental designs in Scotland, while influencing their collaborators in the large architectural firms in England, and especially in London. The conference brought together many scholars from the fields of architectural history, decorative arts, and Byzantine studies, many now reunited in the present volume. Since the conference took place, the field has been sadly diminished by the loss of two remarkable scholars, whose contributions appear posthumously. Gavin Stamp (1948–2017) was a distinguished architectural historian who championed the rescue of historical buildings through his writing and teaching. His breadth of knowledge of his field, his graciousness in sharing that knowledge, and his enthusiasm were uplifting. He was especially pleased that a small book on Robert Weir Schultz that he was commissioned to write in 1981 had sparked such a wealth of research four decades later. Ruth Macrides (1949–2019) was a Byzantine historian with a particular interest in reception studies. Her ingenious and witty personality was infectious. Ruth loved teaching and discussing new ideas and was a seasoned storyteller. A Byzantine historian by trade, she first ventured into reception studies on a quest in 1992 to uncover the story of Lord Bute, the man who had started Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of St Andrews, at the time her own institutional home. Both Gavin and Ruth were extremely enthusiastic about their individual fields of study but also just as keen to learn from others. They contributed enormously to the energetic and stimulating atmosphere of the conference and their contributions to this volume are essential for understanding the people who created the Byzantine Revival movement and their vision. If the conference participants were the spark, then the fuel was the magnificent archival collection of the Byzantine Research Fund. This collection still has many stories to tell, not just of the monuments and structures that it documents but of the people that it brought together and their resulting cultural exchanges. There remains much to be learned about the influences of Byzantium in Britain, as well

xx Preface as new ground to break on how the Byzantine Revival in Britain contributed to the Arts and Crafts revival in Greece later in the 1920s and 1930s. Given this potential, future plans will include further exhibitions and multidisciplinary conferences based on this rich archival resource in which scholars can share their expertise on this vibrant and visually engaging subject. Amalia G. Kakissis British School at Athens September 2022

Editor’s Note on Transliteration

The reader will note that transliteration of place names is not consistent throughout the volume, e.g. Hagia Sophia, Agia Sophia, St Sophia. It was decided to keep the variation used within each chapter as particular transliterations are reflective of the time in which they were used and the cultural background of those using them.

Prelude to the Byzantine Revival

1

The Byzantine Revival in Europe J. B. Bullen

Byzantine art, architecture, religion, and culture were rejected by post-Enlightenment thinkers as ‘a disgrace to the human mind’ (Voltaire) but rediscovered by Romanticism. Yeats’s famous poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (1928) was a late expression of that romantic impulse, in which Yeats represents the empire and its culture in aesthetic terms and as a foil to the political upheaval of contemporary Ireland.1 Yeats’s Utopian view of Byzantium had its roots in William Morris’s political idealism and in the concordance between the arts developed by some of his most prominent followers. Delighted by what he saw of the Hagia Sophia, Morris spoke eloquently about Byzantine culture: ‘Nothing more beautiful than its best works has ever been produced by man’, he said in 1889, and the force of his argument inspired a generation of Arts and Crafts architects, including Sidney Barnsley, William Lethaby, and the architect of Westminster Cathedral, John Francis Bentley.2 Morris’s sense of the intimate connection between cultural achievement and architectural form had come essentially from Ruskin, and Ruskin was one of the earliest and most articulate enthusiasts for Byzantium in English. Surprisingly, Morris did not warm to San Marco in Venice, but Ruskin was overwhelmed by its design and its decoration and wrote some of his most highly charged prose about it as the principal representative of Byzantine culture. But it was in Germany in the 1820s that the first Romantic turn to Byzantium seems to have taken place. In a world dominated by the strict rules of neoclassicism, the unusual forms of the Byzantine style attracted a number of rich and colourful figures in Bavaria and Prussia, characters who found in Byzantium modes of expression for religious, aesthetic, and political ideas that could not be contained within the prevailing orthodoxies.

Goethe and the Boisserée Brothers With pardonable exaggeration, we might date the revival of widespread European interest in Byzantine culture to the year 1823. On the night of 15 July of that year, the basilican church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, Rome, caught fire and was almost completely destroyed. A church had stood here since the fourth century CE, facing first neglect, then the critical attacks on Byzantine culture from the Enlightenment DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-2

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J. B. Bullen

philosophes. Now it was gone in an instant, and Europe slowly woke to the fact that something had been irretrievably lost. Its rebuilding was instigated by the recently elected Leo XII, and like the culture it represented, it rose like a phoenix from the ashes. There had, however, been signs of curiosity about Byzantine work before this event. In 1814, the interest of the unlikely figure of Goethe had been stimulated by the brothers Sulpiz and Melchior Boisserée. Born in Cologne in the early 1780s, they were the sons of a wealthy merchant. As young men, they developed a passion for medieval art. Under the tutelage of Friedrich von Schlegel, Melchior began to make an unprecedented collection of early German painting, while at the same time Sulpiz had begun to measure and draw medieval German buildings. The brothers firmly believed that medieval German work had its origins in Byzantium. In 1810, Sulpiz was introduced to Goethe, who was then arch-dictator of German taste. He was a 60-year-old celebrity and well-known classicist, but the brothers managed to rouse his interest in their picture collection, though they had to wait until 1814 before he actually came and saw the paintings for himself. Even then they had to wait another two years, until 1816, for him to get round to writing a piece about the works in the journal Kunst und Altertum. The article entitled ‘Heidelberg’ is fascinating for its ambivalence towards Byzantine art. For Goethe, Byzantium is made acceptable or perhaps is tempered by being Greek in its early phases and German in its later ones. ‘The Byzantine school of which we have been able to say very little good’, he wrote, ‘still bore within it, merits of its Greek and Roman forefathers’.3 But one comes away from this essay with the sense that even for this classicist there is a real power, energy, and strange attraction latent within Byzantine art. The pattern of Byzantine influence that the Boisserée brothers thought they detected in German painting, they transferred to the history of German architecture. Together with Friedrich Schlegel, they developed the idea that early Rhenish churches were characterised by traces of Hellenism that came to them through Byzantium. Sulpiz Boisserée in 1810 identified the Romanesque architecture of the Rhine as ‘neugriechisch’ or ‘néo-Grec’, which became for him synonymous with ‘Byzantine’, and it was from these seeds of curiosity that early Romantic interest in Byzantium began.4 It was stimulated and consolidated, however, by royal patronage and particularly by the important figure of Ludwig I of Bavaria. Ludwig I came to the throne in 1825 at the age of 38, and his little neo-Byzantine Allerheiligen-Hofkirche or Court Church of All Saints, which was begun in 1827 and finished in 1837, had an influence on and created an interest among European builders out of all proportion to its size or its place in Ludwig’s ambitious and eclectic architectural programme. Ludwig’s first encounter with Byzantine architecture took place in Sicily in 1817. On Christmas Eve he attended mass in the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. The light of the candles reflecting off the richly encrusted mosaics captivated his imagination, and he told one of his companions, the doctor Emile Ringseis: ‘I will build myself a private chapel like it’.5 This was an important moment in Ludwig’s personal development as he began to devise the idea of a collective German

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consciousness built upon the culture of the arts. This notion was reinforced by his meeting with the young Protestant scholar Christian Bunsen, and although they did not take to each other personally, the publication in 1823 of Bunsen’s innovative study Die Basiliken des christlichen Roms (The Christian Basilicas of Rome) helped to consolidate Ludwig’s positive view of Byzantine architecture. In the same year as the destruction by fire of San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome, Ludwig spent the New Year once again in Palermo, and for a second time was delighted by the Cappella Palatina. Ludwig was now determined upon a Byzantine style for his own court chapel. His principal architect, the classicist Leo von Klenze, hated the idea but was forced to give in to his master. On the outside, the chapel was German Romanesque; inside, it was pure Byzantine (Figure 1.1). Ludwig wanted mosaics, but the art of manufacturing tesserae had died out, so instead the Nazarene painter, Heinrich Hess, decorated the interior with hieratic murals. The building was an international success. Ann Mary Howitt, a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was an art student in Munich in 1850 and was amazed by the Hofkirche. ‘I had no conception how sublimely beautiful is this chapel’, she wrote soon after her arrival.6 It is built, she said, ‘in the Byzantine style . . . all one glow of gold, of rich draperies, of angelic forms and faces, of rainbow-tinted wings, of mystical flowers and symbols’.7 Less gushing, but more influential, was the account of Hess’s work from Hippolyte Fortoul, professor at the University of Toulouse, who was to play a crucial role in naturalising the Byzantine style in France. In his extensive critique of modern German art, De l’art en allemagne (Concerning German Art) (1841), Fortoul saw the archaising elements in Hess’s work as explicitly Byzantine in origin. His decorations, according to Fortoul, are ‘austere’ and ‘naïve’, but they are expressive of ‘deep feeling’, ‘conviction’, and ‘masculine energy’.8 Fortoul’s enthusiasm for Hess in the Hofkirche, ‘the most precious jewel of Munich’, derived from the importance that Fortoul attached to the importance of Byzantine art in the history of the Western imagination.9 ‘Byzantinism’, he claimed, ‘is the dream which rocked European art in its infancy’.10 The pictures amassed by the house of Wittelsbach had grown too numerous for the Kammergalerie in the Residenz, and Ludwig was determined to give Munich a gallery unequalled in Europe. There were no very early works in this group, so in 1826 he approached the Boisserée brothers for the purchase of their collection. Discussions about this were protracted because Ludwig met opposition from his ministers on financial and pedagogical grounds. In their view, it contained no Italian masters and could, therefore, provide no reliable models for contemporary artists. Peter Cornelius, who was the King’s principal art adviser, took Ludwig’s side, and the two of them ensured that in 1827 the paintings entered the Royal collection. The sale catalogue proudly announced them as Byzantinisch-NiederRheinische Schule vom ende des 13ten bis zum Unfang des 15ten Jahrhunderts (Lower-Rhine Byzantine school of the end of the 13th century until the beginning of the 15th century). Ludwig’s brother-in-law, Friedrich Wilhelm IV, also had a strong nationalistic interest in Byzantine work. He came to the Prussian throne in 1840, and though

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Figure 1.1 Leo von Klenze, Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, Munich, 1826–37 (destroyed 1942) Source: © Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Graphik/Gemälde

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he shared a number of Ludwig’s passions, including a love of Italy and distaste for Napoleonic France, in temperament he was very different from his brother-in-law. Where Ludwig was an aesthetic Catholic, Friedrich was a committed Protestant; where Ludwig was something of a libertine, Friedrich was a Puritan; and where Ludwig wished to establish Munich as an eclectic art capital of Europe, Friedrich was committed to establishing a state modelled on the values of primitive Christianity. It was to Friedrich Wilhelm that Bunsen dedicated his book on the basilicas of Rome. Like the Roman emperor Constantine, who, for Friedrich, was something of a role model, the Prussian monarch was attempting to rebuild an empire ruined by invaders (the French in Friedrich’s case), and like Constantine was trying to build that new monarchical state out of a fervent belief in the political efficacy of Christianity. Returning from Rome in 1828 via Ravenna and Venice, Friedrich Wilhelm was determined to bring Byzantium to Prussia, but it was not until he came to the throne in 1840 that he was able to put his ambitions fully into operation. Above all, he wanted to revitalise the Protestant Prussian Church and decided that architecture would become a prominent vehicle for his political and social goals. In Friedrich Schinkel, his principal architect, he found a sympathetic interpreter of his ambitions, but Schinkel died only a year after his accession. Ludwig Persius succeeded him in the role of Architect to the King, and it was under his direction that neo-Byzantine work in northern Germany came to its full flowering. In 1841, he began his Heilandskirche at Sacrow, now Potsdam (Figure 1.2). This tall, simple Roman basilica with an externally arcaded apse and a freestanding campanile derived from Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome. This was soon to be followed by the Friedenskirche (1843), modelled on the basilica of San Clemente, also in Rome. Though Friedrich’s interests tended towards the Romanesque and basilican rather than Byzantine, he made one extremely significant contribution to the Byzantine Revival in Europe. It took the form of the support of a publication illustrating the greatest Byzantine church in the world, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Friedrich Wilhelm commissioned the architect Wilhelm Salzenberg to go to Constantinople to make a visual record of the church, and the result was Alt-Christliche Baudenkmale von Constantinopel vom V. bis XII (Ancient Christian Architecture in Constantinople) (1854). This sumptuous collection of detailed drawings of the architecture and mosaics opened people’s eyes to the splendour of Byzantine art in the Eastern Empire, and it remained a standard reference work for the rest of the century. Salzenberg’s work impresses by its sheer scale. The volume is enormous, the architectural drawings gigantic, and the lithographs pulsate with colour. The smoothing of the mosaic effect, the realistic representation of the hands, and the soft modelling of the skin are all more suggestive of Nazarene painting than Byzantine mosaic, but to Salzenberg’s contemporaries, the engravings must have appeared powerful in their primitive magnificence.

8 J. B. Bullen

Figure 1.2 Ludwig Persius, Friedenskirche, Potsdam, 1843–8 Source: ©Bednorz Images

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France The revival of interest in Byzantium was developed in France in three different ways. The first was the exploration of Byzantine sites in Greece, Turkey, and beyond by French archaeologists and historians. The second was the fashion for Byzantine architecture, which sprang out of the belief that there existed a native tradition of Byzantine work in France, and third was an interest in the decoration of churches in a Byzantine style. Though Byzantine Revival buildings are not widespread in France, two of the most important span the country geographically and the period of the nineteenth century. The first, the cathedral of Sainte-Marie-Majeure (1852–93), is situated in Marseilles and has its stylistic roots in an early nineteenth-century Romantic architectural tradition. The second, Sacré-Coeur, which towers over Paris on the hill of Montmartre, is the product of an attempted Catholic Revival and was not finished until well into the twentieth century. Both of these churches were built in troubled times, both grew out of the passionate religious convictions of their respective patrons, and both record the turbulent relationship between the French Church and State in the nineteenth century. We have seen how Germany, or rather Bavaria, discovered Byzantium through the particular passions of Ludwig I. We have also seen the way in which Ludwig incorporated the then rather eccentric interests of the Boisserée brothers into the mainstream of modern art by purchasing their collection of medieval German paintings and placing those same paintings in the royal collection in Munich. The Boisserée brothers also provide a link between France and Germany, since Sulpiz Boisserée was a familiar figure in both Munich and Paris. In the mid-1820s, Sulpiz was known in the French capital as a lecturer and writer on art and architecture and was well known, too, for promulgating the idea that medieval Rhenish churches were byzantin-roman. But this fascination for the Byzantine origins of northern European architecture was naturalised in France not by Sulpiz Boisserée, but by Ludovic Vitet. Vitet was famous as a novelist and as the editor of the widely read liberal journal Le Globe. Under the July monarchy, his passion for ancient architecture led to his appointment as first Inspecteur Général des Monuments Historiques, and his interest in early medieval work stemmed from a trip that he made in 1829 to the Rhine, where he met the Boisserée brothers. Their enthusiasm was infectious, and he effectively brought the ‘new’ German attitudes to the attention of the French. He adopted the Boisserées’ passion and their terminology. Vitet translated their word ‘neugriechisch’ (neo-Greek) into the French ‘néo-Grec’ or ‘Byzantin’ and wrote about it as a style burgeoning with ‘youth and life’. ‘Towards the second century’, he said in a widely read article of 1830, the emergent Byzantine style began to play like a shy child. . . . Then, growing each day, little by little gained its independence: free, bold, original, it stepped out at last under Justinian, when in the designs of Isidoros, Sancta Sophia rose up in Constantinople.11

10 J. B. Bullen The French passion for Byzantium was translated into modern terms by a group of radical architects. In the late 1820s, Henri Labrouste, Félix Duban, Louis Duc, and Léon Vaudoyer were impressed by the ideas of Claude Henri Saint-Simon, ideas that indirectly opened the way for the rehabilitation of Byzantine art in historical terms. Saint-Simonian theory perceived historical processes in terms of a number of cycles that alternated between ‘organic’ periods and ‘critical’ periods. Organic periods were sustained by religious faith in conjunction with stable social organisations. Critical periods were times of change, disjunction, and instability. Saint-Simon’s great organic periods were those of Greek antiquity extending to the age of Pericles, and the period of Christianity up to the fifteenth century. This meant that the privileged architectural models were the Greek temple and the Gothic cathedral, since they were produced in times of cohesion. Byzantine architecture, though Christian in its associations, was more closely related to a period of transitional instability and close also (so the young architects of the 1820s argued) to modern life and modern culture. Alexandre Laborde’s influential Les Monumens de la France (Monuments of France) marks most clearly the change that took place in French sensibility about pre-Gothic architecture. The first edition of 1816 had little space for the ‘degenerate architecture’ between late classical and the flowering of Gothic in the twelfth century. The second edition of 1836, however, is quite different, and in this he devoted the whole first section of the book to some 33 French ‘monuments in the Byzantine or Roman style’. It was the ‘discovery’ of St-Front in Périgueux, however, that confirmed the French in their belief about Eastern influence in France (Figure 1.3). St-Front was an abbey church of 1120–50 dedicated to the follower of Saint Peter and first bishop of Périgueux. After many years of archaeological labour on the church, the historian Félix Verneilh published a study, L’Architecture byzantine en France (Byzantine Architecture in France), that appeared in 1851. As its title signifies, its assertions were far-reaching. Verneilh claimed that France had a hidden tradition of Byzantine architecture that could be traced from the domed churches of Le Puy, Avignon, Souillac, Solignac, and above all Périgueux, back to Constantinople. The key building was St-Front, by then in an advanced state of decay, whose magnificent domes had long been hidden under a sloping tiled roof. The similarity in plan between St-Front and San Marco in Venice, and back to Hagia Sophia, was exploited to the full by Verneilh, and a restoration campaign was set in motion. The architect chosen for the task was Paul Abadie, who had already stripped the domed cathedral of St-Pierre at Angoulême of its later additions, and who was the future designer of Sacré-Coeur in Paris. The debate around St-Front centred on whether French architecture drew directly on Byzantium, as Verneilh argued, or whether the early influence came from the Romanesque building of northern Italy. The greatest authority behind the idea of French Byzantine, however, was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. In the section ‘L’Architecture’ in his Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française (1854–68), having praised Verneilh as ‘one of our most distinguished archaeologists’, he devoted a large section to identifying the sources of Eastern influence in France.12 Using material from Verneilh’s book,

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Figure 1.3 Saint-Front, Perigueux, 1120–50

12 J. B. Bullen he suggested that trade between the Mediterranean and the East, influences from Rhenish building in Germany, and the presence of Venetian colonies in Limoges around 988 or 989 CE all served to introduce Byzantine planning and Byzantine detail into the architecture of the domed churches of Aquitaine and the Midi. Above all, it is St-Front, he said, that is ‘distinguished not only by the way in which it was laid out – which had no analogue in France – but was perhaps the original of all the churches possessing domes on pendentives in Périgord and the Angoumois’.13 But le-Duc continued in unequivocal mood: ‘We believe that the domed churches in the Auvergne and the Lyonnais, like those of the cathedral of Le Puy, for example, were influenced by the East, or, rather, by the Adriatic, in a direct fashion, through Venetian commerce’.14 Abadie’s restoration of St-Front took place in the wake of this enthusiasm. In modern terms, this was not so much a restoration as rebuilding, and recent historians have bemoaned the loss of evidence for the history of domed churches in France. Coloured decoration was considered but abandoned. In his preliminary report on the building in 1851, Abadie suggested that the first architects had intended decoration. Like San Marco, he said, it should have been covered with paintings, but his idea was never taken up. The work on St-Front and the other buildings in south-western France encouraged a belief in a native Byzantine tradition, which in its turn provided a basis for not only the design of the Cathedral in Marseilles but also the famous shape of Sacré-Coeur in Paris (Figure 1.4). In the world of nineteenth-century architectural practice, it was Léon Vaudoyer who took most passionately to the idea of Byzantine France. He came under the influence of Saint-Simonian thought in the early 1830s with its belief in social scientific progress, and he established friendships with the editors of the SaintSimonian journal the Encylopédie nouvelle, Pierre Leroux and Léonce Reynard together with Albert Lenoir. He was also close to the historian Edgar Quinet and the journalist and politician Hippolyte Fortoul, both of whom were interested in things German, in reading Herder, and in travelling to the Rhine. It was at about this time in the early 1830s that the Byzantine style began to be distinguished from Romanesque. Albert Lenoir identified what he saw as two strains of post-antique architecture – ‘style Latin’ and ‘style Byzantin’, as he called them. ‘Style Latin’ was Western in its pedigree and derived directly from the basilicas of antique Rome; ‘style Byzantin’ was the Eastern version, the version with the oriental physiognomy that developed the pendentive and the dome. We have seen Fortoul’s enthusiasm for Ludwig I’s work at the AllerheiligenHofkirche, and it was his friendship with Vaudoyer that took him to Germany in the first place. Germany was the envy of France, and particularly of the SaintSimonians, who saw in its dominantly Protestant culture the appearance of a progressive state. They felt that its philosophical culture dominated by Fichte and Hegel was second to none. Fortoul’s De l’art en allemagne (1841–2) was the fruit of this trip and did much to establish the central importance of Byzantine architecture in the history of the West. Fortoul’s view of art and architecture was societal and progressive. The artist, he maintained, was part of the continuing process of history, and artistic style was conditioned by evolving political and

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Figure 1.4 Paul Abadie, Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, Paris, 1875–1919 Source: ©Bednorz Images

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14 J. B. Bullen religious forces. So, in the concluding paragraphs of De l’art en allemagne, Fortoul stressed the vital, revolutionary importance of Byzantine work in the progress of architecture. It was a moment, he wrote, when ‘architecture freed itself from the orders . . . placed the arcade on the column . . . and began upon the road of its uncertain development’.15 For this group of architects and writers, Byzantine art was energetic, innovative, and fresh. It was also exotic without being remote from the French tradition, and it fitted an interpretation of the relationship between art and society of which they approved. The outcome of their thinking can be seen in Marseilles. The cathedral church of Sainte-Marie-Majeure and the pilgrimage chapel of Notre-Dame-de-laGarde dominate the city skyline (Figure 1.5). From the sea, the cathedral appears to be floating on a slim raft, its domes rising one behind the other and billowing like sails in the wind. The Byzantine style of both these buildings was the inspiration of Vaudoyer and his colleagues, but the money to finance them was due to the efforts of a local priest, Eugène de Mazenod.16 Few buildings in the nineteenth century were more caught up in contemporary politics and the struggles of the Church. Its origins lie in the Romantic mythology of the Mediterranean and the arrival of Christianity in France, its foundations rest on the relationship between the State and the Church, and its superstructure grew out of the aesthetic conceptualism of Vaudoyer. Sainte-Marie-Majeure is a symbol of many things. It represents the material mid-century prosperity of Marseilles; it represents the Catholic Revival under the Third Republic; it is a monument to Mazenod’s temporal and spiritual ambitions; it is the architectural realisation of the Saint-Simonianism of Fortoul and Vaudoyer, and it symbolises the triumph of a pan-European aesthetic over the narrower field of northern European Gothic. It is a proud, striking and unusual building, and one that asserts itself at the heart of the port life of Marseilles. As early as 1846, Vaudoyer had told Pascal Coste that the first cathedral to be built in France for a hundred years should be in a Byzantine–Romanesque style.17 When he was commissioned to build the cathedral in Marseilles, Henri Espérandieu, Vaudoyer’s right-hand man, wrote to Charles Blanc, that ‘two things must have immediately occurred to him: the structure of the great thermal halls of the ancients and the decoration of St Mark’s and Santa Sophia’.18 He was also aware of the debate about the presence of Byzantine buildings on French soil. Charles Questel had successfully experimented with a neo-Romanesque building in nearby Nîmes, and Vaudoyer wrote to him requesting copies of the drawings of St-Paul-de-Nîmes. He entered into a correspondence with local scholars about the relationship between Romanesque and Byzantine styles and he corresponded with A. C. Mallay, author of Essai sur les églises romanes et romano-byzantines du départment du Puy-de-Dôme (Essay on the Romanesque and Romano-Byzantine Churches in the Area of Puy-de-Dôme) (1838), who sent him a substantial number of measured drawings of the churches from the Puy-de-Dôme region. Though Vaudoyer had never been to Greece, André Couchaud’s Choix d’églises bysantines de la Grèce (Selection of Byzantine Greek Churches) of 1842 provided an array of drawings of domed churches designed to be a source book of ‘motifs’, which might be ‘applicable to modern architecture’ (Couchaud 1842, 1). Vaudoyer also sought

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Figure 1.5 Léon Vaudoyer, Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, Marseilles, 1853–70

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the assistance of the French ambassador in Istanbul, who agreed to send measured drawings of the Hagia Sophia. Above all, he was convinced by the compelling argument of Félix de Verneilh’s L’Architecture byzantine en France.

Britain In Germany and France, interest in Byzantium centred on Byzantine architecture and emerged out of an earlier interest in Romanesque. The sequence was similar in Britain, but it was a slower process. The reason may have been that Byzantium was more remote for the British than for the rest of Europe. Germany saw connections between the churches of the Rhine and the building of ancient Byzantium, and in the figure of Charlemagne in particular their history was linked to that of the East. The French, too, perceived both direct and indirect links between their own architecture and that of the Byzantine Empire. In the middle of the century, the ancient domed churches of south-west France came into prominence in such a way that Oriental origins of early French architecture became something of an orthodoxy. This was not the case in Britain. It is true that the terms Norman and Romanesque were used indifferently, and the two were often identified as ‘Byzantine’, but the extremely widespread use of the term ‘Byzantine’ to describe any pre-Gothic building was the result of blurring and confusion, rather than of strong historical connections. Religious issues also played a part. The Gothic Revival in Britain was a doctrinaire affair. Catholics claimed one thing and Anglicans another, but both perceived Gothic as the Christian style par excellence. In terms of this odd way of thinking, Romanesque was seen as ‘foreign’, and Byzantine even more remote. It was Oriental and alien, and its long-standing associations with Christianity were almost totally ignored. Architectural historians of the Gothic, however, could hardly overlook its precursors, and in the late 1830s, British architectural writers began to take a serious interest in early medieval and basilican styles. Outstanding here was the work of the Master of Trinity College, William Whewell, who in his book Architectural Notes on German Churches (1830), and in advance of continental historians, laid the cornerstone for a historical and systematic discrimination between Byzantine and Romanesque.19 The clarification was, however, a slow process, and towards the end of the 1830s and the beginning of the 1840s, the term Byzantine was persistently applied to the few round-arched buildings that now appear decidedly neo-Romanesque. A writer in the Christian Rembrancer, explaining the use of ‘Byzantine’, suggested that it was generic for ‘pre-Gothic’. ‘Byzantine’, he said, might be its most accurate general name; but as in passing into different countries it became more or less modified, so it has in each received a different denomination: in Italy it is called Lombard, in England, Norman; and to the German churches of the same style, Mr Whewell has affixed the term Romanesque.20

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Three buildings in this period stand out. They were all called ‘Byzantine’ but to our eyes are Romanesque: St Mary’s at Wreay, Cumbria by Sarah Losh (Figure 1.6); Christ Church, Streatham by James Wild (1845); and St Mary and St Nicholas, Wilton by Sidney Herbert (1845). The first (and perhaps the most remarkable) was ignored; the other two were much publicised, and their use of round-arched forms, large undecorated wall surfaces, and other un-Gothic features set in train a vigorous debate about the place of non-Gothic styles in modern church design.21 In this period, the British High Church was profoundly intolerant about the use of Romanesque or Byzantine styles in modern architecture. Like Byzantine art, it was un-English and un-Christian. This view was bolstered from the continent. From France, the influential critic A. F. Rio denounced Byzantine art as emanating from an ‘abyss of moral and intellectual degradation’.22 His views were promulgated in the Catholic community by Nicholas Wiseman, who condemned mosaic as ‘the hard and dark delineations of the Byzantine school’.23 From Germany, the most widely read historical guide took an even stronger line. Franz Kugler’s Handbook of the History of Painting (1837, trans. 1841) spoke of the ‘spectral rigidity’ and ‘dull, servile constraint’ of Byzantine mosaic.24 His British editor, Charles Lock Eastlake, agreed and wondered why Byzantine art had ever been included in the book at all.25 The burgeoning study of the history of architectural style, however, inevitably brought Byzantine work to the attention of British readers. Henry Gally Knight’s The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy From the Time of Constantine to the Fifteenth Century (1842) was a magnificent historical panorama of the history of pre- and early medieval architecture with sumptuous drawings of Italian, German, and French buildings by Domenico Quaglio. J. L. Petit’s Remarks on Church Architecture (1841) was a two-volume anthology of drawings by Petit himself from a Continental trip of 1839, accompanied by his commentary, in which he suggested the adoption of a round-arched architecture in Britain. A little later, Edward Freeman published his History of Architecture (1849), in which Byzantium took a prominent place in the historical development of world architecture. In spite of its importance, however, in Freeman’s eyes it is fundamentally the product of alien culture: ‘it is not ancient, modern, or mediaeval . . . it is Oriental . . . alien in language, government, and general feeling’.26 In all this confusion and condemnation of Byzantine art and architecture in Britain, we usually associate Ruskin with the change of mood, but he was preceded by three lesser-known figures who took up the challenge in favour of Byzantine work. The first was Frances Palgrave, a Jew who converted to Christianity and compiled one of the first guidebooks intended for mass tourism. Ten years before Ruskin, Palgrave as a passionate antiquarian enthused about the Byzantine work in San Marco in his Handbook for Northern Italy (1842). ‘As soon as you cross the threshold’ of San Marco, he wrote, ‘you feel admitted into the Byzantine empire’.27 The second was Lord Lindsay, who, in his remarkable Sketches of the History of Christian Art (1847), claimed that ‘St Mark’s is the glory of Byzantine architecture’. The whole building, he continued, is ‘completely incrusted with mosaics; the lower walls are lined with precious marbles; the pavement is of rich opus

18 J. B. Bullen

Figure 1.6 Sara Losh, St Mary’s Wreay, Cumbria, 1842 Source: Author’s photo

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Graecanicum, undulating and uneven like a settling sea – the whole blending into a rich mysterious gloom’.28 Lindsay was a committed orientalist and entirely at home in the art of the East. The third is Benjamin Webb, whose intimidatingly dull title, Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology (1848), disguises a fascinating guide to the most important European religious centres. For him, San Marco is ‘unique in the world in almost every point of view’, and he claimed he was mesmerised by the ‘porphyry, jasper, serpentine and alabaster, verde, and rose antique’ and hundreds of other marbles that create ‘a truly eastern magnificence’.29 Ruskin had experienced the fascination of Venice and San Marco long before Webb set foot there. His interest began back in 1835 when, as a boy of 16, his parents took him to Italy. His first published views on Byzantine building came in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), and by the time that the second volume of The Stones of Venice appeared in 1853, there was as yet no real consensus about the status of Byzantium either historically or aesthetically, nor about its place in the history of art and architecture. Ruskin stepped in with a critical discourse that was effusive, tactile, corporeal, even erotic: ‘Round the walls of the porches’ of San Marco, he writes, there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, ‘their bluest veins to kiss,’ – the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as the receding tide leaves the waved sand.30 But Ruskin’s is not uncritical romanticism. His account of Venice and San Marco shifts between meticulous observation, moral rhetoric, and intense personal responsiveness, and it is embedded in a historical structure, of cultural birth, blossom, and decay. The first readers of The Stones of Venice were simultaneously astounded by his language and puzzled by his ideas. Throughout these volumes, Ruskin consciously manipulates his audience; his range of linguistic ‘voices’ is far greater than that of any contemporary writer, and he employs those voices to entice, to fascinate, and to convert his readers. So far, the British had only read about Byzantium, but in the 1854 Crystal Palace Exhibition in Sydenham, a version of Byzantium came to Britain. A new Byzantine Court was designed for the exhibition by Digby Wyatt, and the famous architect Owen Jones went on to print three plates to illustrate ‘Byzantine Ornament’ in his hugely innovative book, The Grammar of Ornament (1856) (Figure 1.7). One of the effects of Ruskin’s panegyric on San Marco was to increase the public interest in Byzantine design and Byzantine mosaic. A few individuals had been intrigued by mosaic and, as we have seen, in the 1830s, Ludwig I had wanted to place mosaic in his Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, but this was technically impossible because the art of making tesserae had died out. This changed in the 1850s through the inspiration of one man, Antonio Salviati. A native Venetian distressed by the condition of the mosaics on San Marco, Salviati abandoned his job as a lawyer and teamed up with glass master Lorenzo Radi to research the process of tesserae

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Figure 1.7 Byzantine designs by Owen Jones Source: Byzantine no. 3, pl. xxx, The Grammar of Ornament, 1856.

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manufacture. They succeeded totally, and the firm Salviati’s Venetian EnamelMosaic Works was a rapid success, beginning to supply the coloured glass cubes to potentates throughout Europe. Henry Layard had met Salviati in Venice and facilitated an invitation to decorate the Royal Mausoleum Frogmore (1865) modelled on the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. By 1868, Salviati realised that Britain would be a useful base for his operations. Since Layard had come to believe ‘that mosaic is the only external and internal decoration on a great scale which will suit our climate’, the Englishman invested money, and the Venice and Murano Glass Company opened in London.31 It is an irony that while the Italian Salviati was working in Britain, Englishman Edward Burne-Jones was asked to design a mosaic for Rome. The church for which it was destined was G. E. Street’s St Paul’s American Church in the via Nazionale. Building began in 1870 and when, some ten years later, an artist for the mosaics had to be found, Street turned to Burne-Jones. Street had met the painter in the 1860s when he and William Morris were undergraduates at Oxford. He also knew that Burne-Jones had had a long-standing interest in this medium – an interest that went back to his introduction to the art of Venice under the auspices of Ruskin in 1862. After seeing San Marco and Torcello, he wrote to Ruskin, saying that his ‘heart was full of mosaics’,32 and this love of mosaic was strengthened by his visit to the ‘heavenly churches’ of Ravenna in 1873.33 Thus in 1881, St Paul’s in Rome offered the long-standing ambition to work in ‘vast spaces’ and to have ‘big things to do’. Burne-Jones saw in mosaic the possibility of creating democratic art on lines suggested by William Morris; he wanted ‘common people to see them and say Oh! – only Oh!’34 Burne-Jones co-opted William Morris to help design the mosaics, and the two of them spent many Sunday mornings at Burne-Jones’s house, The Grange in London, creating a key system by which the colours on the cartoon could be matched to the colours on the tesserae. During this period, Morris was developing a considerable interest in Byzantine art, an interest that was strengthened by his personal involvement in the craftwork associated with mosaic production. While Burne-Jones was completing the mosaics for Rome, the interest in Byzantium was beginning to inform the burgeoning Arts and Crafts Movement. One of the most prominent Byzantinists of the period was Robert Weir Schultz, who came from Scotland in 1884 to work in Norman Shaw’s London office. In Shaw’s office, five young architects, including Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, and led by William Lethaby, were thinking of forming a guild. Three years later, in 1887, Schulz won a Royal Academy Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship. He first went to Venice, where he made careful drawings of the interior of San Marco, Murano, and Torcello, then in 1889, and on Lethaby’s advice, he went with Sidney Barnsley to Greece to study the remains of Byzantine architecture.35 Their work had to wait until 1901 to be published as The Monastery of St Luke of Stiris in Phocis, but their personal enthusiasm for Byzantine art and architecture was communicated to friends in their circle. But perhaps the single most important figure behind this late nineteenth-century interest in Byzantium was William Morris himself.

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Morris’s initial inspiration came from Ruskin who, in The Stones of Venice, attached enormous importance to architectural integrity, honesty, and the autonomy of the craftsman, but Morris intensified the practical and pragmatic aspects of the message and shifted its political implications away from Ruskin’s paternalism and towards egalitarian socialism. And in doing so, he placed Byzantine art and architecture on a footing comparable with that of other major historical styles. For reasons probably connected with his interest in the ‘Eastern Question’ and the threat of a Russo-Turkish war in the mid-1870s, Morris’s interest was drawn to Hagia Sophia. In 1878, he asked a Greek friend, Aglaia Coronio, to send him photographs of the building, and in the same year, he told his daughter that he had been ‘reading a lot about the Byzantine Empire in Finlay’s book’, finding it ‘interesting though somewhat dreary’.36 Also in that year, he described Hagia Sophia as ‘lovely and stately’37 and the ‘crown of all the great buildings of the world’.38 Morris’s understanding of Byzantine art and culture was, like Ruskin’s, socioaesthetic, and the city of Constantinople, and Hagia Sophia in particular, became central to his thinking about the relationship between art and society. For Morris, Gothic art was the true art of the modern period, and Byzantine art was its earliest manifestation, ‘new born’ out of the decadence of Greece and Rome.39 Morris’s first extended account of Byzantium came in his 1882 lecture, ‘History of Pattern Designing’, in the period when he was helping Burne-Jones design the mosaics for Rome. But it was in 1889 in a paper entitled ‘Gothic Architecture’ that he described Byzantine ‘freedom’ breaking away from the deadly grip of classicism in his most extended account of Byzantine society and art. ‘The first expression of this freedom’, he wrote, ‘is called Byzantine art. The style leaps into completion in this most lovely building’.40 For Morris, social unity and equality informed Byzantine culture. ‘Who built Hagia Sophia?’ he asks. The answer is ‘men like you and me, handicraftsmen who left no names behind them’.41 The essential characteristic of Byzantine art, he said in another lecture from 1881, was that it was ‘the work of collective rather than individual genius’, and just as it united architect and craftsman, it drew together East and West in a richly synthesising process.42 Byzantium constituted ‘a kind of knot to all the many thrums of the first days of modern Europe’.43 It gathered together the arts of India, Mesopotamia, Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, and Egypt, which it ‘mingled’ with the older arts of Greece, and it joined, too, Eastern love of freedom, mystery, and intricate design with Western respect for discipline, structure, and fact. ‘It is the living child and fruitful mother of art, past and future’.44 Morris’s dithyrambic, historically panoramic account of Byzantine architecture, which reaches its peak in ‘Gothic Architecture’, owes much to Ruskin’s ‘Nature of Gothic’. But Ruskin’s version of Byzantium began and ended in Venice; Morris took the hint from later archaeological work and gave Byzantine architecture a global significance. ‘From Italy’, he wrote, ‘or perhaps even from Byzantium itself, it was carried into Germany and pre-Norman England, touching even Ireland and Scandinavia’.45 It is as though Morris has turned all the old attitudes to Byzantium on their heads. Gone is the talk of oppressive tyrants, inflexible religious hierarchies, and cultural

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stagnation of the Enlightenment philosophes, and in its place have appeared ideas about political and personal freedom, life, vitality, and autonomy. Morris mythologised Byzantium in positive economic, political, social, and aesthetic terms. By 1884, Morris’s views were sufficiently widely accepted for five architects from Norman Shaw’s office (led by W.R. Lethaby) to found the Art Workers’ Guild under his auspices. In 1888 its public face, the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, held its first meeting in the New Gallery, and to celebrate its second show in 1889, Morris delivered his passionate account of Byzantium in ‘Gothic Architecture’. This was just two years after Lethaby urged Schultz to travel to Greece to study Byzantine architecture. Morris considered this lecture sufficiently important to be delivered to another three London groups and to further groups in Liverpool and Glasgow. Finally, he published it in book form in 1893 and sold it at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition of that year. From the Bavaria of Ludwig I to the Irish meditations of W.B. Yeats, the Byzantine Revival in Europe was more a matter of heart than head. In architectural terms, it flickered in and out of the culture, unlike the Gothic Revival, whose monuments maintained a stern and constant presence throughout the nineteenth century. Part of that difference was determined by the exotic nature of Byzantium. Gothic churches and Gothic cathedrals were familiar sites and populated the whole of Western Europe; the Hagia Sophia was extremely distant, difficult to penetrate, and had a complex, mysterious history. Architects, clerics, royalty, or simply men of great wealth turned to the Byzantine style to satisfy personal agendas that were often unorthodox or unusual. Though in its early days the Gothic stimulated the imagination, it did so by seeming to be an extension of Western culture back into the Dark Ages. Byzantium fed the imagination in another way. It was separate, remote, mysterious, and had only one toe in Western culture in the form of San Marco in Venice. These sentiments lay at the heart of Ruskin’s response to the basilica in The Stones of Venice, awesome and different: ‘there rises a vision out of the earth’, he wrote, ‘and all the great square seems to have opened from it in a kind of awe, that we may see it far away’.46

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

See Bullen 2007. Morris 1936, I, 274. Goethe 1980, 133. Brownlee 1991, 18. Corti 1938, 156. Howitt 1853, i, 6. Ibid., i, 6–7. Fourtol 1841, i, 405–6. Ibid., i, 106. Ibid., i, 118. Vitet 1830, 155. Viollet-le-Duc 1854–68, i, 138. Ibid., i, 136. Ibid., i, 138.

24 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

J. B. Bullen Fortoul quoted by Middleton 1986, 42. Bergdoll 1994, 212. Ibid., 233. Bergdoll 1994, 237. See Bullen 2004. Anon. 1842. See Bullen 2001. Rio 1836, 10. Wiseman 1847, 493. Kugler 1841, i, 22. Ibid., i, 24 n. Freeman 1849, 164–5. Palgrave 1842, 342–3. Lindsay 1847, i, 66. Webb 1848, 268–9. Ruskin 1903–12, x, 83. Waterfield 1963, 308. Burne-Jones 1912, ii, 66. Ibid., ii, 37, 66. Ibid., ii, 13. Ottewill 1979, 90. Morris and Kelvin 1984, i, 463. Morris and Morris 1914, xxii, 78. Ibid., xxii, 207–8. Ibid., xxii, 185. Morris 1936, 273–4. Morris and Morris 1914, xxii, 6–7. Ibid., xxii, 159. Ibid., xxii, 229. Ibid., xxii, 208. Morris 1936, 274–5. Ruskin 1893, Vol 2, p. 66.

References Anon. 1842. ‘On the Romanesque Style for Churches in London and Large Towns’, Christian Remembrancer 3, 567. Bergdoll, B. 1994. Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (New York, Cambridge, MA and London). Brownlee, D.B. 1991. ‘“Neugriechisch/Neo-Grec”: The German Vocabulary of French Romantic Architecture’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 50, 18–21. Bullen, J.B. 2001. ‘Sara Losh: Architect, Romantic, Mythologist’, The Burlington Magazine 143, 676–84. Bullen, J.B. 2004. ‘The Romanesque Revival in Britain, 1800–1840: William Gunn, William Whewell, and Edmund Sharpe’, Architectural History 47, 139–58. Bullen, J.B. 2007. ‘W.B. Yeats, Byzantium and the Mediterranean’, in Cianci, G. (ed.), Anglo-American Modernity and the Mediterranean (Cisalpino), 17–30. Burne-Jones, G.L. 1912. Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones (London) (1906 first ed.). Corti, E.C.C. 1938. Ludwig I of Bavaria (S.l.). Couchaud, A. 1842. Choix de l’églises bysantines en Grèce (Paris). Fourtoul, H.N.H. 1841. De l’art en Allemagne (Paris). Freeman, E.A. 1849. A History of Architecture (London).

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Goethe, J.W.V. and Gage, J. 1980. Goethe on Art (London). Howitt, A.W.A.M. 1853. An Art-Student in Munich (London). Jones, O. 1856. The Grammar of Ornament (London). Kugler, F.T., Eastlake, C.L. and Hutton, M. 1841. A Handbook of the History of Painting, trans. A Lady Hutton, M., edited with notes, by Eastlake, C.L. (London). Lindsay, A.W.C. 1847. Sketches of the History of Christian Art (London). Mallay. A.C. 1838. Essai sur les églises romanes et romano-byzantines du départment du Puy-de-Dôme (Essay on the Romanesque and Romano-Byzantine Churches in the Area of Puy-de-Dôme) (Moulins). Middleton, R. 1986, ‘The Rationalist Interpretation of Classicism of Léonce Reynaud and Viollet-le Duc’, A.A. Files, 11, 29–48. Morris, M. 1936. William Morris: Artist, Writer, Socialist (Oxford). Morris, W. and Kelvin, N. 1984. The Collected Letters of William Morris (Princeton). Morris, W. and Morris, M. 1914. The Collected Works of William Morris (London). Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History 22, 88–172. Palgrave, F. 1842. Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy [by Sir F. Palgrave] (London). Rio, A.F.O. 1836. De la Poesie chretienne dans son principe, dans sa matiere et dans ses formes. (De l’Art chretien.) (Paris). Ruskin, J. 1893. The Stones of Venice (Sunnyside, Orpington). Ruskin, J., Cook, E.T.S. and Wedderburn, A.D.O. 1903. The Works of John Ruskin (London). Viollet-le-Duc, E. 1854–68. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française (Paris). Vitet, L. 1830. ‘De l’architecture Lombarde’, Revue Français 15, 151–73. Waterfield, G. and Layard, A.H. 1963. Layard of Nineveh (London). Webb, B. 1848. Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology, or Church Notes in Belgium, Germany, and Italy (London). Whewell, W. 1830. Architectural Notes on German Churches (Cambridge). Wiseman, N. 1847. ‘Christian Art’, Dublin Review 22, 486–515.

2

The Discovery of Byzantium by British Visitors to Greece and What They Saw Robin Cormack

The aim of this contribution is no more than to outline the attitudes of a selection of British visitors to Greece in the nineteenth century and to reflect on whether and in what ways viewpoints on Greece’s past and its surviving monuments altered in the course of the century. The focus will be on visitors to mainland Greece rather than to, say, St Sophia at Constantinople, which anyway has been recently investigated in the book of Robert Nelson.1 Mostly, I shall consider those who visited Athens and its region. One such visitor was Lord Byron (1788–1824), who will be treated as a representative of attitudes before Greek independence, however maverick some consider him to be. But the attitudes of Byron and his contemporaries are of course soon to be superseded by the increasing knowledge of the archaeology of the past and by changing perspectives towards that past from other travellers as the century progressed. Empathy with the Arts and Crafts Movement in the UK was a significant factor in this process. My method is to ask what the British chose to look at, and how their choices influenced their subsequent thinking and practices. Most names that I touch on will be covered in much greater detail in the other chapters in this volume, but I hope to give a conceptual profile for the reception of Byzantium in the nineteenth and early twentieth century and to highlight some of the most influential visitors in this context. I will be arguing a scenario that recognises three main patterns of the perception of Greece and its past during the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century, we have the evidence of some visitors who expressed their reactions and taste through their literary or scholarly writings, and these witness statements conformed with traditional and well-established norms about the role of ‘Greece’ in political and cultural history, usually laced with nostalgia about the ancient classical world. They came, they saw, and they described what they expected to see. The second pattern of response to Greece was different and more individualistic, reflecting broader developing attitudes about the past in Victorian Britain. They recorded their experience in writings but also in drawings and watercolours as well as in the new medium of photography. One outcome of the growing interest in medievalism in Britain was a new sensitivity towards the practices of Byzantine workmanship. The third pattern of response to Greece was to go beyond appreciation and to engage with and incorporate the knowledge of Byzantium into their own thinking and practices. The question to explore among visitors in this third DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-3

The Discovery of Byzantium 27 group is to what extent they seriously absorbed what they saw and how far their experience changed their subsequent artistic and architectural productions. The most promising individual in this group, it will be argued in the final part of this chapter, is Robert Weir Schultz, who came to Greece in the late nineteenth century very early on in his architectural career. The question to examine in his case is how far his Greek travel and close archaeological examination of Byzantine monuments influenced the rest of his life, despite never again returning to Greece; and, in particular, how his empathy with Byzantium conceptually influenced his design for the Anglican Cathedral at Khartoum, in both its plan and its Arts and Crafts fixtures and fittings.

Before 1832 My arbitrary, but I think representative, starting point is the visit of Byron in 1810–11 to Ottoman Greece and Athens and his perception of Greek lands. He was born in 1788, became Lord Byron at the age of 10, went on the Grand Tour at the age of 21, was in Athens in 1810 and 1811 at the age of 22, returned to London in 1811, left England forever in 1816, then came back to the Greek world with his arrival in Missolonghi in December 1823, where he died in April 1824 at the age of 36. His impact as a philhellene on the people of Greece was astonishing and can be easily assessed; one example of his fame is the choice of the prominent central position of the monument made in his memory in the cemetery at Missolonghi, a dominant standing figure sculpture. Even more prestigious is the marble statue in his honour in the National Gardens in the centre of Athens made by the sculptor Alexandre Falguière after a design by Henri-Michel Chapu. Here Byron’s life and achievements are represented with his crowning by a woman, who is the personification of the inspiration of Greece (Figure 2.1). The impact of Greece and its monuments on Byron is, on the contrary, much less easy to assess. In the main, his writings seem to be elegant, if conventional, illustrations of the Enlightenment way of looking at Greece, placing him at the end of that tradition.2 Seen in this way, Byron marks a turning point, since the nineteenth century was next to see changes in the ways of viewing Greece. The decisive moment was the Independence of Greece in 1832, after which year visitors confronted a modern country rather than engaging, as Byron did, in a recreation of a past mythical classical world. Byron’s perception of Greece was not his alone. His fervent philhellenism was matched across Europe and probably marks the peak of the Romantic emulation of Greece and its lost glories. When in Athens in 1811, he stayed in the Capuchin convent, which incorporated in its precinct the fourth century BCE Choregic Monument of Lysicrates, erected to commemorate his first prize for sponsorship of one of the performances in the nearby theatre of Dionysos. In the convent Byron worked on his first best-seller, the autobiographical Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Canto XX is a useful sample of his evocation of the environment: Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great!

28 Robin Cormack Who now shall lead thy scatter’d children forth, And long accustom’d bondage uncreate? Not such thy sons who whilome did await, The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, In bleak Thermopylae’s sepulchral strait – Oh! who that gallant spirit shall resume, Leap from Eurotas’ banks, and call thee from the tomb? This text is the literary equivalent of the visual image of ‘Greece invoking the great men of old’ that was the frontispiece of the book Voyage pittoresque de la Grèce of 1782. The author, the aristocrat le compte Marie-Gabriel-FlorentAuguste de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752–1817), gives a full explanation of his imagery. He explains that Greece is represented as a woman in chains (and in front of a ruined Doric temple). She is surrounded by funerary memorials dedicated to the great men of Ancient Greece who sacrificed their lives for her freedom, such as Lycurgus, Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Epaminondas, Pelopidas, Timoleon, Demosthenes, Phocion, and Philopoemen (not all everyday names today, one might add). Greece leans on the tomb of Leonidas, and behind her is a tablet inscribed with Simonides’s epitaph for the three hundred Spartans killed at Thermopylae: ‘Go tell the Spartans, you who read: We took their orders, and lie here dead’.3 Greece personified evokes the spirits of these great men, and on the high rock above her is inscribed exoriare aliquis: ‘May someone arise’. The full quotation is spoken by Dido in Virgil, Aeneid IV 625 – ‘May someone arise from my bones as an avenger’. So, both this book and the sentiments of Byron’s verses are imbued with the perception of Greece as ‘picturesque’, but at the same time their paramount interest was more in the memory of the heroes of antiquity and the places where they lived than in the archaeology of the sites. Studying in any detail the monuments of Antiquity was certainly not a priority for Byron, though he did see the Lysicrates monument, sit on the columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus, visit the Acropolis (perhaps only once), and write his name on the temple at Sounion. Still less of a priority for Byron was to visit Byzantine monuments. He only wished to see in Greece what any British gentleman educated in the classics expected. Byzantium, for Byron, only existed in passing. Beaton argues that viscerally Byron did not empathise with the monuments as material things, but as shrines for the dead; hence the reason he criticised Lord Elgin’s operations on the Acropolis, because he saw them as sacrilege against the dead.4 No doubt, however, his attitudes on such collecting were not fixed; in a letter to Hobhouse written in the voyage back to England in 19 June 1811, Byron records that his own collection of antiquities included ‘four skulls taken out of ancient sarcophagi’.5 Beaton also suggests that Byron’s disability in his foot restricted his enthusiasm for sites that could not easily be visited on horseback. Yet, Byron did in fact have daily contact with John Hobhouse during their travels in 1809 and 1810, a companion who was decidedly committed to archaeological exploration (but who returned to London in July 1810).6 Choiseul-Gouffier had also shown an energetic interest in collecting antiquities – he preceded Lord

The Discovery of Byzantium 29

Figure 2.1 Sculpture of Lord Byron in Athens, Greece designed by Henri-Michel Chapu and made by Alexandre Falguière in 1896 Source: Author’s photo

30 Robin Cormack Elgin in appropriations; as French ambassador to Constantinople (1784–91) he had obtained a firman and was responsible for the removal of two metres of the Parthenon frieze and their transport to Paris, where they were subsequently acquired by the Musée du Louvre and are now on show there. Hobhouse was very thorough in his pursuit and knowledge of antiquities; he travelled with the appropriate and useful books for the serious traveller that he so obviously was – dare one say, in this respect, unlike Byron?7 He refers frequently to Pausanias, Stuart, and Revett, and Chandler.8 His publication of his travels with Byron also reveals Hobhouse’s own antiquarian priorities for Antiquity. For example, after appreciating Delphi and what could be seen at that time, they took the road to Thebes but avoided (though with some regrets) taking the detour to ‘the monastery of St Luke, a summary of whose pious, unprofitable life is given in Dr Chandler’s Travels’. Hobhouse notes that the monastery ‘contains a church, once the pride of Greece, and now splendid even in ruins’ (p. 217). At Skripou, however, they did see the ninth-century church and looked carefully at the inscriptions on the walls (p. 226). This is not the only Byzantine church they visited, and during the stay at Athens, while concentrating on the Antiquities, they went too to Daphni. But not with any enthusiasm: the monastery, ‘though much venerated and supposed the most ancient in the country, has nothing to detain you’ (p. 307). The dome with the mosaic of Christ does get a mention, but only because of its ‘disfiguration’: ‘the eyes of the figure are perforated with bullets’. Hobhouse boasts that in their residence of ten weeks at Athens, there was not a day when some part of it was not devoted to the contemplation of the noble monuments of Grecian genius (p. 257). Hobhouse’s description of the sculptures of the Parthenon is extensive and detailed, and he even defends the activities of Lord Elgin in saving the sculptures from being ‘ground to powder’ by the Turks (pp. 282–9). In Constantinople, Hobhouse was little impressed by St Sophia: ‘a stupendous monument of the heavy mediocrity which distinguished the productions of the sixth century from the perfect specimens of a happier age’ (pp. 971–2). The complimentary reference in this account to the excellence of Edward Gibbon no doubt explains his adverse view of Byzantium. Byron and Hobhouse surely give a representative insight into the standard British perception of Greece at that time.

After 1832 The outlook of the Honourable Robert Curzon (1810–73) towards the Greek past was radically different from these forerunners with their firm attention directed towards Antiquity. His obsession was, on the contrary, with Christian monasteries and their treasures. He travelled extensively in Egypt and Greece in 1833–4 and was on Athos in 1837, and his best-selling book, Visits to the Monasteries in the Levant, came out in 1849.9 For John Ruskin in the Stones of Venice, it was ‘the most delightful book of travels that he ever opened’, and this comment is in itself an indication of newly emerging attitudes towards the Middle Ages in Victorian England. Curzon’s emphasis was, however, still very much on the picturesque, and his was a romantic view of Byzantine Greece, focusing on monasteries where he

The Discovery of Byzantium 31 was looking for ‘early manuscripts and printed books’ as part of his life-long ambition to ‘illustrate a history of the art of writing from specimens in my own possession’. After his death, his collection of books was donated to the British Museum by his daughter, and they are now in the British Library. In his new preface for the 1865 edition, Curzon gives a warning: These pages describe a state of affairs so entirely passed away that the account of them seems to belong to a much more remote period than the year 1833. Those countries were, however, much better worth seeing at that time than they are now; they were in their original state, each nation retained its own particular character, unadulterated by the levelling discourse with Europeans, which always, and in a very short time, exerts so strong an influence that picturesque dresses and romantic adventures disappear, while practical utility and a commonplace appearance are so generally disseminated, that in a few years more every country will be alike, and travellers will discover that there is nothing more to be found in the way of manners and customs that they may not see with greater ease in their own houses in London.10 Significantly, Curzon’s book encouraged travellers to relish the picturesque monasteries of the east, and to be sympathetic to the art and architecture of the Middle Ages. His denigration of the intelligence and education of Orthodox monks may have been part of a literary strategy to hide his own possessive ambitions, for this argument was used to justify his attempts to purchase and remove their manuscripts. He was bitter that in the case of the Sinai monastery of St Catherine, for example, he was outwitted by the abbot. The acquisitive urge of the British traveller could no longer follow the pattern of Choiseul-Gouffier and Elgin during the Ottoman control of Greece. Curzon differed from the earlier generation in his appreciation of Medieval calligraphy and illumination, but he was no less opportunist in trying to take away works of art. Curzon did not share their pattern of philhellenism and he was not in pursuit of the lost classics of the classical Antiquity. The new preface does lament the growing ease of travel to Greece, something which would in his opinion spoil the innocence of his perceived ‘orientalist’ world (as we might now call it). Robert Curzon revelled in the picturesque setting of the monuments, particularly the monasteries at Meteora and on Mount Athos, illustrating in his book, for example, the vista of Simonpetra. Yet, on the nature of Byzantine architecture, he was both observant and analytically critical: The three qualities of classical architecture – proportion, symmetry and grace – are absent from Byzantine architecture. On Byzantine painting, he conceded that it was inferior and less noble than the Italian primitives, being stiff and conventional, yet he said no one who studies these ancient works of art can fail to appreciate that high and noble spirit that animated the pencils of these saintly painters. He reckoned they succeeded in conveying feelings of devotion, religious awe, and a kind of grandeur, which were lost in the works of modern artists. He had read Didron’s French translation of Painter’s Manual of Mount Athos (1845)11 and accepted the line that Byzantine art

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was controlled and restricted by the Church, putting himself into a Pre-Raphaelite frame of reference of sympathy with frustrated artists. The Byzantium that Curzon communicates was a primitive, but romantic, spiritual world. His frustrations in his many attempts to purchase illuminated manuscripts coloured his view of the monasteries and the mentalities of the monks he met. His ambivalence was picked up by subsequent travellers, in particular Edward Lear (1812–88), who travelled with Curzon’s book in hand to some of the same places. Lear knew exactly what Curzon communicated about Mount Athos, and he too sketched there in the late summer of 1856. His responses may well have been an over-reaction to Curzon’s enthusiasm, and his descriptions of Orthodox monasticism as practised there were as much satirical as genuine. I quote some of his words from a letter to Chichester Fortescue, written on Corfu on 9 October 1856:12 However wondrous and picturesque the exterior & interior of the monasteries, & however abundantly & exquisitely glorious & stupendous the scenery of the mountain, I would not go again to the Agios Oros (Mount Athos) for any money, so gloomy, so shockingly unnatural, so lonely, so lying, so unatonably odious seems to me all the atmosphere of such monkery. That half of our species which it is natural to every man to cherish & love best, ignored, prohibited and abhorred – all life spent in everlasting repetition of monotonous prayers, no sympathy with ones fellowbeans of any nation, class or age. The name of Christ on every garment and at every tongue’s end, but his maxims trodden under foot. God’s world and will turned upside down, maimed, & caricatured: – if this I say be Xtianity let Xtianity be rooted out as soon as possible. More pleasing in the sight of the Almighty I really believe, & more like what Jesus Christ intended man to become, is an honest Turk with 6 wives, or a Jew working hard to feed his little old do’ babbies, than these muttering, miserable, mutton-hating, man-avoiding, misogynic, morose, & merriment-marring, monotoning, many-mule-making, mocking, mournful, minced-fish & marmalade masticating Monx. Poor old pigs! Yet one or two were kind enough in their way, dirty as they were: but it is not them, it is their system I rail at. Lear took up the idea of the picturesque qualities of Byzantium from Curzon, but his heart, like Byron’s, lay in classical Antiquity, as so many of his watercolours witness. He chose to record the picturesque or Antiquity, preferably combined, as in his watercolour of the temple at Bassae. When back in England, Lear reworked his sketch as a large oil painting, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge (and acquired as a memorial after death of its architect, George Basevi, 1794–1845, to reflect his name). Lear turned the Greek landscape into an English countryside view, complete with the temple, and even a tortoise to evoke the exoticism of what he called Arcadia. In the case of Lear, Greece is seen through a classical perspective again, but conceptualised and Anglicised. His memories of Greece were reworked into a more familiar (‘Englished’) world (Figure 2.2).

Source: Reproduction by permission of the Syndics of The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (object no. 460), ©The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

The Discovery of Byzantium 33

Figure 2.2 The Temple of Apollo at Bassae by Edward Lear, c. 1854–5.

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The turning point in British attitudes to Greece can be attributed to not only Robert Curzon but also the communication skills and writings of John Ruskin (1819–1900), notably The Stones of Venice of 1851, as well as the work of Augustus Pugin (1812– 52).13 They were major figures in the promotion of medievalism, though neither went to Greece, and Ruskin distorts the nature of the role of Byzantium as well as the Italian traditions in the formation of Venetian art and architecture when he favoured a theory of Islamic influences (he supposed the pointed arch came from the east). For these two, Greece was no more than an imaginary sphere, but through them came the desire of the next generation to see Greece at first hand. It was William Lethaby (1857–1931) who swung the knowledge of Byzantium firmly towards direct experience and appreciation in his book on St Sophia (‘a work surpassing every edifice in the world’), which was published in 1894.14 He had been promoting study in Greece in the years before this monograph emerged, and it was Lethaby who personally encouraged architects, sympathetic to the Arts and Crafts Movement, to go to Greece and work at the British School at Athens. He was not alone as an entrepreneur, of course, and medievalist patrons like both the third and fourth Marquesses of Bute were important players too. The Arts and Crafts Movement domesticated religious art into the frame of middle-class homes, and artists could relish the medieval church not as something remote in time but as the living source of new ideas and desirable practical skills. An example of how medieval art could be transformed into the secular is a panel of stained glass made for a domestic setting in London by Thomas Camm (1839–1912) and his firm. It represents art personified in a gothic frame (Figure 2.3). It was not, of course, just the British who were developing an interest in medieval Greece. The 1880s saw in Greece what was then noted as a new and emerging field – the study of Byzantine monuments. Among the French, Gabriel Millet photographed on Athos, at Mistra and elsewhere, and he published his monograph on Daphni in 1899. Russian and German scholars were active too, especially in Turkey and the Middle East, and Joseph Stryzygowski photographed at Daphni. But a case can be made that the systematic fieldwork and recording undertaken by the British visitors based at the British School was the most important. The Director of the British School, E. A. Gardner, wrote in the Journal of Hellenic Studies as follows:15 It is a great satisfaction to be able to record an awakening interest in Byzantine Antiquities on the part of the official Greek administration as well as of foreign students. Happily, the time is at length almost past when interesting and beautiful Byzantine churches could be pulled to pieces without a protest, on the chance of finding an inscription in their ruins, or in order to use their materials for other buildings. But a good deal remains to be desired. What Gardner omits to mention is the iconoclastic operations of archaeologists on the Acropolis in the nineteenth century who eliminated materials that did not promote the ‘Golden Age’ of the fifth century BCE. This phase of activity saw the removal of the prominent Frankish tower from the Acropolis as well as the pieces of Byzantine sculpture that remain today in the early Christian and Byzantine Museum. They are not part of the materials exhibited in the new Acropolis museum. But, apart from the Acropolis, the decade of the 1880s in particular, and the years following, too, marked an enormous intensification of Byzantine

The Discovery of Byzantium 35

Figure 2.3 Stained-glass panel made by Thomas William Camm, c. 1880 Source: Private collection; Author’s photo

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recording at the British School. This was the time when the first Arts and Crafts architects came to Greece and set out to record the visible Byzantine heritage. But the point for this survey is that each of these men took away a different perspective about Greece in their future career, and it is that perspective that I want to assess. One of the Arts and Crafts visitors deserves only a brief mention. Ramsay Traquair (1874–1952) was at the British School from 1905 to 1908, and he recorded monuments particularly in south Greece, as, for example, in his drawing from the Asomato church in the Lower Mani (Figure 2.4). His work was elegant and accurate, but his later career benefited little from his exposure to Byzantium. In 1913 he was offered the chair of architecture at McGill University in Montreal (despite having gained no degree). He accepted this position, remaining in Canada for the rest of his life. Information about his use of the knowledge of Byzantium he gained in Greece is to be found in an interview in 1997 with Professor Norbert Schoenauer (1923–2001) at Quebec. Schoenauer was expressly asked about the work of Ramsay Traquair, and his reply usefully sums up Traquair’s position:16 ‘Can you comment on Traquair’s earlier studies concerning Byzantine, Greek, and Roman religious architecture, and how they influenced his first commissions?’

Figure 2.4 Details of decorations in churches in Lower Mani, by Ramsay Traquair, c. 1905–9 Source: BRF 01/01/14/142, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

The Discovery of Byzantium 37 ‘I really doubt whether his Byzantine church studies influenced his architectural work later on. Academically, it was very, very important. After all, the first articles that he published were on Greece and on Constantinople, but I think the influence as such, of Byzantine architecture, was not as important as his contact with the Arts and Crafts movement in Edinburgh.’ The expertise in recording monuments developed by Ramsay Traquair was such that he is credited on the title page as assisting the author Alexander van Millingen in Byzantine Churches in Constantinople (London, 1912). Also credited as an assistant in this book was William Sykes George (1881–1962). W. S. George represents an entirely different career profile from Traquair, but he was similar in retaining in his later work very little of his Byzantine knowledge, though there are hints of his past acquaintance with its practices and motives. George came to Greece in 1906 and worked at various sites there and elsewhere up to 1911. He was in demand as an archaeological draughtsman in Sparta and Sudan as well as recording major Byzantine buildings. His major monograph on the church of St Eirene in Constantinople exhibits his superb recording skills, and it remains today a more persuasive analytical history of the church fabric than several more recent studies, despite the fact that much of the masonry was concealed with plaster in his time.17 Equally, his accuracy in recording the mosaics and structure of St Demetrios at Thessaloniki in 1909 means that we have the fullest and best source of information about the (now rebuilt) church and its decoration before the destructive fire of 1917. Of all the contributors to the BSA archive, in my view his work was the most reliable and the most elegant. Everything changed in George’s career when in 1912 he decided to work as assistant to Herbert Baker and, through him, to Edwin Lutyens in the project to move the imperial capital of India from Calcutta to Delhi, and to build the grand scheme of New Delhi that was completed in 1931. From 1913 and for the rest of his life (up to his death in 1962), he was resident in Delhi. Among the plaques, which record the building of the gigantic Viceroy’s House (and became the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President’s House, with Independence in 1947) and Secretariat, we see the names of the architects, including W. S. George (Figure 2.5). He was unique among the British architects employed in the project for remaining in Delhi and making his permanent home there. George came to India with an Arts and Crafts mentality, but he had to work for a grandiloquent design that reflected Lutyens’s rejection of Arts and Crafts in favour of a Palladian classicism. Lutyens, as far as he could, played down local Indian traditions, especially Mughal traditions (Lutyens was not a fan of the Taj Mahal). Whatever George had felt about Byzantium, he subordinated such interests while engaged in this huge project, even in the Mughal Gardens, which he participated in completing (though there are some evocative carved fish plaques in the waterways). I wonder if George’s time at sites in the Sudan at Musawwarat es Sufra near Meroe might have influenced the elephant designs at the gateway of the complex (Figure 2.6). In India, Walter Sykes George committed himself to the mission of encouraging and training Indian architects, and he designed a considerable number of domestic

38 Robin Cormack

Figure 2.5 Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi: plaque recording architects Source: Author’s photo

Source: Author’s photo

The Discovery of Byzantium 39

Figure 2.6 Rashtrapati Bhavan (previously Viceroy’s House), New Delhi: entrance gateway

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buildings as well as some of St Stephen’s university. But he (unlike Lutyens) failed to find any great patrons, and, in comparison with other BSA architects, his building career is disappointing. His design for the Regal Theatre (1932 – built by Sobha Singh) remains classicising (Figure 2.7), though some of the details inside are more in the Arts and Crafts tradition. Sadly, this building complex was scheduled for demolition and redevelopment in 2018. As for his Church of St Thomas for the road-sweepers (1931–2, Mandir Marg, New Delhi), this is a personal piece of architecture with a few Medieval Greek features, but hardly a memorable achievement (and with its tower now truncated) (Figure 2.8). He designed the fittings, the triple arcade in the sanctuary, and the early Byzantine carving style of the ventilators in the ceiling, which might even have been memories from St Eirene (Figure 2.9). The plan and details of St Stephen’s College at Delhi are more reminiscent of a British public-school environment than of Byzantium (Figure 2.10). My own assessment of George is that his experience of what he saw in Greece was not reflected in any deep commitment to Byzantine style and skills, and that his career in India contrasts adversely with the archaeological success of his work in Greece. I will in the final section implicitly contrast the simplicity of the church of St Thomas with the complexity of the Anglican Cathedral by Robert Weir Schultz at Khartoum. Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951) and Sidney Barnsley (1865–1926) were the forerunners of these architects as recorders of Byzantine monuments in Greece. Unlike Walter George, they both remained doctrinaire Arts and Crafts people in their later careers. In Greece, they worked closely together. Schultz had won the RA Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship (for the design of a railway terminus) in December 1887 and worked with Barnsley in Greece in 1888, 1889, and 1890. Together they recorded monuments and published a major monograph on Hosios Loukas.18 On the structure of this monastic complex, they were much less accurate than George was on St Eirene, and they were responsible for the misdating of the two main churches, thinking the catholicon on the south side was earlier than the Panagia church on the north, which was a misunderstanding of the nature of the development of the site but remained the standard opinion on the chronology of the churches until the major restoration of the 1960s.19 But their recording of the appearance of the fabric and sculpture was exemplary, and they were expert at the relatively new medium of photography. Schultz and Barnsley visited the monastery at Daphni several times and recorded both the architecture and the mosaics, but they learned that there was an understanding that the monograph on this church would be written by Gabriel Millet.20 The condition of the monastery must have been a matter of general discussion at Athens, since the Rev. Joseph Hirst was ready to go into print with his censure of the situation in The Reliquary (1888).21 The photographs taken by Schultz and Barnsley are essential today for understanding the condition of the mosaics, particularly the dome mosaic of Christ, which was damaged in the disastrous earthquake on the early morning of 10 January 1889. All the mosaics were subsequently detached from the masonry by the Italian restorers, then replaced and finally restored (rather than consolidated) in the

Source: Author’s photo

The Discovery of Byzantium 41

Figure 2.7 The Regal Theatre, Connaught Place, New Delhi, built in 1932

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Figure 2.8 Church of St Thomas, New Delhi, built in 1931–2 Source: Author’s photo

The Discovery of Byzantium 43

Figure 2.9 Church of St Thomas, New Delhi, detail of ceiling moulding, built in 1931–2 Source: Author’s photo

1890s. The tantalising question ever since has been whether the restorers substantially remade the face of Christ, and whether they incorrectly restored the eyes. Schultz’s drawing of the face before the earthquake suggests that from the ground he thought the gaze was frontal, and others have made the same decision from the photographs taken before the earthquake. The difficulty in all these interpretations is that the original Byzantine viewer of the face of Christ was expected to be standing just inside the western door into the naos. This is the place from where the Byzantine mosaicist designed the viewer to contemplate the image of Christ. This is demonstrated from the fact that photographs taken from this location do not distort the face or the cross nimbus. Photographs taken from directly below the dome are therefore likely to distort the face. The complication in the nineteenth century was that a large wooden beam across

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Figure 2.10 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, completed 1941 Source: Author’s photo

The Discovery of Byzantium 45 the dome obstructed the line of view of any camera. The position of the beam is recorded by a photograph of Weir Schultz and Barnsley taken in the church before the earthquake, probably in March 1888 (Figure 2.11). The beam (and its obstructing position) was removed during the restoration in the 1890s. Another photograph taken by Schultz and Barnsley is crucial in resolving the issue of whether the gaze was frontal or to the side (Figure 2.12). This photograph was taken after the earthquake, not from the floor but from the scaffolding above the beam, most likely in November 1889. This makes it possible to understand that the eyes had been damaged before the earthquake, possibly by gunshots during the Turkish period; and also, that as part of the remedial work after April 1889 and before the mosaic was taken down, the restorers temporarily fixed the mosaic to the dome by inserting cross-shaped ties through gaps in the damaged eyes. With the help of the photograph, we can trace one by one the setting of the tesserae of the eleventh-century eyes. The examination shows that restored tesserae of the 1890s are correct, and the gaze was not frontal. The current mosaic is patched with some new tesserae, but the gaze of the eyes to one side is the correct original setting.22 The work of Schultz and Barnsley remains of significant value in the modern analysis of the monastery of Daphni and its mosaic decoration, as do their observations and records of numerous other monuments. Neither of them ever returned to Greece after 1890. Back in England, Sidney Barnsley was the architect of Church of the Wisdom of God at Lower Kingswood (1891–2), which has many Byzantine elements, but he soon went to the Cotswolds and for a time worked on furniture with Ernest Gimson, developing an Arts and Crafts style that owed little to Byzantium. Robert Weir Schultz set up a practice in London and worked on many commissions, including Westminster Cathedral, but the focus here will be only on one of his commissions: the Anglican Cathedral at the new colonial capital of AngloEgyptian Sudan at Khartoum.23 He was commissioned in 1906 to build what was to be the first Anglican cathedral in Khartoum, which was also to commemorate General Gordon, who died at the hands of the Mahdi in 1885. Schultz travelled through Egypt to see the location near the bank of the Nile at Khartoum in 1907. He delegated the on-site organisation to a Scottish architect. Schultz came back to Khartoum for the opening dedication service in January 1912. The tower and baptistery were completed finally in 1931. The cathedral was permanently closed down in 1971, and the tower demolished in 1994. But the building has survived in a new use and is today the Museum of Sudanese History. The British development of the city of Khartoum had nothing of the grandiose scheme of New Delhi. Kitchener recaptured Omdurman in 1898 and then worked rapidly to lay out the new city of Khartoum along the Nile. He ordered an army captain to build a governor’s palace, and it was achieved in an Italianate style. The background of Schultz led to an entirely original concept for a cathedral in a region that had no visible Christian buildings or traditions. It is deeply indebted to his knowledge of Byzantium. However, his design met with instant criticism when he displayed the plans at the Royal Academy in London in 1909 (Figure 2.13). One comment: ‘A very curious piece of

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Figure 2.11 Monastery of Daphni, photograph, looking north-east in the nave, c. 1888–9, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 01/01/01/089, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 2.12 Christ in the dome, Monastery of Daphni, photograph, possibly November 1889, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BSA BRF WI.G-33, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 2.13 Design for All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, 1909, by Robert Weir Schultz Source: RIBA 85919, PA 1093/5, ©RIBA Collections

architecture, the style of which we presume is suggested by local associations’. Another comment: ‘It has no reminiscence of any particular style’. Such comments reflected the conventional view that an Anglican cathedral should be in a Gothic style. Schultz in his writings shows he was well aware of the practical problems of building in a region with no local traditions in stone architecture and with no local building skills except in mud brick building. He discovered there was a quarry in the region with suitable stone, and his design was adapted to fit this stone and local conditions. His first debt to Greece was that he decided to use the Byzantine method of building arches with no centring, as wood was hard to come by, and he designed simple triangular window openings for ease of construction. These are a major feature of the building and he insisted that nothing else was possible in the situation. He had side doors so that entrance was possible from these during the frequent sand-storms from the west, and it was built on a high platform for protection during the flooding of the nearby Nile. It was the combination of practical reasoning and constructive use of his knowledge of the eastern Mediterranean that led to Schultz’s inspired design for the cathedral as the setting of a newly established religion in a new country

The Discovery of Byzantium 49 (Figure 2.14). A number of factors contributed to his new construction, and they come predominantly from his knowledge of Byzantine Greece. The design of a transept church, seated on a platform, and with side doors is a clear reflection of the early Byzantine church of St Demetrios in Thessaloniki, which both Schultz and Barnsley (as well as George) had studied and recorded in great detail, with Schultz once having made a reconstruction of its original appearance. The idea of a separate baptistery for a cathedral is also an early Byzantine scheme, later dropped when child baptism rather than adult baptism became the norm. As for the front façade of the cathedral, the sources which Schultz used are more diverse and evocative. The cyclopean masonry is a feature of Mycenaean building in Greece, and so harks back to the origins of Greek culture. The display of Jesus Christ NIKA was the sign of Constantine the Great, who converted the Roman Empire into a Christian empire, and is therefore highly symbolic of the establishment of Christianity in the new country of Sudan. But the rose window, gothic arches, and use of stained glass are all features of medieval churches in England; and the stained-glass designer, Mabel Esplin, brought an orientalist touch by representing Balthasar as an Arab. The chequer masonry of the arches is a feature of early Byzantine churches, but is more broadly evocative as a method used also in medieval buildings in Cairo and even in Anglo-Saxon churches. Equally significant as a reflection of the acquaintance of Schultz with Byzantine and Greek practices was the design of the furniture and fittings. Though some of these items are still visible in the cathedral, most of the moveable pieces were taken to the new cathedral of Khartoum, built in 1979, in an architectural style and with a concrete structure that would have been anathema to Schultz’s Arts and Crafts commitments. But here are to be found the furniture designed by Schultz and refined by the suggestions of Gimson, who made them in Cuban mahogany in the Cotswolds and then transported them to Sudan (Figures 2.15 and 2.16). Since both the drawings and the pieces survive, we can see how Gimson looked at the designs and refined the finials; but we can also see how the spindle uprights were designed by Schultz with his knowledge of the pieces in Hosios Loukas and St Theodore at Athens (Figures 2.17 and 2.18) – more likely sources than the fittings of Coptic churches in Cairo, which Schultz had also seen on his journey to Khartoum. All these visual clues in the Anglican cathedral together add up to a remarkably fluent recreation of early Christianity and show how the importance of the religion being established in Sudan matched what Constantine achieved in Rome and Byzantium. Schultz’s vision of a new church in a new land was indebted to his deep knowledge of Byzantium. The architecture of this unique church is perhaps more original and transformative than his work in Britain. Of all the travellers to Greece to see its Byzantine architecture, none was more enhanced by the experience in his later career than Robert Weir Schultz. The Anglican Cathedral of Khartoum can therefore be presented as a remarkable building that only the intersection of visiting Greece, discovering Byzantium, a deep knowledge of Byzantium, and an Arts and Crafts aesthetic could achieve. Schultz fits into my third category as someone whose career must be related to his experience in Greece. Without that, Khartoum Cathedral would never have been conceived.

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Figure 2.14 Republican Palace Museum, formerly All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, south wall and transept, completed 1912 Source: Author’s photo

Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 2.15 Furniture in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral, Khartoum

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Figure 2.16 Designs for a priest’s chair in the Memorial Chapel for General Gordon in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral at Khartoum, 1909–12, by Robert Weir Schultz Source: RIBA 126779, PA 1093/5 (14), ©RIBA Collections

Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 2.17 Furniture in All Saints (Anglican) Cathedral, Khartoum

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Figure 2.18 Sketch of church furniture in St Theodore, Athens, from Robert Weir Schultz’s notebook, 1888–90 Source: BRF 03/SCH 5, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Nelson 2004; For the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Constantine 2011. Spencer 1954; now also Kitromilides 2013. Translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt. Beaton 2013, esp. 12–13. See the online publication of Byron’s letters, www.petercochran/wordpress.com. Cochran 2010. Hobhouse 1813. Pausanias 1918; Stuart and Revett 1762; Chandler 1776. This account of Curzon I take from Cormack 2000. The quotations are from Curzon 1865, vii–x. For an account of this eighteenth-century text and a translation, Hetherington 1974. See Noakes 1988, 138–44; Uglow 2017, 240–3. Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect. Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain (London, 2007). Lethaby and Swainson 1894. JHS 10 (1889), 254. http://cac.mcgill.ca/traquair/interviewnorbert.php George 1913. Schultz and Barnsley 1901. See Stikas 1970; Bouras 1980, who dates the Panagia church to the reign of Romanos II (959–63). Millet 1899: an acknowledgment to Schultz in the preface (p. xi) for illustrations. See Cormack 2008; also, Cormack 2013a. See Cormack 2008 Cormack 2013b.

References Beaton, R. 2013. Byron’s War: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (Cambridge). Bouras, L. 1980. The Sculptural Decoration of the Church of the Virgin in the Monastery of Saint Luke (Athens) (in Greek). Chandler, R. 1776. Travels in Greece (Oxford). Cochran, P. 2010. Byron and Hobby-O: Lord Byron’s Relationship with John Cam Hobhouse (Newcastle). Constantine, D. 2011. In the Footsteps of the Gods. Travellers to Greece and the Quest for the Hellenic Ideal (Revised ed., London). Cormack, R. 2000. ‘A Gentleman’s Book: Attitudes of Robert Curzon’, in Cormack, R. and Jeffreys, E. (eds.), Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium Through British Eyes (Aldershot), 147–62. Cormack, R. 2008. ‘Rediscovering the Christ Pantocrator at Daphni’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71, 55–74. Cormack, R. 2013a. ‘Viewing the Mosaics of the Monasteries of Hosios Loukas, Daphni and the Church of Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello’, in Entwistle, C. and James, L. (eds.), New Light on Old Glass (London), 242–53. Cormack, R. 2013b. ‘Unity out of Diversity? The Making of a Modern Christian Monument in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, in Swenson, A. and Mandler, P. (eds.), From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire c.1800–1940 (Oxford), 63–90. Curzon, R. 1865. Visits to Monasteries in the Levant (London).

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Didron, M. 1845. ‘Διονύσιος, ο εκ Φουρνά (ca. 1670–ca. 1745)’, in Manuel d’iconographie chrétienne, grecque et latine / avec une introduction et des notes par M. Didron; traduit du manuscrit byzantin, le guide de la peinture par Paul Durand (Paris). George, W.S. 1913. The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople (Oxford). Hetherington, P. 1974. The ‘Painter’s Manual’ of Dionysius of Fourna (London). Hobhouse, J.C. 1813. A Journey through Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in European Asia to Constantinople in the Years 1809 and 1810 (London). Kitromilides, P.M. 2013. Enlightenment and Revolution. The Making of Modern Greece (Cambridge, MA). Lethaby, W.R. and Swainson, H. 1894. The Church of Sancta Sophia. A Study of Byzantine Building (London). Millet, G. 1899. Le Monastère de Daphni: histoire, architecture, mosaiques (Paris). Nelson, R.S. 2004. Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950. Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago). Noakes, V. (ed.) 1988. Edward Lear Selected Letters (Oxford). Pausanias. 1918. Description of Greece, trans. Jones, W.H.S. and Ormerod, H.A. (Cambridge, MA). Schultz, R.W. and Barnsley, S.H. 1901. The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris in Phocis (London). Spencer, T. 1954. Fair Greece Sad Relic (London). Stikas, E.G. 1970. Report on the Works Done in the Monastery of Hosios Lukas in Phocis (Athens) (in Greek). Stuart, J. and Revett, N. 1762. The Antiquities of Athens and other Monuments of Greece, vol. I (London). Uglow, J. 2017. Mr Lear. A Life of Art and Nonsense (London).

3

The Restoration of Byzantine Monuments in NineteenthCentury Greece In Search of the Anti-Restoration Movement’s Impact Eleni-Anna Chlepa

The Society for the Protection for Ancient Buildings, otherwise known as SPAB, was founded in 1877 by British luminaries in the fields of art, literature, and architecture, such as William Morris, Phillip Webb, John Ruskin, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Charles Faulkner, Edward Burne Jones, Thomas Carlyle, Percy Wyndham, and others.1 A few years later, in the 1880s, the Society’s main ideas and principles for the treatment of historical monuments, known as the anti-restoration movement, had also spread to other European countries. The movement expressed opposition to the neo-Gothic style restoration of hundreds of churches in Britain as well as a reaction to the drastic reconstructions of historic monuments taking place in France. The art historian Boisserée brothers were the first to revisit Byzantine art and architecture2 and, after them, John Ruskin himself, who had studied and lauded the glorious architecture and decoration of the basilica of St Mark in Venice (eleventh century), which was not only the monument par excellence of Byzantine architecture but also a model of ecclesiastic architecture in Europe from the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1870s Greece, the historian Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos had completed his writings integrating Byzantium into Greek history, promoting a new perception of the Greek nation’s past in the renowned continuum of an Antiquity–Byzantium– Modern Hellenism.3 Byzantium’s growing appeal went along with the ‘Great Idea’ of modern Greece, meaning ‘the spiritual Renaissance that would make Hellenism the leader of the whole East’.4 Byzantium as an integral part of Greek history serves a need for the nation’s continuity across the centuries. The then neglected medieval and, in particular, Byzantine monuments had started to be perceived as historical testimonies documenting the nation’s identity. Their preservation therefore became a necessity.5 Despite the ideological dominance of the Athens Archaeological Society,6 with members in influential governmental positions, and also the uncontested architectural (neo)classicism of new buildings, which extended to church extensions and embellishments, the interest in Byzantine heritage gradually grew during the last two decades of the nineteenth century.7 This interest is more evident in the case DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-4

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of the most prominent ecclesiastic buildings, such as the Katholikon of Daphni and Hosios Loukas Monasteries, which attracted also the attention of European architects working in Greece.8 European cultural transfers on Greece remain powerful throughout the period examined. European architects, such as Christian Hansen and Ernst Ziller, and archaeologists and artists, such as Ludwig Thiersh, changed the perception of Byzantine architecture with their work in studying and surveying these monuments, and, as a result, they contributed to the efforts made for the preservation of Byzantine heritage. The foundation of two new scientific Societies in Athens, the Historical and Ethnographical Society (1882) and, particularly, the Christian Archaeological Society (1884), led by the archaeologist George Lampakis, confirms the changing ideological context.9 The Society’s mission was to collect, study, rescue, and conserve the Christian antiquities of Greece.

Daphni Monastery and the Fame of Saint Mark’s Basilica The history of conservation work carried out on St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (1862, 1875–82), and the activities of the International Committee of SPAB were well known by the end of the nineteenth century. In Venice, from 1877 onwards, conservation interventions on marbles and mosaics of the Basilica were strongly criticised. The Venetian painter Alvaro Piero Zorzi had published an article entitled ‘Osservazioni intorno ai restauri interni ed esterni della Basilica di San Marco con tavole . . .’10 with an introduction written by the renowned John Ruskin, who was in Venice at the time. This article also referred to the conservation of the mosaic decoration in the chapel of St Zeno, inside St Mark’s, where a part of the dome had been demolished after the mosaic’s removal.11 In fact, the repositioning of the mosaics in the chapel was performed in 1883 under the supervision of the architect Pietro Saccardo, who replaced Giovanni Battista Meduna, the engineer who had been responsible for all restoration work on St Mark’s Basilica until then. The aim of the article’s criticism was to prevent the planned interventions on the Basilica’s main façade and the mosaics in the atrium, and, furthermore, it stressed the need for an expert supervising committee for the Basilica, claiming that the existing state services could not handle the intervention’s complexities. After this publication, in 1879, SPAB organised public debates on the issue and drew up a petition (signed by William Gladstone, former prime minister of Great Britain, and Benjamin Disraeli, then prime minister) for the Italian government to withdraw the planned reconstruction of the Basilica’s west front, stressing their opposition to any intervention that would falsify the monument’s authenticity. SPAB also called for the support of artists, archaeologists, and other scholars in the rest of Europe and the USA and continued to file petitions to the Italian government until 1905, with in all about 170 public figures signing.12 A supervising committee and a laboratory for mosaics were indeed set up in 1882.13 A year later, in 1883, the ideas of SPAB and Italian theorists, such as Camillo Boito,14 were summed up at the Fourth Congress of Italian Engineers and Architects, setting down the rules and principles for the treatment and conservation

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of architectural heritage.15 The Congress participants also included representatives from Austria, where the influence of SPAB, but also the neo-Byzantine style in architecture, was strong because of Christian Hansen, Otto Wagner, and Alois Riegl. Since then, St Mark’s Basilica had thus emerged as the emblematic model for conservation work on ecclesiastic monuments throughout Europe.16 In Greece in the 1880s, discussions and interventions on the most important Byzantine monument in Attica, the Katholikon of the Daphni Monastery (dated to the eleventh century), were focused on the consolidation of the collapsing mosaic decoration, which was seriously damaged by earthquakes (Figure 3.1). Restoration work at the Daphni started in 1888 and lasted until 1907.17 Complex interventions included repair work, re-pointing of mortar-joints, consolidation, recoveries of original openings, and, most of all, removal, consolidation, and repositioning of the dome mosaics after the reconstruction of the dome. As I will demonstrate in what follows, the restoration work at Daphni, but also the criticism and protests expressed against the replacement of the dome mostly, reflect the views and theoretical positions of those involved in the work, but also of those criticising it. In July 1885, after the collapse of part of the Pantocrator mosaic from the dome, a committee of the Christian Archaeological Society initiated the first efforts for the conservation of the Katholikon. Despite the Ministry of Education’s pledges,

Figure 3.1 Daphni Monastery, Katholikon, Pantocrator, before conservation work, 1888–92 Source: Lampakis Archive, Historical and Photographic Archives, ©Byzantine and Christian Museum Athens

60 Eleni-Anna Chlepa however, no conservation work was carried out.18 It is important to point out that, in Athens in August of that same year, the Athens Archaeological Society demolished the great church of Megali Panagia,19 located near the Roman Agora inside the ruined building of Hadrian’s Library, to facilitate excavations of the Library area. As archival documents show, a year earlier in 1884 the Greek government searched for expert mosaicists in Palermo, where such conservation work was being carried out on the mosaics of Cappella Palatina.20 The mosaicists were asked to work in Greece for the conservation of mosaics and frescos at important Byzantine monuments, such as the Katholikon of Daphni Monastery in Attica, Hosios Loukas Monastery in Boeotia, Megalon Pylon Monastery in Trikala, Thessaly, and the churches at Mistra in Laconia, Peloponnese.21 The exchange of official letters with the Italian mosaicists, the Bonanno brothers, was continued in 1885 by the archaeologist George Lampakis, first Ephor of Christian Antiquities and founder of the Christian Archaeological Society, who had himself visited Palermo together with the Scottish philhellene and later member of the Christian Archaeological Society, John Crichton-Stuart, Third Marquess of Bute, in July 1884.22 The Bonanno brothers expressed their strong interest and asked for a high rate of pay for permanent cooperation with the Greek State and to move to Greece. They also informed Lampakis about ‘innovative mosaic conservation practices’ that the Italian State had adopted from the experiences gained through the work and criticism at St Mark’s Basilica.23 Ultimately, the cooperation with the Bonanno brothers did not proceed. In 1888, following more destructive earthquakes in Athens, the Greek government sought advice from the Italian Director General for Antiquities Giuseppe Fiorelli (1823–96),24 who had, since 1877, closely followed the developments of the conservation of the mosaics at St Mark’s Basilica in his capacity as Director for Antiquities.25 Fiorelli recommended the artist Carlo Novelli, responsible for the mosaic conservation at Ravenna.26 Following a new round of efforts and contacts with mosaic experts in Ravenna and Venice, Julius Salviati, representing the well-known Salviati Company, was selected for his reliability and experience to carry out the work at Daphni.27 Indeed, in 1890, the Salviati Company sent two experts to Athens to remove the Daphni mosaics.28 The reconstruction of the dome at the Katholikon was carried out in 1891 (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). The demolition of the original dome and its rebuilding in a different shape than the original evoked a storm of protests and strong criticism by the Christian Archaeological Society, led by Lampakis.29 Almost all this criticism reflects modern principles of interventions on monuments, also promoted by SPAB. The replacement of the central dome, in particular, as well as the demolition of the bell tower at the north side of the Katholikon (built later in the sixteenth century) were considered the most dramatic of the interventions.30 The criticism stressed the negative effects of demolishing historic constructions, such as the one on the flat roof-terrace of the church, as well as the re-pointing of mortar-joins and of the repair of plasters applied to decorative

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Figure 3.2 Daphni Monastery, exterior from the north after the reconstruction of the dome, the buttresses and the repair work during 1891–2 Source: Collection chrétienne et byzantine – Photothèque Gabriel Millet, EPHE

Figure 3.3 Daphni Monastery, exterior from the east, after the reconstruction of the dome and the repair work during 1891–2 Source: Lampakis Archive, Historical and Photographic Archives, ©Byzantine and Christian Museum Athens

62 Eleni-Anna Chlepa brickwork elements on the external surfaces. Lampakis also made a case for the preservation of the Gothic portico (exonarthex), which was built later, bringing into the discussion the preservation and conservation of all the historical construction phases of the Katholikon. Finally, he demanded the documentation of all the demolished sections.31 During this time, the Katholikon was the subject of study and documentation by British (1888–90)32 and later French (1892–8) archaeologists and architects.33 Documents found during my archival research record all of the restoration work and those elements of the building34 that were lost during the restoration project at Daphni.35 The demolished dome had been recorded in the measured drawings and photographs taken by the British architects Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Howard Barnsley two years earlier. In November 1889, Schultz and Barnsley made drawings and took photographs of the Daphni Monastery36 when the dome and the bell tower had already been re-tiled.37 It is important to point out that Schultz’s drawings include his own interpretation of the original form of the Monastery’s Katholikon. The south side shows the original arrangement by revealing the west portico with the Ionic column and leaving semi-complete the upper part of the façade, which he did not know about (Figures 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6).38 At present, the connection between Schultz and Lampakis is only evident through a note of thanks included in the 1889–90 Annual Report of the British School at Athens.39 However, the close relationship both scholars had with Lord Bute would support this connection between the two men.40 Nevertheless, in 1890 Schultz left Greece and took his drawings with him to Britain. The intense criticism and debates against the ‘clumsy’ intervention at Daphni carried out by ‘civil servants’, as well as the pressure towards the Minister for Education, then the historian Spyridon Lambros, resulted in the appointment of a special supervising committee, which consisted at this time of archaeologists and historians and not of engineers and architects, as had been the case previously, in order to supervise the dome’s restoration to its original form, but this project was never accomplished. All of the mosaics, however, were repositioned on the reconstructed dome by the Italian mosaicists Francesco Novo and Giuseppe Zambon in 1892–3.41

Restoration Work at the Church of the Dormition of Theotokos at Tegea (1884–8) In May 1890, Schultz and Barnsley carried out measured drawings of the church of the Dormition of Theotokos (tenth century) at Tegea in the central Peloponnese. In his notebook, Schultz included drawings and a report on the church, describing it in exceptional detail (Figures 3.7 and 3.8).42 He recognised that there had been recent restoration works during his recording of the monument. These works, which probably took place between 1884 and 1888, were confirmed recently by comparisons with older drawings by Fauvel of which Schultz was unaware when he was recording the monument.43

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Figure 3.4 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, south elevation, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley

64 Eleni-Anna Chlepa

Figure 3.5 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, north elevation, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 01/01/01/163, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Source: BRF 01/01/01/145, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 3.6 Drawing of Daphni Monastery, section through church looking east, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley

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Figure 3.7 Drawing of Tegea, Church of the Dormition of Theotokos (Palaia Episkopi), south elevation, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 01/01/11/007, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 3.8 Photograph of Tegea, Church of the Dormition of Theotokos, (Palaia Episkopi) exterior from the south, 1890 Source: Episkopi Tegeas, Orlandos Archive, ©Athens Archaeological Society

The restoration work was promoted by a local society (Tegeatikos Syndesmos) and conducted by the famous German architect Ernst Ziller, who later became a Greek national and was the most outstandingly eclectic architect of the nineteenth to early twentieth century in Greece.44 The detailed review and analysis of the interventions at the Dormition church at Tegea and the examination of the choices made by Ziller also reveal that he was influenced by the novel principles for the treatment of monuments promoted by the antirestoration movement. Two main intervention choices made during the restoration work of the Dormition church at Tegea can be detected: firstly, the imitation of the original construction type – pseudo-cloisonné masonry including spolia – on the buildings’ incorporations and adjustments, as applied on the small domes and the openings (windows) at the long sides of the church; secondly, the differentiation of building techniques and materials on the reconstructed parts of the church, the walls, the central dome, and the new windows. It can thus be seen that Ziller tried to apply modern restoration principles to the monument with care, and to differentiate rebuilt from original parts of the building. His own architectural style, however, and his rather limited knowledge of Byzantine architecture hampered his endeavours and affected the ‘honesty’ of the additions he made.

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Besides, Ziller was an architect who, together with the archaeologist Athanasios Roussopoulos, had publicly opposed the restoration of the Parthenon. In his comments on the Parthenon’s restoration, published in 1895, Ziller emphatically expressed the principles of SPAB, denounced any interventions other than those strictly for consolidation purposes, and, in particular, without the dismantling or replacements of blocks, echoing the anti-restoration movement’s position.45 The choices Ziller made in the church of the Dormition at Tegea, such as the dome’s shape, and other architectural features (the gable wall and wall pillars) subsequently influenced his ecclesiastic architecture, as becomes evident in the churches of Faneromeni and Eisodion Theotokou, both at Aigion.46

Lampakis, the Third Marquess of Bute, and His Architect, R. W. Schultz New findings in the (as yet unpublished) Lampakis Family Archive, which recently became accessible, provide evidence of the contributions of Lord Bute and his favourite architect, Schultz, as well as showing Bute’s close friendship with Lampakis, which influenced the discovery, re-appraisal, and dissemination of Byzantine heritage in Greece, Britain, and the rest of Europe.47 Bute’s presence in Greece in the 1880s has already been studied by Ruth Macrides.48 Bute’s journeys around Greece and his activities in Scotland and Britain have made a significant contribution to the research and preservation of Byzantine heritage in Greek lands. His presence and influence in Greek thought were further enhanced through his many Greek friends (mainly historians, parliamentarians, and diplomats, such as Panayiotis Kalogeropoulos, member of Parliament, Demetrios Bikelas, historian of Byzantium, George Lampakis, archaeologist, and Ioannis Gennadios, diplomat in London). In Bute’s correspondence with Lampakis (conducted in French) in the Lampakis Archive, the close relationship between the two men and their families is evident. They share their thoughts, reflections, and concerns about Byzantine architecture but also about political developments in Greece. Lampakis’ publications in British journals, via Bute, also document the interaction of the two men. These archive documents and publications reveal Bute’s special interest in Byzantine architecture and Greek arts and his frequent financing of the Christian Archaeological Society and their excavations, for instance at the church of Hagioi Apostoloi and Hagios Spyridon, both in the area of the ancient Agora in Athens. A letter from Bute addressed to Lampakis dated May 1884 records that when Bute visited the Faneromeni Monastery on the island of Salamina together with Lampakis, he was also accompanied by ‘a Scot architect’,49 Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921), a close collaborator of Bute’s since 1877. In another letter from Naples, dated June 1884, Bute writes that he is studying, in detail, the plan of the Holy Apostles Church,50 located in the area of the Athenian Agora (Figure 3.9). In this letter, Bute shares with Lampakis his thoughts about the church’s architecture; comparing its plan with that of St Costanza in Rome, he notes the possibility of it having initially been a baptistery. In August of the same year, during the same journey, Bute

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Figure 3.9 Drawing of Holy Apostles, Athens, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley

70 Eleni-Anna Chlepa visited the Peloponnese, as has already been documented by Macrides.51 Bute’s interest in Byzantine architecture, in particular around the Athenian Agora, most probably guided Schultz’s own studies of the church of the Holy Apostles and in other Byzantine churches of Athens. While Bute and Lampakis exchanged ideas on Byzantine architecture in 1884, Schultz was training at the office of the innovative architect Richard Norman Shaw and was part of the Art Workers’ Guild. His high level of education and training in the offices of Anderson and Shaw, as well as his creative appropriation and elaboration of the new Arts and Crafts ideas, is recognisable in his own work, including the measured drawings, details, and restored plans that constitute some of the most valuable documentation of Byzantine architecture to date. At the same time, his drawings reflect and highlight, in an indirect way, the theoretical elaborations and innovative approaches of the anti-restoration movement, such as: •

• • •

The presentation of the authenticity of the churches’ architecture through the differentiation of the original sections (for example at Hagioi Theodoroi, Mistra), emphasising the falsification of the authentic form of historical buildings inflicted by restoration work, extensions, or repairs (Figure 3.10). The presentation and highlighting of original material and building techniques or decorative features, and decorative brickwork (for example at Kapnikarea, Athens, and Hosios Loukas, Phocis). The research of morphological-decorative features of Byzantine architecture and of later historical periods (Mistras). The historical building phases (Mistras and Hagioi Apostoloi, Athens), that is, highlighting the importance of the monuments as documents and the recognition of the historical value of all the construction phases (both central positions of SPAB).

Schultz and Barnsley’s study trips to Greece between 1888 and 1890 were funded by Lord Bute, among others. Their exceptional drawings of Byzantine monuments that they brought back to Britain were very influential, particularly in the Greek London community in the 1890s,52 and further contributed to the antirestoration movement’s influence within Greece and the re-appraisal of Byzantine architecture, until then published only by French scholars. Finally, the re-appraisal of Byzantine heritage and its dissemination and appropriation by the Arts and Crafts Movement in England has taken many different forms and dimensions, as other authors in this volume will also show. I would, however, like to highlight two specific examples of new buildings crafted by Schultz for Lord Bute, which were inspired by their time in Greece. Schultz used the Daphni Monastery as a model for the colonnade of the west loggia of Pickenham Hall (Swaffham, Norfolk) in 1902–5, assimilating the elevation of the south portico of the Katholikon at Daphni (Figures 3.11 and 3.12).53 Ten years earlier, in 1892, a new chapel was planned at the theological library of

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Figure 3.10 Drawing of west and east elevations of Hagioi Theodoroi, Mistra, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 01/01/14/068, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 3.11 Drawing of the south elevation of the Katholikon, Daphni Monastery, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 01/01/01/156, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 3.12 Detail from photograph of Pickenham Hall, South Pickenham Norfolk, showing the West Loggia 1902–5, designed by Robert Weir Schultz Source: Pickenham Hall (BB85/03670), Historic England Archive

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St John’s Lodge in London.54 There, Schultz provided plans of a small circular chapel for Bute. The plans imitate early Christian baptisteries, such as that of St John on the island of Kos, which Bute had visited. As a documented source of inspiration, we may also consider the church of Hagioi Apostoloi and, perhaps, a more symbolic reference to Hadrian’s Library and the church of Megali Panagia built within it, given the special interest of Bute in early Christian baptisteries, as documented in his letter of 6 June 1884 to Lampakis.55 In conclusion, I would particularly like to stress that international principles on restoration practices of monuments are discernible and traceable in late nineteenth-century Greece. Besides that, as archival documents show, after 1884 all key actors who participated in discussions, reflections, and restoration work of Byzantine monuments, such as the Christian Archaeological Society led by Lampakis, architects and other archaeologists, civil servants, and politicians, were aware and had direct communication and knowledge of European developments in conservation practices and approaches in medieval and Byzantine architecture. The selective affinities with the ideas of the Arts and Crafts Movement, as well as those of the anti-restoration movement, often reflect the special scientific, artistic, or religious interests of individuals or institutions in Christian art and medieval architecture.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

Stevenson 1877. Chlepa 2011, 20, 28, n. 65. See also the recent english edition, Chlepa 2022. See Dimaras 2006; Kitromilides 1998, 25–33. Politis 1998, 61–73. Chlepa 2011, 16–18 On the history of the Athens Archaeological Society, see Petrakos 1999, 2007. Chlepa 2011, 64–9; Chlepa 2021, 320–329. Millet 1899; Schultz and Barnsley 1901. Chlepa 2011, 62. On the foundation and history of the Christian Archaeological Society and the activity of G. Lampakis, see Gratziou and Lazaridou 2006, 139–256. Robotti 1999, 64. For the detailed description of the work at St Zeno’s chapel, see Dalla Costa 1986, 40–9. See also Chlepa 2014. Ibid., Robotti 1999, 66. Cecchi 2003; see also Robotti 1999, 44. Zucconi 1997. Atti del IV Congresso degli Ingegneri e Architetti Italiani (Rome, 1883), 59–61. Bellini 1991, 159–67. Concerning the history of the restoration of the Katholikon of Daphni, see Chlepa 2011, 78–102; Chlepa 2007, 127–8; Lampakis 1899. Chlepa 2011, 82. Bouras 2006. At the time it was Nikolaos Politis, Director General for Secondary Education, who addressed a letter to his colleague Giuseppe Pitrè, later responsible for the Ethnographic Museum in Palermo, asking for expert mosaicists to work in the conservation of Byzantine monuments in Greece (Lampakis Family Archive). Lampakis Family Archive. Ibid.

The Restoration of Byzantine Monuments 23 24 25 26

27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34

35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

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Ibid. Chlepa 2011, 109, n. 145. Ibid. The Italian artist Carlo Novelli, who was working on the Ravenna mosaics at the time, arrived in Athens in April 1892. He drafted a detailed assessment of the actual state of the mosaics at Daphni and carried out the first repair work of the damaged mosaics (Chlepa 2011, 86). The Salviati Company had worked for a long time at St Mark’s basilica, albeit not always successfully (Chlepa 2011, 87). The selection of the Salviati Company reflects the fame of the celebrated basilica of St Mark within Greece, but indirectly it also reflects the Greeks’ awareness of such developments in Venice. It rather reflects their knowledge of Ruskin’s publications, SPAB’s international activities, and the renowned interventions at the basilica of St Mark and, later, at the Palazzo Ducale. On the Palazzo Ducale restoration work, see Fontana 1986, 40–9. The new dome did not follow the external dimensions of the original dome, while as a reconstruction model, it had to follow an earlier reconstruction, that of the dome of the church Soteira Lycodimou at Athens (Chlepa 2011, 50–1). Lampakis 1889, 1899. It seems that Lampakis was unaware of Schultz’ s drawings of Daphni (see Chlepa 2011, 111, n. 183). Kakissis 2009, 125–44. Chlepa 2011, 93. This chapter is based on research carried out in Athens and Paris in the Lampakis Family Archive, Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive at the British School at Athens (BSA), Directorate of the Management of the National Archive of Monuments, Documentation and Protection of Cultural Goods in Athens and Collection de l’École Pratique des Hautes Études chrétienne et byzantine, Gabriel Millet, in Paris. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the archivists. Many thanks to Amalia G. Kakissis at the BSA for our long and productive collaboration and for calling to my attention drawings and notebooks in the BRF Archive. Chlepa 2011, 78–102. Ottewill 1979, 88–115. BSA BRF Archive, photographs from Daphni Monastery, Attica. Schultz, in his later notes, included information taken from Lampakis’s book on ‘Christian Archaeology of the Daphni Monastery, Athens, 1889,’ see Byzantine Research Fund Archive, Notebook by Robert Weir Schultz, 1889, BRF 3/SCH 12, while in another notebook he had a sketch with the dome’s mosaic numbered, Notebook by Robert Weir Schultz 1889, BRF 3/SCH 9, British School at Athens. BSA Annual Report 1889–90. Stamp 1981. Chlepa 2011, 92–3. Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/SCH 15, British School at Athens. On the restoration work of the church of the Dormition of Theotokos at Tegea, see Chlepa 2011, 69–76. Poulimenos 2010. Mallouchou-Tufano 1998, 146, n. 248. See n. 42. Lampakis Family Archive. Macrides 1992 and her contribution in this volume. Lampakis Family Archive. Schultz, then 24 years old, later carried out (1889–90) many different plans of the church of the Twelve Apostles and its brickwork decoration; all of them are now in the Byzantine Research Fund Archive held at the British School at Athens.

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51 On September 4, having travelled on the ship Speranza, Bute arrived in Athens and stayed at the Hotel d’Angleterre, on Athinas Street. The next day he sailed to the island of Patmos. Between the 1st and the 4th of September, he visited and studied Hadrian’s Library, the Holy Apostles Church again, and the Ancient Agora (Macrides 1992, 6). 52 Greensted 2010. 53 Ottewill 1979, 98–9; Hannah 2013. 54 Ibid., 16–23. 55 Lampakis Family Archive.

References Bellini, A. 1991. ‘Boito tra Viollet-le-Duc e Ruskin?’ in Grimoldi, A. (ed.), Omaggio a Camillo Boito (Milan). Bouras, Ch. 2006. ‘Ἐπανεξέταση τῆς Μεγάλης Παναγίας Ἀθηνῶν’, Δελτίον της Χριστιανικής Aρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 27, 25–34. Cecchi, R. 2003. La basilica di San Marco. La costruzione bizantina del IX secolo. Permanenze e trasformazioni (Venice). Chlepa, E.-A. 2007. ‘Ο διεθνής οίκος ψηφιδωτών Salviati της Βενετίας στο Δαφνί. Η πρώτη συντήρηση των ψηφιδωτών (1890–1893) βάσει των αρχειακών πηγών’, 27° Συμπ.ΧΑΕ, 127–8. Chlepa, Ε.-Α. 2011. Τα βυζαντινά μνημεία στη νεότερη Ελλάδα. Ιδεολογία και πρακτική των αποκαταστάσεων 1833–1939 (Athens). Chlepa, Ε.-Α. 2014. ‘Αναζητώντας την εικόνα του Βυζαντίου: ευρωπαϊκές επιρροές στην αποκατάσταση των βυζαντινών μνημείων στην Ελλάδα, 34ο Συμπόσιο της Χριστιανικής Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας’, Αθήνα 9–11 Μαΐου 2014. Chlepa, E.-A. 2021. “La découverte de l’héritage médiévale. De l’historicisme romantique à l’architecture néo-byzantine”, in J.- L. Martinez (ed.), Paris-Athènes. Naissance de la Grèce Moderne 1675–1919 (exhibition catalogue) (Paris), 320–329. Chlepa, E.-A. 2022. Byzantine Monuments in Modern Greece. Ideology and Practice of Restorations 1833–1939 (Athens). Dalla Costa, M. 1986. ‘Restauro, conservazione e manutenzione: I temi di una polemica al restauro dell’Ottocento nella basilica di San Marco’, Restauro e Città II, no. 3/4, 40–9. Dimaras, K.T. 2006. Κωνσταντίνος Παπαρρηγόπουλος. Η εποχή του – Η ζωή του – Το έργο του (Athens). Fontana, V. 1986. ‘Il Palazzo Ducale di Venezia alla fine dell’ Ottocento’, Restauro e Citta II, no. 3/4, 40–9. Gratziou, O. and Lazaridou, A. 2006. Από τη Χριστιανική Συλλογή στο Βυζαντινό Μουσείο (1884–1930) (exhibition catalogue) (Athens), 139–256. Greensted, M. 2010. The Arts and Crafts Movement: Exchanges Between Greece and Britain (1876–1930) (MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham). Hannah, R. 2013. The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh). Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive: Encounters of Arts and Crafts Architects in Byzantium’, in Llewellyn Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and E. Kalligas (eds.), Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture through the British School at Athens (BSA Studies 17) (London), 125–44. Kitromilides, P.M. 1998. ‘On the Intellectual Content of Greek nationalism: Paparrigopoulos, Byzantium and the Great Idea’, in Ricks, D. and Magdalino, P. (eds.), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity (King’s College London, Centre for Hellenic Studies 4) (London), 25–33. Lampakis, G. 1889. Χριστιανική αρχαιολογία της Μονής Δαφνίου (Athens). Lampakis, G. 1899. Η Μονή Δαφνίου μετά τις επισκευές (Athens). Macrides, R.J. 1992. ‘The Scottish Connection in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies’, St John’s House Papers no. 4 (University of St Andrews), 1–21.

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Mallouchou – Tufano, F. 1998. Η αναστήλωση των αρχαίων μνημείων στη νεώτερη Ελλάδα (1834–1939) (Athens). Millet, G. 1899. Le Monastère de Daphni (Paris). Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History 22, 88–115. Petrakos, V.Ch. 1999. Η Εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία: Οι πρώτες δεκαετίες 1837– 1909 (Athens). Petrakos, V.Ch. 2007. Τα 170 χρόνια της Αρχαιολογικής Εταιρείας 1837–2007 (Athens). Politis, A. 1998. Ρομαντικά χρόνια. Ιδεολογίες και νοοτροπίες στην Ελλάδα του 1830–1880 (Athens). Poulimenos, G.A. 2010. ‘Η ναοδομία του Τσίλλερ και η παρένθεση του νεορομαντισμού’, in Kasimati, M.Z. (ed.), Ερνέστος Τσίλλερ, Αρχιτέκτων [1837–1923] (exhibition catalogue) (Athens), 57–8. Robotti, C. 1999. ‘Il significato del restauro della basilica di San Marco nel panorama inetrnazionale’, in Vio, E. and Lepschy, A. (eds.), Scienza e tecnica del restauro della basilica di San Marco (Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Venezia, 16–19 maggio 1995), vol. I (Venice), 41–77. Schultz, R.W. and Barnsley, S.H. 1901. The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependent Monastery of Saint Nicolas in the Fields, Near Skripou, in Boeotia (London). Stamp, G. 1981. Robert Weir Schultz, Architect, and his Work for the Marquesses of Bute: An Essay (Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute). Stevenson, J.J. 1877. ‘Architectural Restoration: Its Principles and Practice’, RIBA Transactions 1876–7, 219–35. Zucconi, G. 1997. L’invenzione del passato. Camillo Boito e l’architettura neomedievale 1855–1890 (Venice).

Pioneers and Patronage

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‘What I Want Is to Locate My Dome’ The Byzantinism of the Third Marquess of Bute* †Ruth Macrides John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute, heir to a giant industrial fortune, scholar, mystic, multi-millionaire, High Tory, philanthropist, compulsive builder, archaeologist, herald, linguist, theologian, historian, liturgiologist, astrologer, philologist, ethnologist, traveller, Celticist, psychical researcher, convert to Roman Catholicism, landlord of 117,000 acres, inheritor of thirteen titles, owner of half a dozen major seats, sponsor to some sixty building projects, patron of a dozen architects.

It is with this dizzyingly varied and wide-ranging characterisation that J. Mordaunt Crook introduces the Third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900) in his book on the architect William Burges.1 Indeed, so many are the interests, pursuits, and accomplishments of the Third Marquess, who died at the age of 53, that his Byzantinism has passed by his most recent biographer without remark.2 Byzantium in all forms of the word is missing from the index of the book. However, Greece and the Greek Orthodox church and the names of Greek friends and acquaintances can be found there. These are the keys to Bute’s Byzantinism. How and when his interest in things Byzantine originated and how he expressed and pursued them are the subjects of this study. As students of Byzantium know from experience, it is not self-evident that someone who is interested in the Middle Ages, as Bute was, will be interested in Byzantium. Bute was certainly deeply attached to the Middle Ages. The hero of Disraeli’s novel Lothair exclaimed, ‘I wish I had been born in the middle ages’. Meeting the young marquess was ‘like reading Lothair in the original’.3 To say that most of Bute’s pursuits stemmed from his relationship to the medieval past would not be an exaggeration. His conversion to Roman Catholicism,4 at the age of 21, was also a product of his medievalism,5 which he expressed through his attention to the sights and sounds of ritual, through his translation of the Roman Breviary, in two volumes,6 and foremost through his buildings, the many castles he restored and recreated and the chapels he built.7 In particular, it was the thirteenth century to which Bute was devoted. He expressed his preference in the following way: To me it is unaccustomed to find the Renaissance treated as a benefit. The more general view with us is to regard it as a Decadence, and the XIIIth Cent. DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-6

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Bute’s interest in the Middle Ages is the key to his scholarly work, which ranges from hagiography to heraldry, archaeology to the ancient language of Tenerife.9 But his medievalism also found a visual expression in his restorations and building projects. Both he and the architects with whom he worked had an on-the-spot knowledge of medieval buildings. For Bute and his architects, archaeology went hand in hand with architecture. This can be seen from the way the same men both built anew, basing their work on older models, and also restored the old and recreated it. William Burges’s report on the ruined Rothesay Castle on the Isle of Bute formed the basis for the later restoration, carried out in red sandstone to distinguish old from new.10 At Castell Coch outside Cardiff, he turned a thirteenth-century ruin, a heap of rubble, into a dream castle residence for Bute. He followed the original ground plan but recreated the upper portions, the round towers capped with steep conical roofs, justifying his conjectures by reference to medieval manuscript illuminations.11 For the rebuilding of the family home, Mount Stuart, on the Isle of Bute, after a fire in 1877 destroyed the central block, Bute employed Robert Rowand Anderson, whom he dispatched to Aachen to study the railing surrounding the tomb of Charlemagne. Anderson recreated it in the Great Hall,12 the centrepiece of the new building. One of the three chapels at Mount Stuart, in white Carrara marble, was modelled on the cathedral at Zaragoza, built by Benedict XIII,13 whose papal bull confirmed the foundation charter of the University of St Andrews where Bute was Rector between 1892 and 1898.14 At the House of Falkland in Fife, Bute had a Corpus Christi procession painted in his bedroom. This summer feast day, introduced in the mid-thirteenth century, was a celebration of the Eucharist with a procession.15 A wide frieze around the bedroom represents the assembly of candleholding clergy and other notables, children strewing the path with rose petals and Bute himself in a red gown (Figure 4.1). Bute’s buildings in Scotland and Wales give ample evidence of his archaeological approach and close involvement with the Gothic, with buildings and subjects from medieval France, Italy, and Spain. His medievalism, expressed in his building activities, was very much a product of the times in which he lived. Given this deep attachment to the medieval West, expressed through his liturgical, theological, and archaeological studies and even in his design for his gown as Rector (1892–5; 1895–8) at the University of St Andrews – modelled on a Benedictine habit16 – (Figure 4.2), one can wonder how it came about that Bute opened his eyes to the medieval East, to the Greek language, Byzantine churches, and archaeology. At first the story is the familiar one of the young man on the Grand Tour who is attached to the ancient world, its language, and its physical remains. For such travellers, Byzantium was a poor second best.17 What is more, for a Catholic, Byzantium was synonymous with the schismatic Orthodox church. At the age of 19, on his Grand Tour in 1866, before his conversion at 21, Bute saw the sites in Istanbul. He first encountered Greek Orthodox worship there in the cathedral in Pera. The

Source: ©Falkland Centre for Stewardship

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Figure 4.1 Photograph of Corpus Christi procession frieze, House of Falkland

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Figure 4.2 Lord Bute in Rector’s gown Source: Private collection; Author’s photo

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 85 experience was decidedly disappointing. In his travel journal he described the service so: It lasted till 9.30 or so, and was perhaps the most disagreeable function I ever assisted at. The church was crammed with people, in a state of restlessness and irreverence apparently peculiar to Photians. . . . In my opinion the function was almost as much spoiled as slurring, drawling, irreverence, bad music, and bad taste could spoil it. . . . After breakfast I went and heard High Mass sung in the conventual church of the Franciscans – a very different thing to the Photian Cathedral.18 On the same voyage, he expressed a negative view of icon veneration: ‘Pictures exposed to receive an exaggerated homage, unknown and undreamt of in the West’.19 If his attitude to the Orthodox church is not surprising, his feeling for ancient sites and Greek landscape was also to be expected of one educated in the classics. In 1877, on what appears to be his first visit to Athens, he sent to his wife Gwendolyn a description that approaches ecstasy: We have been all day looking at the antiquities – the temple of Zeus Olympios and the theatre of Dionysus in the morning, the Theseum, the Pnyx and the Acropolis in the afternoon. Set in the midst of a lovely landscape, canonized, beatified, transfigured, vivified by the most exquisite poetry and history, they quite exceed anything at Rome. It is something like the difference between the best opera, and the conversations in a dialogue-book. The pure Greek art is totally by itself, and I shall have to go again more than once before I can fix what it is first, and then try to conceive (which I suppose cannot be done) what it must have been. It is a dream of intellectual sensuality.20 One might conclude from this account of a man of 30 that, like so many other travellers to Greece, he had no time for anything after the classical period, be it the language, history, monuments, or people. Yet, Bute’s involvement with Greece was total. He did not stop with Antiquity; he did not stop with the Middle Ages. He saw ancient, medieval, and modern Greek history and language as an integral whole. It is difficult to determine when his attitude changed, but already on the same journey of 1877 in which he described the antiquities as ‘a dream of intellectual sensuality’ he talks of visiting ‘some very quaint small old churches in the small new town’ that Athens was. He also began to express a less harsh judgement of the Orthodox church: ‘On the whole the state of the schismatic church is a favourable contrast to much one sees at Nice’.21 He had left his wife in Nice, going by steamer for his first visit to the Greek mainland. Although, then, the 1877 visit to Greece shows signs of a change in attitude and approach, it is in the last 20 years of his life, from the 1880s until his death in 1900, that Bute’s interest in, and attachment to, Byzantium, contemporary Greece, and Greeks is best documented and most marked. It is in these years that Bute studied Byzantine archaeological remains, took lessons in modern Greek, published essays on Byzantium, and ‘built Byzantine’.

86 Ruth Macrides In 1884, in a long visit of many months to Greece, documented by daily letters to his wife, Bute travelled around the Peloponnese, Zakynthos, and Patmos. Everywhere he studied classical and Byzantine remains. This he had done before but not to the same extent and not in the company of Greeks. On this trip,22 he had in his travelling party the Director of the Library of the Greek Parliament, Panagiotes Kalogeropoulos (1853–1932),23 whom Bute called K in his letters. With him he discussed Greek politics and the church. Kalogeropoulos also gave Greek lessons to Bute on this journey.24 They had much in common: Kalogeropoulos, who held a doctorate in philosophy, published essays on a wide variety of subjects, including Byzantine history and spiritualism, another of Bute’s interests.25 Bute’s other travelling companions were the two Gs, as Bute referred to them in his correspondence,26 both converts to Catholicism, Charles Tindal Gatty (1851–1928), an antiquarian and curator at the Liverpool Museum who then served Bute as secretary, and Hartwell de la Garde Grissell (1839–1907), papal chamberlain and founder of the Oxford University Newman Society.27 In his letters, Bute called the latter the Apostolic Legate, ‘AL’, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as Grissell was a layman; in the same fashion, he referred to Gatty and Grissell as ‘padres’.28 Bute admired Grissell’s knowledge of the popes and especially ‘their heraldry’ and hoped to learn from him,29 but more often than not he was exasperated by his behaviour. With Kalogeropoulos, Bute enjoyed his ‘philosophical’ conversations,30 sometimes also his anti-clerical comments. On Kalogeropoulos’ anti-clericalism, Bute remarked in a letter to his wife, K is very amusing. I hope I shan’t become an anti-clerical, though I’m sure the behaviour of the Padres is enough to produce the result. K says there’s no such thing as anti-clericalism in Greece, because the Padres being married brings religion home and don’t create a separate anti-social caste.31 The ‘Apostolic Legate’caused a certain amount of trouble as a travelling companion. He was convinced they would become the victims of brigands, as ‘none having been heard of for so many years shows that it’s time for them to crop up again’. He caused annoyance also by taking ‘a bit of stone from Olympia’, which he refused to return: ‘he just stole and then got the inspector to give him a piece of the black (blue) marble square on which the chryselephantine statue stood’.32 On Patmos, the AL who has turned out to have armed himself with photographs of the Pope, blessed Rosaries, etc. etc. to have determined to make use of the fact of my having invited him to come here to say all the offensive things that he can about Photianism, schism and so on. I don’t think it’s fair on me.33 On this journey, Bute’s letters to Lady Bute give ample evidence of his interest in contemporary Greece. At Patras, he mentions special prayers: At Benediction there were prayers for fine weather, as they are in terror about their currants, from the threatening thunder-storms. The currants seem to be

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 87 drying in beds on the ground all over the country, and the colour of these beds of drying black grapes is the most marvellous deep dead purple I think I have ever seen, especially when it is set off by the marvellous living green of the vines close to or through which one sees it.34 On Zakynthos, Kalogeropoulos’ place of birth, Bute remarked, It seems the Greeks of the Ionian islands were all Catholics till the French, at the end of the last century or the beginning of this, put down the Venetian Republic when they joined the schism, at first nominally, to escape the revolting French persecution of Catholicism. Now, No-Popery is in full bloom.35 Concerning Zakynthos, he also commented how the island is celebrated for its flowers, used to make cosmetics and scents, and the Zakynthians for their good manners: ‘(they) are certainly very civil. Even the dogs don’t fly at you’.36 At Gythion, he remarked, ‘the fashion of separating the women from the men in a gallery, seems to prevail in all these new provincial churches. The gallery is rather the best place of the two’.37 At Nauplion, the executioner of Greece and his guillotine are kept on a small fortified island in the harbour. He is a murderer himself, whose life has been spared on condition etc. They say there have been 5 or 6 executions this year.38 These and many other observations testify to Bute’s interest in all aspects of life in Greece. The Greece of this visit was also full of reminders of Byzantium for Bute. On Turkish Patmos, Bute noticed how the church kept the dream of the Byzantine Revival alive. We went yesterday afternoon to see the church of the Apocalypse . . . the priest and deacon . . . sung a short office in which they prayed for us by name and for the Queen. At the beginning I noticed, when they had prayed for the ecclesiastical authorities, that they prayed for the Emperor, but made a pause after the title where his name should have come, if there had been any Emperor to pray for.39 Another reminder of Byzantium came in the Peloponnese, at Mistra, on the south wall of the narthex of the church of the Pantanassa, where Bute took note of a ‘remarkable full-length portrait of Constantine XIII [XI]’, the last emperor of Byzantium. ‘The features were striking and resemble his medals. A lamp burned before it’.40 It was not until later in the century that Gabriel Millet published the inscription that identifies the subject of the portrait as a local grandee of the fifteenth century, Manuel Laskaris Chatzikes.41 A lamp burned before his full-length portrait because it was a funerary portrait (Figure 4.3). Bute was presumably misled by the name Constantine Palaiologos that may have been visible to him in the inscription below the figure. Chatzikes is called the ‘doulos of the despot Constantine Palaiologos’. But the main reason for Bute’s misidentification is the distinctive hat

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Figure 4.3 Manuel Laskaris Chatzikes, Pantanassa narthex, Mistra Source: ©The Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports (v. 3028/2002); the church of the Pantanassa in the archaeological site of Mistra is under the responsibility of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Laconia, Ministry of Culture and Sports, and the Archaeological Resources Fund

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 89 in which Manuel Chatzikes is portrayed. The brother of Constantine XI, John VIII, is shown wearing the same kind of hat on the medals that Pisanello cast; the latter had observed John VIII in person at the time of the council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–9), convened to discuss the union of the churches (Figure 4.4).42 John is shown in profile on the obverse and wearing the skiadion, headgear that emperors and members of their court alike wore.43 George IV (1820–30) had donated the Pisanello medal in 1825 to the British Museum.44 Bute may have seen it there, but he remembered the emperor on the medal as Constantine and not John VIII. Greece in 1884 was an independent nation barely 50 years old, in the process of creating an identity for itself. The Greek Middle Ages, Byzantium, had been passed over initially, while the classical ancestry of modern Greece was stressed, held to be the basis of European civilisation by western Europeans educated in the classics. By the 1880s and the time of Bute’s involvement with Greece, Greek intellectuals, as well as foreign scholars, were presenting Byzantium as a link between ancient and modern and were demonstrating continuity in historical and archaeological studies, as well as in editions of Byzantine texts.45 On Bute’s extended stay in Greece in 1884, he met also with other Greeks who had interests in Byzantine archaeology, history, and literature. In many of his letters to Lady Bute, he describes meetings with George Lampakis (1854–1914), who had studied theology in Athens and had recently returned from Germany, where he had obtained a doctorate with a dissertation on the subject of the Christian antiquities of Attica.46 Bute explored Byzantine churches in Athens with Lampakis, who was a passionate advocate for their preservation. Soon after returning to Athens from Germany in 1883, Lampakis published an article in the Greek newspaper Aion on ‘the state of our Christian antiquities’, in which he spoke out against the defacement, disrepair, and destruction of the Byzantine monuments. He remarked that the mosaics at Daphni, outside of Athens, although of a quality

Figure 4.4 Pisello medal of John VIII Palaiologos Source: ©Trustees of the British Museum

90 Ruth Macrides surpassing those of St Mark’s in Venice, were not protected or appreciated, while the Venetians collected money from visitors to their monument. The paintings of St Eleftherios, or the Little Metropolis, which had been recorded by a Greek artist recently, were on a par with those of Duccio, but no one knew of them. Lampakis concluded his article with a plea for the creation of a museum of Christian art.47 Bute’s friendship and collaboration with Lampakis are documented by a series of letters written between 1884 and 1890.48 Bute wrote to Lampakis in French, although he states in one letter that he had wanted to reply in Greek but hesitated out of lack of confidence.49 The letters show collaboration of the two men in the study of monuments and in their publication. Bute also gave financial support to Lampakis’s archaeological work and to the newly established Christian Archaeological Society (XAE), becoming a founding member. Lampakis was its first General Secretary.50 In Athens, Bute studied Byzantine churches in the company of Lampakis. In his letters, Bute mentions specifically churches in the agora and the ‘Stoa of Hadrian’, the name by which Hadrian’s Library was then known. Excavations were about to begin in the Stoa of Hadrian, which had been used as a market place since Turkish times and had suffered a number of fires because of the crowded wooden structures within it. Nearby, in the agora, the Church of the Twelve Apostles, in particular, interested Bute. He wrote to Lampakis later from his yacht to say that together with the ‘Scottish architect Anderson’, he was studying the plan of the church, which was causing them difficulties in understanding it precisely.51 Bute suggested that it could have been a baptistery and not a church. He remembered that the woman who had shown him around the church spoke of a subterranean crypt full of water.52 He wrote to Lady Bute: There seems a general tendency to accept my idea that the building was not a church but a Baptistery, and excavations are to be begun under the pavement, to find the font. It seems there is water under it, a spring (?) in the neighbourhood is said by tradition to come from it and the water is looked on as blessed, and one of the oldest inhabitants remembers having it said that the antient Athenians (before the Christian era) were christened in that church!!!53 In August 1884, Bute sent Lampakis ‘1000 francs for expenses which the excavations at the Church of the Twelve Apostles will cost’.54 It is not known what Lampakis’s excavations revealed or, indeed, if they ever took place. In the 1950s, the ‘disfiguring extension’ that concealed the west end was demolished. Archaeological investigations inside the building finally revealed the original plan. The subterranean area full of water was not a baptistery, as Bute had surmised, but rather an ancient nymphaion on whose ruins the church had been built.55 Before returning to England, Bute made other contributions to Athens, modern and Byzantine. He gave money to a foundling hospital to feed the babies, contributed £500 in subscription to the British School of Archaeology at Athens,56 and gave seven bronze statues, copies of ancient statues in the museum at Naples, to the city of Athens to be displayed out of doors. He suggested the statues be instated at Omonoia, which ‘used to look a little bare’, but they languished for two years in a customs depot until they saw the light of day.57 Today, six of the statues adorn Syntagma (Constitution) Square (Figure 4.5).58

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Figure 4.5 Bronze statue of boy in Syntagma square given to the city of Athens, Greece, by Lord Bute Source: Author’s photo

92 Ruth Macrides Upon his return to Britain, Bute wrote ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’, based on his investigations with Lampakis. In it, he called for a proper study of the few churches that still remained after King Otto’s 1836 decree ‘placed at the disposal of the Ministry of Public Worship every ruined church in Greece, however important historically or however precious artistically, as a mine for the building of new places of worship, the new University of Athens, etc.’ Lampakis had made a list for him. In Athens, 89 churches had been destroyed, 43 preserved, and 8 were in ruins.59 By the time Bute’s article appeared in the Scottish Review the following year, 1885,60 some of the churches he had described that were in the Stoa of Hadrian, in particular the Megale Panagia, had been badly damaged in a fire.61 In Athens, he had commissioned the Swiss artist Emile Gilliéron (1850–1924) to make watercolour copies of the paintings in the dome of the Megale Panagia. The artist made his name working for Heinrich Schliemann,62 and later with Arthur Evans at Knossos. Bute had also engaged Gilliéron to make watercolour drawings of the Parthenon wall paintings. In an article of 1897 on Byzantine art, Robert Weir Schultz described the wall paintings: A few faded remains of the paintings still exist on the walls of the opisthodomos of the temple, which had become the narthex of the Christian church. These consist of rows of nimbused figures of saints. They have been painted directly on the marble walls, which had been prepared beforehand with a transparent film. On this the figures have been outlined with what seems to have been a broad red line, and only the draperies and other accessories show remains of strong colouring. The whole has even now a very transparent effect.63 While he was in Athens, Bute met with Gilliéron several times, and in the late summer of 1884 he collected ‘the beautiful watercolours’.64 In a letter to Lampakis in 1886, he stated that the Society of Antiquaries in London was going to ask him to lend ‘the watercolours in order to make a careful study, in the light of our article on the monuments of Christian Athens’.65 A Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Nathaniel Hubert John Westlake (1833–1921), in a paper delivered in 1887 and published in Archaeologia in 1888, confirmed that Bute had lent the paintings and that because of the fire in the Stoa, ‘the drawings have . . . acquired accidentally much art-historic value, as they are probably the only trustworthy records of the work’.66 Westlake was, at that time, head of a firm of stained glass manufacturers. He was an artist who studied medieval mural painting and published several volumes on the subject.67 In his lecture to the Fellows of the Society that accompanied the exhibition of the watercolours of the Parthenon and the Megale Panagia lent by Bute, he summarised Bute’s comments in ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’ but also described the wall paintings and attempted to date them by comparison with frescoes in western Europe. His publication in Archaeologia contains collotype reproductions of the watercolours of Gilliéron. They are the only record of the paintings. Both sets of watercolours have disappeared.68

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 93 Lampakis enquired eagerly of Bute as to how his article on the churches of Athens had been received in Britain. Bute replied, ‘people are so ignorant in these countries on all the subjects there that I find we have, you and I (to use the scriptural phrase) thrown our precious pearls before swine’.69 Lampakis had sent Bute material with a view to publication: a list of churches in Athens, inscriptions from Euboia, and a communication on the Megale Panagia, all of which Bute had sent to the Society of Antiquaries in London. His letters to Lampakis make reference to the long delay at that end and Bute’s reminders. Finally, in 1886, he wrote that he had received a reply from Mr Freshfield,70 whom the Antiquaries consulted on questions concerning ‘Greek Christian things’ , about the material Bute sent him. There had been a long delay because of illness, travel, and the ‘rien faire’ of Freshfield, who finally wrote Bute ‘a not very polite letter’ in which he let it be known that he does not want the material sent him. Bute was ‘very angry’.71 In a letter to another Greek friend, he commented on ‘the ignorance and opposition of one Freshfield who has been posing as the Byzantine archaeologist and does not seem to relish the idea of being eclipsed by a real one’.72 Bute published the inscriptions of Euboia in the 1887 issue of the Scottish Review.73 A third Greek friend, whom Bute met in the 1880s, one who introduced Bute to historical and literary developments in contemporary Greece, was Demetrios Bikelas (1835–1908). It was with Bikelas that Bute had the longest lasting and most intense friendship. Bikelas had lived and worked in London as a merchant; later, in Paris, he wrote short stories, a novel, and essays. He is best known in Greece for his promotion of the modern Olympic Games that took place in Athens in 1896. He also founded the ‘Society for the Distribution of Useful Books’.74 His name first appears in Bute’s correspondence with reference to his novel, Loukes Laras, published in 1879. Immensely successful, it was translated into 12 languages.75 Bute was reading it out loud in Athens in 1884 as part of his Greek lesson with Kalogeropoulos.76 Bute’s long friendship with Bikelas had several consequences for Bute’s Byzantinism. He became the translator, from French into English, of Bikelas’s essays on Byzantium. In his essays, Bikelas set out to show that Hellenism survived, albeit in a modified form, during the Byzantine period. He argued that Byzantium should be compared not with antiquity but with its contemporaries. Although the rejection of the spoken language was to be regretted, Byzantium had earned the right to the recognition of the modern world by the preservation of Hellenism and the propagation of Christianity. The essays appeared in the Scottish Review and were reprinted in Seven Essays on Christian Greece in 1890.77 Bute’s translations made available to a wider audience the work of Greek scholars striving to put Byzantium on the cultural map of Europe. They promoted in Britain the idea of Byzantium as a vital link in the Greek language and in Greek history. Bikelas regretted that Byzantium had rejected the spoken language in favour of the classicising Greek. His attitude toward the spoken language of the middle ages was in keeping with his own position on the Greek language as a writer. His Loukes Laras was written in a form of Greek which was appropriate to the speech of a merchant such as Loukes. Likewise, Bikelas translated Shakespeare’s plays

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into the 15-syllable verse form used since the twelfth century for works in the vernacular.78 His essays on Byzantium were translated into French and German by Legrand and Wagner, scholars who were themselves editing vernacular Greek texts of the Middle Ages. Wagner had dedicated his collection of Rhodian love songs to ‘his dear friend Demetrios Vikelas’, and when Wagner died at the age of 37, Bikelas had his Trois poèmes grecs du Moyen Age, vernacular texts, published at his own expense.79 Bute, Bikelas’s English translator, was likewise disposed to see Byzantium as a vital link also in the Greek language. He put great emphasis on Greek as a living language, in not only his writing but also his actions: 80 he learned to speak Greek, with the help of Kalogeropoulos, and with the help of Bikelas he sought a young lady to ‘Hellenize the English governess quite as much as to Hellenize Margaret [his daughter]’. A young woman from Athens was employed as a teacher of Greek.81 These acts in support of modern Greek culminated in his establishment of the first lectureship in modern Greek in Britain, at St Andrews (1896–1903).82 In these various ways, through archaeological investigation, publications, financial support of archaeological excavations, and a lectureship, Bute contributed to the study of Byzantium. He promoted medieval Greece also in one other way. In the early 1880s while travelling in the Mediterranean, he began a building project in Scotland: a Byzantine church. Bute wrote to Lady Bute from Italy in 1882 with a sketch plan.83 A few months later he discussed the dedication. I had some idea of having it dedicated to the Eternal Wisdom of God, since it will be the first and possibly the only specimen in Scotland of the style of which the Sophia of Constantinople is the chief type.84 Bute’s reference was to Justinian’s church of Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. As a young man of 19 on his Grand Tour in 1866, he had caught sight of Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, approaching Constantinople on the deck of a paddle steamer: About 3 a.m. we approached Constantinople and I sat up. It was intensely still, the light intense, but grey, the water as smooth as oil, the only sound the thud of the paddle wheels. Ahead was a great veil of silver mist shrouding all the waters and far away rose over this two vast domes with minarets clustering round them, all grey and shadowy, like the domes in a mysterious picture I once saw, with no apparent foundation on earth.85 Domes remained a central concern and interest for Bute after this first and, it seems, only visit to Constantinople. He wrote to Lady Bute, asking her to oversee the building of a church at Troon in Ayrshire and to engage an architect. He wrote, ‘what I want is to locate my dome’.86 The sketch he enclosed shows an inscribed cross-in-square with five domes, a middle Byzantine church which bears no resemblance to the domed basilica that is Hagia Sophia Constantinople (Figure 4.6). Rowand Anderson (1834–1921), who was rebuilding Mount Stuart after the fire of

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Figure 4.6 Lord Bute’s sketch plan of St Sophia, Galston in a letter to Lady Bute, 20 March 1882 Source: BU/21/175/10, ©The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart

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1877, was chosen as the architect of the Troon church. In June 1882, Bute returned the plans for the church to his wife with two sheets of notes. He remarked, These churches are, it is true, almost invariably on the plan of a fat + inscribed in a square as this is, but they become practically oblong as this does by the addition of sanctuaries at one end and porches, etc. at the other . . . I think you had better show this also to Mr Anderson, with my compliments on his success in the Byzantine line. The spire (?) is very pretty and much better adapted to our climate.87 In the end, the church at Troon was not built to Bute’s specifications and plans;88 the project was taken up at Galston, Ayrshire, where the Catholic community was also in need of a church.89 Bute kept to his original plan, both in the architectural form of the church and its dedication. ‘Sophia’ had a personal significance for him, too, as it was his mother’s name.90 Some modifications were introduced. In September 1884, Bute wrote from his yacht in the Bay of Marathon that the Galston church had better be enlarged: the dome, the nave transepts, and the central apse.91 It was not until the spring of 1885 that building began.92 The church opened its doors on Christmas Eve 1886 to a congregation of 400 people.93 St Sophia’s, Galston, the first Byzantine Revival building in Scotland, still serves the Catholic community of around 70 parishioners who are aware that Lord Bute was the patron but know nothing of the background or the significance of the dedication (see Figure 12.1 Carruthers and Green).94 The church was built of brick, as requested by Bute, and as is appropriate to a middle Byzantine church exterior. Anderson substituted a spire for the hemispherical dome, as he had planned earlier for the church at Troon.95 The outside of the building contrasts in a striking manner with the interior and does not prepare the visitor for the effect of the interior, plastered and undecorated, as was Bute’s intention (Figure 4.7).96 The plain white dome and walls contribute to the sense of spaciousness and add to the light. The change to Bute’s original plan, brought about by the need to enlarge the church space without enlarging the building, led to the creation of a domed basilica and not the cross-in-square church Bute had wanted.97 Thus, although Bute’s original sketch plan did not convey ‘the style of which the Sophia of Constantinople is the chief type’, the interior of the church that was built does. Bute’s St Sophia is the closest in spirit to Justinian’s church of all the St Sophias in Britain or anywhere in the world.98 Light streams into the nave from the eight windows at the base of the dome; the whiteness of the walls and the height of the dome contribute to a feeling of vast space and a floating dome. Likewise, the windows on the north and south walls, as in Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, are arranged on a semi-circular wall surface enclosed by an arch, a tympanon (Figure 4.8).99 A local newspaper commented, ‘there is a massive grandeur about the building that is awe-inspiring’.100 Today it seems inconceivable that anyone, much less someone like Bute who was so deeply interested and involved in Byzantine architecture, could think Hagia Sophia in Constantinople to be a cross-in-square church. Yet, he had not visited the church since 1866, when he was 19 years old. Plans were not available, photographs were rare,101 and Lethaby and Swainson’s book was not published until 1894. It is clear

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 97

Figure 4.7 Dome, St Sophia, Galston Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 4.8 Tympanon windows, St Sophia, Galston Source: © Crown Copyright: HES

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 99 from his essay, ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’ (1885), that Bute associated the Byzantine with the dome. He explained that there are ‘two main systems of design upon which such buildings are constructed – the Basilican and the domed or Byzantine’. For him, the plan of the ‘Byzantine church’ ‘consists essentially of a square. Within this square is described a cross with rather short arms’. The Basilica, on the other hand, comprised ‘a nave with an aisle separated from it by pillars, upon one or both sides, and no dome’.102 It seems, therefore, that Bute remembered Hagia Sophia not as a domed basilica but as a cross-in-square church. Ironically, the need to enlarge the church meant that St Sophia’s, Galston became a domed basilica and therefore more like St Sophia in Constantinople than Bute’s original plan would have allowed. What is more, the church at Galston was the creation of an architect who was not ignorant of Byzantine churches. Anderson had travelled with Bute on his yacht in the spring–early summer of 1884. In his ‘Recollections’ of Bute, written years after the latter’s death, he mentions his travels in Greece with Bute and visits to ancient sites. They also visited some churches, as Bute’s correspondence with Lampakis reveals.103 Bute’s St Sophia is the only Byzantine Revival church in Scotland, but in England there was an earlier and a later church dedicated to Holy Wisdom. Neither of these churches resembles the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople. The first was the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Bayswater, built by George Oldrid Scott in 1882 for the London Greek community;104 the second was built in 1891 by Sidney Howard Barnsley, for Edwin Freshfield (1832–1918).105 It was Freshfield at the Society of Antiquaries who had rejected the materials Bute had sent for publication.106 As a scholar with a doctorate in Byzantine law, Freshfield may have considered Bute’s efforts inadequate. The men also had different approaches to the past. Freshfield’s Anglican Church of Holy Wisdom in Lower Kingswood, Surrey, which is ‘related to Hagia Sophia in name only’,107 is decorated with marble on the floor and walls, mosaics in the apse, but also has carved capitals both inside the church and outside; these he had brought back from Istanbul.108 Unlike Freshfield, Bute was not a collector of antiquities. He took away nothing from the sites he visited, as his exasperation with the Apostolic Legate’s behaviour shows.109 In the preface to Schultz and Barnsley’s publication of the monastery church of St Luke in Phokis, which was finally published in 1901 by the British School at Athens, the authors thank the ‘Marquis of Bute’ for his ‘many kind suggestions in connexion with the notes on the Hagiology and other matters’.110 The two men had gone in 1888–90 ‘to make a systematic study of the remains of Byzantine Architecture throughout Greece, and to collect a large amount of material in the shape of measured drawings of buildings, studies of ornament and mosaics, photographs, etc.’111 Bute and Freshfield are among those listed in the preface as having made donations to the British School that enabled the two men to travel.112 Bute’s diary and correspondence reveal that he was in touch with Schultz from 1889 at Mount Stuart, where the two studied drawings of Greek medieval churches,

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and in London at St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, where Bute ‘spent all [his] time with Schultz’.113 Schultz built two chapels for him at St John’s Lodge, one next to the library and another on the grounds of the property. The latter, a half-buried chapel with only its dome exposed above ground, is known today from a photograph (Figure 4.9) and the correspondence of Lady Bute with Schultz after the death of Lord Bute.114 The chapel was demolished in 1916 when the lease on the property came to an end. The half-buried or ‘sunken’ chapel, as Schultz called it,115 has puzzled those who have tried to explain it.116 Yet, in Athens in 1884, during his stay of many months in Greece, Bute had seen and remarked on ‘the domed ruins, half-above-ground’ of the Megale Panagia. He wrote to Lady Bute on 1 September: We went through the bazaar which is completely burnt away. There is a sort of wilderness inside the walls of Hadrian’s Stoa (?) with Lord Elgin’s tower (gutted) standing in the midst, beside the domed ruins half-above-ground, of the united churches of the Megále Panagía and the Taxiarches.117 The following year, in his article on ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’, he again described the Megale Panagia, making reference to the paintings of the dome of the main church that Gilliéron had copied for him in watercolour. Bute remarked that to enter the church one had to descend seven steep steps because of ‘the extraordinary amount of rubbish accumulated on the spot making the floor of the church some fifteen feet below the present level of the ground’.118

Figure 4.9 The Subterranean Chapel, exterior, at St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London Source: CC53/00442, Historic England Archive

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 101 Although in his letter Bute referred to the ‘united churches of the Megale Panagia and the Taxiarches’, in his article he made reference to the ‘main church’ whose dome had such interesting iconography, copied by Gilliéron, and the church ‘to the north side of the main church’, which was at right angles to the main building. This church had a dome that he described with approval: ‘The form of the dome is of great boldness and elegance, with a graceful clerestory pierced by high lancet windows’.119 There can be no doubt that it was this dome that Schultz recreated for Bute on the grounds of St John’s Lodge. He did not, however, depend on Bute’s description or even a sketch. It seems that Schultz used the drawing of André Couchaud published in his book of 1842 (Figure 4.10).120 Couchaud’s

Figure 4.10 The dome of the buried ‘L’Église de la Grande Vierge’ (the Megali Panagia) in Athens Source: From André Couchaud, Choix d’églises bysantines en Grèce (Paris 1842), out of copyright

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Choix d’églises bysantines en Grèce was ‘regularly consulted’ by Schultz.121 Bute may have been wrong about the names of the ‘united churches’: the main one was Hagia Triada, not Taxiarches, but the dome he had Schultz recreate in London was that of the Megale Panagia.122 Couchaud describes the Megale Panagia as a church ‘qui se trouve actuellement enterré, et son dôme qui seul apparait hors de terre, s’élève modestement au milieu du bazar . . . .’123 Schultz’s dome has an octagonal base, tall narrow windows and archevolts that imitate those in Couchaud’s sketch. Bute’s financial and scholarly support of all things relating to the Greece of his day shows that, unlike most travellers to Greece of the nineteenth century, he became involved with ancient, medieval, and modern Greece. The architects who worked for him and with him to create, recreate, or restore were provided with the opportunity to study buildings in situ, giving them a first-hand knowledge of materials, methods, and structures. The functionalist Anderson put a spire on St Sophia, Galston,124 and used reinforced concrete in the dome of the church,125 whereas Schultz, the Arts and Crafts artisan, with a profound knowledge of Byzantine buildings, worked with a historically accurate style, method, and materials. Like Bute, Schultz believed in the continuity of Byzantine art and architecture and recorded post-Byzantine and modern remains in Greece, as well as Byzantine.126 With Schultz, Bute’s Byzantinism found its best expression. Bute had located his dome, this time at St John’s Lodge. The sunken chapel was completed in the year Bute died.

Notes * This paper is based on research in the Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, Rothesay, Isle of Bute, the Lampakis Family Archive, Athens, the Byzantine Museum Historical Archive, Athens, the National Library of Greece, Athens, the St Andrews University Library, Special Collections, and the Historical Archive, Chania, Crete. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the assistance of the archivists: at Mount Stuart, Lynsey Nairn, and the Collection Assistant, Alexandra Healey; Nikolaos Linardatos at the Byzantine Museum, Ioannes Lampakis at the Lampakis Family Archive. Many thanks to Lenia Kouneni for sharing with me her knowledge of Byzantine architecture and her interest in St Sofia’s Galston; to Kostis Kourelis for calling to my attention Couchaud’s drawing. 1 Crook 1981, 253. 2 Hannah 2012. See also the first biography by Hunter Blair 1921; K.D. Reynolds 2014, s.v. Stuart, John Patrick Crichton. 3 Statement attributed to Augustus Hare and cited by Crook 1981, 256; Hunter Blair 1921, vii–viii. 4 Hunter Blair 1921, 39–82. 5 Crook 1981, 256: ‘His conversion was historically based – the product of his medievalism’. 6 John, Marquess of Bute 1879. 7 For the context of Bute’s medievalism, see Crook 1981, 253–92; Alexander 2007. 8 Letter to Dimitrios Bikelas, 9 September 1886, National Library, Athens. 9 These essays are collected in his Essays on Home Subjects and Essays on Foreign Subjects. 10 Crook 1981, 280; Hume 1987, 4–19. 11 Crook 1981, 279–84.

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 103 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Anderson 1920, 243; McKinstry 1991, 78–9, 147; Hannah 2012, 192. Hannah 2012, 349–50. Hannah 2012, 295–319; below for Bute’s ‘Greek’ activities while Rector. Stamp 1981, 24–31, here 28; Rubin 1991, 246–68. Crook 1981, 257; 396 note 47 cites Bute’s letter to Lady Bute of 24 November 1893: ‘went to meeting wearing hood; students assembled to see me pass, cheered and didn’t laugh – so I suppose it was impressive and not grotesque’. Kourelis 2004, 42–3. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, Journal (1866): Sunday 29 July, pp. 154, 166, 167. Passage paraphrased by Hunter Blair 1921, 37–8; see also Hannah 2012, 61. Cited by Hunter Blair 1921, 37, from Bute’s Travel Journal, without indication of date or page. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/139/3: undated letter to Lady Bute. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/139/4: letter to Lady Bute, 24 February 1877. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194 (1884) August 5, 10, 17, 22; September 7. The Greek Press announced Bute’s presence in Greece, his travelling companions, and his itinerary. See Aion 3 (07/08/84). His return to Scotland was also announced, as well as his gift of 500 francs to clean some small neglected Byzantine churches that had ‘important remains of Byzantine painting’. Paliggenesia 2 (08.05.1884). Director of the Library of Parliament (Bibliotheke tes Boules) (1875–1932): Μεγάλη Ελληνική Εγκυκλοπαίδεια 13 (Athens, 1930), 594; Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/194: July 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/194 (1884), 3, 4, 6 October. Bibliotheke tes Boules ton Hellenon, 20–1; Konomos 1965, 9–10; Passas 1957, 220; Hannah 2012, 309–12, 323–6, 342, 344–8, 351. Hannah 2012, 180, 182–3, 390, note 124. Hunter Blair 1921, 64. Hannah 2012, 180, 182–3, considers the AL to be a third person accompanying Bute, in addition to the two Gs, but Bute’s letters referring to the AL’s theft of a stone from Olympia and to Grissell’s theft of the same stone indicate that they are one and the same person. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/194 (1994), letters to Lady Bute, 3 July 1884, 5, 20 August 1884, October 1884; letter to Bikelas, National Library, Athens, 28 August 1885. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU 21/194, letter to Lady Bute 13 October 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: 5 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: 7 August 1884. See note 28. Bute was eventually able to retrieve the stone. He sent to Kalogeropoulos ‘some pieces of pavement on which the chryselephantine statue at Olympia stood’: Bute Archive at Mount Stuart 28 August 1885. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: 8 September 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Patras, 15 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Zakynthos, 17 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Zakynthos, 16 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Gythion, 22 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Nauplion, 15/27 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Patmos, 26 August 1884. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Mistra, 26 August 1884. In Bute’s time, the last emperor of Byzantium was known as Constantine XIII. On the numbering of emperors named Constantine, see Foss 2005, 93–102, especially 93–4. Millet 1899, 138–9. Evans 2004, no. 321, pp. 535–6; see also nos. 319–20, pp. 532–4. Macrides et al. 2013, 326–32. Hill 1930, I, 7; Curtis and Tallis 2012, 223, Figure no. 202; date of acquisition quoted in British Museum Online collection, accessed 23 May 2017 www.britishmuseum.

104

45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55 56

57

58 59 60 61

62 63

Ruth Macrides org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1672295&p artId=1&images=true. Bute’s contact at the British Museum, Walter de Gray Birch (1865–1926) (see note 114) may have told him about the medallion, as he did about books on Byzantine architecture. Herzfeld 1982, 1–52; Beaton 1988, 102–4; Christodoulou 2010, 445–61. www.aol.org.gr/sylloges/georgios-lampakis-bio.htm Lampakis 1883. For Lampakis’s contribution to the foundations of Greek medieval archaeology in Greece, see Athanassopoulos 2008, 15–35, here 22. Lampakis Family Archive: ten letters written from Attica, S. Italy, England, and Scotland. Lampakis Family Archive, Bute to Lampakis from Chiswick House, 16 September 1885. Historical Archive of the Byzantine Museum, Athens: letter to Monsieur Aristide Pappudos at the Christian Archaeological Society, Athens, from House of Falkland, 6/18 June 1890, announcing that he has sent £100 to Mr Lampakis, to replace the cheque that went missing. The Greek press also cited Lampakis’s announcement that Lord Bute had given 3000 francs towards the museum of the Society (Nea Ephemeris 6 [14.06.1890]). Lampakis Family Archive, 6 June 1884. Ibid. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: Athens, 1 September 1884. Lampakis Family Archive: Athens 23 August/4 September 1884; Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: letter to Lady Bute from Sunium, 5 September 1884. Frantz 1955–6, 513–20; Frantz 1971, 4: ‘According to an old tradition the church had originally been a baptistery and therefore a tetraconch’; Bouras 2005, 99–108, here at 103–4, 2010, 122–6. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: letter to Lady Bute from Athens, Hôtel d’Angleterre, 4 September 1884. His donation is reported in the ‘Report of Committee and of the First Meeting of Subscribers’ of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, 23. The Marquis of Bute and P. Ralli, Esq. were by far the largest contributors. The donation of 500 English lire toward the founding of the ‘English’ Archaeological School in Athens is reported in Ephemeris 2 (19/10/1884) and in Nea Ephemeris 6 (14/06/1890). Letter of Bute to Lady Bute: Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: 2 October 1884. The Greek newspaper Aion (3, 17.07.1884 and 4, 04/07/1884) refers to seven bronze statues, copies of ancient statues in the museum at Naples. Letters of Bute to Bikelas, National Library, Athens, 16 December 1886, 28 February 1887; 61 November 1887: ‘those unfortunate bronzes are in the open air at last’. Barber 1990, 82. I thank Robin Barber for identifying and photographing the statues at Syntagma. Many are indeed copies of those in the Archaeological Museum of Naples. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: letter to Lady Bute, 1 September 1884. The Scottish Review 6 (1885) July and October: 85–123; repr. in John, Third Marquess of Bute 1901, 113–65. Westlake 1888, 173–4; Bute 1885, repr. 1901, 115–16. Bute, in a footnote (repr. 1901, 134), refers to the fire and ‘the water-colour drawings of the decoration of the dome . . . made by the Swiss artist, M. E. Gilliéron of Athens’. He states that the scaffolding erected for this purpose had contributed to the fire. For a description of the paintings, see Bute 1901, 135–9. Traill 1996, 238–9. Schliemann commissioned him to make full colour reproductions of the paintings at Tiryns in 1884–5. Schultz 1897, 192–9, here at 198. Bute described the iconography of the paintings in ‘Some Christian Monuments’ (1901, 125–9), reprinted from the Scottish Review 6 (1885). Sketches of some of the images are reproduced in Westlake 1888, figs. 28, 29. Kaldellis 2009, 152–4; Ousterhout 2005, 293–329, here 312, 313 Figure 112.

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 105 64 Meetings with Gilliéron: Bute Archive Mount Stuart BU/21/194 (1884): letters of 1 September; 1, 13 October from Athens, Hôtel d’Angleterre; framing of the watercolours: Lampakis Family Archive, 23 August/4 September 1884. 65 Lampakis Family Archive: letter of Bute to Lampakis from Chiswick House, Chiswick 10/22 February 1886. 66 Westlake 1888, 173–88, here 173. 67 Westlake 1902–1905. Westlake 1929, 59–65. For the stained-glass firm, see https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavers,_Barraud_and_Westlake (accessed 18 August 2017). 68 Cutler 1993–4, 171–80. 69 Lampakis Family Archive: Chiswick House, 16 September 1885. 70 On Freshfield, see later in the chapter. 71 Lampakis Family Archive: Mount Stuart, 24 November/6 December 1886. 72 National Library of Greece, letter to Bikelas, 16 December 1886. 73 The Scottish Review 9 (1887), 347–56. Bute contributed 36 articles to the Review, founded in 1882 and purchased by Bute in 1887: Crook 1981, 258; Hannah 2012, 241–2. 74 Oikonomos 1953. 75 Macrides 1992, 8–10. Translated into English in 1881 by J. Gennadius. 76 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute, 2 October 1884 77 The Scottish Review 8 (1886), 258–86; Bikelas 1890, 1–42. Bute was an exacting translator. He took Bikelas to task for supplying only four references to Gibbon (‘they hardly seem to me to be sufficient’) as evidence for Gibbon’s use of ‘Romans’ to label the Byzantines when they were victorious in battle and ‘Greeks’ when they were defeated. National Library Athens, 25 October 1886. 78 Politis 1973, 164–5. 79 See Bikelas’ introduction (x–xv) to Wagner 1881. 80 John, Marquess of Bute 1890, 11–14. Report in Greek newspaper, Akropolis (16/07/1892): Bute, in addressing London members of the British School in Athens, said that he hoped contact with living Greece would contribute to the demise of the ‘ridiculous Erasmian pronunciation’. 81 Letters of Bikelas to Bute concerning the Greek tutor: Bute Archive, Mount Stuart BU/21/327 (1887): 1, 5, 17 May; 2 June; letter of Bute to Bikelas, National Library, Athens (1887): 4, 16, 21 March; 4 May, 4,16 June, 3 July, 15 November. 82 BU/21/371, 18 December 1896: letter of Antonios Jannaris to Bute concerning his first undergraduate class; Alphabetical List of Students 1870–1899, St Andrews University Library, Special Collections. On the establishment of the lectureship, see Macrides 1992, 13–16. 83 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute, 20 March 1882. The sketch is part of his letter. 84 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute 5 June 1882. 85 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, Journal (1866), 21 July. 86 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute, 20 March 1882. It seems that this letter still pertains to the projected church at Troon. On the significance of the dome of Hagia Sophia in early accounts of the church, see Bender 2012, 1–28; of Byzantine domes, Kotoula 2015, 88–90. 87 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute, 18 June 1882; Hannah 2003, 255–68. 88 Hannah 2003. 89 Bute archive at Mount Stuart BU/91/26, no. 17: letter of Father Laverty to Lady Bute, 1 September 1884. 90 Hannah 2003, 258–9. 91 Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/194: letters of 20, 25 September to Lady Bute. 92 Anderson wrote to Bute on 6 April 1885 (Bute Archive at Mount Stuart), seeking his approval of the position of the church on the ground. Work was about to begin. For Anderson’s plans, see Hannah 2003, 261, figs. 2–3.

106 93 94 95 96

97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

Ruth Macrides Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/91/26, no. 208. Personal communication of the vicar, Fr. Ben Lodge, 21 November 2015. McKinstry 1991, 108–9. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/175: letter to Lady Bute, 20 March 1882, 18 June 1882: ‘these buildings depend for effect upon the decoration which there’s no use proceeding with’. A postcard of ‘St Sophia’s Catholic Church, Galston. Sanctuary’ shows that at one time the apse was stencilled. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart. Hannah 2003, 266. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart 91/26 no. 208: letter of the Bishop of Galloway to Bute in which he referred to the church as a ‘Basilica’. Pace Nelson 2004, 242 n. 54. For other Saint Sophias, Nelson, 187–214. The same arrangement of the windows can be seen in Bute’s original sketch. See Figure 4.6. Cited by Hannah 2003, 262 (31 December 1886). The acoustics were also praised in a letter of the organist at Cumnock, John Denham, to Bute: Bute Archive at Mount Stuart BU/21/255, 16 November 1888: ‘I do not know any other building more perfect for sound’. Nelson 2004, 108. John, Third Marquess of Bute 1901, 139–40. Anderson 1921, 244; Lampakis Family Archive, letters of April 23 and June 6 1884. See previously. Nelson 2004, 107–8. Slin 2004, 994. See previously. Nelson 2004, 189: ‘related to Hagia Sophia in name only’. Nelson 2004, 189–90. See previously. Schultz and Barnsley 1901, vi. Ibid., v; Kotoula 2015, 75–101; Kalligas 2000, 23–44. Schultz and Barnsley 1901, v. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, Diary 4 January 1889; BU/21/293 (1891) letter of W. de Gray Birch, British Museum, to Lord Bute congratulating him on having ‘secured’ Schultz; BU/21/304 (1892) letters to Lady Bute from St John’s Lodge: 3, 4 February; BU/21/319 (1893), 14 February: ‘spending all my time with Schultz’; Ottewill 1979, 92. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, Schultz to Lady Bute, 2 August 1901. Ibid. Stamp 1981, 23 and n. 58. Bute Archive at Mount Stuart, BU/21/194. John, Third Marquess of Bute 1901, 134, 135 (reprinted from the Scottish Review VI 1885). John, Marquess of Bute 1901, 134–7 (main church), 138–9 (north church). Couchaud 1842, 13. Kotoula 2015, 87. For the ‘reading list’ of Schultz and Barnsley, see BSA BRF Archive: Corporate Records, Notebooks: SCH 11 (July 1889), SCH 19, BAR 5, BAR 9. I thank Dimitra Kotoula for this information and reference. For the complicated history of this church, see Bouras 2006, 25–34. Bouras did not have access to Bute’s description in ‘Some Christian Monuments’ or to Westlake’s article about the wall paintings. Couchaud 1842, 13. McKinstry 1991, 109, calls it a ‘conical spirelet in the Georgian or Armenian manner’. It is highly unlikely that Anderson had these models in mind. Hannah 2003, 262, 264–5, comments that the technology was in its infancy even 25 years later. The concrete caused structural problems. Kotoula 2015, 84 and note 39.

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Frantz, A. 1955–6. ‘The church of the Holy Apostles at Athens’, Byzantion 24, 513–20. Frantz, A. 1971. The Church of the Holy Apostles (Princeton, NJ). Freshfield, E.H. 1926. A Manual of Roman Law: The Ecloga (Cambridge). Freshfield, E.H. 1927. A Revised Manual of Roman Law Founded Upon the Ecloga of Leo III and Constantine V of Isauria, Ecloga privata aucta (Cambridge). Freshfield, E.H. 1928. A Manual of Eastern Roman Law: The Procheiros Nomos (Cambridge). Freshfield, E.H. 1930. A Manual of Roman Law Compiled in the Fourteenth Century by George Harmenopoulos: On Torts and Crimes, vol. 6 (Cambridge). Hannah, R. 2003. ‘St Sophia’s Church, Galston: “the Vast Space of the Interior”’, Architectural History 46, 255–68. Hannah, R. 2012. The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh). Herzfeld, M. 1982. Ours Once More (Austin, TX). Hill, G.F. 1930. A Corpus of Italian Medals of the Renaissance before Cellini, 2 vols (London). Hume, J.R. 1987. Isle of Bute (Historic Buildings and Monuments) (Edinburgh). Hunter Blair, D. 1921. John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K. T. (London). Kaldellis, A. 2009. The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens (Cambridge). Kalligas, H. 2000. ‘Twin Reflections of a Byzantine City: Monemvasia as Seen by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney H. Barnsley in 1890’, in Cormack, R. and Jeffreys, E. (eds.), Through the Looking Glass. Byzantium through British Eyes (Aldershot), 23–44. Konomos, D. 1965. Οι Ζακυνθινοί στην υπηρεσία της Βιβλιοθήκης της Βουλης (Athens). Kotoula, D. 2015. ‘Arts and Crafts and the ‘Byzantine’: The Greek Connection’, in Betancourt, R. and Taroutina, M. (eds.), Byzantium/Modernism (Leiden and Boston), 75–101. Kourelis, K. 2004. ‘Early Travelers in Greece and the Invention of Medieval Architectural History,’ in Lasansky, D.M. and McLaren, B. (eds.), Architecture and Tourism: Perception, Performance, and Place (Oxford), 37–52. Lampakis, G. 1883. ‘Ἡ κατάστασις τῶν παρ᾽ ἡμῖν Χριστιανικῶν ἀρχαιοτήτων’, Aion 30, no. 9, 83. Macrides, R.J. 1992. ‘The Scottish Connection in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies’, St John’s House Papers, no. 4 (University of St Andrews), 1–21. Macrides, R.J., Munitiz, J.A. and Angelov, D. 2013. Pseudo-Kodinos and the Constantinopolitan Court: Offices and Ceremonies (Farnham and Burlington, VT). McKinstry, S. 1991. Rowand Anderson ‘The Premier Architect of Scotland’ (Edinburgh). Millet, G. 1899. ‘Inscriptions byzantines de Mistra’, Bulletin de Correspondance hellénique 23, 97–156. Nelson, R.S. 2004. Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950 (Chicago and London). Oikonomos, A. 1953. Τρεῖς Ἄνθρωποι, vol. II (Athens). Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History 22, 88–115. Ousterhout, R. 2005. ‘“Bestride the Very Peak of Heaven”: The Parthenon After Antiquity’, in Neils, J. (ed.), The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge), 293–329. Passas, J.D. 1957. Νεώτερον Ἐγκυκλοπαιδικόν Λεξικόν (Athens). Politis, L. 1973. A History of Modern Greek Literature (Oxford). Reynolds, K.D. 2014. ‘Stuart, John Patrick Crichton’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford). Rubin, R. 1991. Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge).

‘What I Want is to Locate My Dome’ 109 Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art’, The Architectural Review I, part I, 192–9; part II, 248–55. Schultz, R.W. and Barnsley, S.H. 1901. The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependant Monastery of St Nicolas in the Fields, Near Skripou, in Boeotia (London). Slin, J. 2004. ‘Freshfield Family’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford), 993–5. Stamp, G. 1981. Robert Weir Schultz, Architect, and his Work for the Marquesses of Bute: An Essay (Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute). Traill, D.A. 1996. Schliemann of Troy. Treasure and Deceit (London). Wagner, W. 1881. Trois poèmes grecs du Moyen Age (Berlin). Westlake, M. 1929. ‘N.H.J. Westlake, FSA’, Journal of the British Society of Master GlassPainters 2, 59–65. Westlake, N.H.J. 1888. ‘On Some Ancient Paintings in Churches of Athens’, Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity 51, second series, no. 1, 173–88. Westlake, N.H.J. 1902–1905. History of design in mural painting from the earliest times to the twelfth century, with an introduction of the art of the pre-Christian period (London).

5

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’; W.R. Lethaby and the Byzantine Revival Julian Holder

‘Sancta Sophia is the most interesting building on the world’s surface’.1 It is with this resonant phrase that two British architects, William Richard Lethaby (1857–1931) and Harold Swainson (1868–94), began the preface to The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building (hereafter Sancta Sophia). Published in 1894, this was not only a work of considerable scholarship for the time but has become one of the key texts of the Byzantine Revival. Accordingly, the book stimulated further research and influenced a body of architecture in England stretching well into the mid-twentieth century and beyond. When first published, it joined a growing body of scholarship on Byzantine architecture and was unusual because it was devoted to one seminal building and not the Byzantine style – an attempt to avoid the appetite for revivalism (Figures 5.1a and 5.1b). The book’s subtitle – ‘a study of Byzantine building’ – was thus crucially important to its authors. It offered not only an understanding of one of the greatest historic monuments of the Byzantine age but also proposed an interpretation of Byzantine architecture seen primarily as concerned with the pragmatics of construction rather than the art of architecture. Such an approach was partly founded on the ideological beliefs of the Arts and Crafts Movement and partly on the analysis of structural systems researched by Auguste Choisy (1841–1909), especially in his L’art de bâtir chez les Byzantins, and the search for a new rational architecture to oppose revivalism (Figure 5.2).2 As a contemporary article argued, there was an idea growing that Byzantine architecture was ‘based on genuine straightforward structural methods, worthy of being carefully integrated and pondered over in these days of false construction and sham ornament’.3 For Lethaby and Swainson, as the rest of their preface made clear, Sancta Sophia was not simply of historic interest but represented a hope, if not a model, for a new contemporary architecture based on these structural methods to demonstrate that ‘Byzantine art still exists’. However, the book was far from being prescriptive. As they argued, ‘it is evident that the style cannot be copied by our attempting to imitate Byzantine builders; only by being ourselves and free, can our work be reasonable, and if reasonable, like theirs universal’.4 Following the ideas of John Ruskin (1819–1900) and his notion of the freedom of medieval craftsmen advanced in The Stones of Venice (1851–3), their book also occupied an important position in the development of these ideas for architecture and its relationship to society.5 DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-7

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Figure 5.1a Sancta Sophia photographed by Robert Weir Schultz to illustrate his seminal 1897 article on ‘Byzantine Art’ in the first issue of The Architectural Review. Source: The Architectural Review, 1, 1897.

Figure 5.1b A sketch of the massing of Sancta Sophia from Harold Swainson’s notebook of 1893. Source: BRF 3/SWA-1, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 5.2 Analytical drawing of Sancta Sophia by Lethaby adapted from Choisy. Source: The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study in Byzantine Building, 1894.

This chapter, based on the central figure of Lethaby, begins by considering this seminal book, then the other publications it spawned through Lethaby’s role on the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund, founded in 1908, and finally the identification of a discrete Byzantine Revival in English architecture which, both wittingly and unwittingly, was indebted to his work.

‘Much Remains to Be Observed at S. Sophia’ It is far from clear how Lethaby’s early interest in Byzantine art and architecture was acquired. In part, it must have been fuelled by the curiosity of his fellow architects, and in part was self-taught, as the incorporation of drawings from objects in the British Museum makes clear. As a specific building study, Sancta Sophia should have been preceded by The Monastery of St Luke of Stiris, in Phocis,6 much of the research for which was already complete in the late 1880s, over a decade before its publication. Written by Lethaby’s friends and former colleagues from the office of Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912) – Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951) and Sidney H. Barnsley (1865–1926) – the handsomely crafted book was based on their surveying work in Italy, Greece, and Turkey. It was the result of Schultz

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 113 having been awarded the Royal Academy’s Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship for Architecture in 1887. On hearing the news concerning the scholarship, Schultz asked Lethaby’s advice on where to travel. As he recalled (based on what Schultz called his ‘profound knowledge of Byzantine Art’), Lethaby suggested Athens.7 Once Schultz and Barnsley returned to England – after three trips over two years – publication of their results was delayed due to lack of funding and, as the authors put it, ‘the very scant intervals of leisure obtained from arduous professional work’.8 Funding was to bedevil the progress of Byzantine Studies during these years. A financial guarantee was eventually secured from Edwin Freshfield (1832–1918), and the St Luke book appeared in 1901, but seven years after Lethaby and Swainson’s, which is, therefore, informed by many of Schultz and Barnsley’s general ideas on the nature of Byzantine architecture.9 Despite its age, Sancta Sophia has maintained a considerable reputation for its place in the historiography of Byzantine Studies and for its role in the history of architecture. In 1941, in a review of a recent book on the building, Kenneth Conant (1894–1984) argued that ‘much has been learned about Byzantine art since 1894, when Lethaby and Swainson published their notable book, Sancta Sophia, to which all students of Hagia Sophia owe much, for parts of it can never be obsolete’.10 Even as late as 1957, David Talbot Rice (1903–72) was still of the opinion that: In no other work, French, German or English, does this superb building receive so sympathetic or so penetrating treatment. Quotations from early writers who described it when it was young are freely drawn on; the elements, Eastern, Western and local, which went to inspire it are carefully analysed and examined: the numerous works of art which adorn it are carefully described.11 Even allowing for potential nationalist sympathies, this was high praise from a scholar of Talbot Rice’s standing. More recently, and in recognition of the dominance of French scholarship at the time, Mark Crinson has argued that ‘it was not until William Lethaby and Henry Swainson’s work on Hagia Sophia (1894) that a painstaking, sympathetic and first-hand analysis of Byzantine architecture . . . appeared from the pen of British writers’.12 Still more recently, Robert Nelson qualified this admiration for what he considers the ‘first scholarly monograph on the church’, arguing that ‘we may find it difficult to appreciate Lethaby and Swainson’s distillation of earlier scholarship and wish for a richer archaeological analysis of the actual building, but it was not written for us’.13 Given that Lethaby and Swainson only spent two weeks in Istanbul studying the building – and in far from ideal circumstances – this enduring reputation is a remarkable achievement. The work they produced therefore provides a demonstration of the ‘profound knowledge of Byzantine Art’ with which Lethaby was credited by Schultz and Barnsley when they set off for Greece in 1887. As we will see, it was to be an admiration shared by other architect members of the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund. Not unsurprisingly, the Sancta Sophia book’s current reputation mirrors that of the mid-1890s, when it also received largely positive reviews. These included

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one by John B. Bury (1861–1927), in the Athenaeum,14 a large two-part review by H.H. Statham, the editor of the professional magazine the Builder,15 and another in the Edinburgh Review.16 Only The Times criticised it as being ‘learned and rather abstruse’.17 Richard Norman Shaw, the most successful and fashionable British architect of the day (and the man who brought Lethaby to London in 1879), is said to have remarked that he preferred a critique in the Quarterly Review written by another of his ex-pupils, Reginald Blomfield (1856–1942), to the original book.18 Of the same generation as Shaw was Philip Webb (1831–1915), friend and collaborator of William Morris (1834–96), both men equally revered by Lethaby. In a letter to the Italian architect Giacomo Boni (1859–1925), Webb called it ‘a reasonable book on the glory of S. Sophia’, seeing in it a recipe for a new type of architecture and particularly recommended it for the challenge it threw down to the ‘false construction and sham ornament’ of contemporary architecture.19 Lethaby was the older and more experienced of the two authors and is known to have been interested in the building for some time. At a memorial event for ‘my oldest and best friend’ at the Art Workers’ Guild in 1932, Schultz recalled that ‘Lethaby had been early attracted by that monument of building, the great church of Sancta Sophia’, a building Schultz wrote of as remaining ‘to the present day the masterpiece of Byzantine Architecture and construction’.20 Similarly, A.R.N. Roberts’s memoir of Lethaby recalled that ‘the great church of Sancta Sophia at Constantinople’ was ‘a goal which had long attracted him’.21 Lethaby’s early interest in Hagia Sophia may well have come from the leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris. Morris’s enthusiasm for the building was fed by his friend, Aglaia Coronio, who obtained photographs of the building in 1878. One of Morris’s early seminal lectures on ‘Gothic Architecture’, first delivered to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1889 and subsequently published by the Kelmscott Press in 1893, spoke of Hagia Sophia as Byzantine art’s ‘greatest work. The style leaps into sudden completeness in this most lovely building’.22 Lethaby, though he later admitted to a greater fondness for Philip Webb, was clearly a disciple of Morris in every sense of the word, in common with most associates of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It was Morris who proposed Lethaby for membership of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) in September 1891, after an introduction by Ernest Gimson. Although principally concerned with Britain, this Society, founded by Morris, Webb, and others in 1877, had already made an international voice for itself by protesting against both the reconstructions of St Mark’s basilica in Venice in 187923 and the damaging structural interventions to San Vitale, Ravenna, in 1880. Where Morris led, others followed. It is important to note that this was not simply an artistic following, but a political one, for which Hagia Sophia, and Byzantine architecture generally, was imbued with political meaning. For Morris, an active socialist (in common with Lethaby and many other members of the Arts and Crafts Movement), Byzantine building construction represented artistic and, therefore, political freedom, and so was also marshalled as an argument in support for Greek independence at this time. As he wrote in his lecture on Gothic architecture, ‘the first expression of this freedom is called Byzantine Art’.24

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 115 Despite this growing interest in what Lethaby and Swainson called ‘the reorientalization of classic art’, for most architects Byzantine art and architecture was still generally seen as uncivilised and therefore unworthy of study – representing a period of little interest between the fall of Rome and the arrival of Gothic.25 These dominant sentiments were well expressed – and countered – by Ruskin when, comparing Byzantine with Gothic, he wrote, ‘I know that they are barbaric in comparison; but there is a power in their barbarism of sterner tone, a power not sophistic, nor penetrative, but embracing and mysterious’.26 As the Gothic Revival was beginning to lose the grip it had held on European architecture, Gothic’s potential origins in Byzantine architecture offered tantalising new ground for architectural exploration, while remaining true to Ruskinian ideals.

W.R. Lethaby in the 1890s: From Architect to Academic Interpretations of Lethaby’s career to date have tended to fall into two main camps, which, if accurate, would also question the seriousness of this interest in Byzantine architecture, preferring to see it as a somewhat youthful exuberance, which he would soon put behind him. Firstly, he has been regarded as a leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement – the inheritor of the work of John Ruskin, William Morris, and Philip Webb. Secondly, he is seen as a ‘pioneer of Modernism’ in his desire to move away from a notion of architecture concerned with ‘the styles’ and put his faith in a modern architecture of the so-called machine age. Lethaby gave up the practice of architecture around 1901 in recognition of the advances of technology and his own unsuitable training. ‘If I were again learning to be a modern architect’, he wrote to his friend Sydney Cockerell in 1907, ‘I’d exchange taste and design and all that stuff and learn engineering, with plenty of mathematics and hard building experience. Hardness, facts, experiment: that should be architecture, not taste’.27 However, Lethaby is an altogether more complex individual than these dominant interpretations suggest, and during the 1890s he began to move away from architecture and towards education and the scholarship for which he is well known. He was born to Bible Christian28 parents in Barnstaple in Devon in 1857 where his father was a local carver and gilder. At the age of 14, he left school to serve his articles under a local architect, Alexander Lauder. This ‘on the job’ form of training was supplemented by attendance at evening classes at the local art school before eventually entering Shaw’s office in London in 1879. Here he met with university-educated men, which put him at a distinct disadvantage, and he spent much of his spare time reading, studying, and visiting the British Museum and the South Kensington Museum, in addition to attending evening classes at the Royal Academy’s Architecture School headed by its influential Master of Architecture, Richard Phene Spiers (1838–1916). Schultz later recalled the Saturday afternoons he and Lethaby spent sketching with others before they went on to Spiers’s house, where ‘we were always sure to meet interesting people’.29 Spiers represented a model for Lethaby, and many others of his generation, yet his role remains insufficiently acknowledged. Trained in France in the rigorous

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Beaux Arts system, he brought a different, wider, perspective to the architectural culture of late nineteenth-century London, Byzantine studies, and the Byzantine Revival. As a member of the Palestine Exploration Fund, he was one of the authors in 1871 of The Recovery of Jerusalem; A Narrative of Exploration and Discovery in the City and the Holy Land.30 In 1904, Lethaby and Schultz established a testimonial party for him, which included publishing a collection of his essays under the title Architecture East and West. This collection ably demonstrated his unusual approach for the time, which gave equal credit to both the classical West and the Byzantine East and the links between them – effectively ‘the re-orientalization of classic art’. The testimonial was bittersweet in recognising that Spiers had been nominated for the RIBA’s Gold medal that year, an accolade that finally went to Choisy. Prior to Sancta Sophia, Lethaby had published two works of single authorship, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (1891) and Leadwork (1893). The latter (published by George Macmillan & Sons) established the series of ‘Handbooks on the Artistic Crafts’, which Lethaby came to edit and which was to include works by leading members of the Arts and Crafts Movement.31 More recent scholarship has been drawn to his first publication, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, and its subtly pervasive influence over the progressive architects of the 1890s and beyond in search of an English Free Style.32 An unusual and penetratingly imaginative study, it contained an altogether different notion of architecture from the mixture of French-inspired structural rationalism and Arts and Crafts-based collaborative building practice sought and promoted through the pages of Sancta Sophia. On his return from Greece in 1890, Schultz recalled that it ‘opened up to us younger men a hitherto undreamt of romance in architecture’.33 Yet, with only a few exceptions, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was not as well received as Sancta Sophia. Although the same compositional technique is evident in Sancta Sophia and many sources, such as Bayet, Labarte, and Texier and Pullen, are common to both works, the difference was in having the linguistic ability of a university-educated coauthor, Swainson, assist him. Despite these different critical receptions, there is nonetheless a clear line of development between Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and Sancta Sophia in the desire to identify a ‘universal’ architecture. In the earlier book, Lethaby was already writing on Byzantine iconography and describes Hagia Sophia as ‘the most splendid church Christendom has ever seen’.34 It seems clear that Lethaby did not entirely abandon his early symbolist theory of architecture in choosing to study Hagia Sophia but rather added a practical dimension to it in following Webb, the writings of Choisy, the Ruskinian philosophy of the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the SPAB, which he later noted had unwittingly become ‘a school of rational builders’.35 Capturing this dichotomy, Bullen has noted that ‘Lethaby responded to Byzantine design as much for its potential for fantasy as for its practical possibilities’.36 The argument here that Lethaby’s symbolist theory continued to exert an influence on him (despite its largely hostile critical reception) is further compounded by a textual comparison of the preface to the two books. Both are concerned not to recommend pastiche and, in the case of Sancta Sophia, as has

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 117 already been noted, its authors were concerned not ‘to imitate Byzantine builders’. Both are also concerned to be ‘universal’, an argument that reappears throughout Sancta Sophia. Essentially, Sancta Sophia is a compendium of newly translated source material allowing an intelligent conjecture on the building’s construction history and fabric. However, fabric analysis proved difficult as access to the building during the authors’ stay in 1893 was denied by the Ottoman authorities. This was probably due to the building being closed to non-Muslims, and as the Palestine Exploration Fund was finding at the same time, obtaining official permits for examination, let alone excavation, was becoming increasingly difficult. Luckily for the authors, also staying in their hotel was an American, Margaret Crosby, whose son was a judge in Alexandria. Possibly using his influence, she gained access for herself and her two daughters, Edith and Grace. Lethaby and Swainson subsequently managed to enter the building dressed as women and wearing full-face veils.37 What Lethaby brought to the project was his ability to analyse fabric and phase its development – ‘the important sphere of Architectural Archaeology’, as Schultz and Barnsley were to term it in the preface to the St Luke book.38 Too often credit for the book is handed to Lethaby as the better known and more prolific of the two authors. Swainson’s early death at the age of 26 in 1894 on his way to Egypt only serves to complicate this opinion. As a jointly written work, the book’s authorship is hard to disentangle – insofar as this is necessary. In the preface, the authors helpfully state that ‘the one of us – by the accident of the alphabet, second named – has done the larger part of the reading and the whole of the translation required’. They continue: ‘The first has undertaken more of the constructive side of the book and the whole of the illustrations’.39 Taken at face value, this would claim the first eight chapters for Swainson, and the final four for Lethaby. However, clearly both worked on attempting to make an accurate measured record of the building under difficult circumstances. One of Swainson’s two surviving notebooks from their trip records ‘height of marble balustrade at these eastern arch openings up to the lowest button of my waistcoat’, revealing the difficulty of doing the basic measured survey disguised in traditional Muslim women’s clothing (Figure 5.3).40 As the preface said: ‘In some instances where scales are given in details, the scales are but rough approximations’.41 The roughness of the measurements, no less than the difficulty of access generally, is probably the reason that in 1905, many years after Swainson’s death, Lethaby published again on Hagia Sophia in recognition of the superiority of the survey, and illustrations, undertaken by his former pupil J.B. Fulton.42 However authorship is apportioned, the book was quickly perceived as the considerable work of scholarship that the building had lacked and fed the increasing interest in Byzantine art and architecture. Lethaby’s importance as principal author of Sancta Sophia – if not unwitting instigator of the Byzantine Revival – is also apparent in his role on the committee of the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund from its foundation in 1908 until 1922.

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Figure 5.3 Swainson’s resourceful survey drawing of marble balustrading in Sancta Sophia - made, as he notes here, using his waistcoat for rough measurements Source: BRF 3/SWA-1, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Lethaby and the Byzantine Research and Publications Fund Founded in London in 1908, with close links to the British School at Athens,43 the Fund was established to financially support, and direct, research into Byzantine buildings. Lethaby was an obvious Committee member. As Schultz had written in a knowing reference to the work of French, German, and Russian institutes: In other countries where more encouragement is given to such studies, the subject of Byzantine Archaeology is receiving increased attention from year to year, and we must rest content with the knowledge that work, which might have been carried out under more favoured conditions by British students, is being done by others who have every support and help given them, and with most excellent results.44 With Edwin Freshfield as its first President, and Schultz as its Honorary Secretary, other members of the Fund included J.L. Myers, Professor of Ancient Geography at Oxford; significant museum curators such as Sir Cecil H. Smith, the Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, A. Hamilton Smith, the Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, together with Charles H. Read and Ormonde M. Dalton of the Museum’s Department of Medieval Antiquities; and the Directors of the British Schools in both Rome and in Athens, Thomas Ashby and Richard M. Dawkins respectively. Joining Schultz as ‘Architects’ on the Committee were Sidney Barnsley, William R. Lethaby, and Richard Phene Spiers, who, following his death in 1916, was replaced by A.C. Dickie, former architect to the Palestine Exploration Fund (1895–97), and by this time Professor of Architecture at Manchester University.45 Financial donations to the Fund included those from the Society of Antiquaries of London and various wealthy individuals, headed by Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), L. Phillips, J.W. Mackail (1859–1945) – the official biographer of William Morris – and fellow architects such as Ernest George (1839–1922), in whose office Schultz had received part of his architectural training. Gertrude Bell’s expertise, no less than her financial support, earned her a place on the committee.46 In many respects, the Fund and its Committee was effectively a sub-committee of, or more clearly a joint committee with, the British School at Athens, which had now been in existence for 22 years. Hence, a meeting of 31 March 1908 was attended by Dalton, Read, Schultz, Smith, Spiers, and Lethaby for the Fund, and George Macmillan, Francis C. Penrose, and Cecil Smith for the School. Support from the British School in Athens for the Fund’s work came in the form of providing accommodation, a library, and, more importantly perhaps, a base for those working on Byzantine sites. Accordingly, at their meeting of 31 March 1908, it was decided that the Byzantine Research and Publications Fund authors should ‘be enrolled, where possible, as students or associates of the British School’.47 On its formation, the residue of earlier funds held by the School, such as the Frankish Fund and a previous Byzantine Architecture Fund, was given to the new Byzantine Research and Publications Fund. Beyond direct donations, and donations

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in support of specific publications, fundraising took the form of meetings such as that held at the Society of Antiquaries in London in December 1909, where archaeologist and theologian Dr A.C. Headlam (1862–1947) read a paper on ‘The Scope and Interest in Byzantine Studies’.48 At the same meeting, Ramsay Traquair (1874–1952) and William Harvey (1883–1962) reported on their work for the Fund in Mani and Jerusalem respectively.49 Lethaby remained a dedicated member of the Fund, attending its meetings consistently throughout his life, helping and advising as necessary over the course of all its publications from Traquair’s The Churches of Western Mani (1909) to the Fund’s final publication The Church of Our Lady of the Hundred Gates in 1920. In March 1909, he wrote to William Harvey to encourage completion of his work on The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem and maintained a diplomatic stance over the troubled publication of The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople. Here a rival author, the American Alexander van Millingen, was eventually accepted to jointly author the work with the Fund’s Walter S. George (1881–1962), despite the expectation that this would be undertaken by Lethaby – George writing to Schultz that ‘I should prefer that the writing should be done by Lethaby’.50

The Byzantine Revival As the interest in Byzantine buildings and their decoration promoted by the Fund’s activities took root, so interest began to spill out from within the confines of scholarship and into a new style of architecture. Not unsurprisingly, this was chiefly, but not exclusively, in the field of church building despite some spirited forays into civic architecture by figures such as Pite, Ricardo, Aston Webb, Reynolds, and Curtis Green. Given his views on the state of contemporary architecture, it is not surprising that there is no attempt for an archaeologically accurate revival of Byzantine architecture in Lethaby’s own work. This consisted of country houses in a Shavian manner, an unusual and much-praised office building in Birmingham of 1900 and All Saints, Brockhampton (1901–2), one of the most important churches of the Arts and Crafts Movement.51 While the search for a new ahistorical type of architecture, free from self-conscious references to previous styles, precluded Lethaby ever practising revivalism for its own sake, there are elements that suggest his interest in Byzantine work. These are manifest in elements such as the patterning of stone, brick, and tile to create surface interest, certain types of moulding, the unusual tracery pattern of the windows to the tower of All Saints (used also in Melsetter House), and, although designed under the name of W.E. Riley, Chief Architect of the London County Council, elements of the Central School of Arts and Crafts, London (1905–8). Lethaby was the first joint principal and likely to have influenced the design by Riley’s use of Lethaby’s former student Arthur Halcrow Verstage (1875–1969) as the executant architect. If Lethaby was hoping for a progressive English Free Style to emerge, based on the freedoms within Byzantine building practice, what actually happened alongside this was the establishment of a clear Byzantine Revival. The first obvious manifestations, apart from Barnsley’s church at Lower Kingswood of 1891 (and

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 121 only slightly later that of St Agatha’s, Landport, of 1895, designed by J.H. Ball with interior decoration by Heywood Sumner), is also its greatest – Westminster Cathedral (1895–1903). Where Sancta Sophia is the key text and central inspiration for the Byzantine Revival in Britain, Westminster Cathedral is its chief monument. Originally intended to be a Gothic Revival building (still considered the most appropriate style for a church, despite the late date), its architect was to be selected as the result of an architectural competition. This idea was abandoned by the new Archbishop, Herbert Vaughan (1832–1903), who feared that a Gothic building for the Catholic faith would be a provocation to Anglicans given the proximity of Westminster Abbey to the site for the new Catholic cathedral. Discarding the competition, Vaughan instead commissioned J.F. Bentley (1832–1902), the leading Catholic architect of the day (but a zealous Goth) in July 1894. On 22 November that year, armed with Lethaby and Swainson’s book, the architect set off on a four-month study tour with Istanbul as the final destination. Although an outbreak of cholera in Istanbul prevented him from completing his journey, he took refuge in the fact that ‘San Vitale at Ravenna and Lethaby’s book really told me all I wanted’.52 The design, and especially the novel concrete construction of the new cathedral, caused great interest. As it progressed, on 12 May 1900, Bentley wrote to Philip Webb, ‘Mr. Lewis tells me that you are interested in the Concrete Construction now being carved out at the Westminster cathedral. Need I say that it will afford me much pleasure of shewing you over the work at any time?’53 Bentley was by now an elderly man and began to fear he would be unable to see the job through and looked to Webb to take over. Webb declined; so too did Bentley’s fellow Goth, G.F. Bodley (1827–1907). Writing to Edith Crosby, Lethaby’s wife, Webb confessed that ‘my own peculiar admiration . . . rests mainly on the splendid rashness of design in the inertbuttressing of the domes – looking across the nave’. He went on to say that ‘this can hardly be spoiled by the future decorative work’ and even suggested that the interior should just be whitewashed and left undecorated in order to appreciate the power of the internal volume and its construction (Figure 5.4).54 Opened for worship in 1903 (the internal applied decoration was to be completed later), it was this construction, and particularly its four great shallow domes, that received most praise. These were built of concrete, four parts of broken brick to one of Portland cement, and shunned the then common use of iron reinforcement – the very type of ‘fake construction’ disliked by advocates of the Arts and Crafts Movement and highlighted as absent from Byzantine architecture in Schultz’s 1897 essay. Lethaby, no less than Webb, was full of praise for the building, choosing to see in it a certain universality – or at least a synthesis – in the style, and every country and every age contributes its quota. Athens, Byzantium, Pisa, Bologna, Milan, Venice, the south of France, England’s Gothic, the Renaissance of Donatello, the modern French of M. Duc (not Viollet), and the modern English of Philip Webb – all these, and many more antecedents colour this complex result.55

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Figure 5.4 A photograph of the bare interior of Westminster Cathedral, London in 1919 - greatly admired in this unfurnished state which emphasized its construction. Source: W. de l’Hôpital. 1919. Westminster Cathedral and Its Architect (London)

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 123 Lethaby viewed Westminster through Choisy’s eyes and saw it as a demonstration of the qualities of ‘hardiesse’ and ‘franchise’ advanced by him as the characteristics of Byzantine building to which he and Swainson deferred in the preface of Sancta Sophia, qualities that he sought for contemporary architecture. Even more than Webb, his appreciation of the building, which he reiterated in the preface to the book on the building by Winefride de l’Hôpital (Bentley’s daughter), was for its structural rationalism and austerity of construction rather than its decoration. Showing the gulf between them, Bentley told his close friend Charles Hadfield he found Lethaby’s review irksome for its emphasis on the construction.56 A similar story to Westminster informs the competition for a new Anglican cathedral in Liverpool, held just as Westminster was nearing its completion. Here, though only a few years later than Westminster, entries were restricted to Gothic. The stipulation became a national debate spilling out from the world of architecture and into daily newspapers to the extent that a hastily arranged and confusing second competition saw the relaxation of the rules. Assessing the entries in the Architectural Review, it was noted that ‘a few of the designs, chiefly from America and the Continent, where the Committee’s first limitation was possibly unknown, are of purely classic type; and a more limited number still are based on Byzantine models’.57 Although still dominated by variations of Gothic, two of the entries clearly show the influence of the Byzantine-style Westminster Cathedral and the Lethabites. One was by Arthur Beresford Pite (1861–1934), the second by Henry Wilson (1864–1934) – both key members of the Arts and Crafts Movement and both close friends of Lethaby.58 Given Pite’s recent work, his entry of a Byzantinestyle cathedral is no surprise. In 1896, he had been commissioned to design Christ Church, Brixton, London. Completed in 1902, it is a significant work of the Byzantine Revival, if slightly conventional in its cruciform plan – a metropolitan parish church to Bentley’s cathedral, and an urban riposte to Barnsley’s rural Lower Kingswood. Elsewhere, in Islington, Pite had designed a striking public library (1906–8), which, like Christ Church, delights in constructional patterned brickwork to create surface texture, incorporates Byzantine capitals, and includes many other references to Byzantine architecture in its decorative detail. Pite’s Liverpool Cathedral competition entry is a remarkable complex of a building, conceived on a palatial, not to say city, scale, and centred on a central domed church – the domes being of concrete construction. So impressed was The Builder with the design that they asked Pite’s assistant, Alexander Wingate (1875–1915), to prepare a bird’s-eye perspective, finished off by William Curtis Green (1875–1960), for a subsequent issue of the journal (Figure 5.5). Pite’s report accompanied his published drawings and itemised 21 points of clarification in addition to a description of the ‘Architectural treatment’. Point six referred to the impact the Liturgical Movement was having, as Pite wrote, ‘the baptistery is placed in the great attached entrance tower, in which is provided a total immersion font . . . the position corresponding with early Christian usage’.59 Increasingly, theological research into the early Christian church and its liturgy was informing and directing

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Figure 5.5 William Curtis, bird’s-eye perspective of Liverpool Cathedral competition entry by Beresford Pite Source: The Builder, October, 1902.

the work of Lethaby and his fellow Byzantinists. Later in the report, Pite deferred to Westminster by writing that the modern knowledge and use of concrete domed construction, exemplified in many buildings, and specially in the new Roman Cathedral at Westminster, I feel cannot be put aside in a rational architecture, and, therefore, have employed large vaults and domes. In its assessment of the competition, the Architectural Review made particular comment on the two Byzantine entries, arguing that ‘one is more the new Byzantine as we see it at Westminster, and another is a frank untranslated edition of what correctly belongs to the shores of the Bosphorus or to the Mohammedan cities of Asia Minor’.60 This ‘frank untranslated’ entry must have been the design submitted under Henry Wilson’s name. Although Lethaby would seem to be the leading light of a Byzantine Revival in England, it is a title more accurately shared with his great friend and collaborator Henry Wilson. Not only had Wilson, as the first editor (1896–1901) of the Architectural Review (a mouthpiece of the Arts and Crafts Movement), commissioned significant articles on Byzantine art and architecture, but, as an assistant of J.D. Sedding, he had completed many of his master’s commissions in an assuredly Byzantine manner. Chief among these was the east end of St Bartholomew’s, Brighton (1895–1911), but they also include the chapel and library at Welbeck Abbey (1890–6), and his jewellery designs

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 125 more generally – such as a chalice (1900) for Gloucester Cathedral, where A.C. Headlam was now Bishop. Given the Arts and Crafts Movement’s belief that the great buildings of the past were the result of the collective effort of craftsmen working in a guild, rather than succumbing to the ‘tyranny’ of a single architect or designer’s wishes, it is no surprise to realise that unconventionally, the Liverpool Cathedral entry by Wilson was a group submission on behalf of himself, F.W. Troup, Halsey Ricardo, Robert Weir Schultz, Christopher Whall, Stirling Lee, and Lethaby. This was a determined attempt not only to build a Byzantine church but also to design it in a manner thought to have existed at the time and thereby create, or recreate, the idea of Byzantine as a living artistic language, to prove that ‘Byzantine art still exists’, as Lethaby and Swainson had written in the preface to Sancta Sophia.61 As Schultz claimed of the Byzantine craftsman, ‘he did not follow rigidly the lines of a full-sized cartoon carefully worked out beforehand, as would be the case with a modern workman’.62 This perfectly reflected the Ruskinian doctrine of the Arts and Crafts Movement giving freedom to the craftsmen as advanced by Ruskin in The Stones of Venice, rooted in early medieval practice, and expressed a political, no less than an aesthetic, credo. In criticising the competition, another of Lethaby’s circle, Edward Prior (1857–1932), had argued that Liverpool’s new cathedral should be created by the same type of ‘confraternities or lodges of mechanics that were organised to re-build Exeter or York’, suggesting either his own Ruskinian beliefs or that he knew of the group submission in advance.63 Perhaps this is the reason that, unlike the other entries, that by the Wilson group was criticised as rather vague – ‘The design is no more than a suggestion’, commented the Architectural Review.64 While an undated drawing by Wilson of a Byzantine church – thought to have been done between 1900 and 1902 – bears some similarities to the basilical plan and general massing of the body of the cathedral as submitted, part of the original concept was drawn by Lethaby on the back of an envelope (Figures 5.6a and 5.6b).65 Perhaps it is this early concept sketch and its clear affinities with the group entry that has led many to ascribe the design to Lethaby rather than Wilson. Certainly, Schultz was in no doubt that ‘it was Lethaby who was at the bottom of it all, and the design which was produced was largely of his inspiration’.66 The interesting technical aspect is, following Bentley, the use of concrete. But here are no concrete domes resting on massive brick walls but rather a series of trapezoid concrete roofs sailing over the basilical plan with a large eastern apse (possibly triapsidal like Bethlehem) and semi-domed side chapels. What survives of the competition drawings are longitudinal sections, details of sculpture panels, two bird’s-eye perspectives, plans at triforium level, drawings of the numerous apses, the west front, and two photo-montages of the design – a novel enough process in itself ‘enough to convey to the assessors what was in the author’s mind’ (Figures 5.7a and 5.7b).67 A model was also submitted showing the building in longitudinal section both inside and out. Finally, and it seems it was almost an afterthought, a great solid campanile containing two arcades of bells was placed next to the basilica. Looking at this prepossessing octagonal tapering tower, and its magnificent position overlooking the river Mersey, it is

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Figure 5.6a First sketches for the Liverpool Cathedral competition done on the back of a used envelope by William R. Lethaby, 1902 Source: Museum # E.3196–1991, Prints & Drawings, ©Victoria and Albert Museum London

Figure 5.6b Sketch design for a cathedral in the Byzantine style by Henry Wilson, thought to date from between 1900 and 1902, and part of the group entry to the Liverpool Cathedral competiton. Source: RIBA 22511, PA 530/21(2), ©RIBA Collections

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Figure 5.7a Another part of the unconventional Liverpool group entry was this early use of a photograph with the building drawn directly onto it. Source: Museum # E.2290–1934, Prints and Drawings, ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Figure 5.7b Crude plaster models, rather than conventional architects drawings, formed an additional part of the Liverpool Cathedral competition entry by Lethaby, Wilson, and others. Source: Museum # E.2285–1934, Prints and Drawings, ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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hard not to be reminded of the tower of Galata and Lethaby and Swainson’s evocation of Byzantine Constantinople in their book, suggesting a desire to recreate Byzantium in Liverpool. Sadly for the Byzantine Revival, neither Wilson’s nor Beresford Pite’s entry found favour with the judges – Shaw and Bodley. As Wilson’s biographer has commented, ‘in reality, their unconventional proposal had little hope of success: as well as being the most innovative, it was also the most misunderstood of all the entries’.68 A Gothic design was judged the winner, but both designs, Wilson’s in particular thanks to its innovative methods of presentation as much as its technical daring, have achieved some fame since as a great unbuilt scheme; a mythology has developed around it ever since as a pioneer of concrete construction and a building that looked forward to Perret’s all-concrete Église Notre-Dame du Raincy in France (1922–3). Despite the failure of Wilson’s Liverpool group entry, the Byzantine Revival continued to establish itself in a variety of different, chiefly ecclesiastical buildings, in major cities and dioceses then animated by the theological debates of the Liturgical Movement, Christian Socialism, and the Eastern Churches Association.69 Chief among these was the new Diocese of Birmingham, created out of the Diocese of Worcester in 1905, with the influential Charles Gore (1853–1932) as its first Bishop. Lethaby had close links with the city, which was fertile ground for the Arts and Crafts Movement, where it was ‘a deliberate reaction against the over-decoration of the terracotta style and of many local manufactured goods, and it avoids ornament so much as sometimes to appear austere’.70 Birmingham was home to Ernest and Sidney Barnsley, whose father, John, was a notable local builder. Its Art School invited Lethaby, and before him, William Morris, to lecture – Morris in 1879 on the proposed destruction of parts of St Mark’s, Venice. Though more English Free Style than Byzantine, Lethaby’s Eagle Insurance building (1900) was undertaken with the Birmingham architect, and, from 1910, the first Director of the Birmingham School of Architecture, J.L. Ball (1853–1933), as executant architect. Ball was married to Ernest and Sidney Barnsley’s sister, Edith, and it has been suggested that on completion of the job Lethaby asked Ball to enter into partnership with him.71 Also part of this Birmingham group was A.S. Dixon (1856–1929), another ardent Lethabite, who included among his friends Richard Norman Shaw, C.R. Ashbee, and Charles Gore. Dixon was a supporter of the Fund and donated money to see Saint Eirene published in 1910. As in London at this time, Birmingham had its own cohesive group of Arts and Crafts architects centred on Lethaby and his ideas and equally enamoured with the study of Byzantine art and architecture. In 1902, not long after the completion of Lethaby and Ball’s Eagle Insurance building, the latter was commissioned to design the church of St Gregory the Great, Small Heath, Birmingham (1910–13). Its pungent, dense red-brick, eastern apse, and scheme of decoration, although with hints of the Lombardic about it, all generally point to the Byzantine as a source. Built by Ball’s father’s construction company, it exemplifies the Birmingham tradition of virtuoso building in brick, the local building material. ‘Byzantine architecture’, wrote Lethaby and Swainson, ‘was developed by the use of brick in its fullest and frankest manner’.72 Although working as a solicitor later in life, A.S. Dixon also became a largely self-taught part-time architect and designed several ‘Byzantinesque’ churches

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Figure 5.8 Arthur Stansfield Dixon, Church of St Basil, Deritend, Birmingham, 1910–11. Source: Photo credit ©Steve Cadman, CC BT-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ deed.en

130 Julian Holder including St Andrew, Barnt Green (1908), St Basil, Deritend, (1910–11), St Giles, Rowley Regis (1923–26), and much further afield, the Anglican cathedral in Seoul, South Korea, in 1922. Of them all, it is St Basil that, in its greater stylistic reference to the Byzantine, remains truest to the work of Bentley at Westminster, and, as has been noted, ‘the texture starts to approach that of the complex brick, stone and tile patterns and cloisonné’ found at Hosios Loukas, Phocis (Figure 5.8).73 Contemporary with Gore’s new church-building campaign in Birmingham was the city’s new University (1900–9). Designed by Aston Webb (1849–1930) and Ingress Bell (1837–1914), it shares the same almost city-scale imperial palace planning employed by Pite for his Liverpool Cathedral Competition and, like Bentley’s Westminster Cathedral, the style is clearly chosen to distinguish it from the Gothic of England’s other new universities, at Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds. It was an unusual departure for Aston Webb, who, although enjoying a reputation for being adept at any style required, had not previously turned to the East to the same extent; it is unclear who determined the style beyond, it seems, a commitment to the use of brick. As both the first civic university, and the first formally planned university in the country, its layout apes that of the pavilion-type of hospital then popular, and seen in Pite’s design for a mission hospital in Jerusalem published in The Builder in 1894.74 As one commentator noted of the University, ‘from certain aspects and in certain lights [it] can even look as magical as the domes and spires of Istanbul or Moscow’.75 Manchester, no less than Liverpool or Birmingham, was equally enthused by the Arts and Crafts Movement and in 1896 formed a Northern Art Workers’ Guild, which elected as its first Master the local architect Edgar Wood (1860–1935).76 Both he, and his later partner James Sellers (1861–1954), were ardent Lethabites; Sellers’s papers contain a file of cuttings of his writings and another on Byzantine art.77 The circles they moved in, for example at Manchester School of Art, led by Walter Crane (1845–1915), were similarly excited by the possibilities Byzantine art offered.78 Wood and Sellars’s work, especially such celebrated buildings as the First Church of Christ Scientist, Manchester (1903–7), was exactly the type of new English Free Style architecture Lethaby wanted. Here, as in his own work, can be seen elements of the Byzantine in the forms of decoration to its apse and much else. In 1909, Wood, on behalf of the Manchester Society of Architects, drew an ambitious early town-planning scheme for Withington. Its American Beaux Arts layout contained a litter of Byzantine domed structures as public buildings at key points and intersections.79 The Byzantine influence could also be found outside major metropolitan centres in less-fashionable locations, thanks to the growing influence of the Liturgical Movement and the Eastern Churches Association. At Launceston in Cornwall is St Cuthbert Mayne, which was completed in 1911 for Father Charles Langdon. Charles commissioned his brother, the architect Arthur G. Langdon, to design it in

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 131 a thoroughly Byzantine manner, mixing thin bands of slate with granite to create surface interest, with an expressive semi-domed apse and Byzantine window tracery (Figure 5.9).80 After World War I, the Byzantine influence may well be thought to have disappeared in the face of modernism, yet in 1925 the architect Manning Robertson (1887–1945) was still of the opinion that ‘the Byzantine influence is likely to be shown in many of our new churches’.81 This was certainly true, and the interwar period saw a largely overlooked blossoming of the Byzantine influence in church building. One notable example is St John the Baptist, Rochdale (1917–25), a stunning bright-red brickand-concrete domed version of Hagia Sophia (Constantinople). Based on a pre-war

Figure 5.9 Arthur Langdon, St Cuthbert Mayne, Launceston, Cornwall, 1910–11. Source: Author’s photos

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Figure 5.10 St John the Baptist, Rochdale, 1917–27, by Sandy & Norris based on an earlier design by Oswald Hill. Source: Wikimedia CC-BY

Figure 5.11 Watercolour of unidentified unbuilt cathedral by J.H. Sellers – probably entry to Guildford Cathedral competition (1928) or a design for Liverpool Roman Catholic Cathedral (1929) Source: © Manchester Metropolitan University Library, Special Collections

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 133 design by the Manchester architect Oswald Hill (1888–1917), completion was delayed until 1927, the final design subsequently exhibited at the Royal Academy and credited to Sandy and Norris (Figure 5.10).82 In a similar Byzantine vein are two inter-war cathedral competitions balancing those of Westminster and Liverpool. One for a new Catholic cathedral at Liverpool (1927) – subsequently won by Sir Edwin Lutyens – and the other for a new Protestant cathedral at Guildford in 1932, won by Sir Edward Maufe. However, both competitions received entries by Edgar Wood’s partner James Sellers, which shows the clear influence of Hagia Sophia as a model to meet the demands of the New Liturgical Movement (Figure 5.11).83 While the Byzantine influence continues well into the post-war period, by this time, as Robert Proctor has shown, any idea that what Lethaby and Swainson termed the ‘Byzantine theory of building’ was being employed was giving way to a liturgically informed brief for a new industrially built modern church architecture responsive to the demands of Vatican Council II (1962–5).84 The history of the Byzantine Revival in England has yet to be written, but the belief that ‘Byzantine Art still exists’ came to inspire a whole generation of architects that created a Byzantine Revival led by W.R. Lethaby and the work of the Byzantine Research and Publications Fund.

Acknowledgements I must thank for their help the late Peter Blundell-Jones, Ian Dungavell, Edinburgh College of Art Library, English Heritage Library, the late Stuart Evans, Andy Foster, Clare Hartwell, Susan Halls, Amalia G. Kakissis and Catherine Morgan at the British School in Athens, Alison Mackenzie, Jeremy Parrett (Special Collections, Manchester Metropolitan University), Alan Powers, Robert Proctor, RIBA/V&A, and Mark Swenarton.

Notes 1 Lethaby and Swainson 1894, v. 2 Choisy 1883. In 1892, Choisy was in London to contribute to a meeting on Byzantine architecture at the RIBA. On Choisy generally see Middleton 1981. 3 Schultz 1897, 192. 4 Lethaby and Swainson 1894, vi. 5 On the impact of Ruskin’s idea see Swenarton 1988. 6 Schultz and Barnsley 1901. 7 Ibid., vi. It is worth noting that the British School at Athens was established in 1886, only a year before Schultz won the gold medal. 8 Schultz and Barnsley 1901, v. 9 On funding difficulties, see Thornton 2013. 10 Conant 1941, 355. 11 Rice 1957, 333. In 1949 Talbot Rice had revised Lethaby’s Medieval Art; From the Peace of the Church to the Eve of the Renaissance originally published in 1904. 12 Crinson 1996, 92. 13 Nelson 2004, 116. 14 ‘Review of the Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building’, The Athenaeum 1895, 103–4.

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15 ‘Review of the Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building’, The Builder 1895, 68, 213–16, 233–5. 16 ‘Review of the Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building’, Edinburgh Review 1895, 181. 17 ‘Review of the Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building’, The Times, 6 December 1894, 12. I am grateful to Alan Powers for this reference and use of the (unpublished) paper he delivered at the initial conference in 2013. 18 Saint 1976, 325. The article appeared in the Quarterly Review for 1903. Blomfield served on the Committee of the British School at Athens in London, 1903–6. 19 Aplin 2015, 270. 20 Schultz 1897, 192. 21 Roberts 1957, 22. 22 Wilmer 2004, 337. 23 See Eleni-Anna Chlepa’s chapter in this volume. 24 Wilmer 2004, 337. 25 Lethaby and Swainson 1894, 199. 26 Cook and Wedderburn 1903–12, vol. 10, 120–1. 27 Rubens 1986, 171. 28 The Bible Christian Church was a Methodist denomination founded by William O’Bryan, a Wesleyan Methodist local preacher, on 18 October 1815 in North Cornwall. The first society, consisting of just 22 members, met at Lake Farm in Shebbear, Devon. Members of the Church were sometimes known as Bryanites, after their founder. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Christian_Church 29 Schultz 1957, 12. 30 On the Palestine Exploration Fund see Moscrop 2000. 31 According to Lethaby’s chief biographer, Godfrey Rubens, Leadwork was probably completed in 1889. On this significant series published by Macmillan’s see Manton 2009, 90. George Macmillan (1855–1936) was not only a noticeable publisher of works of the Arts and Crafts Movement but an active supporter of the work of the Asia Minor Exploration Fund, Byzantine Research and Publication Fund, and the British School at Athens. 32 Holder 1984, 63. 33 Schultz 1957, 10. 34 Lethaby 1891, 205. 35 Lethaby 1924, 4. 36 Bullen 2003, 169. 37 Ibid., 173. 38 Schultz and Barnsley 1901, vi. 39 Lethaby and Swainson 1894, v. Edith Crosby (Lethaby’s future wife, whom he met in Istanbul) probably translated the German. Swainson may have been the ‘friend’ Lethaby refers to in Architecture, Mysticism and Myth as translating Codinus for him (see Lethaby 1891, 202). 40 BSA BRF Archive. Notebooks. Series 3. Swainson’s other surviving notebook is held in the RIBA Archives, London (SKB337/2). 41 Lethaby and Swainson 1894, vi. 42 Lethaby 1905. 43 Kakissis 2009. On the British School at Athens see Gill 2011. The Fund was preceded by other funds, such as the Asia Minor Exploration Fund established in 1882. 44 Schultz and Barnsley 1901, vi. 45 On Dickie see E.M.E.B. 1942. In 1902, Dickie and Curtis Green submitted a competition entry for the Presbyterian Church, Muswell Hill, illustrated in The Builder, December 27, p. 607. 46 Gertrude Bell was the grand-daughter of the wealthy industrialist Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell (1816–1904) and was born and raised in houses designed for her grandfather by Philip Webb – Washington Hall and later Rounton Grange (see Howell 2008). Webb was also responsible for the conversion of Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire into a holiday

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77

home for the family and, in 1868, ‘Red Barns’ in Redcar for Gertrude’s father Hugh Bell (see Kirk 2005). BSA BRF Archive. Corporate Records. Minute book. 31 March 1908. Headlam et al. 1892. On Headlam, see Jefferies 1991. Headlam had a ‘professional’ interest in the Early Church no less than many architects and archaeologists in this circle, having written on the monastery at Alahan in 1892; a leading churchman, follower of the ecumenical Bishop Charles Gore (1853–1932), and a contributor to his ‘Lux Mundi’ symposium and resulting book of 1889. On the Church generally in this period, see Vidler 1961. BSA BRF Archive. Corporate Records: BRF Minute book, meeting November 18, 1909. BSA BRF Archive. Corporate Records. Series 4. Folder 2a. 28 December 1909. Van Millingen was in doubt of Schultz’ intentions of the ownership of George’s work for the Fund on St Eirene. On Walter George see Butler 2012 and Butler in this volume. Blundell Jones 1990. L’Hôpital 1919, 35. Aplin 2015, 920. Ibid., 264. It is very noticeable how early photographs of the building concentrate on its daunting or gaunt brick construction as revealed in the interior, almost as much as the technical daring of its concrete domes. L’Hôpital 1919, 6. Hadfield 1902, 116. ‘The Liverpool Cathedral Competition’, Architectural Review 12, no. 70, 1902, 83. On Pite, see Hanson 1993; on Wilson, see Manton 2009. ‘A Sketch Design for a Modern Anglican Cathedral’, The Builder, October 18, 1902, 346. See n. 57. Lethaby and Swainson 1894, vi. Schultz 1897, 192. Prior 1901, 144. Interestingly, Lethaby wrote a two-part article, ‘How Exeter Cathedral Was Built’, Architectural Review 13, 1903, 109–20, 166–76. See n. 57. Held at RIBA/V&A Drawings collections. E.3196–1991. The Wilson design can be seen at RIBAPIX; RIBA 22511. Schultz 1957, 12. See n. 57. Manton 2009, 89. The Eastern Churches Association, originally established in 1864, went through various name changes to become the Anglian and Eastern Churches Association, having received new impetus in 1893 when it was united with the Committee for the defence of Church Principles in Palestine. Committed to ensuring the continued use of Hagia Sophia as an Islamic mosque, its papers are held in Lambeth Palace Library, London. On church history in this period more generally, see Vidler 1961. Foster 2005, 21. Granelli 2009, 411. Lethaby and Swainson 1894, 199. Foster 2009, 606. I am grateful to Andy Foster for use of his ‘A draft catalogue of Birmingham Church Architecture, 1910–1940; the later Arts and Crafts period’ version 2.9.2007 (unpublished). On the hospital see Crinson 1996, 221–6. Foster 2005, 243. The same effect, albeit on a more concentrated site, can perhaps be seen in the Liver Building, Liverpool of 1908–11 designed by Aubrey Thomas with a litter of cupolas surmounting its early reinforced concrete structure. Increasingly, it seems Byzantine meant the rational use of not only brick but also concrete. Partnership in Style: Edgar Wood and J Henry Sellers (Exhibition Catalogue, Manchester City Art Gallery 1975). Pers. comm. Stuart Evans.

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78 Hunt 2006. 79 Held at RIBA/V&A Drawings collections. PA10/28 (1–3). 80 No other buildings by Langdon are known, although he designed several modern Celtic crosses such as the Boer War Memorial at Haverfordwest and wrote Old Cornish Crosses (Truro, 1896) and an article on ‘Sculptural Norman Tympana in Cornwall’ in The Reliquary, and Illustrated Archaeologist (New series, vol. iv, January 1898, 91–9). A useful guide to such churches of the Catholic faith is the website Taking Stock; Catholic Churches of England and Wales, available at taking-stock.org.uk. 81 Robertson 1925, 125. Robertson served his articles as an architect under Sir Ernest George, who, with his partner Harold Peto, was a subscriber to the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund and its publications. See also Betancourt 2015. Other notable Byzantine churches of the 1930s include the Church of the Holy Spirit (1937–38), Ewloe, Wales by H.S. Goodhart-Rendel. 82 Sandy and Norris, whose work continued into the 1930s was developed further by their successors Reynolds and Scott, formed in 1946. 83 Among the books Sellers left to the former Manchester School of Art was his copy of l’Hôpital’s work on Westminster Cathedral. 84 Proctor 2015.

References Aplin, P. (ed.) 2015. The Letters of Philip Webb (London). Betancourt, R. (ed.) 2015. Byzantium/Modernism; The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (Leiden). Blundell-Jones, P. 1990. ‘All Saints, Brockhampton’, Architects’ Journal, 15 August 1990, 24–43. Bullen, J.B. 2003. Byzantium Rediscovered (London). Butler, R.J. 2012. ‘The Anglo-Indian architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): A Modernist follower of Lutyens’, Architectural History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 55, 237–68. Choisy, A. 1883. L’Art de bâtir chez les Byzantins (Paris). Conant, K. 1941. ‘[Review of] E.H. Swift, Hagia Sophia’, Speculum 16, no. 3, 355–7. Cook, E.T. and Wedderburn, A. (eds.) 1903–12. The Works of John Ruskin, 39 vols (London). Crinson, M. 1996. Empire Building: Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London). E.M.E.B. 1942. ‘Professor A.C. Dickie, ARIBA’, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 74, no. 1, 5–7. Foster, A. 2005. Birmingham; Pevsner City Guide (London). Foster, A. 2009. ‘A. S. Dixon’, in Ballard, P. (ed.), Birmingham’s Victorian and Edwardian Architect (Wetherby), 585–618. Gill, D. 2011. Sifting the Soil of Greece: The Early Years of the British School at Athens (1886–1919) (London). Granelli, R. 2009. ‘Joseph Lancaster Ball’, in Ballard, P. (ed.), Birmingham’s Victorian and Edwardian Architects (Wetherby), 401–22. Hadfield, C. 1902. ‘The Late J. F. Bentley; A Retrospect’, The Architectural Review 11, 115–17. Hanson, B. 1993. The Golden City: Essays on the Architecture and Imagination of Beresford Pite (London). Headlam, A.C., Hogarth, D.G. and Ramsay, W.M. 1892. ‘Ecclesiastical Sites in Isauria (Cilicia Trachea)’, Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, Supplementary Papers II. Holder, J. 1984. ‘Architecture, Mysticism and Myth and Its Influence’, in Backemeyer, S. and Gronberg, T. (eds.), W.R. Lethaby; Architecture, Design, Education (London). Howell, G. 2008. Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations (New York).

‘Byzantine Art Still Exists’ 137 Hunt, L.A. 2006. ‘Byzantium-Venice-Manchester; An Early Thirteenth Century Carved Marble Basin and British Byzantium at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, in Jeffreys, E.M. (ed.), Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilization; In Honour of Sir Steven Runciman (Cambridge). Jefferies, P. 1991. A.C. Headlam: His Place in the Tradition and Development of the Church (Masters dissertation, University of Durham). Jewell, H.H. and Hasluck, F.W. 1920. The Church of Our Lady of the Hundred Gates in Paros (London). Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive: Encounters of Arts and Crafts Architects in Byzantium᾽, in Smith, M.L., Calligas, E. and Kitromilides, P. (eds.), Scholars, Travels, Archives; Greek History and Culture through the British School at Athens (London). Kirk, S. 2005. Philip Webb: pioneer of Arts & Crafts Architecture (London). L’ Hôpital, W. 1919. Westminster Cathedral and Its Architect (London). Lethaby, W.R. 1891. Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (London). Lethaby, W.R. 1905. ‘Sancta Sophia, Constantinople – 1’, The Architectural Review 17, 118–24. Lethaby, W.R. 1924. Ernest Gimson, His Life & Work (London). Lethaby, W.R. and Swainson, H. 1894. The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople; A Study of Byzantine Building (London). Manton, C. 2009. Henry Wilson: Practical Idealist (Cambridge). Middleton, R. 1981. ‘August Choisy, Historian: 1841–1909’, International Architect 1, no. 5, 37–45. Moscrop, J.J. 2000. Measuring Jerusalem: The Palestine Exploration Fund and British Interests in the Holy Land (London). Nelson, R.S. 2004. Hagia Sophia, 1850–1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago). Prior, E.S. 1901. ‘The New Cathedral for Liverpool; Its Site and Style᾽, The Architectural Review 10, 139–44. Proctor, R. 2015. Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (London). Rice, D.T. 1957. The Beginnings of Christian Art (London). Roberts, A.R.N. (ed.) 1957. William Richard Lethaby, 1857–1931: A Volume in Honour of the School’s First Principal / Prepared by A. R. N. Roberts at the Suggestion of William Johnstone (London). Robertson, M. 1925. Laymen and the New Architecture (London). Rubens, G. 1986. William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Work 1857–1931 (London). Saint, A. 1976. Richard Norman Shaw (London). Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art’, The Architectural Review I, part I, 192–9; part II, 248–55. Schultz, R.W. (ed.) 1910. The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (London). Schultz, R.W. 1957. ‘W. R. Lethaby’, Architectural Association Journal 73, no. 813, 7–14. Schultz, R.W. and Barnsley, S.H. 1901. The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependent Monastery of St Nicolas in the Fields, Near Skripou, in Boeotia (London). Swenarton, M. 1988. Artisans and Architects: The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought (London). Thornton, A. 2013. ‘. . . A Certain Faculty for Extricating Cash’: Collective Sponsorship in Late 19th and Early 20th Century British Archaeology’, Present Pasts 5, no. 1, part. 1. http://doi.org/10.5334/pp.55. Traquair, R. 1908–09. ‘Laconia III: The Churches of Western Mani’, ABSA 15, 177–213. Vidler, A.R. 1961. The Church in an Age of Revolution: 1789 to the Present Day (Harmondsworth). Wilmer, C. (ed.) 2004. William Morris: ‘News from Nowhere’ and Other Writings (London).

6

‘A Piece of Sherlock Holmes Inference’ (sic) Byzantine Recordings in Nineteenth-Century Greece and the Art and Crafts Architects of the Byzantine Research Fund Archive of the British School at Athens* Dimitra Kotoula I am sending on prints of photographs of the church by the Epidaurus Heireon for you to say whether or no it is the one you meant. I think it is, but this is of course guesswork on my part, a piece of Sherlock Holmes inference.1

Just before embarking on one of his several trips to Thessaloniki in northern Greece, then part of the Ottoman Empire, the British architect William Harvey communicated with his colleague and mentor Robert Weir Schultz (Figure 6.1). Harvey travelled to the city during this period to systematically record its surviving Byzantine heritage in collaboration with Walter Sykes George. Based at the Ξενοδοχείον Περιηγητών Tourist Hotel in Athens, Harvey shared photographic material with Schultz, as he would regularly do throughout his research journeys, as well as his interpretation of a church close to Epidaurus. It had been almost 18 years since Schultz had left Greece to establish his own architectural practice back in England. However, it seemed that he was still very much preoccupied by the Byzantine past in the eastern Mediterranean, and particularly of Greece. Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951) had arrived in Greece for the first time in March 1888 along with Sidney Howard Barnsley (1883–1962), his colleague at the Royal Academy of Arts and also an Arts and Crafts pioneer.2 Their research on location was made possible through a Travelling Scholarship of £200 won by Schultz in a Royal Academy of Arts competition, as well as the financial support of Edwin Freshfield (1832–1918), solicitor and amateur antiquarian with a keen interest in Byzantine art, and the Third Marquess of Bute, John CrichtonStuart (1847–1900), the extraordinary Scot and medievalist who shared this interest in Byzantium.3 Schultz and Barnsley would return in October 1889, laying the foundations for a lifelong fascination and collaboration.4 Between 1907 and 1910, Walter Sykes George (1882–1962) and William Harvey (1865–1926), also distinguished members of the British Arts and Crafts, would follow to complete their mentors’ Byzantine recordings.5 As students of the newly founded British DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-8

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Figure 6.1 William Harvey’s letter to Robert Weir Schultz from Athens, 3 June 1908 Source: BRF Corporate Records, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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School at Athens, which opened in November 1886, they all profited immensely from the growing resources, the wide-ranging research agendas and networks of the School.6 Their trips, Harvey’s in particular, were organised and funded with the support of the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund, founded in 1908 at Schultz’s instigation under the auspices of the British School. It aimed to protect, promote, and publicise the documentation and study of the remnants of Byzantine architecture, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean. The result of their work is known today as the Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive, which consists of approximately 1500 drawings and 1000 photographs, a notebook series, and correspondence, which records major surviving and lost Byzantine monuments in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Asia Minor, and the Near East.7 The teachings of the leading lights of the British Arts and Crafts Movement, with a particular interest in the ‘Gothic’, guided and inspired the architects of the BRF. In particular, the ethos and attitude towards past cultures of the patriarchs of the movement, John Ruskin and William Morris, the work of the avant-garde architect of the Gothic Revival Philip Webb (1831–1915), the teachings of the chief professor at RIBA Richard Phene Spiers (1838–1916), as well as George E. Street (1824–81), Morris’s Oxford mentor and master of the RA, and architect Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912), at whose office both were trained, all influenced their studies and recordings. It was William Richard Lethaby (1857–1931), though, the chief assistant in Richard Norman Shaw’s office, who actually encouraged Schultz and Barnsley to undertake their endeavour in the first place.8 Lethaby, an Arts and Crafts pioneer, particularly favoured the Gothic, influenced by his close friend and collaborator John Dando Sedding (1838–91), an authority himself in the study of historic architecture.9 Lethaby was among the first of the movement to hail the Byzantine as a subversive precedent. Amid the socio-political crisis of the 1830s and 1840s and on the eve of European industrialisation and the Great Depression, Byzantium offered modernity an escape from the deathly grip of classicism. In this way, Lethaby influenced decisively the shift of focus from the Gothic, the mosaic cycles of Ravenna, and Rome, to Byzantium in the eastern Mediterranean, thereby giving Byzantine art and architecture a broader significance.10 The work produced by the BRF architects through an Arts and Crafts viewpoint offered a unique re-imagining of Byzantine spirituality and material culture in the eastern Mediterranean with a later traceable impact on the applied Arts and Crafts. When Schultz and Barnsley visited Greece, the newly liberated country still largely identified with its classical past. The philhellenes of the period, who travelled to the region in their masses, developed the academic study of Antiquity, formalised by the Society of the Dilettanti and elaborated by the Grand Tourists.11 With the aid of new technical developments, mainly in recording techniques such as photography with the invention of the roll film that gradually replaced the photographic plate, they focused almost exclusively on surviving classical remains.12 Byzantine, Venetian, Frankish, and Ottoman architecture, classified as ‘περίεργα’, were still considered somewhat exotic. Influenced by comparative philology and the ethnic studies that dominated European Romanticism, these amateur scholars

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and travellers also soon demonstrated a growing interest in modern Greece and its people.13 In their recordings, post-antique monuments were usually studied in juxtaposition to classical ones and were related to somewhat biased narratives. In many cases, these narratives were drawn from local mythology or traditions that, no matter how interesting or intriguing, had very little to do with any concrete and comprehensive documentation or study.14 Gradually, the Byzantine monuments of the Mediterranean became more prominent at home and abroad. The ‘neo-Gothic’ and ‘neo-Byzantine’ revivals in the arts renewed interest in surviving historic architecture as a response to the – until then – random documentation and study of Medieval, Gothic, and Byzantine heritage.15 The expansion and development of historical studies, mainly in Germany and France, further encouraged the re-appraisal of Byzantine architecture in the region.16 By the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the meticulous recordings of the surviving Roman basilicas by J.G. Gutensohn and J.M. Knapp, Byzantium in Italy already dominated the field.17 John Ruskin’s monumental publication, The Stones of Venice (1851–3), officially introduced the surviving Byzantine monuments in Italy to the world of the British Arts and Crafts. The fascination was such that Lord Lindsay, who travelled as far as Mount Sinai, summarising the period’s attitude, remarkably asserted that, ‘St Mark is the glory of Byzantine architecture west of the Adriatic’.18 Pioneering scholars, such as the French Alexandre Laborde, began clearly distinguishing two styles for the first time: the Romanesque and the Venetian Byzantine.19 Soon, Byzantium, in the somewhat neglected eastern part of the Mediterranean, entered the scholarly and cultural agendas of the nineteenth century. In his 1851 study, L’architecture byzantine en France, Félix de Verneilh traced a tradition of the French medieval domed churches back to the churches of Constantinople, and to St Sophia in particular.20 Impressed by the latter, the Austrian Wilhelm Salzenberg published an illustrated monograph in 1854, which is largely influenced in its layout by the predominance of European neoclassicism. This volume reproduced some of the chromolithographs of that church, which had appeared two years earlier, created by the Swiss-Italian architects the Fossati brothers, Giuseppe and Gaspare.21 William Morris was one of the first to own a copy of the book, which was devoted to a monument he had greatly admired – until then mainly through photographic reproductions.22 Through Lethaby’s book, Sancta Sophia, the historic building stood on a par with St Mark’s basilica in Venice in its reception by the Arts and Crafts Movement.23 For the first time, European audiences were acquainted with large-scale Byzantine decorative works besides the mosaic through the French painter Dominique Louis Papety, who made reproductions of the fresco cycles in the monasteries of the Great Lavra and the Protaton, Mount Athos, for an exhibition in 1847 in one of the famous Parisian Salons (Figure 6.2).24 Such early recordings of Byzantine buildings in Greece inspired one of the most celebrated neo-Byzantine revivals in Europe by the French architect, Léon Vaudoyer, who drew inspiration for his Marseilles Cathedral (1852 and 1896) from material recorded in André Couchaud’s Choix d’églises bysantines en Gréce (1842).25 Britain would follow with a series of neo-Byzantine buildings between 1854 and 1856

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Figure 6.2 Engraving by Dominique Louis Papety from the frescoes of the Monastery of Lavra, Mount Athos, presented at the 1847 Salon in Paris Source: Published in the Magazin Pittoresque, vol. XV (June 1847)

inspired by Byzantium in Italy and Constantinople.26 As far as Greek architecture is concerned, the neo-Byzantine architectural attempts of the brothers Christian and Theophilus Hansen, as well as those of the Greek Demetrios Zezos, passed almost unnoticed 27 Haunted by neoclassicism and the classical past that dominated the period’s research agendas, authorities and intellectuals in the recently established independent Greek state could not easily reconcile Hellenism with the Christian empire of Constantinople. Byzantium could not be seamlessly appropriated as an integral part of the national historical narrative. It was the expansion and development of historicism in late nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the establishment of foreign archaeological schools in Athens during the period, that would encourage the study of the nation’s medieval past and folklore.28 Monumental works such as Constantinos Paparrigopoulos’s History of the Greek Nation finally incorporated

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Byzantium into the continuum of Greek national narrative.29 This multi-volume work was comparable to George Finlay’s History of Greece, a series particularly favoured by the Oxford circle of the Arts and Crafts pioneers. The foundation of the Christian Archaeological Society in 1884 encouraged further the study of the surviving Byzantine heritage in Greece. However, as far as the Greek authorities were concerned, the first official attempt to systematically record any medieval or Byzantine antiquities in Greece is dated as late as October 1892.30 One of Paparrigopoulos’s students, Spyridon Lambros, who later became an academic himself, was one of the first scholars to explore Byzantium through surviving primary sources and physical remains in Greece.31 His cataloguing and studies of library and monastic archives, which were published in the 21 volumes of the legendary Νέος Ελληνομνήμων, the periodical he edited between 1904 and 1917, still remain invaluable. One of Lambros’s prime aims was to publicise Byzantine art. To this end, in 1880, he commissioned Émile Gilliéron, the renowned Swiss artist and antiquarian, to reproduce a series of Mount Athos wall paintings, which he intended to publish.32 Lambros owned several reproductions of Byzantine artwork, mainly painting and sculpture, commissioned by artists and scholars who were immersed in studying the Byzantine in Greece.33 The architects of the BRF also collaborated on occasion with Gilliéron, mainly in the reproduction of coloured frescoes.34 Lambros also had such coloured reproductions in his collection, such as the large selection of copies created by the Frenchman Paul Durant that were included in Adolphe-Napoléon Didron’s significant study of Christian iconography published in 1843.35 It was through the travels and research of Didron, Albert Lenoir, Louis Petit de Julleville, and, later, Charles Bayet, as well as of other French travellers and scholars during the second half of the nineteenth century, such as Alfred Delacoulonche and Georges Perrot, that Byzantine Greece was introduced into the travel itineraries of the period, increasing the recordings of surviving Greek Byzantine heritage.36 These early French recordings and the discussions they generated were soon introduced into Britain, where the demand for a ‘new, modern architecture’ was predominant.37 Historic architecture was, along with the Gothic Revival, neoclassicism, the ‘Queen Anne’ style, and Eclecticism, at the very heart of contemporary debates that took place at the RIBA, mainly at the instigation of Arts and Crafts pioneers.38 Byzantium was introduced in the liveliest of these panels. T.L. Donaldson, co-founder of the RIBA and Professor of Architecture at King’s and University College London, had already turned his interests to the ‘Greek’ material in his inaugural lecture of 1842 at University College London.39 He later developed the topic in an article published in 1853 in The Builder, in which he openly suggested that Byzantine influences could be traced in English architecture, too, fully endorsing the opinions of Lenoir and de Verneilh on ‘Greek-influenced’ French architecture, which came about as the result of the proper study and recording of surviving Byzantine material in the eastern Mediterranean.40 Gradually, Byzantine recordings became more meticulous and directly related to the regions in question. Early maps created by the Germans during this time, such as the architects Edvard Schaubert (in collaboration with Stamatis Kleanthis, 1831–2), Wilhelm von Weiler (1834), and Frederick Staufert (1836–7) as well as

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the collaboration of Staufert and Schaubert (1836), and the Greek, Lysandros Kaftantzoglou (1839 and c. 1842), noted some surviving ecclesiastical and, in some cases, secular medieval buildings.41 Almost 50 years later, in 1874, the Germans Ernst Curtius and Johann August Kaupert created the first detailed maps of Attica, faithfully recording the monuments’ locations, but without giving information about the monuments themselves.42 It was the French, though, who devoted two much-celebrated monographs almost exclusively to the surviving Byzantine monuments in southern Greece, as well as the still Ottoman-occupied Greek north: the Choix d’églises bysantines en Gréce by André Couchaud (1842) and Byzantine Architecture by Charles Texier and Richard Popplewell-Pullan (1864). Both proved particularly influential in architectural practice and the scholarship, although they offered a selective, largely amateurish, documentation of the Christian monuments that did not pass unnoticed by the Arts and Crafts pioneers. William Lethaby included the Couchaud monograph in the bibliography accompanying his article on ‘Byzantine art’, which appeared in the eleventh edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.43 In 1858, the Reverend John-Louis Petit, a leading expert in ecclesiastical architecture and an ardent supporter of the pre-Gothic arched style and the adoption of the Romanesque in Britain, gave a lecture at the RIBA inspired by the Byzantine material Couchaud had recorded.44 Couchaud’s study and his travels to Greece and Turkey in 1857–8 further fuelled his enthusiasm for Byzantine architecture against the then predominant Gothic style. As early as 1834, the French architect and scholar Charles Texier worked with the assistance of his colleague Richard Popplewell-Pullan on Byzantine monuments in Greece and Asia Minor. Impressed by the Byzantine material of Thessaloniki, they published in their Byzantine Architecture a series of drawings (unfortunately inconsistent and inaccurate in their details, but rather lavish) of the architecture and, partly, the decoration of major Christian churches in the city.45 The book was published in French and English in 1864 and enjoyed growing popularity in both the scholarly community and the wider public. Lethaby, despite the noted inconsistencies, was aware of Texier’s work; it appears that he had studied Texier’s St Sophia drawings of 1834, which were held at the RIBA library.46 European Romanticism had re-invented Byzantium essentially as a Hellenic empire.47 It was the classicist aesthetic ideology and ethos that determined how these early random and selective recordings of surviving Byzantine monuments and remains were executed. Created almost exclusively by professional copyists or artists who were working alongside the travelling scholars, these recordings were widely copied in turn and offered a neoclassical reading of Byzantium. Such examples include Lambros, who worked with Guilliéron as well as Emmanuel Lambakes, an acclaimed Nazarene painter of the period. The Frenchman Gabriel Millet, a major figure in the documentation and reception of Byzantine Greece, first worked with the artist Pierre-Louis Bénouville and, later, Sophie Millet, Jules Ronsin, Pierre Roumpos, Didron worked with Paul Durant.48 The reproductions by these professional copyists/artists treated all materials (i.e. metalwork, enamels, mosaic) as paintings and rarely remained faithful to the original artefact, since the main principle inspiring their recordings was to ‘correct’ and complete the art work; this was in an attempt to

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create an impressive ‘masterpiece’ in quality and impact equal to that of ancient art, which was much more appealing to contemporaneous European audiences. Thus, while they were extremely popular, having the advantage of being coloured compared to the era’s black-and-white photography, these reproductions failed to give a more or less faithful and accurate documentation of the studied work. Schultz and Barnsley studied Byzantium in the region by adopting a different approach. Both arrived in Athens well prepared. They had studied closely major works of contemporary British as well as French and German travelling scholars, mainly those in fields of interest highly valued in Arts and Crafts circles (history, historic architecture, archaeology, ecclesiology etc.). Long reading lists and large extracts from these works were copied in the notebooks, which both of them kept consistently throughout their travels.49 Clear goals were set for their endeavours: 1 2

Both the architecture and decoration of major Byzantine and post-Byzantine monuments of the Greek mainland were to be documented, studied, and, if possible, published. The experience and skills acquired would be used to reinvigorate their own work as architects, ‘teaching them how to build honestly, reasonably and efficiently’, according to the principal Arts and Crafts ideal, and the teachings of the likes of Philip Webb, Norman Shaw, and Lethaby, who promoted research fieldtrips as an essential part of professional architectural training.50

Through this practice, they produced themselves, without the assistance of an artist or copyist, detailed preliminary and final inked black-and-white or coloured drawings based on close in situ observation, their own photographs and exhaustive notebook entries that they kept consistently throughout their travels. All of their records demonstrate clear expertise, true draughtsmanship, and a genuine concern for faithful accurate documentation (Figure 6.3). Photography underwent major aesthetic and technical changes in the late nineteenth century. The development of easier methods, such as the dry plate and, later, the roll film, and the invention of new, much lighter cameras by Kodak, Linhof, and Zeiss introduced a new type of traveller-scholar who would arrive at the Mediterranean seaports carrying photographic equipment instead of an easel and brush.51 Photographic reproductions, taken by either them or professional photographers, would be used by Schultz and Barnsley for scientific purposes alongside the detailed drawings they created for each of the monuments they recorded. They focused on documenting key aspects of the architecture, masonry, and decoration of these monuments as well as, in many cases, the related surviving material culture (i.e. ecclesiastical furniture, metalwork) and inscriptions in an attempt to study the building as fully as possible (Figures 6.4a and 6.4b). More than 50 monuments were documented between 1888 and 1890, some of which are lost today. Two monastic complexes were fully recorded: the monasteries of Daphni, Attica, and Hosios Loukas, Phocis. Only the latter was published in

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Figure 6.3 Colour drawing of a mosaic by Robert Weir Schultz from the Monastery of Daphni, Attica, 1888–90 Source: BRF 01/01/01/187, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

1901 under the auspices of the BRF.52 In addition to religious architecture, Walter George also documented some of the secular architecture, the houses in particular, in the fortified city of Mistras.53 Together with William Harvey, he also documented various churches in Thessaloniki with the intention to properly publish the city’s Byzantine monuments in a monograph sponsored by the BRF.54 Information from their work on Hagios Demetrios, Thessaloniki, was eventually published, in part, by George Soteriou in 1952, but George’s invaluable watercolours of the monument were not fully published until Robin Cormack’s exhibition catalogue in 1985. Throughout their travels, all of the BRF architects met and exchanged methods and ideas with members of international teams, mainly French, Italian, Russian, and

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Figure 6.4a The Church of Hagioi Theodoroi in Athens (south elevation), 1842, as recorded by A. Couchaud in Choix d’Églises Byzantines en Gréce, pl. X, Figure 1.

Figure 6.4b The Church of Hagioi Theodoroi in Athens (south elevation), 1888–90, as recorded by British architects Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley. The BRF Archive preserves 17 drawings of the Hagioi Theodoroi church while the Couchaud publication contains three Source: BRF 01/01/01/110 Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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German, which were active in the region during the period, as well as with the local Greek and Turkish authorities. In particular, Schultz and Barnsley collaborated with Georgios Lambakes, a legendary figure in Byzantine Studies in Greece.55 Lambakes shared their zest for the documentation of the monuments, the active involvement in restoration work, and the eager concern for the fate of the recorded monuments, as well as the same sponsor, John Crichton-Stuart (Lord Bute).56 Through Lambakes, Schultz and Barnsley were in contact with the Greek archaeologists responsible for the Byzantine monuments in the regions that they visited. In Thessaloniki, George and Harvey would meet and discuss their work on the city’s monuments with the Frenchmen Marcel Le Tourneau and Henri Saladin, as well as the Russian Nicholas K. Kluge, and arranged a meeting with Gabriel Millet.57 The BRF architects all adopted a research methodology that was heavily influenced by their Arts and Crafts ethos. The following main principles, among others, inspired their recordings: A. A Strong Interest in Nature and Landscape, Rural and Urban Following Ruskin’s example, the BRF architects were very interested in, besides the building per se, the surrounding landscape, as they wanted to observe the monument within the landscape and considered its relationship to its topographical setting an integral part of its physical environment. B. The Close In-Situ Study of Historical Building Techniques and Materials An important factor in the British architects’ documentation of the buildings was studying the actual construction methods, building techniques, and materials used. This led them to a rationalistic understanding of the Byzantine building system. The approach was mainly influenced by the French scholarship of the period, and works by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Choisy, which were greatly admired by Morris, Webb, Lethaby, and the Arts and Crafts enthusiasts.58 In this context, they focused particularly on the use of the vault, the arch, and the dome in Byzantine architecture, which was interpreted as the ultimate proof of the originality and innovative character of the building system of the Byzantines. They read the arched architecture of the Byzantine masters as an ability to ‘understand and appropriate only what is necessary from other people’s [art] and other times’, as well as to work within limits.59 C. The Close In-Situ Study of the Building’s Decoration in Organic Relation to Architecture For the British architects, Byzantine architecture had another distinctive feature that was fundamental to the Arts and Crafts Movement’s aesthetic values: delightful, fresh ornamentation. Schultz and Barnsley studied both the sculptural and mural decoration of the recorded monuments in detail. They would focus in particular on the interrelation of decoration and architecture and its principal role in the ‘animation’ – a term used frequently in the Arts and Crafts literature – of the

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building.60 They were quite fascinated by Byzantine capitals and the continuous, elongated floral mosaic bands that decorated equally flat and curved or arched surfaces. The capital, in particular, was treated as emblematic of the power of Byzantium to creatively assimilate elements from past cultures, as well as the unified timeless space of the Byzantine church. Schultz expressed a keen interest in mosaic techniques, while George and Harvey were actively consulted about the restoration of the Byzantine monuments of Ottoman Thessaloniki.61 D. The Recording and Study of Material Culture and Contemporary Liturgical Practices The nineteenth century witnessed the development and growing popularity of folklore studies, another offspring of European Romanticism.62 As far as Greece was concerned, the premises of the new discipline, which was thriving in Europe, were quite explicit: to prove that the modern Greeks were direct descendants of the ancient Greeks, and to identify elements of continuity in Greek folk culture.63 At the same time, the wide-ranging interest of the scholars based at the foreign schools – the British School at Athens in this case – further encouraged interdisciplinary studies.64 A strong nationalistic interest, combined with a certain tendency to exoticism, typically characterised the followers of the Arts and Crafts Movement. As students of the BSA, Schultz and Barnsley’s research was influenced by this interdisciplinary approach. In addition to their interest in the architecture, building techniques, and decoration, they were also intrigued by contemporary liturgical practices related to both Byzantine and post-Byzantine monuments, treating the monument as a whole with all its parts and functions. Inspired by the idea of ‘living history’, something that had fascinated Morris since his Oxford years and permeated the Arts and Crafts ideology, the BRF architects attempted to reconstruct a religious sacred space that had largely remained in use up until modern times.65 The approach was obviously influenced by works greatly admired by the Arts and Crafts followers emphasising the continuity of the Greek nation, such as George Finlay’s History. ‘Mysticism’, as in the ‘mysticism’ of the Byzantine church, another favoured term in Arts and Crafts literature, was studied by the BRF architects in tandem with the pragmatic principles of Byzantine architecture.66 The BRF architects undertook their research and travels with the ambition to apply the lessons learned in their profession. Their Byzantine recordings, inspired by the Arts and Crafts principles, seem, in their turn, to have been more or less directly reflected in a series of architectural and artistic projects they later executed. Although George and Harvey’s subsequent work does not have any obvious Byzantine influences, Schultz and Barnsley were behind some of the earliest manifestations of the Arts and Crafts expression of Byzantium in Britain. The parish church of the Holy Wisdom in Lower Kingwood, Surrey, commissioned in 1891 by Edwin Freshfield and Sir Henry Cosmo Orme Bonsor and designed by Sidney Barnsley, was modelled on the plan of Hagia Eirene, Constantinople, and certainly has strong Byzantine influences (Figures 6.5a and 6.5b).Equally, Schultz’s contributions in the Chapel of St Andrews in Bentley’s

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Figure 6.5a Apse decoration in the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey, England Source: Author’s photo

Figure 6.5b Apse decoration of Hagia Eirene, Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey Source: Author’s photo

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Westminster Cathedral (1912–16) were inspired by his Byzantine recordings.67 It is Schultz’s later work, though, that most eloquently demonstrates both a practical and primarily conceptual knowledge of Byzantium.68 The Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum, modelled on the church of Hagios Demetrios, Thessaloniki (Figures 6.6a and 6.6b) and built between 1906 and 1923, gave Schultz the opportunity to apply in practice the main lesson of the Arts and Crafts interpretation of Byzantine

Figure 6.6a Ground plan (west end and east end) of the Cathedral Church of All Saints, Khartoum, Sudan Source: after RIBA 126768, PA 1093/5(2) and RIBA 126767 PA 1093/5(1) ©RIBA Collections

Figure 6.6b Ground plan of the Church of Hagios Demetrios, Thessaloniki, Greece, 1908–1910, by Walter Sykes George Source: BRF 01/01/07/282, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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builders: the appropriation of existing local and traditional construction methods in a practical ‘economic’ architecture true to the materials and beautiful in its own way. His main challenge was to make Khartoum Cathedral evoke Byzantium, appropriating past European and local traditions, in what Lethaby would read as a ‘universal style’.69 Entrenched in the Arts and Crafts philosophy, Robert Weir Schultz, Sidney H. Barnsley, Walter S. George, and William Harvey contributed a unique approach to the largely amateurish late nineteenth to early twentieth-century treatment of Byzantium in the East. Their refined methodology, advanced for its time, and their systematic recordings have proved among the most valuable for the modern researcher. The BRF architects succeeded in bringing Byzantine Greece to the forefront of contemporary consciousness. Their systematic, comprehensive documentations and studies solidified the idea that Byzantine art and architecture were worthy of attention and respect. They introduced Byzantium in the eastern Mediterranean to nineteenth-century research agendas and, influenced by their Arts and Crafts background, popularised and proposed new ways of reading and studying the surviving Byzantine heritage in the region. Besides the St. Luke monograph by Schultz and Barnsley, Harvey and George would work systematically on Byzantine architecture in Turkey and the Near East. The results of their research resulted in two major publications by the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund on the eve of World War I. Harvey’s monograph on the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, with contributions from Lethaby, Weir Schultz, and British supporters of the Arts and Crafts Movement, such as the then Director of the British Museum, Ormond M. Dalton, appeared in 1910.70 In 1913, George closely collaborated with Alexander van Millingen, a renowned Byzantinist, on the publication of the church of Hagia Eirine in Constantinople, which gave him the opportunity to elaborate further on his reception of Byzantine architecture.71 To fully understand the contribution of the BRF architects, the appropriation of Byzantium by the British Arts and Crafts Movement needs to be re-examined. Byzantine architecture and art represented for the Arts and Crafts enthusiasts what they would define as ‘modern’ – that is, simplicity – the unity of design and function, integrity on the handling of the materials, the ability to communicate to the public complex ideas that reunited the spiritual and the commonplace, all key concepts of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic. Their approach constituted, ultimately, a unique and most fascinating reading of the culture of the Byzantines, and asking questions such as: is it actually possible to talk about a comprehensive, systematic, and most radical recreation of Byzantium? What was the purpose of this re-imagining that brought Byzantium at the foreground of nineteenth-century modernism? What did it actually consist of, and how deep-rooted was it in the Arts and Crafts ideology and ethos? How did it affect the place of Byzantium, Byzantine heritage in the eastern Mediterranean, Greece in particular, in the international cultural agendas of the era and to what extent has it influenced or not our perception of Byzantium?

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Notes * This chapter is based on research into the Byzantine Research Fund Archive that dates back to 2007 when, as a project assistant/research associate to the British School at Athens Archives, I catalogued, documented, and prepared for online publication the BRF Drawings and Photographs, now available on the BSA Digital Collections page: https://digital.bsa.ac.uk/. I am most indebted to the former and current Directors of the BSA, Profs. Catherine Morgan, OBE, and John Bennet as well as the BSA Archivist Ms. Amalia G. Kakissis. It is an honour to acknowledge the generous support of the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and the Firestone Library of Princeton University, Center for Hellenic Studies, King’s College, London, and the A.G. Leventis Foundation. Preliminary results of this research, partly summarised here, have been presented at: Kotoula 2013 with a contribution by A.G. Kakissis, Kotoula 2015, 2017, and, also, www.youtube.com/channel/UCJLq-d0Q3Upn28hO5UWptmw, in 2014. My study of the BRF Archive at the British School at Athens is an on-going research project. 1 Letter from William Harvey to Robert Weir Schultz, 3 June 1908, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 13, British School at Athens. 2 BSA Annual Report 1887–88, 8–10; Stamp 1981, 8; Kakissis 2009, 132. 3 Ibid. 4 BSA Annual Report 1890–91, 5; Kotoula 2015, 75–6. 5 Kakissis 2009, 153–4, 155; Kotoula 2015, 95–6. See also Butler in this volume. 6 For the early history of the BSA: Macmillan 1911. 7 Kakissis 2009, 143–5. 8 Stamp 1981, 9. 9 Rubens 1986, 38. 10 Kotoula 2015, 77–9. 11 For foreign travellers in Greece during the nineteenth century, see Simopoulos 1996 (in Greek) and Vergopoulou 2004. For British travellers in particular, see Angelomatis-Tsougarakis 1990; Tolias 1995, esp. 10–21. For the Dilettanti: Redford 2008; Kelly 2010. For the Grand Tour, see the reference studies Hibbert 1966, 1987 2nd ed.; Woodhouse 1969. 12 For representative examples: Tsigakou and Dollinger 1995. 13 Tsigakou 1981, 1991. 14 For travel accounts of the period, see the standard editions: Droulia 1993 (in Greek) and Weber 1952. For a critical approach to this material: Hamilakis 2011. 15 Bullen 2006, 83. 16 Mango 1961, 7–9; Jeffreys et al. 2008, 10–11; Cameron 1992, 10–12. 17 Chlepa 2011, 19–20 (in Greek). 18 Lindsay 1847, I, 66–8. 19 See the excellent study by Nayrolles 2005, 64–5 and 71, 83, 91, on Alexandre Laborde and his contribution. 20 Verneilh-Puyraseau 1851, 17–18 and 302; see also Nayrolles 2005, 293–5. 21 Salzenberg 1854, pls. 3, 4, 5; Fossati 1852. For the Fossati–Salzenberg relationship, see Mango 1962, 18–21. 22 Nelson 2004, 105–7. 23 Lethaby and Swainson 1894. 24 Mathiopoulos 2006, 83, n. 30. 25 Couchaud 1842. 26 Bullen 2006: 58–72 (for France), 70–2 (for the Marseilles Cathedral), and 132–50 (for Britain). 27 Chlepa 2011, 13–38, esp. 13–25 (in Greek). 28 For the foreign schools, see Fitschen 2000, 222–5. For the development of Byzantine historical studies in Greece and their impact, see Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou 1994 (in Greek).

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37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

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Kitroeff 2012, 271–4 (in Greek), and Christodoulou 2010. Collection of the Greek National Monument Archives, ref. no 23273/17.10.1892. Gazi 2004 (in Greek) and Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou 1994, 163–76 (in Greek). Lambros 1880. Ioannou 2003 (in Greek) and Mathiopoulos 2006, 84–5 (in Greek). The most celebrated of these is the reproduction of the Virgin with Prophets from the Kaisariani monastery, Athens, Attica. Watercolour drawing of the Tree of Jesse, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 01/01/01/221, British School at Athens. Didron 1843. For Lenoir’s expeditions, see Martin 2005; Thomine-Berrada 2009, 5–10, which can be found at: http//inha.revues.org/4917. Lenoir had already draw attention to historic architecture in the East with Lenoir 1834; Bayet 1883. For the other French travellers and scholars, see Spieser 1991, 1996. Collins 1998, 128–49. Macleod 1971, 9–107. The Spectator 1842, 1028. Donaldson 1853, 68–9. Korres 2010, 79 (in Greek); see also Peckham 2001, 137–47. Curtius et al. 1881–1900. Lethaby 1910, 911. Petit 1858, 277. Texier and Popplewell-Pullan 1864, pls. 16, 26, 30–4, 40. Nelson 2004, 116. Mackridge 2008, 302–3. Mathiopoulos 2006, 79–81. For their reading lists, see: Notebooks of Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/SCH 11 & 19 and BRF 3/BAR 5 & 9, British School at Athens. Schultz 1909, 10; Kotoula 2015, 80. Edwards 1985, 14–24; See also Carabott et al. 2015. Schultz and Barnsley 1901. For George and Harvey’s Thessaloniki recordings, see Kotoula 2017. For the documentation of George’s houses in Mistra, see Kourelis in this volume. Letter from Robert Weir Schultz (as the Honorary Secretary of the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund) to Walter George, 6 January 1910, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/1, RIBA Collections. On Lambakes, see Olga Gratziou 2006, 41–6 (in Greek). Macrides 1992, 5–10. Kotoula 2017, 132–3. Choisy 1883; Viollet-le-Duc 1854–68. Notebook of Sidney Barnsley, 1890, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/BAR 5, British School at Athens. Kotoula and Kakissis 2013, 263–6. Kotoula 2017, 137, 139–40. Politis 2003, 38–9 (in Greek). Ibid., 49–52 and 61–73 (in Greek). Whitley 2005, 53. Swenarton 1989, 67. Lethaby 1892a. For a detailed treatment of the issue, see Kotoula 2015, 99, Figure 3.10. Cormack 2013, 86–7. Lethaby and Swainson 1894, 6. For Lethaby’s philosophy on the building and the builder, see also Lethaby 1892b. Harvey et al. 1910. George 1913.

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Harvey, W. et al. 1910. The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. Illustrated from Drawings and Photographs by W. Harvey and Others (London). Hibbert, C. 1987. The Grand Tour (2nd ed., London). Ioannou, P. 2003. ‘The Art-Historian Spyridon Lambros’, in The History of Art in Greece. Proceedings of the First Conference of the History of Art (Herakleion), 117–59 (in Greek). Jeffreys, E., Haldon, J. and Cormack, R. 2008. ‘Byzantine Studies as an Academic Discipline’, in Jeffreys, E., Haldon, J. and Cormack, R. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (Oxford and New York), 3–20. Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive: Encounters of Arts and Crafts Architects in Byzantium’, in Llewellyn-Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and Calligas, E. (eds.), Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture through the British School at Athens (Athens), 143–61. Kelly, J.M. 2010. The Society of the Dilettanti: Archaeology and Identity in the British Enlightenment (New Haven and London). Kitroeff, A. 1989. ‘Continuity and Change in Contemporary Greek Historiography’, European History Quarterly 2, no. 19, 269–98. Updated & translated into Greek as Kitroeff 2012. Kitroeff, A. 2012. ‘Continuity and Change in Modern Greek Historiography’, in Veremis, Th. (ed.), National Identity and Nationalism in Modern Greece (Athens), 271–321 (in Greek). Korres, M. (ed.) 2010. Οι πρώτοι χάρτες της πόλεως των Αθηνών (Athens). Kotoula, D. 2015. ‘Arts and Crafts and the “Byzantine”: The Greek Connection’, in Betancourt, R. and Taroutina, M. (eds.), Byzantium/Modernism. The Byzantine as a Method in Modernity (Leiden and Boston), 75–102. Kotoula, D. 2017. ‘The Byzantine Mosaics of Thessaloniki in the Nineteenth Century’, in Eastmond, A. and Hatzaki, M. (eds.), The Mosaics of Thessaloniki Revisited (Athens), 130–43. Kotoula, D. and Kakissis, A. 2013. ‘Recording Byzantine Mosaics in Nineteenth Century Greece. The Case of the Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) Archive’, in Entwistle, C. and James, L. (eds.), New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on Byzantine Glass Mosaics (London), 260–70. Lambros, S.P. 1880. Εκθεσις . . . προς την Βουλήν των Ελλήνων περί της εις το Αγιον Ορος αποστολής αυτού κατά το θέρος του 1880 (Athens). Lenoir, A. 1834. Histoire de l’architecture chrétienne depuis le règne de Constantin jusqu’ au XIIIe siècle (Paris). Lethaby, W.R. 1892a. Architecture, Mysticism, Myth (New York). Lethaby, W.R. 1892b. ‘The Builder’s Art and the Craftsman’, in Shaw, R.N. and Jackson, T.J. (eds.), Architecture: A Profession or an Art? Thirteen Short Essays on the Qualifications and Training of Architects (London), 152–72. Lethaby, W.R. 1910. ‘Byzantine Art’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. IV (11th ed., New York), 906–11. Lethaby, W.R. and Swainson, H. 1894. The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople. A Study of Byzantine Building (London and New York). Lindsay, A. 1847. Sketches of the History of Christian Art, vol. I (London). Mackridge, P. 2008. ‘Cultural Difference as National Identity in Modern Greece’, in Zacharia, K. (ed.), Hellenisms: Culture, Identity and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity (Farnham), 297–320. Macleod, R. 1971. Style and Society: Architectural Ideology in Britain 1835–1914 (London).

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Texier, C. and Popplewell-Pullan, R. 1864. Byzantine Architecture Illustrated by a Series of the Earliest Christian Edifices in the East (London). Thomine-Berrada, A. 2009. ‘Le Orient d’Albert Lenoir (1801–1891). Voyages, Lectures, Ecritures’, in Oulebsir, N. and Volait, V. (eds.), L’Orièntalism Architectural entre Imaginaires et Savoirs (Paris), 2–13. Tolias, G. 1995. British Travellers in Greece 1750–1820. Exhibition Catalogue (London). Tsigakou, F.-M. 1981. The Rediscovery of Greece: Travellers and Painters of the Romantic Era (London). Tsigakou, F.-M. 1991. Through Romantic Eyes: European Images of Nineteenth-century Greece from the Benaki Museum (Virginia). Tsigakou, F.-M. and Dollinger, A.-S. 1995. Glanz der Ruinen: die Wiederentdeckung Griechenlands in Gemälden des 19. Jahrhunderts: aus den Beständen des Benaki Museums, Athen, und des Rheinischen Landesmuseums Bonn (Bonn). Vergopoulou, I. 2004. ‘The Greek World as Seen by Travellers, 15th–20th Centuries’, in Navari, L. (ed.), Greek Civilization through the Eyes of Travellers and Scholars (Athens), 28–64. Verneilh-Puyraseau, F. 1851. L’Architecture Byzantine en France. Saint-Front de Périgueux et les églises à coupoles de l’Aquitaine (Paris). Viollet-le-Duc, E. 1854–68. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle (Paris). Weber, S.H. 1952. Voyages and Travels in the Near East and Greece Made During the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ). Whitley, J. 2005. ‘British School at Athens’, in Korka, E. (ed.), Foreign Archaeological Schools in Greece. From the 19th to the 21st Century (Athens), 52–63. Woodhouse, C.M. 1969. The Philhellenes (London).

7

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House Ruskin’s Greek Shadow Kostis Kourelis

An idealised notion of classical antiquity shaped the foundations of Modern Greece as a nation state situated at the origins of western culture. The discipline of archaeology sought to materialise this classical heritage through a destructive act of liberation from medieval and postmedieval accretions. Neoclassicism’s late eighteenth-century perspective of a single golden period came into increasing conflict with a diachronic sense of history developed by British medievalists in the mid-nineteenth century. The ideal of layered accumulation articulated by John Ruskin, the ethos of imperfect craft practised by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and the preservation principles developed by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (or the Anti-Scrape Society) conspired against the classical heritage. Impure Venice typified for Ruskin the foil to pure Athens. The Byzantine Research Fund was established to generate documentation about this lesser-known impure Greece, but it also propagated Ruskin’s multi-period conceptions of history and historic preservation. The architects of the Byzantine Research Fund brought Ruskin’s ethics into Athens, the epicentre of opposition exhibited by a newly fabricated classicising capital. Venice and Athens collided in the architectural documentation of Byzantine churches that British architects carried out, but they also collided in the archaeological revolution of stratigraphy as practised by the British School’s contemporary excavations of Sparta. The medieval house, which had been indiscriminately destroyed by archaeologists in Greece, needed to be rehabilitated by fresh domestic research. Walter S. George was the architect who produced the earliest stratigraphic record of a medieval Greek house, effectively marrying Ruskin’s Arts and Crafts with the stratigraphic revolution systematised by Cambridge archaeologists. Walter Sykes George (1881–1962) grew up in a Quaker family in Lancashire. He studied architecture in the Royal Academy School and received the Soane Medallion in 1906, which allowed him to travel to Greece. In 1915, he moved to India and joined the office of Herbert Baker, who was building New Delhi with Edwin Lutyens. George opened his own Indian office in 1923. His work included Maiden’s Hotel in Delhi, the Council Chamber in Shimla, two hospitals and the law courts in Mandi, Nabba, and Jodhpur, the British Residency in Kabul, houses for the rulers of Jhind, Mandi, and Bahawalpur States in New Delhi, several blocks of houses and offices, and St Stephen’s College in the new university.1 This chapter DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-9

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Figure 7.1 Mistras, distant view, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 02/01/14/31, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

focuses on a small, unknown episode in the architect’s young life that contributed to a new stratigraphic approach to the study of medieval Greek architecture. This contribution is reconstructed based on the drawings left behind in the Byzantine Research Fund Archive at the British School in Athens. George has left no other record of this project and its significance is projected by reading other circumstantial evidence surrounding the project’s execution. In 1909, Walter Sykes George carried out a short expedition to the medieval site of Mistra, while serving as the architect of the British School’s excavations in Sparta (Figure 7.1). George’s unpublished drawings of three medieval houses illustrate a departure from the standard methods of studying Mistra developed by French scholars of Byzantium and later standardised by Greek archaeologists and restorers. What is unique in George’s approach is a concern over chronological phasing and the demonstration of diachronic impurities in domestic architecture. George had already developed his ideals of diachronic accumulation before coming to Greece under the guidance of his mentor, the architect William R. Lethaby. While in Greece, however, he learned the nascent practices of stratigraphy in the excavation trenches at Sparta, under the guidance of Alan J.B. Wace and Richard M. Dawkins. Stratigraphic rigour was transmitted to the American excavation

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 161 through the influence of Wace. Analysing excavation notebooks in the Peloponnese during this period, Ioulia Tzonou-Herbst has observed that a mixture of old and new methodologies was used, but when selecting stratigraphic rigour, it was through Wace’s recommendation.2 In his study of Mistra, George synthesised two separate intellectual traditions, Ruskinian aestheticism from the disciplines of architecture and historic preservation and archaeological positivism from the discipline of archaeology. Not fully codified by Mortimer Wheeler for another decade, George observed the birth of stratigraphy in a pivotal moment of integration in Sparta. His commitment to stratigraphy became sharper when he brought its practices to Egyptian archaeology, a field even more conservative than classical archaeology. Attention to secular medieval architecture is also evident in work of Ramsay Traquair, who arrived in Greece seven months before George. While George was working in Sparta, Traquair was recording medieval castles in Laconia’s environs and discovering a hybrid Frankish architecture. Both architects took those lessons of stratigraphic accumulation from Greece to India, in the case of George, and to Canada, in the case of Traquair. Ideas that first gestated in England were tested in Greece and then disseminated to wider colonial fields of British Asia and French North America. As postcolonial critics have observed, Ruskin’s theories were imperialist tools for Britain’s cultural hybridisation.3 Ruskin’s shadow in Greece, paradoxically, had the opposite of an imperialist effect. Greece’s ‘cryptocolonialism’, following Michael Herzfeld’s analysis, was facilitated through neoclassicism, making it possible for Ruskin’s shadow to have a counter-imperialist affect.4 Neither Traquair nor George returned to Greece after their short engagements with Greek archaeology. For both architects, the Greek experience was an extension of their educational experience that terminated with professional and academic practice abroad. While in Greece, they planted seeds that fully germinated a decade later, when they were far from Greece in Montreal or Delhi and fully engaged in respective domestic traditions. George’s stratigraphic Ruskinianism manifested itself in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens excavations of Ancient Corinth in 1928–39. Under the directorships of Rhys Carpenter, Richard Stillwell, and Charles Morgan, the American School carried out the first excavation of medieval houses in the excavations of the Central Area.5 Among Greek circles, Ruskin’s and the Byzantine Research Fund’s ideas did not take root until the work of Demetris Pikionis, the first self-declared Greek Ruskinian. Projects such as St Demetrios Loumbardiaris and the repaving of the Acropolis environs most directly illustrate Pikionis’s debt to the Byzantine Research Fund that introduced Ruskin’s theories of historic preservation to Greece.6 The rediscovery of Pikionis by postmodern architectural criticism in the 1980s makes the legacy of George, Traquair, and the Byzantine Research Fund an important chapter in the development of an alternative modernism, or Critical Regionalism.7 Before the modernist vocabulary of architecture had fully matured in the 1920s, architects in Europe and the United States carried out their conversations through the spectrum of the historical past, particularly through the choice of the classical or medieval competing vocabularies. The classical past had asserted itself as an international style of the imperial West, further embedded into state operations

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with the professionalisation of architectural education in national academies modelled after the École des Beaux-Arts. The medieval past, particularly the Gothic, emerged as a vehicle of celebrating northern European heritage, but by the late nineteenth century had evolved into an instrument of critique, social reform, and radicalism.8 Around the 1850s, classical and medieval were compatible choices within a system of relative historicism employed according to social context (classical for city halls; Gothic for churches and schools, etc.). By the 1880s, however, this eclectic choice had transformed into a division of fundamental cultural orientation. A superficial choice of styles had escalated into a fundamental orientation in aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values. A radical medievalism took various guises in the European fin de siècle, from Art Nouveau’s organic designs at Belgium, France, and Spain to the mystical medievalism of the early Bauhaus in Germany. In the Anglophone world, John Ruskin was the theorist responsible for this transformation. Equating mass production and class exploitation with the neoclassical status quo, Ruskin elevated the medieval as the necessary springboard for a reformed modern architecture. Embraced by the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement, Ruskin’s theories of history, design, and historic preservation were transmitted to the modern movement of the twentieth century. The cultural battlefield between classicists and medievalists is evident in the trenches of Greek archaeology. The Modern Greek nation state was established on the basis of the classical glories, which it sought to revive through the visual strategies of neoclassicism and the intensive excavation of its classical sites. The four major foreign schools of archaeology were established to excavate exclusively classical sites that highlighted the rhetorical continuities between France, Britain, Germany, and the United States. The shared European origins materialised as each foreign school unearthed physical testimonies of greatness in their national excavations at Delos (1872), Olympia (1875), Delphi (1892), Corinth (1897), Sparta (1906), Perachora (1930), and Athens (1932). Ruskin, whose theories of architecture had saturated British and American education by the end of the nineteenth century, had resolutely rejected the model of Athens as an impoverished technocratic and oppressive system. If Ruskin were to visit Greece, he would have turned his attention away from the classical to seek inspiration in the Byzantine monuments that influenced his beloved architecture of Venice. When Ruskin’s students visited Greece, they declared that preference by establishing the Byzantine Research Fund and targeted standing churches over buried temples. For the most part, the Byzantine Research Fund architects operated autonomously from their classicist colleagues engaged in stratigraphic excavation. Their charge was to survey in plan, section, and elevation hundreds of standing churches, travelling as widely as possible through the country. Architects of the Byzantine persuasion occasionally collaborated with archaeologists of the classical persuasion. Peter (A.H.S.) Megaw, the last architect to be associated with the Byzantine Research Fund, excavated at Isthmia, Kourion, and Saranda Kolones, becoming director of the Cyprus Department of Antiquities (1936–60) and director of the British School in Athens (1962–8).9 Less known is the archaeological work of Walter Sykes George, who arrived in Greece two

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 163 decades before Megaw. George contributed to the British excavations at Sparta, as well as in the Sudan. While in Sparta, George conducted a short expedition at the medieval fortress of Mistra, where he surveyed three houses. George’s study was never published. A year after his visit, Gabriel Millet published the first monograph on the site based on fieldwork carried out by the French School in Athens 1893.10 During the 1920s, Mistra was transformed into a heterotopia of experiential Byzantium under the restorations of Anastasios Orlandos.11 The centrality of the houses of Mistra in the national narrative of 1930s Greece make George’s drawings of two decades earlier important as they represent an alternative way of interpreting domestic form and the chronology of monuments. The unpublished drawings by George reveal an interpretive lens very different from that of either Millet or Orlandos. George’s houses of Mistra are informed by the lessons of Ruskin and the Arts and Crafts Movement as well as the theories of historic preservation promoted by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which were antithetical to Greek practices. George’s experience during the excavations of Sparta, moreover, introduced him to the revolution in stratigraphy excavation that the British School introduced into Greek archaeology. Formally established in 1908, the Byzantine Research Fund supported the documentation of Byzantine buildings by a group of seven architects trained in Britain under the Arts and Crafts tradition.12 Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, the two architects who laid the groundwork of the BRF, left their legacy in Byzantine historiography by producing the first monograph on a Greek church to ever appear in print.13 A monograph comparable to Hosios Loukas never appeared from the Byzantine Research Fund, leaving many of the archive’s drawings unknown to scholarship. Schultz and Barnsley returned to England in 1891 and left their mark on the architectural profession; they continued to work for the Third Marquess of Bute, who had supported the Byzantine Research Fund and shaped the British and Scottish Arts and Crafts Movement.14 Ramsay Traquair and Walter. S. George were two of the first architects sponsored by the Byzantine Research Fund. Both arrived almost two decades after Schultz and Barnsley’s departure and, therefore, represent a second generation. Although not formally funded by the Byzantine Research Fund until 1908, Traquair and George came to Greece earlier on other fellowships and prizes. Traquair worked in Greece from 1906 to 1909 and George from 1907 to 1911. Both spent time in Istanbul, where they assisted Alexander van Millingen, professor at Roberts College, in the landmark publication of Byzantine churches in Constantinople.15 Traquair’s and George’s arrival coincided with the British School at Athens’s new excavations at Sparta and broader topographical research in Laconia. Traquair arrived in Greece on March 1906 as an architectural student. His appointment was divided into three months studying Byzantine and Frankish monuments in Laconia and three months making drawings of Byzantine churches in Constantinople under the direction of Alexander Van Millingen.16 His analysis of the monuments of the Crusader – or Frankish – period in Greece was ground-breaking, even though it appeared in print two decades later, while he was teaching in Canada.17 Traquair’s interpretation of Frankish architecture was radical in two ways, in creating the first

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documentary record and in analysing that record in new ways. French colonial archaeology in the Latin Crusader states, or Christian archaeology, had argued that Gothic was superior to indigenous styles (Byzantine and Islamic). Like the rational architecture that Rome brought to its eastern provinces in antiquity, French Gothic architecture had a civilising effect. Colonial historians like De Vogüé in Palestine, or Buchon in Greece, used medieval architecture to justify contemporary colonial mandates.18 Traquair, in contrast, argued against the centre–periphery model and highlighted a stylistic multilingualism in the monuments that turned the Gothic East into a creative epicentre, much like Venice had served in the paradigm of Ruskin’s aesthetics. Postcolonial theories of hybridity have confirmed Traquair’s thesis a century later.19 Although Traquair’s thesis appeared in the prestigious Journal of the Royal Institute of the British Architects, he never published the full lot of drawings into a monograph. Consequently, his scholarly contribution was eclipsed by fieldwork carried out by the French School in the 1920s and the magisterial publication of Antoine Bon.20 Traquair never returned to his medieval scholarship in Greece after he and Percy Nobb took over the creation of Canada’s first Arts and Crafts school of architecture at McGill University – a competitor to the neoclassical curriculum of the University of Toronto. Most profoundly, he applied the interpretive model he developed in Greece in his foundational study of vernacular architecture in Quebec. He argued for a hybrid architecture in new France that paralleled the paradigms of old France.21 While Schultz and Barnsley influenced the practice of Arts and Crafts architecture in Britain, Traquair transformed the history of Canadian architecture and its educational curriculum. His commitment to Ruskinian principles originated with his mother, who corresponded with Ruskin in the 1880s and was a member of the Arts and Crafts Movement and continued into his Canadian research.22 George’s career in Greece was similar to Traquair’s, splitting his attention between well-preserved Byzantine monuments in Istanbul and northern Greece, while also assisting the British School’s archaeological excavations in Sparta. George’s experiences were also supplemented by a broader colonial reach of the British. Just as Traquair migrated to Canada, George spent significant portions of his career in colonial India. George received a Ruskinian education at the Royal College of Art, under the guidance of William Lethaby (in whose office both Schultz and Barnsley had worked). George’s first scholarly contribution to the field of Byzantine architecture was a monograph on the Church of Hagia Eirene in Istanbul that was modelled after his mentor’s study of Hagia Sophia.23 George’s study withstood the test of time and was invaluable to the modern study of the church carried out by Urs Peschlow 65 years later.24 In northern Greece, George completed a set of drawings for the Church of St Demetrios in Thessaloniki that proved to be invaluable in the reconstruction of the church after the devastating 1917 fire.25 The excavation and restoration of St Demetrios began as an international collaboration between British and Greek scholars, based on George’s early studies. Peter Megaw and David Talbot Rice continued research at the church in the 1930s, but after the death of Humfry Payne (then the British School Director) and Aristotelis Zachos (project architect)

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 165 in 1936 and 1939, the collaboration between Greek and British scholars disintegrated. When excavations resumed after World War II in 1948 and the site was published in 1952, it was solely a Greek project.26 George’s work in Sparta began one year after Traquair in 1907. Richard M. Dawkins, director of excavations in Sparta, noted the contribution of these two architects in the annual field reports. Traquair, for example, studied Sparta’s Byzantine fortifications and concluded they were Roman in 1906. With the discovery of the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia near the Eurotas River on 7 April 1906, the excavation focus shifted. George arrived in Sparta in 1907. Dawkins writes: Mr. George, an architectural student, did some excellent watercolour drawings, and also very valuable work at the Orthia Sanctuary, giving us several weeks of his time, first at Sparta and then at Athens. The plan and sections of the Orthia buildings are due to him. I take this opportunity of recording how very much my account of the Roman theatre at this site owes to his careful work and to his readiness to put his architectural knowledge at the service of the School.27 Although not visibly credited to him in the plates, George’s archaeological drawings were printed in Dawkins’s annual report.28 His sections of the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia are most important because they clearly demarcate stratigraphic levels (‘altar deposit’, ‘Geometric deposit’, ‘“Orientalising” deposit’, ‘level made at building of temple’, ‘sand’, ‘virgin soil’, ‘surface before excavation’, etc.) and constitute some of the earliest stratigraphic sections in Greek archaeology (Figure 7.2). Traquair published the second instalment of his castles study the same year.29 George was not in Sparta in 1908, but architectural work continued under another BRF architect, William Harvey. Dawkins reports, ‘Mr. Harvey, an architectural student of the Royal Academy, also visited Sparta during the excavation, and made drawings of some of the painted vases and ivory carvings’.30 George returned to Sparta in the spring of 1909 working on the completion of the excavation of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia. ‘Mr. George devoted six weeks to making drawings of the finds and gave the surveying the benefit of his experience’.31 During the same year, Traquair published his churches of the Mani. The materials for these notes were gathered in two journeys, the first through Upper Mani from Areopolis to Kalamata in 1906 as a student of the British School at Athens, the second in 1909 from Gerolimena to Kalamata on behalf of the Byzantine Fund.32 George was also present in the 1910 excavations. Dawkins writes: The season of 1910 closed the excavations of the School at Sparta which were begun in 1906. . . . Mr George was again present and made a number of drawings, mainly of the objects in ivory from the Orthia site.33

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Figure 7.2 Section drawing of Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, Sparta, 1907, by Walter S. George Source: Sparta 80a, Sparta Excavation Records, ©British School at Athens

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 167 Although the excavations at Sparta were focused on the ancient city, attention was given to Byzantine material culture whenever possible, including a landmark article on Byzantine pottery.34 This was the first study of Byzantine pottery that dealt with them as material objects and not as decorative patterns, focusing on the wheeled shapes rather than the glazed surfaces. As Joanita Vroom notes, it is the first time that cross sections of Byzantine ceramics were ever published.35 Sparta’s excavation director, Richard Dawkins, created a cultural laboratory for the integration of post-classical material culture in the canonical history of Greece. George’s contributions to the study of medieval houses are situated in a larger agenda that included the study of modern Greek linguistics, ethnography, arts, and crafts.36 During the spring of 1909, while he was working at the Sparta excavations (field season 27 March to 28 May), George travelled to Mistra, eight miles west of Sparta, to document medieval domestic architecture. Schultz and Barnsley had already visited Mistra in 1890 and had surveyed its churches. The Byzantine Research Fund had focused on Byzantine churches rather than domestic architecture. The notebooks of the Byzantine Research Fund architects, however, include notes about vernacular architecture. Harris Kalligas, for instance, has studied the notebooks of Schultz and Barnsley from 1890 as sources of information for the vernacular architecture of Monemvasia.37 A domestic perspective should be expected from the Byzantine Research Fund architects. Their own professional practice was heavily domestic. Before coming to Greece, both Schultz and Barnsley had worked in the office of Norman Shaw in 1885, the premier Queen Anne domestic house architect of England.38 Traquair’s architectural practice before Greece was also focused on houses. He had worked on prominent domestic firms in Edinburgh and London, while his own practice was also predominantly domestic. Before coming to Greece, he had designed Skirling House in Peeblesshire, in 1905. He designed his best-known work, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Edinburgh, in 1911, after his return from Greece.39 Traquair’s domestic interests are evident in the details of windows, door, and fireplaces of medieval Greek castles.40 George’s research on the domestic architecture of Mistra, however, comprises not sketches but fully fledged archaeological surveys of the kind that the Byzantine Research Fund architects devoted to churches. The British architects had always kept an eye out for interesting domestic details that they could later incorporate, via their sketches, into future projects in Britain. George’s close attention suggests an interest beyond the standard notebook habits of building a visual library by contemporary architects. Annette Carruthers, who has investigated George’s correspondence at the Victoria and Albert Museum, has suggested that George’s Mistra expedition might have been more explicitly ordered by the Third Marquess of Bute, the patron of the Byzantine Research Fund.41 The Marquess had already begun a practice of employing the Fund’s architects to work on his houses. Schultz even restored a medieval structure, Wester Kames Tower, in the Marquess’s estate in 1897–1900.42 The Marquess was preoccupied with the design of his house and was especially interested in Byzantine domestic models, but George’s schemes were not adopted.

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Stored in the archives of the British School and never published or cited by later scholars, George’s study of the houses of Mistra become all the more valuable in recording an important episode in the history of medieval architectural studies. In the absence of a memoir or any explicit discussion of methodology or context, George’s short tenure in the Peloponnese needs to be reconstructed from circumstantial evidence. Richard J. Butler, the scholar who has studied George’s papers most thoroughly, has concluded that George flourished in Sparta because Wace, Dawkins, and their fellow archaeologists accepted him as an equal.43 This should not be assumed given the internal social stratification of archaeological practices in the early twentieth century, where architects were considered to be inferior staff members to the service of the superior academics. Archaeologists, moreover, tended to be of a higher class and socially connected, while architects were salaried technicians in the early stages of a training that concluded in professional practice. By all accounts, George’s archaeological experience in Sparta was positive. If architects were marginalised by more elite classicists and archaeologists, it seems that George was accepted and respected by Wace and Dawkins. His experiences must have been positive among both parties as they lead into further explorations in archaeological architecture. Surely on the recommendation of Wace and Dawkins, George continued with archaeology once his fellowship in Greece was over. In 1910, he joined Liverpool University’s Egyptian excavations at Mer in Sudan and published his reports.44 In contrast to the progressive experiments in Sparta, Liverpool’s excavation was methodologically conservative, as was the entire field of Egyptology.45 Although an architect, George was the only member of the expedition interested in stratigraphy. The project was focused on the Egyptian period, moreover, and had diminished interest in the post-pharaonic domestic accumulation of the site. Classical archaeologists were first in developing stratigraphic methods and employing professional architects. Egyptologists were methodologically conservative. William M. F. Petrie had collected plans of Egyptian sites in the 1880s but without concern for relative chronologies. The director of excavations at Meroë, John Garstang, hired a professional architect but was not interested in stratigraphy. When the site was fully published in 1997, George was singled out as the only staff member who recorded vertical stratigraphy. Archaeological interest in Egyptian Nubia had racist overtones, seeing Hamidic culture to the north as superior to a racially black south. The University of Pennsylvania had initiated excavations in 1907 to 1908, finding Meroitic inscriptions in Lower Nubia. Liverpool University’s excavations of Meroë began in 1909 and lasted for five seasons until 1914. George’s focus in the late domestic structures of a site most valued for its Egyptian period is very similar to his focus on the medieval domestic structures of Laconia most valued for its classical period in Sparta. George reported carefully on the late domestic structures that covered five distinct periods from the second century BCE to the first century CE. He writes: Before the excavations were commenced the areas surrounding Nos. 98 and 197 showed as mounds rising above the general level of the site: it is in these areas that the later buildings have been found, and it seems probable that

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 169 during the later periods of the city’s existence only these portions of the site were occupied, and that at least some portions of the city wall were by this time level with the surface of the ground.46 Eighty-three years after George’s report, archaeologist Lászlo Török processed all of the site’s records and produced the definitive report of the site. Publishing the finds from George’s excavation units, Török writes: It is owed to George’s – however slight – interest for vertical stratigraphy that we have two sections showing the situation within the central part (courtyard?) of the late building M 197/289. These valuable sketches were already discussed . . . from the aspect of their information they provide for the dating of the Enclosure Wall and for the general level conditions within the Enclosure area.47 Like the drawings of Mistra, George’s stratigraphic sketches were never published in his lifetime. Thanks to their unique stratigraphic significance, Török published them in the site’s final monograph.48 They deviated from common practices by showing a vertical stratigraphic section. There is not much to more to say about George’s stratigraphic sensibilities. His short career as an archaeological architect ended in 1912, when he joined Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker in the design of New Delhi in India, which lasted until 1929. After 1929, George remained in India and pursued a private practice and teaching. St Stephen’s College is his best-known project and has received a well-deserved architectural appraisal.49 George’s archaeological experience was short and never intended as a full career. George was not a principal investigator or project director in any of his archaeological projects but always an assistant to a larger agenda. Within the limited area of architectural studies, however, he left his imprint and interpretive mark. The drawings and notes of his houses in Mistra give testament to the rich conversation between architecture and archaeology that took place in the first decades of the twentieth century. Mistra became the centrepiece for Byzantine archaeology, receiving the majority of restoration resources during the 1930s, as Eleni-Anna Chlepa has shown.50 Mistra was founded in 1249 as the seat of the Crusader Principality in the Morea. Following its reconquest by the Palaiologos Dynasty in 1262, the site became a Constantinopolitan satellite and the epicentre of a cultural renaissance that migrated to Florence after the Ottoman conquest and contributed to the Italian Renaissance.51 Mistra continued to function as an Ottoman village into the nineteenth century but failed to attract scholarly attention because no historical text could yet be associated with it. This changed in 1825, when French antiquarian Jean-Alexandre Buchon discovered a medieval manuscript in a Belgian library that, for the first time, gave some kind of textual focus to the medieval site.52 After publishing this edition of The Chronicle of Morea, Buchon journeyed through Greece from 1840 to 1841 in search of monuments to match with his heroic figures, ‘seeking rays of light to illuminate the dark history of the times where our

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crusaders of France founded baronies in the same valleys that decorated the kings of Homer with flowers’.53 The French discovery of Mistra was a colonialist project, seeking medieval precedent for French geopolitical ambitions. One person to read Buchon was Goethe, while writing Faust. After reading The Chronicle of Morea (according to a note he left on a theatre playbill), he moved the site of Faust’s wedding to Helen from Faust’s palace on the Rhine to an imagined Mistra in the Peloponnese, thus finding a convenient topographical marriage between the Hellenic and Gothic genius of western civilisation.54 Now that Mistra had been placed on both the colonialist and literary maps, its monuments had to be actually studied. The French School, having already staked its claim, sent art historian Gabriel Millet to produce the first survey.55 Millet’s work, at Daphni and then at Mistra, seemed to have produced enough anxiety in the competing British School so as to actually establish the Byzantine Research Fund. Millet’s project was predominantly photographic and art-historical, concluding in the foundation of the first Photographic Museum of Byzantine Monuments, which opened its doors in the exhibition grounds of the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris.56 Millet’s team at Mistra included Beaux-Arts medal winning architect M. Henri Eustache, who surveyed a few houses and produced a spectacular plan that literally placed domestic architecture on the map for the first time, and was exhibited in the Academy (Figure 7.3).

Figure 7.3 Plan of Mistras, by M. Henri Eustache, 1910 Source: Millet, G. 1910. Byzantine Monuments of Mistra: Materials for the Study of Architecture and Painting in Greece in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, pl. 1. (Paris).

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 171 Although Millet had no interest in houses himself, his publication signalled the existence of an almost complete Byzantine city, as could be found nowhere else. Buchon’s textual discovery of Mistra (and Goethe’s dramatic adaptation) in the mid-nineteenth century had become a monumental reality by the end of the century. Greek and foreign archaeologists, who had perfected the art of destroying Byzantine houses, took note. Adamantios Adamantiou, the first professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of Athens, wrote in 1909, Upon these heights, the Franks came to build their castle, and then the magistrates of Byzantium came to attempt the renaissance of the Greek world. Along the slopes of the mountain, at the feet of the castle, the extensive ruins reveal a new Hellas full of life and dew.57 With Adamantiou, Greek scholars began a process of decolonialising Mistra from the French and nationalising it as a site of early ethnogenesis. Anastasios Orlandos, the patriarch of Greek Byzantine architectural history, began a concerted effort to study the houses at Mistra in 1924, presented them at international congresses in 1930, and published them in the third issue of his Byzantine archives journal.58 Orlandos had also became Director of Restoration of Monuments, a position he held till 1958. He had learned his restoration principles on the Acropolis, where Nikolas Balanos horrified some members of the international community by aggressively restoring the Propylaia with steel beams and recutting original marble blocks.59 Although Orlandos turned against his mentor in 1922, he applied similarly aggressive methods in restoring the houses of Mistra. Thus, both in architectural and graphic reconstructions, Orlandos sought to fabricate an ideal Byzantine golden age, replete with ladies in waiting and gallant Byzantine warriors on horseback. It is no coincidence that in 1937, the same year that Orlandos published the houses, Angelos Terzakis serialised the novel Princess Ysabeau, a novel dramatising medieval life in the Peloponnese.60 In the first issue of the novel, Terzakis included illustrations of a Byzantine hero on horseback very similar to Orlandos’s illustrations in ‘The Houses of Mistra.’61 At the same time, Terzakis composed three Byzantine plays based on the life of Emperor Michael IV, with the last instalment performed in Orlandos’s reconstructed site of Mistra. In the 1930s, Mistra became a heterotopia of Byzantium, matching the Acropolis of Athens as the heterotopia of the nation state.62 ‘Mistra’s private dwellings and places’, wrote Orlandos, ‘add up to a unique totality. Mistra is a complete Byzantine city, lacking only its inhabitants’.63 As Roderick Beaton observed, the neoclassical monomania of the Greek nation state robbed the Greeks of the possibility of a Gothic Revival or a Gothic novel in the 1850s.64 Mistra made possible a belated effervescence of sentiments that could not take shape in the previous century. The failed Grand Idea in 1922 put Istanbul out of reach. Mistra, once an imperial city but on Modern Greek soil, could play the part of an experiential simulacrum to ‘the’ city of Constantinople. Although medieval in subject, the vision of Orlandos operates in the neoclassical mode of exceptional single moments. Mistra’s proximity to Sparta, as exploited by Goethe and Buchon in the nineteenth century, made Mistra an ideological spectacle of Greek

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nationalism. The houses of Mistra, in this scenario, provided an architectural link between the courtyard houses of antiquity and the modernist slabs of modernity.65 In order to transform the city of Mistra into a heterotopia of Hellenism, the multifaceted chronology of the medieval site had to be repressed. Eustache’s Beaux-Arts rendering of Mistra and Millet’s presentation of the houses highlighted the periodic singularity of Mistra as a Byzantine site. Orlandos stressed that singularity by suppressing visible evidence for multiplicity. While Millet would not have known of stratigraphy in 1893, Orlandos had in fact practised it while assisting the American excavations of Korakou in 1915 and 1916.66 In the publication of the houses of Mistra, Orlandos admits the complexities of studying domestic structures in that they are continuously renovated and responding to new social needs. In his analysis of the palace, he imposes chronological periods based on style rather than spatial evidence. More important than the resistance to stratigraphy (which was a British invention), Orlandos embodied principals of single-period historic preservation in the French tradition of Viollet-le-Duc. Thus, both the earlier French and the later Greek renderings of Mistra were philosophically antithetical to the British principles of historic preservation expressed by Ruskin and articulated in the Anti-Scrape Society. George’s unpublished drawings of the three houses in Mistra reflect those principles. His attention to periodic phasing makes his drawings the first stratigraphic investigation of medieval domestic architecture in Greece. Since the restoration of the three houses have been so heavy-handed, George’s drawings in fact capture the closest we will ever get to a scientific record of the monuments’ existing conditions. George arrived at Mistra in 1909. His introduction to the site would have most likely been through Robert Schultz, who had visited the site in 1890 and surveyed Hagia Sophia.67 Millet’s expedition of 1893 was not published until 1910, but Eustache’s drawings had been exhibited in Paris in 1902. George would have certainly been aware of the French School’s upcoming publication, and it is possible that he might have seen drafts of the final drawings in Athens. Millet’s expeditions at Daphni and Mistra were, after all, the only models for the Byzantine Research Fund in Greece. At Mistra, George produced a total of six drawings for three houses, which he numbered as House No 1 (three drawings), House No 2 (two drawings), and House No 3 (one drawing).68 The drawings are accompanied by notes in a notebook. Between the drawings and the notebook, it is possible to reconstruct George’s point of view, which is marked by a desire to capture detail, periodic differentiation, and the passage of time. A concern over periodisation is spelled out in the notebook, where George divides Mistra’s chronology into six periods, for which he gives a chronological duration: ‘Frankish 12 years, Byzantine 199 years, Turkish 207 years, Venetian 48 years, Turkish again, and finally Greek’. On a matching column, he gives important terminus dates, such as ‘Villehardouin, master of town 1248–49, surrendered to Paleologos 1265, Turks captured 1460, Morosini moved out Turks 1667, and Turks retrieved 1715’. In the ground and first floor plans of House No 1, he translates chronological periods into three different colours of ink wash, black, brown, and ochre, which he differentiates into three periods, ‘Byzantine; Most Recent, and Intermediate’ (Figure 7.4). The long section of House No 1 is an extraordinary drawing in using precise lines and details to demarcate different phases of structural chronology, such as blocked doors or shifted windows (Figure 7.5). To

Source: BRF 01/01/14/120, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 173

Figure 7.4 House No. 1, ground floor plan and first floor plan, Mistras, c. 1909, by Walter S. George

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Figure 7.5 House No. 1, cross-sections/long sections, Mistras, c. 1909, by Walter S. George Source: BRF 01/01/14/122, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 175 the best of my knowledge, George’s section of House No 1 is the first drawing of the structural chronology of any medieval domestic architecture in Greece. Its approach could not be more different than the un-archaeological approach in the study of Byzantine houses laid out in the first monograph on the subject in 1902, seven years before George’s visit to Mistra. Léon de Beylié’s study relies entirely on visual and stylistic evidence, thus exempting houses from archaeological specificity.69 Eustache’s plans in Millet’s study of Mistra suggest a preliminary attempt to distinguish phases (using solid and hashed lines) but do not clarify those distinctions.70 George’s periodisation is explicit in plan, section, and verbal description. It reveals subterranean spaces and also captures the accumulation of erosion. In both the ground and first floors, George notes the accumulation of post-abandonment layers of debris. Although not excavated, those lines resemble the stratigraphic layers in his sections of the excavated temple in Sparta. House No 2 is the most important of the three houses, if only because Orlandos made it an iconic named house in 1937. It corresponds to what Millet and Orlandos called ‘the House of Laskaris’, based on no other evidence than a local remembering that someone named Laskaris once lived there in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.71 House No 2 was a centrepiece in Orlandos’s reconstruction of Byzantine domestic life. Its complex structural chronology – captured by George – was erased in the cleaning and restoration of the building (Figure 7.6). Coupled with the photograph of the house published by Millet, George’s elevation provides the earliest architectural documentation of the building (Figure 7.7). Orlandos’s approach to the monument is striking in its desire to reconstruct an idealised medieval moment, including a lady-in-waiting on the balcony (Figure 7.8). Around the year 1900, English and American students of visual culture confronted a fundamental decision of intellectual orientation. Writing in 1907, Henry Adam located this choice specifically between John Ruskin’s Stones of Venice and Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.72 The choice hinged not simply on an aesthetic preference for the Middle Ages over antiquity, but rather on two fundamentally different ways of interpreting the past, of conceptualising human agency, the passage of time, and the interpreting subject’s passive or active engagement with history. For the Gibbon neoclassicists, western civilisation ought to bypass its medieval degeneration and emulate its Greek and Roman glories, as it began to do in the Renaissance. By choosing Gibbon, one would embrace the pure reflection of a golden age and dismantle any later accretions that impeded upon that perfect model. In direct contrast, Ruskin privileged the Middle Ages for its ability to illustrate the dynamic process of history, and to give visible form to the stratigraphic accumulation of layers. Architectural monuments were like books, in which everyone that passed through them added a new page, and every page in that book was worth reading. If Gibbon led to an aesthetics of purity and neoclassical distancing, Ruskin led to an aesthetics of impurity and Romantic immersion. For the young intellectual of the 1900s, this translated into a geographical choice between the ideals of Athens versus the ideals of Venice. But for the architect, whose education was contingent on foreign travel and the direct analysis of monuments, Athens versus Venice spelled out two epistemological alternatives.

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Figure 7.6 House No. 2, long section/east elevation/north elevation, Mistras, c. 1909, by Walter S. George Source: BRF 01/01/14/127, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 177

Figure 7.7 Photograph of ‘House of Laskaris’, before restoration, 1893 Source: Millet, G. 1910. Byzantine Monuments of Mistra: Materials for the Study of Architecture and Painting in Greece in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Paris), pl. 4.1.

The creation of the Greek nation state hinged ideologically on the revival of a great classical past and the suppression of any post-classical cultural impurities that might have diluted it. Complex multi-period sites like the Acropolis were sanitised down to a single period experience. Greece’s early Christian, Byzantine, Frankish, Ottoman, and Venetian monuments were destroyed in great numbers

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Figure 7.8 Reconstruction drawing of ‘House of Laskaris’, 1937, by Anastasios Orlandos Source: Ἀν. Ὀρλάνδος, Τὰ παλάτια καὶ τὰ σπίτια τοῦ Μυστρᾶ, ΑΒΜΕ Γ´, 1937, p. 110, Figure 100, ©The Archaeological Society at Athens

as the new capital of Athens took shape.73 The fellows of the Byzantine Research Fund were the first generation of artistic intellectuals to bring Ruskin’s anticlassicism to Greece and find creative ways to navigate through the inherent tensions. In order to discover the traces of a cultural synthesis, we cannot rely on published articulations but must read the drawings and notebooks as our primary evidence. George negotiated a paradoxical search for Venice in Athens through the creative

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 179 manipulation of stratigraphic excavation, an emerging scientific method not codified until 20 years later. For Ruskin, The Stones of Venice present the aesthetic borderland of northern Europe and a mercantile precedent for British Imperialism.74 For the Greek state, Venice was less innocent; it had been an oppressive occupying power, whose legacy survived in Italy’s ongoing territorial holdings in the Dodecanese. The reign of Venice (Venetokratia), like the reign of the Ottomans (Tourkokratia), was conceived as a period of national trauma, whose monumental presence should best be erased from the cultural landscape. In effect, any aesthetic affinity with Venice was synonymous with treason. The restorations of the Castle of St John or the Street of the Knights in Rhodes illustrated Italy’s monumental claims of Venice in its colonial regime.75 The Greek destruction of medieval accretions can be best seen in the demolition of the last medieval remnant on the Acropolis, the Tower of the Propylaea, in 1875.76 The project continued the policy of sanitisation of Greece’s antiquities that began with the foundation of the archaeological service.77 Whereas the demolitions were seen by most as ordinary policy, British circles under the influence of Ruskin registered their concern for the first time. An expert on medieval architecture, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, Edward Augustus Freeman registered his protest. ‘The ducal tower on the Akropolis stood out boldly as a living teacher of the unity of history. But to the pedant who is satisfied to grope among the details of two or three arbitrary chosen centuries, the unity of history has not meaning’, he wrote, criticising the tower’s destruction.78 The architects of the Byzantine Research Fund brought to Greece the new standards of diachronic history. The tension between neoclassicism and medievalism took its clearest expression in the archaeological investigation of palaces, domestic towers, and house rather than temples. In contrast to monumental architecture, houses present unique archaeological challenges. They are impure, cumulative, constantly changing diachronic artefacts and, as such, are perfectly aligned for a processual analytical framework and a methodology of fragments, which British Gothic historiography called ‘membrology’.79 Free of any explicit religious or political messaging, houses resisted the reductive ideologies of church or state and proved useless to nationalist, colonialist, or imperialist agendas that, according to Bruce Trigger, are the dominant ideologies of all archaeological discourse.80 Although found in great numbers, medieval houses were always destroyed at every excavation in Greece. Byzantine houses did not come into archaeological focus until 1928, when American architects under Rhys Carpenter – influenced by their British Arts and Crafts predecessors – carried out the first excavation of medieval houses in Corinth (Figure 7.9). Building on the stratigraphic innovations carried out by the British School of Athens, the excavations of the Central Area in Corinth extended new archaeological rigour. Stratigraphy was first devised in the excavation of Greek and Roman layers but was extended into medieval layers according to a new understanding of archaeology’s destructiveness to upper stratigraphic layers. A methodological revolution (with no connections to Byzantium at first) coincided with the work of the Byzantine Research Fund. Through the sharing of personnel, the stratigraphic revolution of classical archaeology infiltrated the

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Figure 7.9 Excavations of Central Area, Corinth, 1930 Source: ©American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Corinth Excavations

documentation of Byzantine monuments. That houses mattered for the English is no secret. More than any other nationality, the English had been obsessed with the house as an architectural topic and had developed a critical domestic language that led to continental modernism. Hermann Muthesius’s influential study of The English House was published in Berlin and is considered a seminal text in the development of continental modernism from the foundation of the Deutsche Werkbund in 1907 to the foundation of the Bauhaus in 1919.81 Trained in the offices of Norman Shaw and William Lethaby, the architects of the Byzantine Research Fund had already achieved unparalleled domestic specialisation before arriving to Greece, while their professional careers after Greece were also dominated by house commissions. The centrality of the house in Ruskin’s theoretical development can be traced to 1837 in ‘The Poetry of Architecture’, which he published under the Greek pseudonym Kata Phusin, literally According to Nature.82 In The Stones of Venice, domestic interests and Byzantium merged in the study of Byzantine palaces. For the latter-day students of Ruskin, however, the Byzantine house remained elusive (as Ruskin offered no historical or archaeological insights). Although the Byzantine Research Fund was all about churches, the architects could not resist scratching Ruskin’s domestic itch. The architects of the BRF came to Greece with a Ruskinian

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 181 mindset but encountered an established archaeological community intolerant of diachronic inclusiveness. How did they deal with this temporal schizophrenia? Did they experience an emotional breakdown, as did Sigmund Freud in his first visit to Greece in 1904, Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1908, ‘H.D.’ in 1920, or Virginia Woolf in 1932?83 Maybe not. However, some did develop interesting coping strategies that synthesised the competing worlds of aesthetics and archaeology. Although his drawings are all we have, George’s Mistra represents a Ruskinian domestic alternative not current in Greek archaeology. For reasons relating to the neoclassical fabrication of Modern Greece, Ruskin is absent from Greek cultural discourse during the first century of the nation state’s formation. His theories of process, labour, and anti-restoration were so contradictory to the Hellenic ideals of a single great past that even the poet Constantine Cavafy rejected them. Cavafy was culturally immersed in British aestheticism; his family even socialised with the Pre-Raphaelites at the house of Alexander Ionides. Unlike his compatriots in Greece, Cavafy first read Ruskin in 1893 but dismissed him as ‘priggish and dogmatic’.84 Ruskin entered Greek publications in a translation by Demetrios Bikelas in his series of useful books and was possibly commissioned by the Marquess of Bute.85 Ruskin’s aesthetic theories, however, did not make an impact in Greek cultural life until the 1930s. Kostis Palamas (1972) mentions his admiration of Ruskin’s theory of nature in a 1931 letter, while the architect Pikionis published an excerpt of Ruskin’s visual theory on linear form in the avant-garde journal The Third Eye, positioned immediately following his landmark essay ‘Sentimental Topography’. The Ruskin excerpts were translated by Takis Papatzonis, an important poet of the Thirties Generation.86 Nineteenth-century Anglophiles like Bikelas read Ruskin as a Protestant moralist. The Greek modernists of the 1930s read Ruskin as an aesthetic theorist. Pikionis’s visual vocabulary is infused with the multi-temporal fragments of the Arts and Crafts Movement, half a century later than its British manifestation. Architectural historian Andreas Giacumatos has singled out Pikionis as ‘a man who might be termed the John Ruskin of modern Greek architecture’.87 The foundation of a Greek Arts and Crafts Society by Angeliki Hadjimihali in 1928 brought Ruskin’s conception of the arts into the Greek intellectual mainstream. A whole century after the publication of The Stones of Venice (1850), Ruskin took his revenge on the Acropolis. In 1951, Pikionis began the paving of the Acropolis environs, suffocating the classical ideal with a Ruskinian maze of spolia, or according to the contemporary architect Aris Konstantinidis, ‘Pre-Raphaelite calligraphies’.88 During the 1980s, Pikionis became recognised as the most important Modern Greek architect. An exhibition at the Architectural Association in London placed his ‘Sentimental Topography’ at the forefront of postmodern debate.89 Architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, who spent time in Greece, placed Pikionis at the centre of a postmodern critique in Hal Foster’s landmark collection of essays The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays of Postmodern Culture.90 Having already published the first edition of his history on modern architecture, he amended the third edition to accommodate Pikionis’s alternate modernism.91 Frampton had taken the operative term of Critical Regionalism directly from Greek historiography. Alexander

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Tzionis and Liane Lefaivre first used the term in their introduction to the work of architects Demetris and Susana Antonakakis.92 Without a doubt, the 12 drawings of three houses in Mistra that George carried out in 1909 occupy a marginal place in the history of architecture. Never published or used as models for future designs, the drawings have remained conceptually locked in the drawers of the British School. Their Ruskinian aesthetics with embedded stratigraphic innovations are pioneering for their time. Like most architects of the Byzantine Research Fund (excluding Peter Megaw), George moved on to professional practice, in distant India. Seen from the perspective of Ruskin’s long shadow over Greece, they help evaluate the history of British and American archaeology in Greece and the silent contributions that architects like George made into a longer process of cultural evaluation, critique, and reinvention. A conceptual thread ties Ruskin’s aesthetics to Critical Regionalism between 1850 and the 1980s. George’s drawings of Mistra are a speck in the continuum but help to elucidate its trajectory. One of the few architects to experiment with stratigraphic analysis, George provides a direct link between the British School’s excavations at Sparta and the American School’s excavations of medieval Corinth and, therefore, plays an unrecognised part in the creation of medieval archaeology in Greece in the twentieth century.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

RIBA 1962. See also Richard J. Butler’s chapter in this volume. Tzonou-Herbst 2015, 48–9. Ogden 1997. Herzfeld 2008. Kourelis 2007. Ferlenga 2000, 226–303. Frampton 1983. Lewis 2002, 115, 162. Rosser 2007. Millet 1910. Orlandos 1937. Kakissis 2006, 2009; Kotoula 2015. Schultz and Barnsley 1901. Ottewill 1979; Stamp 1981; Macrides 1992; Carruthers 2013, 112–23. Van Millingen 1912. Traquair 1905–06, 1906–07. Traquair 1923, Athanasoulis 2013. Kourelis 2004. Grossman 2013. Bon 1969. Traquair 1947. Spasoff 2002; Gournay 1996. George 1913; Lethaby and Swain 1894. Peschlow 1977; Peschlow personal communication. Cormack 1969. Soteriou and Soteriou 1952, vii–viii. Dawkins 1906–07, 1.

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 183 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

Ibid., pls. II, III; Dawkins 1908–09, pl. III. Traquair 1906–07. Dawkins 1907–08, 1. Dawkins 1908–09, 1. Traquair 1908–09, 177. Dawkins 1909–10, 1–2. Dawkins and Droop 1910–11. Vroom 2003, 36–40. French 2009; Mackridge 2000. Kalligas 2000. Ottewill 1979, 89. Spasoff 2002, 62. See, for example, his drawings at Geraki, Traquair 1905–06, 260, Figure 1. Carruthers, personal communication at Byzantium and British Heritage conference. Carruthers 2013, 130. Butler, personal communication at Byzantium and British Heritage conference. George 1914; Garstang 1914. Trigger 1989, 196. George 1914, 21. Török 1997, 92. Ibid., figs. 82, 83. RIBA 1962; Butler 2012; Cormack 2013, 66–9; Butler this volume. Chlepa 2011, 135–57. Runciman 1980. Buchon 1825. Buchon 1843, vi, author’s translation. Schmitt 1904, lviii–lxvi. Millet 1910, 1916. Kourelis 1998, 2016. Adamantiou 1909, 134, author’s translation. Orlandos 1937. Jokilehto 1999, 188–90. Terzakis 1945. Terzakis first publish this as a series in the Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, from November 1937 to January 1938 then as a novel in 1945 American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library Archives, Angelos Terzakis Papers, File 11, Folder 2. Leontis 1995, 40–66. Orlandos 1937, 10, author’s translation. Beaton 1988. Kourelis 2012–13. Blegen 1921, Figure 134. British School at Athens, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 01/01/14/112–118. British School at Athens, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 01/01/14/119–130. de Beylié 1902. Millet 1910, pl. VII. Ibid., pl. IV.1; Orlandos 1937, 150. Adams 1907, 359. Travlos 1960; Bastéa 2000. Ruskin 1903–12, vols. 9–12. Martinoli and Perotti 1999. Mallouchou-Tufano 1998, 59–61. Hamilakis and Yalouri 1999. Freeman 1877.

184 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

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Frankl 1960, 491; Kite 2012, 69. Trigger 1984. Muthesius 1904. Ruskin 1903–12, vol. 1, 1–188. Freud 1936; Kessler 2011, 452; H.D. 1974, 3; Woolf 1982, 90–9. Liddell 2000, 117; Kourelis 2015, 233. Ruth Macrides, personal communication at Byzantium and British Heritage conference. Ruskin 1935. Giacumacatos 1999, 29. Konstantinidis 1991, 49. Architectural Association 1989. Frampton 1983. Frampton 1985. Tzonis and Lefaivre 1981.

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Twenty-ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995 (Aldershot), 23–44. Kessler, H. 2011. Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880–1918, ed. and trans. Easton, L.M. (New York). Kite, S. 2012. Building Ruskin’s Italy: Watching Architecture (Farnham). Konstantinidis, A. 1991. Η άθλια επικαιρότητα – Η χρυσή ολυμπιάδα – Το μουσείο της ακρόπολης (Athens). Kotoula, D. 2015. ‘Arts and Crafts and the “Byzantine”: The Greek Connection’, in Betancourt, R. and Taroutina, M. (eds.), Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity (Leiden), 75–102. Kourelis, K. 1998. ‘Gabriel Millet’s L’École Grecque: Its Origins and Its Legacy’, unpublished paper delivered at the Conference on the Historiography of Medieval Architecture in the Balkans, Princeton University, May 16. Kourelis, K. 2004. ‘Early Travelers in the Peloponnese and the Invention of Medieval Architectural History’, in Lasansky, D.M. and McLaren, B. (eds.), The Architecture of Tourism: Perceptions, Performance and Space (Oxford), 37–52. Kourelis, K. 2007. ‘Byzantium and the Avant-Garde: Excavations at Corinth, 1920s-1930s’, Hesperia 76, 391–442. Kourelis, K. 2012. ‘Byzantine Houses and Modern Fictions: Domesticating Mystras in 1930s Greece’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 65 & 66, 297–331. Kourelis, K. 2015. ‘Closing the Window on Cavafy: Foregrounding the Background in the Photographic Portraits’, Journal of Greek Media and Culture 1, no. 2, 227–52. Kourelis, K. 2016. ‘How Byzantines Became Greeks: Greek Nationalism and Byzantine Studies’, unpublished paper delivered at World of Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks, Symposium, April 22, Washington, DC. Leontis, A. 1995. Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland (Ithaca, NY). Lethaby, W.R. and Swainson, H. 1894. The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building (London). Lewis, M.J. 2002. The Gothic Revival (New York). Liddell, R. 2000. Cavafy: A Biography (London). Mackridge, P. 2000. ‘R. M. Dawkins and Byzantium’, in Cormack, R. and Jeffreys, E. (eds.), Through the Looking Glass. Byzantium through British Eyes. Papers from the Twenty-ninth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995 (Aldershot), 185–95. Macrides, R.J. 1992. The Scottish Connection in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies (St. Andrews). Mallouchou-Tufano, F. 1998. Η αναστήλωση των αρχαίων μνημείων στη νεώτερη Ελλάδας (1834–1939). Το έργο της Εν Αθήναις αρχαιολογικής εταιρείας και της Αρχαιολογικής Υπηρεσίας (Athens). Martinoli, S. and Perotti, E. 1999. Architettura coloniale italiana nel Dodecaneso 1912– 1943 (Turin). Millet, G. 1910. Monuments byzantins de Mistra; matériaux pour l’étude de l’architecture et de la peinture en Grèce aux xive et xve siècles (Paris). Millet, G. 1916. L’École grecque dans l’architecture byzantine (Paris). Millingen, A.V. 1912. Byzantine Churches in Constantinople: Their History and Architecture (London). Muthesius, H. 1904. Das englische Haus (The English House) (Berlin).

Walter S. George and the Byzantine House 187 Ogden, D. 1997. ‘The Architecture of Empire: “Oriental” Gothic and the Problem of British Identity in Ruskin’s Venice’, Victorian Literature and Culture 25, no. 1, 109–20. Orlandos, A.K. 1937. ‘Τα παλάτια και σπίτια του Μυστρά’, ArchByzMnem 3, 3–114. Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz [1860–1951]: An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History 22, 88–115. Palamas, K. 1972. Άπαντα (3rd ed., Athens). Peschlow, U. 1977. Die Irenekirche in Istanbul: Untersuchungen zur Architektur (Tübingen). RIBA 1962. ‘Walter Sykes George’, JRIBA 69, no. 3, 102. Rosser, J.H. 2007. ‘A. H. S. “Peter” Megaw, 1910–2006’, AJA 111, 151–4. Runciman, S. 1980. Mistra, Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese (London). Ruskin, J. 1903–12. The Works of John Ruskin, ed. Cook, E.T. and Wedderburn, A. (London). Ruskin, J. 1935. ‘Τρεις μελέτες του John Ruskin’, trans. T.K. Papatzonis, Trito Mati 2–3, 50–61. Schmitt, J. 1904. The Chronicle of Morea [To chronikon tou Moreos]: A History in Political verse, Relating the Establishment of Feudalism in Greece by the Franks in the Thirteenth Century / Edited in Two Parallel Texts from the mss of Copenhagen and Paris, with Introduction, Critical Notes and Indices by John Schmitt (London). Schultz, R.W. and Barnsley, S.H. 1901. The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependent Monastery of Saint Nicholas in the Fields, Near Skripou in Boeotia (London). Soteriou, G.A. and Soteriou, M.G. 1952. Η βασιλική του Αγίου Δημητρίου Θεσσαλονίκης (Athens). Spasoff, N.J. 2002. Building on Social Power: Percy Erskine Nobbs, Ramsay Traquair, and the Project of Constructing a Canadian National Culture in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century (PhD thesis, Queen’s College). Stamp, G. 1981. Robert Weir Schultz, Architect, and his Work for the Marquesses of Bute: An Essay (Mount Stuart). Terzakis, A. 1945. Η πριγκιπέσα Ιζαμπώ (Athens). Török, L. 1997. Meroe City An Ancient African Capital: John Garstang’s Excavations in the Sudan (London). Traquair, R. 1905–06. ‘Laconia I. Medieval Fortresses, Laconia II. Excavations at Sparta’, ABSA 12, 259–76, 414–30. Traquair, R. 1906–07. ‘The Mediaeval Fortresses of the North-Western Peloponnesus’, ABSA 13, 268–84. Traquair, R. 1908–09. ‘Laconia III. The Churches of Western Mani’, ABSA 15, 177–213. Traquair, R. 1923. ‘Frankish Architecture in Greece’, JRIBA 31, 33–48, 73–88. Traquair, R. 1947. The Old Architecture of Quebec. A Study of the Buildings Erected in New France from the Earliest Explorers to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (Toronto). Travlos, J. 1960. Πολεοδομική εξέλιξις των Αθηνών (Athens). Trigger, B.G. 1984. ‘Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist’, Man 19, 355–70. Trigger, B.G. 1989. A History of Archaeological Thought (Cambridge). Tzonis, A. and Lefaivre, L. 1981. ‘Ο κάναβος και η πορεία. Μια εισαγωγή στο έργο του Δημήτρη και της Σουζάνας Αντωνακάκη, με μερικές προκαταρτικές σκέψεις γύρω από την ιστορία της σύγχρονης ελληνικής αρχιτεκτονικής κουλτούρας’, Architecture in Greece 15, 164–78.

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Tzonou-Herbst, I. 2015. ‘From the Mud of Peirene to Mastering Stratigraphy: Carl Blegen in the Corinthia and Argolid’ in Vogeikoff-Brogan, N., Davis, J.L., Florou, V. (eds.), Carl W. Blegen: Personal and Archaeological Narratives (Atlanta), 41–61. Vroom, J. 2003. After Antiquity. Ceramics and Society in the Aegean from the 7th to 20th Century A.C.: A Case Study from Boeotia, Central Greece (Leiden). Woolf, V. 1982. The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Volume Four 1931–1935, Bell A. O. (ed.) (New York).

8

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In 1975, in the tradition of that exemplary patronage characteristic of his forebears, the late John, Sixth Marquess of Bute, commissioned me to do research on the Arts and Crafts architect who did so much good work for his grandfather and great-grandfather. The eventual result, elegantly designed and printed by Simon Rendall and published at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute in 1981, was Robert Weir Schultz, Architect, and His Work for the Marquesses of Bute: An Essay. Over three decades later, at the conference in London on Byzantium and British Heritage, it was gratifying to find that this little book was regarded as an essential text by several researchers in the field then present; indeed, owing to the date as well as the rarity of the publication and the pioneering nature of the research, some expressed surprise that its author was still in the land of the living. Robert Weir Schultz – the second ‘Weir’ added as a new surname in response to anti-German hysteria after 1914 can now be dispensed with – was scarcely a familiar figure when I undertook my research, although the fact that David Ottewill was also pursuing him, publishing his own research in Architectural History in 1979, suggests growing interest in his role in the Arts and Crafts Movement.1 Today, he is not only becoming regarded as an important architect of his time, notable for designing Khartoum Cathedral and St Andrew’s Chapel in Westminster Cathedral – perhaps the most sophisticated expression of the Byzantine Revival – but can be seen as the principal figure in that crucial symbiotic relationship between Byzantine Studies and the ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Back in the 1970s, I had not grasped how important had been Schultz’s work in Greece, carried out in collaboration with Sidney Barnsley, in recording hitherto overlooked Byzantine architecture and changing appreciation from an exclusive concentration on classical Greek monuments (Figure 8.1). The measured drawings, photographs, and research carried out by the two young architects in 1888–90 are now preserved at the British School at Athens. As Amalia G. Kakissis has written, ‘the exceptional success of this endeavour fuelled interest in the UK in Byzantine studies, which in turn brought more architects out into the field, and contributed to the creation of one of the most valuable resources on Byzantine monuments’.2 And Schultz’s role continued long after he returned to Britain and set up in independent practice. The Byzantine Research and Publication Fund was established in 1908 and had ‘many supporters, but it was Schultz’s lifelong devotion to the work he DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-10

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Figure 8.1 Robert Weir Schultz in front of the Perivleptos Monastery, Mistra, Greece, 1888–90 Source: BSA BRF WI.F-13, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

had started with Barnsley that proved the first crucial factor sustaining the Fund over many decades’.3 It would be otiose here to repeat, or even to summarise, what I have already written about Schultz and his work for the Third and Fourth Marquesses of Bute. The following therefore comprises necessary corrections to what was published back in 1981 together with new research and interpretations. It concentrates on the designs Schultz made for his aristocratic and learned patrons, which manifest the influence of the Byzantine, but does not cover his restorations and work for them designed in a more straightforward Arts and Crafts idiom.

Schultz Revisited 191 Schultz was a red-headed Scot, born in Port Glasgow in 1860. His architectural training began in 1878 as an articled pupil in Edinburgh to Robert Rowand Anderson, the architect for the new Mount Stuart house built on Bute by the Third Marquess after the 1877 fire that destroyed the earlier mansion.4 Anderson was also the architect for the Byzantine-style church of St Sophia at Galston in Ayrshire, first proposed by Lord Bute in 1884 but not built, to a modified design, until 1885–6 (see Figure 12.1). It is possible, therefore, but unlikely that Schultz first encountered Lord Bute at this time while assisting on these projects. It has indeed been suggested that Schultz might have been the ‘young architect’ mentioned in Bute’s diary in 1884, but in January that year he left for England, to work in the office of the great Norman Shaw.5 There he met several of the architects who would become important in the Arts and Crafts Movement, in particular those who founded the Art Workers’ Guild in that year. One was William Lethaby, ‘my oldest and best friend’, who would direct Schultz towards Greece and the Near East and who, in 1894, with Harold Swainson, would publish his own study, The Church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople. For further discussion of Lethaby and Swainson’s work on Sancta Sophia, see Julian Holder’s chapter in this volume. After Shaw’s, Schultz entered another good London office in 1886, one full of young talent: that of Ernest George.6 He was also taking evening classes at the Royal Academy Schools and, in 1887, won the Academy’s Gold Medal for his competition design for a ‘Railway Terminus’. The prize was a Travelling Scholarship worth £200 and, after consulting Lethaby, he set off for Greece early in the following year with Sidney Barnsley to study Byzantine and classical monuments, travelling via Verona, Venice, Florence, and Rome; once in Greece, they also visited Thessaloniki and Constantinople. Schultz returned to Greece early in 1889 to continue recording Byzantine structures as well as to draw the mouldings of the Erechtheion for the Hellenic Society.7 Anxious to make proper, detailed surveys of the Byzantine monuments, Schultz and Barnsley were back in Greece at the end of the year, and they appealed to the recently founded British School at Athens and elsewhere for the necessary funds to continue their work in both the Kingdom of Greece and Salonika, then still part of ‘Turkey-in-Europe’ under Ottoman rule. His old master, Shaw, supported Schultz’s application and his letter, written in January 1890, is worth repeating: I hear that a grant of £50 has been asked for from the Council of the Royal Academy towards a fund to enable an architect now in Greece to make complete drawings of the Byzantine Churches. These have never been properly drawn & indeed are very little known, though full of interest, and it would certainly be a most valuable work to undertake, and one that I feel would be thoroughly well done. Mr Schultz – the architectural student who proposes to do this (and who is in Greece now working for the Hellenic Society) was our travelling student 2 years ago – he did excellent work and is an exceptionally careful and able man – I know him very well for he was in my office for some years, he is a man for whom I always had the greatest regard.8 Schultz and Barnsley returned to London in November 1890 and both immediately started in independent practice, which thwarted their intention immediately

192 Gavin Stamp to finish their drawings for publication (in the event, their monograph on The Monastery of Saint Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependent Monastery of Saint Nicholas in the Fields, near Skripou, in Boeotia, would not appear until 1901; Schultz would also publish an article on ‘Byzantine Art’ in the very first volume of the Architectural Review in 1897, publish more in the Journal of the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies and, in 1910, edit the book of essays on The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Barnsley was commissioned by Edwin Freshfield, the important and generous supporter of Byzantine studies, to design the Church of the Wisdom of God at Lower Kingswood in Surrey in an appropriate style; Schultz was soon engaged by the Third Marquess of Bute to undertake work at St John’s Lodge in London and at the House of Falkland in Scotland. The first definite mention of the young architect in Lord Bute’s diary was at Mount Stuart on 4 January 1889 when he was between his trips to Greece: ‘Mr Schultz came. Turn with him – with him in afternoon (drawings of Greek Mediaeval Churches)’.9 Schultz would come to occupy a similar role to that of the late William Burges in Bute’s life, as a friend with common interests as well as adviser and architect. Bute was already a patron of the Byzantine Revival in architecture; he had first visited Constantinople in 1866 and had been in Athens in 1877, looking at churches – one of several visits to the eastern Mediterranean. In 1882, he wrote from Italy to his wife that, I insist upon building the Byzantine Chapel at Troon.10 That shape will do for a school as well as any other. . . . It will be built of brick or whatever is the cheapest material as these buildings depend for effect upon the decoration, wh. there’s no use proceeding with. What I want is to locate my dome.11 Three months later, he returned the drawings for the Troon church made by Rowand Anderson (rather than Richard Popplewell Pullan, the brother-in-law of William Burges, who had been his other suggestion as architect) to Lady Bute with several suggestions, noting that, I think it had better be made a little larger, as it wd be barely big enough for the congregation as it is . . . I think you had better show this also to Mr. Anderson, with my compliments on his success in the Byzantine line.12 In my 1981 essay, I erroneously and culpably stated that this project for Troon was realised, an error subsequently repeated by others; in fact, the Roman Catholic community at the Ayrshire seaside town had to wait until 1909–11 for their new church, dedicated to Our Lady and St Meddan. Designed by Reginald Fairlie, not in neoByzantine but in a rugged Scottish Late Gothic style, it was built at the expense of Bute’s son and heir, the Fourth Marquess of Bute (Fairlie would design the CrichtonStuart Memorial Chapel at Falkland for Bute’s younger son, Lord Ninian, begun in 1912 but never completed).13 Lord Bute did, however, succeed in locating his dome at Galston before raising two more, now designed by Schultz, at St John’s Lodge. Schultz was at St John’s Lodge in May 1891 to discuss the proposed chapel at Falkland with Lord Bute; they presumably also then talked about the project to

Schultz Revisited 193 alter his London house. St John’s Lodge was one of the original Regent’s Park villas, designed by John Raffield and later enlarged by Decimus Burton and Charles Barry. Bute had taken a lease on it from the Crown in 1888. The first improvements were already under way when Bute asked his new young protégé to add a chapel and an extension to the library as well as to improve the entrance hall and redesign the gardens. Work began on these in 1892. The additional, theological library was added to the south-east wing of the house, and at its end was placed a small, circular chapel, disguised on the stuccoed exterior behind false bay windows. It was lit from above, from a dome above a circular entablature supported by eight fluted free-standing Ionic columns, while the curved wall beyond the colonnade was pierced by arched semi-circular recesses. The interior finishes were of wood and plaster rather than marble as first proposed. The chapel was completed in 1896 when gilded wrought-iron metal gates, an altar modelled from plaster casts taken in Ravenna, and a ‘veil’ by N.H.J. Westlake were installed (Figure 8.2). The

Figure 8.2 St John’s Lodge, Regent’s Park, London, Chapel seen from the Theological Library, c. 1896 Source: Private collection; Author’s photo

194 Gavin Stamp following year, the Rt Revd Abbot Sir David Hunter Blair, friend and sometime chaplain to the family and the Third Marquess’s first biographer, first visited St John’s Lodge and ‘said mass there in the beautiful chapel of Greek architecture, which was among the large additions . . . which Lord Bute had made to the house’.14 In his design, Schultz was by his own admission much influenced by the book recently published by his friend Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism and Myth, which opened up to us younger men a hitherto undreamt world of romance in architecture. The labyrinth, the golden gate of the sun, pavements like the sea, ceilings like the sky, the windows of heaven and three hundred and sixty days. One remembered the labyrinth in the pavement at Siena. Also the one on the west wall of Lucca . . . Now, through Lethaby, one began to understand something of what they all meant. I was at that time about to do a small private chapel; into it went a pavement like the sea and a ceiling like the sky, as an accepted tradition.15 There may have been a definite Byzantine precedent for the unusual plan of this chapel, and it has been suggested that it may derive from that of the small circular domed seventh- to eighth-century baptistery of St John Prodomou at Kos on the eponymous Aegean island near Rhodes.16 Here, the ring of eight Ionic columns is barely proud of the wall and supports arches over recesses, within which there are further apsidal niches. It is not known if Schultz and Barnsley visited Kos, but it seems unlikely – especially as the Dodecanese were still under Ottoman rule at that time. It is possible that Bute may have called at Kos on his cruises around the eastern Mediterranean, although the baptistery was far from well known and may not then have been accessible.17 But there were several other early Christian and Byzantine precedents for circular churches, such as St George’s (Hagios Georgios: Roman in origin) in Thessaloniki, which Schultz and Barnsley had visited and photographed in 1888 and 1890, and the tomb of St Costanza in Rome. It is also worth noting that, in January 1891, Schultz surveyed the circular domed vestibule at Dover House (formerly York House) in Whitehall in London, designed by Henry Holland in 1788, which can only have been in connection with the St John’s Lodge project. Devout Roman Catholic convert that he was, Lord Bute was seldom content with a single chapel at one of his seats when another could be created. At St John’s Lodge, an application was made to the Crown Estate in 1899 for a small ‘sunk chapel or grotto’ at the western end of the gardens near the lake in Regent’s Park (see Figure 4.9 in Macrides’s Chapter 4). It was constructed in 1900, the year the Third Marquess died, so it is unlikely he saw it completed. Schultz charged an additional fee for ‘special superintendence in consequence of the peculiar nature of the work’, and it was indeed peculiar, for the chapel was half-buried in the ground. The plan of this little building was conventionally Byzantine: a Greek cross with apsidal ends to the east and a dome over the crossing. It resembled that of, say, the Hagioi Asomatoi Church in Athens, which Schultz and Barnsley had surveyed, except that instead of a narthex there was an entrance with a downward flight of steps, and the tall dome above emerged from a mound of earth. The whole thing rather resembled a bunker or an air-raid shelter – with a Byzantine dome on top (Figure 8.3).

Source: PC4/3: uncatalogued, ©The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart

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Figure 8.3 St John’s Lodge: Schultz’s plan of the Subterranean Chapel

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Quite why Lord Bute commissioned this most unusual building is not recorded, but it was clearly meant to be inconspicuous and was to be shielded from public gaze by the planting of a screen of new trees. Ruth Macrides18 and Kostis Kourelis suggest the idea may have come from an intriguing plate in the 1842 book Choix d’églises bysantines en Grèce by the French architect André Couchaud, illustrating the dome of ‘L’Église de la Grande Vierge’ (the Megali Panagia) in Athens rising above rough ground (see Figure 4.11 in Macrides’s Chapter 4). This church (since destroyed) was, as Couchaud explained, ‘a victim of the raising of the ground level of the new town [of Athens], this church found itself actually buried, and its dome, which alone appears above ground, rises modestly in the middle of a bazaar’.19 This dome is certainly similar in form and shape to that Lord Bute raised above his buried chapel in Regent’s Park, for which a much less likely precedent was the Byzantine cave churches in Apulia in southern Italy.20 The ‘Subterranean Chapel’ was demolished in 1916 when the Butes surrendered the lease, the Dowager Lady Bute writing to her son, Lord Colum, in June that year, that ‘we have just had the last Mass in the Chapel in the field, this being the nativity of St John. It is really very sad all these last events’. Schultz’s addition to St John’s Lodge containing the circular chapel was gratuitously demolished by the Institute of Archaeology in the 1950s, presumably with the approval of the Crown Estate: back in 1916, Lady Bute had hoped, in vain, that, ‘the Chapel in future be used with the reverence I hope it has always received from us’.21 We have no record of the appearance of the interior of the Subterranean Chapel, and for the circular chapel all we have is a tantalising photograph of the view from the adjacent theological library through the entrance arch, with the ring of Ionic columns and the ‘pavement like the sea’ just visible beyond the elaborate gilded wrought-metal gate (Figure 8.2). What cannot be seen in this is the mysterious object recorded by Lord Bute’s friend, F.W.H. Myers, who shared his interest in psychical research; that is, ‘the great crystal hung up in his chapel at St John’s Lodge; as it were the mystic focus of that green silence in the heart of London’s roar’.22 The other building that Lord Bute asked Schultz to improve soon after his return from Greece was the House of Falkland, a large neo-Jacobean mansion in Fife designed in 1839 by the prolific Scottish country-house architect William Burn. Bute had acquired the house in 1887 (along with Falkland Palace, of which he thereby became hereditary Keeper). To make the changes he desired, he at first employed William Frame, who had worked for William Burges in South Wales and who also worked at Mount Stuart. But Frame had to be dismissed in 1890 for repeated drunkenness, and Schultz took over at the House of Falkland. His alterations there were many and subtle: sympathetic alterations to Burn’s interiors, new woodwork, extraordinary plasterwork in an Arts and Crafts manner, clever new chimneypieces. None, however, can really be described as Byzantine in style.23 The only new interior Schultz created at the House of Falkland, which has hints of the Byzantine, is the chapel created out of two bedrooms (Frame’s work having been rejected by the client: see later in the chapter) (Figure 8.4). This single space is rectangular, without aisles or columns, with an apse to contain the altar, flanked by two smaller apsidal recesses. All surfaces are of oak timber, including the coved

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Figure 8.4 House of Falkland Chapel, interior, c. 1896 Source: Private collection; ©Marietta Crichton Stuart

ceiling rising above elongated brackets. In places there is an inlay of mother-ofpearl and at the west end, with a gallery, is a sort of screen with elaborate shutters with tiny balusters, like those in a zenana overlooking, perhaps, the interior of a mosque. Schultz had visited the chapel at Ham House in England before designing this interior, but the result is quite unlike anything else. It may have a somewhat Byzantine air, but the details are classical and there are embellishments of

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Jacobean strapwork. It is a masterpiece that is beyond style, one that demonstrates Schultz’s ability – as a good Arts and Crafts architect – to learn from the past without copying and, in the process, create something appropriate, finely crafted, and original and new. The chapel was finished in 1896 save for Schultz’s ‘carved, gessoed & gilded altar’, which was installed in the apse the following year.24 Schultz clearly felt that a Byzantine style was suitable for chapels in Lord Bute’s houses, but not for domestic work. His greatest opportunity to design a private chapel for his great patron came in the 1890s when, towards the end of his life, Lord Bute decided to improve and enlarge his other Scottish seat, Dumfries House, a grand Palladian house with lower wings designed by Robert Adam and built in 1754–61 (Figure 8.5). Unfortunately, the chapel here was never completed and has since disappeared, again largely unrecorded. Bute, somewhat surprisingly, found Dumfries House ‘the homeliest’ of all his houses. Schultz inspected it in 1892 and three years later prepared schemes to enlarge it and make it more homely. In the event, the wings were cleverly and discreetly enlarged behind their Adam fronts, the only alteration visible from in front being the tops to the new spiral staircases placed behind the curved connecting wings; these, domed and with tall arched windows, might perhaps be described as Byzantine in character. The enlarged West Wing contained a large top-lit Tapestry Room and a LibraryBilliard Room. The enlarged East Wing, on which work began in 1899, was almost entirely occupied by the Chapel (Figure 8.6). This was a double-height space, with a single aisle to the east (liturgical south) and a double aisle to the west. There was a gallery at a high level, with a passage further west over the additional aisle enabling access to the enclosed ‘Private Pew’ placed under the gallery at the south (liturgical west) end. The chapel was to be top-lit, from skylights in a flat ceiling over the nave similar to those that survive over the Tapestry Room in the West Wing. A small, separate, square-domed Lady Chapel lay further to the east (liturgical north). This interior can hardly have been begun when Lord Bute died at Dumfries House in 1900 but was structurally complete by 1905 when the egregious Abbot Sir David Hunter Blair visited the house and, ‘was interested in the recent additions . . . including a fine Byzantine chapel . . . all so cleverly tucked in by the architect behind the existing wings, that the beautiful Adam front remains as it was’ (see Figure 12.2 in Carruthers and Green’s Chapter 12). The chapel, however, was not then finished.25 The following year, Schultz prepared a scheme for the ‘fitting up of Private Pew, Chapel Ceiling, Marble lining, etc.’, but this was not carried out. Sometime later, a floor was inserted in the double-height space, leaving the upper part for use as a chapel, but this was swept away in 1934–5 when the architect Balfour Paul created a dining room in the upper space and a library below. All this was done for the Fourth Marquess of Bute, who described how ‘a considerable part at one end of the house although roofed was left an empty shell’.26 Although Schultz’s plans and sections survived to indicate the structure of the chapel, this interior seems not to have been photographed. Fortunately, however, since the purchase of Dumfries House in 2007 by the Great Steward of Scotland’s Dumfries House Trust to ensure its preservation, research by Simon Green has unearthed two watercolour drawings by Schultz – a perspective (Figure 8.7) and a long

Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 8.5 Dumfries House, Ayrshire, 2013; the East Wing is to the right

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Figure 8.6 Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Schultz’s contract drawing for the East Wing containing the proposed chapel, plan of upper gallery level, 1899 Source: DHP/14/2 ©The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart

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Figure 8.7 Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Chapel, perspective view looking towards the altar, drawn by Robert Weir Schultz, c. 1905 Source: DHP/17/6, ©The Bute Collection at Mount Stuart

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cross-section of the ‘Proposed Completion of Chapel’ dated 1905 – that now reveal his full intentions.27 The chapel was certainly to be Byzantine in style and the interior was to be faced in a variety of marbles. Corinthian columns supported the three-bay nave arcades, and above each of these round arches the galleries lay behind pairs of arches, Byzantine rather than classical in style. At the (liturgical) east end, the Palladian window, placed on the exterior to harmonise with the Adam design, was to be filled with pieces of marble or stone, pierced by small round lights in the Byzantine manner. In front of this, the altar was covered by an arched ciborium with a polygonal pointed roof, a fusion of Byzantine and early Christian precedents, which would have resulted in something unusual and distinctive – as such, typical of this most intelligent architect. Had it been completed, this chapel would have been Schultz’s finest work in the Byzantine style other than St Andrew’s Chapel at Westminster, but only the small domed space intended as the Lady Chapel survives today. The Fourth Marquess of Bute, who came of age in 1902, may have decided not to complete the Dumfries House Chapel, but he was nevertheless a munificent builder and generous benefactor like his father, and he continued to employ Schultz. Although not a Byzantine scholar like the Third Marquess, he was deeply interested in art and architecture, especially that of his native Scotland, which he did much to protect and preserve. And he was responsible for creating two chapels in the Byzantine style. The first was in Edinburgh. To fulfil his father’s intentions, he built a new chapel for the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Edinburgh attached to his residence, a mid-Victorian villa in Greenhill Gardens. It was erected in 1904–7. The exterior is clearly the work of Schultz: above the roof rises another of his octagonal Byzantine domes, while the entrance front is an intriguing synthesis of the Byzantine and the Celtic, a fusion of two traditional styles that inspired the Arts and Crafts Movement (see Figure 12.3 in Carruthers and Green, this volume). The interior of this building is a puzzle, however. Although the plan is of the Greek cross type, with a dome over the centre and an apse to the east, the architecture is not at all Byzantine. It is, rather, in a debased classical manner, with the plaster vaults carried on ungainly fluted Composite columns on low pedestals. All this is, in fact, recycled architecture from the House of Falkland and it was, in origin, the work of William Frame (see earlier). The explanation for this hybrid is a Codicil to the Third Marquess’s Will, bequeathing to the Archbishop the whole of the inside (including the woodwork made but not placed in position) of the Domestic Chapel now in this House of Falkland, when taken down here, to be used as a Domestic Chapel for his private residence in Edinburgh, and I direct my Executors to pay the cost of transport thither, and of its erection in a suitable shell or building under the direction of Mr Robert Weir Schultz, who is also to alter it by raising its internal height on a base, raising the clerestory, closing the oculus in the dome, as well as other improvements (Figure 8.8).28 Schultz’s other work for the Fourth Marquess is his best known, and a worthy contribution to the principal monument of the Byzantine Revival in Great Britain, Westminster Cathedral, the masterpiece of J.F. Bentley. In 1910, Bute offered the

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Figure 8.8 Edinburgh, Archbishop’s Chapel interior, 1980 Source: Author’s photo

huge sum of £10,000 to complete a side chapel on the (liturgical) south side of the Cathedral to be dedicated to St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland. His condition, that the design of the chapel in its entirety be entrusted to Schultz, was accepted by Cardinal Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster. This chapel was largely complete by 1915. As it has been much praised, rightly so, and described at length in my own earlier publication and elsewhere, only a brief account is required here (Figure 8.9). Although designed and made under Schultz’s direction, St Andrew’s Chapel is a celebration of the Arts and Crafts Movement in that its various elements were fashioned by several artists and craftsmen, mostly colleagues of the architect in the Art Workers’ Guild. The most famous of these are the stalls, of ebony inlaid with bone, of the Greek Orthodox type with high misericords and arm-rests, made in Ernest Gimson’s workshop at Daneway near Sapperton in the Cotswolds (Figure 8.10).

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Figure 8.9 Westminster Cathedral, Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, 2013 Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 8.10 Westminster Cathedral, Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, back wall and stalls, 2013 Source: Author’s photos

206 Gavin Stamp Nikolaus Pevsner considered them one of his finest works and ‘amongst the best decorative woodwork of its date anywhere in Europe’, while for Ian Nairn they were the best thing in the whole Cathedral, ‘a real work of being, style and expression pounding together’.29 It is too often assumed, however, that these stalls were designed by Gimson alone and not by Schultz, but as Mary Greensted has pointed out, the design of the stalls, judging from both men’s working drawings for this project, was the result of close collaboration, the initial idea probably coming from Schultz with, of course, his prior familiarity and sympathy with Gimson’s approach to woodwork, and being subsequently developed and refined by Gimson.30 Correspondence in 1913–14 between Schultz and Gimson over the design of the furniture in Khartoum Cathedral also suggests a creative collaboration.31 For further discussion, see Cormack and Greensted in this volume. The kneelers, which accompany the stalls, were also later designed by Schultz’s old friend and travelling companion in Greece, Sidney Barnsley, who had moved to the Cotswolds with Gimson and concentrated on making furniture. There was also sculpture by J. Stirling Lee, metalwork by W. Bainbridge Reynolds, and contributions from Harold Stabler, Graily Hewitt, and others. The superb mosaic treatment of the vault, illustrating cities associated with St Andrew, was applied by Ernest Debenham’s mosaic workers under the direction of Gaetano Meo using cartoons prepared by George Jack; the design reflects Schultz’s own opinion that Byzantine pictorial decoration should not be copied, for ‘the mere form of the figures, the types of the costumes, the archaeological accessories, all belong to a time and a state of things that is gone from us, and lives only as history’.32 As for the marble floor, it was another ‘pavement like the sea’ inspired by Lethaby, with inlaid sea creatures. The most beautiful marbles, carefully laid, were used throughout, although their cool colours did not please everyone, a critic in The Times writing that ‘the marble casing of the walls under the mosaics is positively freezing in its colour coldness . . . colour blindness could not have led to a more deplorable result’.33 But for the Arts and Crafts architect W. Curtis Green, writing in 1916, the result was ‘perfection’, and he recommended that ‘those who are fearful for the future of the Cathedral should view the recently finished Chapel of St Andrew and the Saints of Scotland; it is the most successful of the decoration yet undertaken’. For the reviewer in Country Life, the completed chapel was ‘no mere archaeological exercise, no dead copy of the churches of Rome or Ravenna or the East, but a live piece of design wrought out in valuable materials, with mature knowledge of design and method’. And Charles Harrison Townsend, that inventive architect touched by the ‘Art Nouveau’ who had a particular interest in mosaics, also responded to the ‘impressiveness, richness and beauty’ of the chapel, which he thought ‘one of the most beautiful works of decoration ever done in England . . . with the full dignity of old Byzantine work’.34

Schultz Revisited 207 This was the last commission from the Fourth Marquess carried out by Schultz, by now known as Robert W.S. Weir, as well as his last executed design in a Byzantine style. There were, however, several other projects with which he was involved, some for another member of the Bute family, that were wholly or partly Byzantine in inspiration. There were also buildings in which, as in several Arts and Crafts buildings by both Schultz and others, a whiff of the Byzantine can be detected. In 1886, the Third Marquess had acquired more property on Great Cumbrae Island in the Firth of Clyde from the Sixth Earl of Glasgow, who was by then in severe financial difficulties. This purchase included The Garrison at Millport, a Regency Gothic house close to the Cathedral of the Isles, the remarkable complex of Gothic Revival buildings designed by William Butterfield for Lord Glasgow. The Dowager Lady Bute became fond of The Garrison (as the Dowager Countess of Glasgow also had been, half a century earlier) and asked Schultz to make internal improvements and lay out the gardens. In 1910, she considered building a new chapel there, and Schultz worked on several schemes – one for a ‘round chapel’ and one for a ‘chapel of Greek type’ – but nothing came of this, and his drawings are now lost.35 Byzantine architecture was clearly the principal influence behind the curious collaborative design entered in 1902 in the second round of the competition for a new Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool, eventually won by the young Giles Gilbert Scott. Schultz recalled that Lethaby had concluded that no one architect ‘should bear the sole responsibility of an important building; so . . . he thought it would be larks to have a shot at it’. The design was published under the name of Henry Wilson, at whose office the collaborators – Schultz, Lethaby, F.W. Troup, Stirling Lee, and Christopher Whall – met (see Figure 5.7a). ‘Many jolly meetings we had and much argument, but it was Lethaby who was at the bottom of it all, and the design which was produced was largely his inspiration’.36 But not entirely, and the tall but squat free-standing campanile proposed for Liverpool is comparable in character and form to the west tower Schultz proposed for his remarkable but sadly unexecuted design for the large Roman Catholic church in Rothesay made for the Fourth Marquess of Bute in 1905. Another conspicuous feature of the Liverpool design, the transverse vaults in the Byzantine manner, would appear in Schultz’s principal and most original church building, the Anglican Cathedral of All Saints in Khartoum in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, commissioned in 1906, consecrated in 1912 but not completed until 1931. Because timber for centring and scaffolding was scarce and expensive, these vaults, of ‘rough local bricks’ (rather than the concrete envisaged for Liverpool), were laid from the outside between the transverse pointed arches across the nave, at a flatter angle than the radius of the vault, ‘without centering, after the traditional manner of Byzantine building’, as Schultz later explained.37 The plan and general massing of this cathedral owed something to the seventh-century Church of Hagios Demetrios in Thessaloniki, which Schultz and Barnsley had visited and recorded back in 1888 and 1890,38 but it is certainly not a neo-Byzantine design, for ideas and motifs were derived from many other lands and cultures, from Anglo-Saxon

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England to Coptic Egypt, combined and fused into something original in response to local conditions. As Robin Cormack has concluded, ‘this church does not export British norms of design to the empire. . . . The predominant details refer to the Christian architecture and decorations of Greece, but they are transformed into something far beyond their Byzantine origins. . . . Its congregation . . . would have found enough familiar features to remind them of faraway English Gothic but at the same time without forgetting that they were nearer to the sources of Christianity in Khartoum. No wonder contemporaries found the design eccentric and somewhat baffling; one reviewer found it ‘a very curious piece of architecture. . . . We cannot call it beautiful, but it is an original and interesting one, like nothing else one has seen in the way of a church’.39 A memorial panel from Khartoum Cathedral was shown by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society at the Royal Academy of Arts at Burlington House in London in 1916 in the middle of the Great War. Also included in the ‘Hall of Heroes’ was a project by Schultz which was more derivative in its Byzantinism. The ‘Pantheon of the Five Dominions’ was proposed as a sort of war memorial, to recognise ‘the great part played by the Self-Governing Dominions in the world conflict’ and ‘not only to preserve in a “Campo santo” the names and monuments of those sons who have given their lives for freedom and justice, but also to provide a place for gatherings and anniversaries of a national character’.40 Illustrated by a model made at the Central School of Arts and Crafts under the direction of Laurence Turner, with sculpture and decoration by Henry Wilson, it was to be a large circular hall with external Byzantinesque open arcades and covered by a wide, flat saucer dome of the Hagia Sophia type (Figure 8.11). Less Byzantine in inspiration was the large arched porch, embellished with Signs of the Zodiac and surmounted by ‘Britannia, Mother of Empire’. The model was shown again, at the R.A.’s War Memorials Exhibition in 1919, but it was an unofficial project, which was soon superseded by the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission.41 Schultz’s Byzantine designs were never purely archaeological and always creatively metamorphosed from the ancient models he knew so well. Perhaps his most archaeologically derivative works in the style were the chapels he designed for his aristocratic patrons, the Marquesses of Bute, and they may well reflect their tastes and ideas as well as his own. Schultz’s attitude to precedent and archaeology was well expressed in the two articles on ‘Byzantine Art’ he contributed to the Architectural Review in 1897, the first published fruit of his travels in Greece, that the main lessons to be learned from the Byzantines are on the structural side, their straightforward building methods, their grappling with great problems of construction, their legitimate and economical use of materials both in a structural and decorative sense. . . . The particular forms of their buildings, and the details of the same, apart from the constructional methods and results, should only interest us historically. They were built to suit other needs and other climates than ours.42

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Figure 8.11 Pantheon of the Five Dominions, model of unexecuted design Source: Photograph published in the journal, The Builder, 1919.

In revisiting and correcting my 1981 publication on Schultz and his work for the Marquesses of Bute, there is one last project that deserves mention, but as an addendum, for it was not a work in a Byzantine manner. Schultz designed the two buildings erected in 1904–7 for the Cardiff University Settlement on the Tredegar Estate in Splott; these were his only works in Cardiff and Wales. The site had been given by Lord Tredegar and the cost of building met by Mr H. Woolcott Thompson, so Schultz was not given this commission directly by the Fourth Marquess. However, with his considerable property in, and connections with, Cardiff, Lord Bute was a generous benefactor to what was then the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, the founding institution of the University of Wales. Similarly, his father had made several generous gifts to the new College, whose establishment in 1883 was ‘naturally a matter of great interest, of which he gave many practical proofs’, and he had served as its president in 1890.43 It is therefore highly likely that Schultz had been recommended as architect for the Settlement buildings by the Fourth Marquess of Bute. The Hall of 1904, which faced Courtenay Road, used an economical and practical form of roof construction. I correctly stated that this intriguing building had disappeared. But what recently emerged was that the adjacent two-storey, red

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brick Club House, erected in 1906–7, stood for much longer, hidden behind two taller and later school buildings of 1929 and 1936, erected after the Settlement site had been acquired by St Illtyd’s Catholic Grammar School for Boys. Its survival was discovered in 2015 because the whole school site was controversially threatened with redevelopment, but neither the school buildings nor Schultz’s modest Club House were given statutory protection by the Welsh authorities, and all were demolished in 2016.44 Not many buildings by this clever, learned, and resourceful Scottish Arts and Crafts architect have been lost, but it is sad that his surviving building in Cardiff should so recently have joined a casualty list that already included the two ingenious and intriguing chapels inspired by Byzantine precedents, which he designed in London for that most distinguished scholar and patron, the Third Marquess of Bute.

Notes 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ottewill 1979. Kakissis 2009, 125. Ibid., 142. In my book, I stated (p. 4) that Anderson had worked in George Gilbert Scott’s office in London but there is, in fact, no evidence for this, although he did act as clerk-ofworks on Scott’s church at Leith. For Anderson, see McKinstry 1991. In her book on The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland, Annette Carruthers (2013, 42) observes that ‘Anderson’s office in the 1880s trained or employed a series of young architects who built much of the most interesting architecture of the following decades in Scotland’. See Saint 2010. For George’s office, see Grainger 2011. BSA, BRF 3/SCH 8- notebook with notes on mouldings, Jan–May 1889. Royal Academy of Arts Archives, London. Lord Bute’s diaries [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]. Also see Hannah 2012. Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland, Bute to Lady Bute, 20 March 1882 [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]. Also see Macrides in this volume. Bute to Lady Bute, 18 June 1882 [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]. See Nuttgens 1959; work stopped on the Memorial Chapel in 1914 but it survives as a roofless ruin. See Hunter-Blair 1919, 243. Schultz 1938. Lethaby’s Architecture, Mysticism and Myth was published in 1891. See Chlepa in this volume. Playfair 1890, describes Kos and its antiquities, but makes no mention of the baptistery. See Macrides in this volume. Couchaud 1842, planche III: ‘Dôme de l’Église de la Grande Vierge . . . Victime de l’exhaussement du sol de la nouvelle ville, cette église se trouve actuellement enterrée, et son dôme, qui seul apparaȋt hors de terre, s’élève modestement au mileu du bazaar at au pied du clocher élevé par Lord Elgin . . ., L’intérieur de cette petite église, dans lequel on pénètre par une des ouvertures du dome, a encore conservé les traces de ses peintures à fresque’. I am most grateful to Ruth Macrides and Kostis Kourelis for this

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20

21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35

36

reference and suggestion. This church, dedicated to Megali Panagia, was built within the ruins of Hadrian’s Library in the Agora and was demolished following excavations carried out after 1885. Sir Steven Runciman wrote to the author, 9 May 1977, ‘Heaven knows where the idea came from. The only underground – or semi-underground – churches in the Byzantine world are cave-chapels in Apulia, which are actually below ground and not in the side of a cliff like those in Cappadocia. . . . They are not buildings that would have come up to the Marquess’s standards; and I cannot think that Schultz can have been inspired by them’. Lady Bute to Lord Colum Crichton-Stuart, 2 July & 23 June 1916 [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]; Lord Bute’s second son, Lord Ninian, had been killed in action in France the previous October. The Institute of Archaeology of the University of London occupied St John’s Lodge from 1937 until 1958. ‘Obituary notice by Mr. F.W.H. Myers’ from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, November 1900, printed as Appendix VI in Hunter-Blair 1921, 245. See Stamp 2014, 34–40. Schultz’s Fee Account book,1897 (the Fee Account books, the Letter books, and Schultz’s photograph albums inherited by Alwyn Brunow Waters [who had been Schultz’s assistant in the 1920s], which I consulted at his office in London in the 1970s, have disappeared since that architect’s death in 1988, and are now presumed destroyed). A mosaic panel of the head of Christ on the exterior wall of the House of Falkland chapel was possibly of Byzantine inspiration. Hunter-Blair 1922, 54. Bute to Henry Heaton, 11 August 1934 [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]. Reproduced in Green 2014, in which Schultz’s work at the house is fully described. See also Carruthers and Green in this volume. The date of this document in the Bute archives at Mount Stuart was misprinted in my 1981 book: it was 3 December 1895. Pevsner 1957, 423; Nairn 1966, 61. Comino 1980, 179. Cormack 2013, 85, quotes Gimson writing to Schultz about his drawings for the furniture for Khartoum Cathedral: ‘Don’t you want some little tops to the uprights? It hardly looks constructional to leave so little wood (and end grain too) above the tenons of the rails’. Schultz 1897, 255. Quoted in Browne and Dean 1995, 99. Curtis Green in the Architectural Review, xl, July 1916, 10–12; A.H. Christie in Country Life, 8th January 1916 (supplement), 2; Harrison Townsend quoted in Peter Doyle, Westminster Cathedral (London, 1995), 77. St Andrew’s Chapel was described in detail in the Builder for 10th December 1915, 422–3, reprinted in Winefride de L’Hôpital, Westminster Cathedral and Its Architect (London, 1919), vol. I, 163–7, and also in the Building News, 1 December 1915, 615. Schultz’s Fee Account book 1908–9 (presumed destroyed – see endnote 24); Schultz’s Letter book: to Dowager Lady Bute 24 & 27 August 1910. [Bute Archives, Mount Stuart]. The original chapel at The Garrison was a former outbuilding converted by Butterfield in 1848 for Episcopalian worship prior to the building of the College of the Holy Spirit, later the Cathedral of the Isles. It was fitted out for Roman Catholic worship by Schultz in 1896–97 and was superseded in 1958: see Stamp 2017. See Schultz 1938, 13–14, quoted in Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Work 1857–1931 (London, 1986), 160–1.

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37 The Builder, 19 May 1916, 371, quoted by Ottewill 1979, 106. The outer roof above the vaults were constructed of thin reinforced concrete slabs, covered by red ‘Roman’ tiles. 38 See Mentzos, A. 2012. 39 Cormack 2013, 88; The Builder’s Journal, 8 May 1909, quoted by Cormack 2013, 73. 40 Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society: Catalogue of the Eleventh Exhibition MCMVI, 1916, 270–1. The Five Dominions of the British Empire were, in 1916, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (but not India). 41 The Pantheon model was illustrated in the Builder, 31 October 1919, 436. 42 Schultz 1897, 255. 43 Hunter-Blair 1921, 184. 44 It was unfortunate that these buildings escaped notice in the Buildings of Wales volume for Glamorgan, published in 1995. The Settlement hall, demolished c. 1936 to be replaced by the second school block, was illustrated in the Cardiff Times for 17 December 1904 as well as in The Builder, lxxxix, 7 October 1905. Schultz’s drawings for the Club House survive in the Glamorgan Archives. The statutory historic buildings authority for Wales, CADW, declined to ‘list’ the Schultz building.

References Browne, J. and Dean, T. 1995. Building of Faith: Westminster Cathedral (London). Carruthers, A. 2013. The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland (New Haven and London). Comino, M. [Greensted] 1980. Gimson and the Barnsleys: ‘Wonderful Furniture of a Commonplace Kind’ (London). Cormack, R. 2013. ‘Unity out of Diversity? The Making of a Modern Christian Monument in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, in Swenson, A. and Mandler, P. (eds.), From Plunder to Preservation: Britain and the Heritage of Empire, c.1800–1940 (Oxford and New York), 63–90. Couchaud, A. 1842. Choix d’églises bysantines en Grèce (Paris). Grainger, H. 2011. The Architecture of Sir Ernest George (Reading). Green, S. 2014. Dumfries House: An Architectural Story (Edinburgh). Hannah, R. 2012. The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh). Hunter-Blair, D. 1919. A Medley of Memories (London). Hunter-Blair, D. 1921. John Patrick, Third Marquess of Bute, K. T. (1847–1900): A Memoir (London). Hunter-Blair, D. 1922. A New Medley of Memories (London). Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive: Encounters of Arts and Crafts Architects in Byzantium’, in Llewellyn Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and Calligas, E. (eds.), Scholar, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture through the British School at Athens (London), 125–44. McKinstry, S. 1991. Rowand Anderson, ‘the Premier Architect of Scotland’ (Edinburgh). Mentzos, A. (ed.). 2012. Αποτυπώματα: η βυζαντινή Θεσσαλονίκη σε φωτογραφίες και σχέδια της Βρετανικής Σχολής Αθηνών, 1888–1910/Impressions: Byzantine Thessalonike through the photographs and drawings of the British School at Athens, 1888–1910 (Thessaloniki 2012). Nairn, I. 1966. Nairn’s London (Harmondsworth). Nuttgens, P. 1959. Reginald Fairlie 1883–1952: A Scottish Architect (Edinburgh and London). Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 22, 88–115.

Schultz Revisited 213 Pevsner, N. 1957. The Buildings of England: London, the Cities of London and Westminster, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth). Playfair, R.L. 1890. Murray’s Handbook to the Mediterranean: Its Cities, Coasts and Islands (3rd ed., London). Saint, A. 2010. Richard Norman Shaw (London and New Haven). Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art’, The Architectural Review I, part I, 192–9; part II, 248–55 255. Schultz, R.W. 1938. William Richard Lethaby: A Paper Read before the Art Workers’ Guild on Friday 22nd April 1932 (London). Stamp, G. 2014. ‘“Really Very Fine” (The House of Falkland, Fife)’, Country Life, 31 December 2014, 34–40. Stamp, G. 2017. ‘The Cathedral of the Isles’, in Howell, P. and Saint, A. (eds.), Butterfield Revisited (London).

Byzantium and Modernism Britain and Beyond

9

Sidney Barnsley, Byzantium, and Furniture-Making Mary Greensted

Three British architects, Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951), Sidney Barnsley (1865–1926), and William R. Lethaby (1857–1931), were largely responsible for developing an awareness and appreciation of Byzantine architecture among their contemporaries from the 1880s onwards. Schultz and Barnsley, in particular, immersed themselves in the first-hand study of Byzantine buildings – their design, construction, and decoration – in Greece. This chapter looks at the impact of this research on the subsequent career of Sidney Barnsley as an architect and furniture maker and through him on the Cotswold craft tradition of the twentieth century. Sidney Howard Barnsley was born in Birmingham in 1865, the youngest of seven children. In 1826, his grandfather, John Barnsley, had set up the eponymous building firm, which had expanded rapidly through its involvement in the construction of much of the Victorian red-brick Gothic architecture that dominated Birmingham’s city centre. After his death, the business was divided between to his two sons, Edward and Thomas, and by 1861 Sidney Barnsley’s father, Edward, was running John Barnsley & Sons, the largest building firm in Birmingham, employing a workforce of over two hundred men. Sidney’s early years were marred by the death of his mother Louisa in 1874 when he was only 9 years old; his father died seven years later in 1881. He was shy and slightly built, quite unlike his three older brothers, whose outgoing personalities were mirrored by their larger physical presence. Tellingly, he was known in the family as ‘Little B’ throughout most of his life. He was taught by a young governess, who lived with the family, before he was sent to boarding school. Here he seems to have acquired the habit of early morning cold baths, as well as a thorough grounding in classical Greek and French. The Barnsleys were Nonconformists, regularly attending the Wesleyan Islington Chapel designed by the architect John Henry Chamberlain and built by the family firm. The family were also characterised by a strong work ethic: one can imagine Sidney and his brothers growing up with a day-to-day familiarity with the firm’s workshops and builder’s yard. John Barnsley & Sons had extensive premises that included woodworking and cabinet-making workshops. As well as producing architectural woodwork, they also made occasional one-off pieces: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery has an elaborate painted cabinet known as the Everitt Cabinet, designed in 1880 by Chamberlain and made by the Barnsley firm. Their practical, hands-on approach is indicated by the career of one of Sidney’s cousins, DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-12

218 Mary Greensted who served his apprenticeship as a carpenter in the family workshops before becoming a senior director of the firm. This was exactly the type of background and training that John Dando Sedding, the ecclesiastical architect and pioneer of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was to recommend for those who wanted to follow in his profession.1 Sidney Barnsley and his elder brother Ernest chose to train as architects, leaving their older male siblings and cousins to run the family businesses in Birmingham. They may have been inspired by Chamberlain, who was closely linked to the family and dominated the city’s architectural life. He taught at the Birmingham School of Art, where both Ernest and Sidney Barnsley attended classes, and was a great advocate of the writings of John Ruskin. He was also responsible for bringing many inspiring speakers to the city, including William Morris, who gave an address on ‘The Beauty of Life’ in 1880, which included his famous dictum: ‘Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. In 1879, Ernest Barnsley, then aged 16, was apprenticed to Joseph Lancaster Ball, a young local architect, and Sidney may have followed in his footsteps. He certainly completed a course in building construction at the School of Art, for which he was awarded a First-Class certificate in 1885. That year, first Ernest Barnsley and then Sidney decided to move to London to continue their architectural training and develop their expertise. The capital was at the centre of new approaches to architecture and the arts, inspired by Ruskin and Morris, that became known as the Arts and Crafts Movement. The two brothers enrolled in classes at the Royal Academy Schools and joined the two most influential architectural offices of their day. Ernest became a pupil with Sedding, while towards the end of 1885, Sidney joined the office of Richard Norman Shaw, pioneer of the vernacular revival, where Lethaby was chief clerk and Schultz already a well-established assistant. Throughout the nineteenth century, young British architects and architectural students were encouraged to travel to continental Europe, and particularly to France and Italy, as part of their training. Travelling scholarships were awarded by institutions and organisations such as the Royal Academy and the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the announcement of these annual awards was eagerly anticipated. In 1887, Schultz, who by this time had left Shaw’s to work in the London office of the architects Ernest George and Peto, was awarded the Royal Academy’s Gold Medal and a Travelling Scholarship worth £200 for his design for a railway terminus. He immediately consulted Lethaby, his friend and something of a mentor to his contemporaries, and subsequently recalled that ‘it was principally due to that advice, so freely given, that I went out to Greece and the near East’.2 Although Lethaby encouraged Schultz to visit Greece to study Byzantine architecture, he himself had never travelled east beyond Italy at that stage. It was another five years before Lethaby was to make the trip to Constantinople that resulted in the book The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople jointly written with Harold Swainson. Schultz set out to Greece in early 1888 and was joined by Sidney Barnsley, who was to be his travelling companion and fellow researcher

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for a series of journeys around the eastern Mediterranean to study and record Byzantine architecture. The photograph of Barnsley with Schultz at the British School at Athens clearly illustrates his diminutive form and retiring nature, which earned him the family nickname of ‘Little B’ (Figure 9.1). In contrast, Schultz was an ebullient and outgoing character who could be the life and soul of the party.

Figure 9.1 Robert Weir Schultz (centre) and Sidney Barnsley (right) with an unknown man (left) in Greece, 1888–1890 Source: BSA Photographic Archive, BSAA 7–30, ©British School at Athens

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Dorothy Walker, a young woman attending the annual dinner of the Art Workers’ Guild in December 1900 noted in her diary: ‘Mr Schultz who was near us set the table in a roar’.3 Despite their different characters, the two men remained lifelong friends. Schultz and Barnsley were the first British architects of the Arts and Crafts generation to spend time in Greece recording Byzantine architecture. Between 1888 and 1890, they made several lengthy visits and produced detailed measured drawings, photographs, notes, and sketches, which have proved invaluable for architects, conservationists, and scholars in subsequent years. Why did they undertake this lengthy research, sometimes under physically difficult conditions, into a long past architectural tradition that was foreign to them? To some extent their work reflected the ethos of the age. In the 1880s, many young British architects were inspired by the ideas of Philip Webb, Sedding, and other pioneers of the Arts and Crafts Movement and wanted to acquire first-hand, practical knowledge of different styles of building, including the Byzantine. Ruskin and Morris in particular had come to believe that Byzantine art and architecture could provide the inspiration for a new and fresh approach to architecture and design. The appropriate use of local materials combined with the structural honesty and vigour of its buildings and the use of natural plant forms in its decorations were much admired. Schultz probably had an existing interest in the Byzantine from his initial architectural training in Edinburgh with Richard Rowand Anderson, whose long-term client was the Third Marquess of Bute, a renowned philhellene with a passion for building. However, another part of their motivation must have been that they were young men in search of new experiences and adventures. They were at the start of their careers with no family commitments. Barnsley was only 22 when he first went to Greece; he had independent means following the death of his father in 1881, and both men received some additional funding through sponsors. Initially, the two men familiarised themselves with Greece’s classical as well as Byzantine heritage and absorbed the unfamiliar landscape and people. The impact of the Greek light and countryside, together with the history and mythology as reflected in the native inhabitants and their customs, must have been tremendous. Charles Nevinson, a nineteenth-century visitor from Britain, was overwhelmed by his first introduction to Greece in 1894, describing ‘the whole of the land – that most lovely land, so abundant in colour, so conformable in scale and free from monstrous and inhuman exaggeration of mountain or sea . . . was far more than any Paradise could be’.4 Some years later in 1909, the Art Workers’ Guild organised a trip to Greece; Katharine Adams, one of the participants and a talented bookbinder, recalled a country of wonderful sunshine & blue blue skies & blue seas, such mountains, such colours, everything from pearly greys to brilliant rose & deepest violet, such stars and such Art. We walked up to the Acropolis with high thoughts & the sacred way at Delphi in romance and mystery & drank of the Castalian spring.5

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Barnsley and Schultz travelled widely in Greece, visiting numerous sites in Athens and the wider region of Attica; Mistra, Messina, and Argolis in the Peloponnese; and Arta and Thessaloniki in northern Greece, as well as short trips to various Aegean islands and to Constantinople in Asia Minor.6 In 1890, their friend Ernest Gimson passed on some news from the two men in a letter to a mutual acquaintance: Sid Barnsley is in Greece again with Schultz. They went last October and will not return until after next Christmas. They are measuring up the remains of Byzantine Churches for the British School in Athens: and of course are having all their expenses paid. Little B. writes to me occasionally and gives wonderful accounts of the glories of their travels. It is travelling too. There are no trails and it all has to be done on horseback or by coach. And there are no inns. The lodgings are either in Monasteries or in some peasant’s cottage where all the family sleep in one room – girls as well as fellows!!!?7 Much of the travelling must have seemed a real adventure under quite difficult conditions. Between 12 and 13 May 1890, for example, they covered the 60 kilometres from Mistra to Kalamata in the Peloponnese by mule at a cost of 25 drachmas.8 They were also the first western visitors for some 30 years to the remote site of the monastery of Hosios Loukas of Stiris, south-east of the classical sanctuary site of Delphi in Central Greece.9 The two men worked thoroughly and very much as a team, looking over each other’s notebooks and sketches and occasionally adding notes or comments where appropriate. One of Barnsley’s notebooks – one of a group that have ended up at the Barnsley Workshop near Petersfield in Hampshire set up by Sidney’s son Edward, rather than at the British School at Athens – is made up of detailed written descriptions of the construction and decoration of the Byzantine church at Kaisariani near Athens. These – together with his inscriptions and drawings – neatly illustrate the research process in progress (Figure 9.2).10 Barnsley noted the composition of building materials and details of construction along with sketches of decorative details. These notebooks were supplemented by photographs, most of which are of excellent quality.11 One of his elder brothers, Charles Herbert Barnsley, was a keen amateur photographer, who may well have passed on equipment and advised on techniques, which ensured that Barnsley was the chief photographer on these trips. Another Barnsley notebook in Athens includes a recipe for photographic developing, underlying his knowledge of, and interest in, what was still a relatively new tool for research purposes. Their experience in Greece had a profound influence on both men. Robin Cormack has suggested that Barnsley and Schultz ‘went native’ in Greece, a comment that is borne out by two surviving photographs, one of Barnsley wearing the traditional pleated skirt-like garment known as the fustanella and another of Schultz in the dress of an Orthodox priest (Figure 9.3).12 A small comment in one of his

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Figure 9.2 Detail from Barnsley’s notes on the Church at Kaisariani, near Athens Source: Sidney H. Barnsley notebook dated 1892, p. 5, ©The Edward Barnsley Educational Trust

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Figure 9.3 Sidney Barnsley wearing traditional Greek evzones outfit, Greece, 1888–90 Source: BSA BRF WI.E-46, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

notebooks in Athens, written in pencil and difficult to decipher, gives an impression of the impact that these travels had on Barnsley. He wrote: Seldom – once or twice a year especially about Easter – we went for refreshment to the nearest villages & their buildings, the fresh air & seeing trees and fields. We remembered Xios and the tower and our garden and the separation of the family appeared to us heaven.13

224 Mary Greensted However, in the autumn of 1890, he received a letter from Gimson, asking him to join a new venture, a scheme to set up a workshop producing innovative furniture designed by a select group of architects. In October that year, Gimson wrote enthusiastically to Ernest Barnsley to confirm that he had heard from Sidney in Greece, who was excited at the prospect of returning to England to join this new venture.14 Schultz and Barnsley returned to Britain from Greece in November 1890, taking lodgings in the Bloomsbury area of London and beginning their working lives as architects and designers. Barnsley already had one commitment to the furniture shop scheme mentioned by Gimson that became known as Kenton & Company. Immediately on his return in 1891, however, he also took on his first architectural project – for the Church of the Wisdom of God at Lower Kingswood in Surrey – commissioned by two local residents, Edwin Freshfield and Sir Henry Cosmo Orme Bonsor. Barnsley was approached by Edwin Freshfield, who was a scholar, antiquarian, and a member of a well-established and successful family firm of solicitors, who had already helped to fund Schultz and Barnsley’s Byzantine researches. Freshfield played a major role in establishing the character of the church. Although it was intended to serve the Anglican community, the intention was that it would also house some of the Byzantine and Roman artefacts that Freshfield had collected on his travels in Europe and the Middle East. The Church’s plan was pre-Byzantine, based on the basilican church of Hagia Eirene in Constantinople, but other elements in its design and decoration reflected Barnsley’s Byzantine Studies in Greece. Although the exterior form with its pitched roof is not obviously Byzantine, it makes an interesting comparison with some of the smaller churches he and Schultz had recorded, such as Hagios Vasileios in Arta in north-west Greece. The photograph of this church’s east end from the Byzantine Research Fund Archive at the British School at Athens highlights the simple lines of the exterior with its pitched roof (Figure 9.4). The building’s stonework, however, features a complex arrangement of patterns, which relates to the decorative use of red brick and Ham stone on the exterior of Barnsley’s church (Figure 9.5). The church at Lower Kingswood was built by a local firm of builders, James Murray & Company, with Barnsley based on site for the duration supervising the work. According to Schultz, ‘[the architect] personally superintended the work in every detail, and himself painted the beautiful decoration of the roof. In the chancel is some of the best and most skilfully arranged marble and mosaic in the country’.15 The interior of Barnsley’s church has a strong Byzantine feel (Figure 9.6). Its walls were clad with thin slices of marble arranged so that their veined markings formed a pattern, a technique that he had observed in the most sumptuous of Byzantine church interiors in Greece which was subsequently described by Schultz: The marble was very skilfully used as a thin veneer . . . and it was often carefully selected and arranged with a view to giving bright contrast of colour and a general richness of effect, but always in a broad and masterly manner. Beautifully veined slabs of Cippolino [marble] were used for the panels, and these were split, opened out and arranged in a series of twos or fours with splendid effect.16

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Figure 9.4 Church of Hagios Vasileios at Arta, Greece, 1890, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 02/01/09/019, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

Barnsley painted the green-stained timbers of the ceiling with a flowing design of wild flowers in red, green, white, and yellow bounded by a double loop (Figure 9.7). This decorative device was one that he had recorded in photographs in Greece, including a stone carving in the church at Samari in Messenia (Figure 9.8), and was subsequently used to great effect by Gimson in designs for plaster friezes and metalwork. Barnsley also designed two six-sided pulpits with seats in the form of a domed bema, similar to one he had photographed in the monastery of Hosios Loukas. Their decoration includes an inlaid herringbone inlay in holly and ebony, which repeats the pattern on the marble pavement of the church; these details recall decorative details that the two men had observed in Greece and were to remain a feature of Barnsley’s furniture designs. These pulpits and the other church furniture were made in Macassar ebony inlaid with olive wood and mother of pearl by the cabinetmakers employed by Kenton & Company. Photographs of the church were included in the 1893 Arts and Crafts Exhibition in London and commented on in The Studio magazine. The reviewer admired the

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Figure 9.5 Exterior of the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 9.6 Interior view of the Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Source: Author’s photo

huge ringed chandelier, which held the candles that provided the only lighting in the church, describing it as ‘quaint in its very severity’ and went on: Here is a new variation of the Byzantine motive, gained I dare swear from the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople but handled with a reticent feeling and sense of proportion beyond praise. . . . It is emphatically the work of an artist rather than of a professional man.17

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Figure 9.7 Detail of the painted ceiling, Church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, Surrey Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 9.8 Fresco icon and frame, Zoodochos Pege Church, Samari, Messenia, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 02/01/15/007, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

In 1902, Barnsley was further commissioned to design a mosaic decoration for the church’s apse, part of which echoes the floral design of the painted roof and reinforces the celebration of nature within the church. A line of crocuses and snakehead fritillaries leads up to the main decoration of roses below a golden arch. The mosaic

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border around both the main design and the inscription is taken directly from the geometric pattern found in many Byzantine church mosaics. Barnsley had made some watercolour sketches of these patterns on a visit to the Monastery at Daphni near Athens in 1890.18 The mosaic work was carried out in a traditional manner to a very high standard by the team of mosaic artists assembled by James Powell of Whitefriars to work on the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in London. In 1909, Schultz described the Church of the Wisdom of God as the earliest of five significant buildings from the previous 20 years. It was ‘typical of genuine effort to get as near as possible to more reasonable conditions of building, and which gave a chance for the various craftsmen employed to express their individuality’.19 Barnsley’s main intention on returning to Britain was to join Kenton & Company, a new London-based furniture workshop set up in the autumn of 1890 by four architects – Gimson, Lethaby, Mervyn Macartney, and Reginald Blomfield – who took on the role of furniture designers, and a partner, Colonel Mallet. Stephen Webb, the sculptor and designer, was also a short-lived member. There was no house style: each man produced his own designs, which were made by the trained cabinetmakers employed in the workshop. We know only of a few pieces designed by Barnsley for Kenton & Company – and some of those simply from archive photos.20 In the collection of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, London, is a mahogany table designed by him probably for Kenton & Company with the same herringbone inlay as he used in the marble and woodwork at the Church of the Wisdom of God. Two unusual mirror frames of a similar design have also survived. A bold domed top, very Byzantine in feel, dominates the frame, which is made of walnut veneered in a very unusual but attractive burr oak. The patterns formed by the placing of the pieces of burr oak veneer refer back to the Byzantine approach to marble cladding also used by Barnsley in the Church at Lower Kingswood. One of the frames is additionally inlaid with a floral spray in different woods and mother of pearl (Figure 9.9). Each item of Kenton & Company furniture was normally incised with the initial of the designer and the name of the maker as part of their stated aim to raise the status of craftsmen. These Barnsley pieces, however, were marked only with his name, suggesting that they were made as well as designed by him. Another piece of furniture made by Kenton & Company, and almost certainly designed by Barnsley – a wardrobe veneered with pieces of Indian walnut to create patterns of circles and diamonds – is known today only through photographs. Although looking back to the Byzantine, this type of veneered furniture, so shockingly plain for the 1890s, also looks forward to the functional designs of the twentieth century, including furniture designed by Gordon Russell and Ambrose Heal in the 1920s and 1930s. It also became a feature of Cotswold Arts and Crafts furniture by both Barnsley and his colleague Ernest Gimson. A cabinet, subsequently designed by Gimson in about 1903 and now in the collection of The Wilson in Cheltenham, featured such a decorative veneered surface bounded by a faceted ebony inset. This decorative feature originated in the treatment of Byzantine veneered marble panels. Schultz described how, around some veneered marble panels, ‘one generally finds a slightly projecting rounded fillet of white marble and sometimes this is enriched with cut facets’.21 The cabinet was made in Gimson’s Daneway workshops at Sapperton, near Cirencester in the south Cotswolds, where both he and Barnsley were to spend the majority of their working lives.

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Figure 9.9 Mirror frame designed and made by Sidney Barnsley for Kenton & Company, c. 1891 Source: Photograph by Paul Reeves, ©Paul Reeves London

232 Mary Greensted Kenton & Company was dissolved by the end of 1892. There was a shortage of capital to invest in the enterprise, and in addition the five active participants were all young men just beginning to establish their reputations and, for some of them at least, the realisation came that if they were to make their mark as architects they had to concentrate on that profession. Barnsley felt differently, however; he had no desire to work as a professional architect in London or Birmingham. Instead, he was considering a return to Greece, since entertaining William Morris’s former secretary, Sydney Cockerell, to dinner in April 1892, when the two men had discussed the possibility of travelling there together later that year.22 By the following year, Barnsley and Gimson developed an alternative plan and decided to move out of London to the Cotswolds, a neglected part of Britain that had been newly opened up by the railway network and was beginning to attract artists and architects. Barnsley and Gimson wanted to live and work as part of a community in the countryside, to get to know an area and learn from its building and craft traditions. It has been suggested by Robin Cormack that Barnsley’s travels in Greece encouraged this move from the urban to the rural.23 Their attitude reflected William Morris’s comments about the collective and egalitarian nature of medieval and Byzantine art in ‘The Lesser Arts’, his first formal public address given to the Trades Guild of Learning in London in 1877. He asked: You look in your history-books to see who wrote to see who built Westminster Abbey, who built Hagia Sophia?, and they tell you Henry III, or Justinian the Emperor. Did they? Or, rather, men like you and me, handicraftsmen who left no name behind them, nothing but their work?24 In the context of this statement, it may be significant that, despite it being a stated principle of the Arts and Crafts Movement to acknowledge both designer and maker, Barnsley and Gimson stopped marking their work in any way after their move out of London, possibly in an attempt to replicate the working life of traditional craftsmen. In the spring of 1893 Barnsley and Gimson moved to temporary accommodation near the market town of Cirencester in Gloucestershire. They persuaded Barnsley’s older brother Ernest, who was struggling to establish his architectural practice in Birmingham, to join them, and by the following year they were settled near the village of Sapperton. The landscape of this beautiful part of the south Cotswolds is characterised by hills and wooded valleys settled with soft grey limestone-built villages. The three men rented Pinbury Park, a run-down farmhouse with outbuildings, one of which was converted into a workshop. They continued to work as architects, but, in addition, the two Barnsley brothers began designing and making furniture, using mainly oak felled locally, which they obtained from the Sapperton wheelwright, laying the foundations for a long-standing tradition of craft furniture making. Gimson designed and made decorative plaster panels and turned ladderback chairs; from 1902, he set up a smithy in Sapperton and workshops making furniture at nearby Daneway House. Schultz was a regular visitor to this craft community and also worked with Gimson and Sidney Barnsley on

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a number of projects, including The Old Place of Mochrum in Wigtownshire in Scotland (restored for the Fourth Marquess of Bute), Woolmer Green Church in Hertfordshire, and the Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum, Sudan. In the Cotswolds, the three men adapted woodworking techniques such as chamfering, traditionally used by wheelwrights in Britain to reduce the weight of farm carts, wheels, and tools in their furniture designs. However, they also used features such as octagonal-shaped knops to create interest and proportion in wood and metal uprights, which both Schultz and Barnsley had sketched in Byzantine churches, including the church of Hagios Georgios at Mistra. This feature was often found in conjunction with gouged decoration in both Greek church furniture and metalwork. It became a feature of designs by both Barnsley and Gimson, and it was subsequently adopted by other Arts and Crafts designer makers such as Charles Spooner and Arthur Romney Green. Both Schultz and Barnsley had made numerous sketches of decorative inlaid work during their visits to Greece. They appreciated the simple geometric patterns and the balance of the contrasting colours and tones of work, such as the marble pavement in the Metropolis at Mistras in the Peloponnese. Barnsley sketched the pavement with its border of interlocking pieces of marble in May 1888, and its influence can clearly be seen in a box made by him in about 1905 in walnut inlaid with mother-of-pearl (Figure 9.10). The sides of the box are inlaid with large discs of mother-of-pearl and smaller pieces of both motherof-pearl and abalone in an abstract design with the merest suggestion of simple flowers and leaves. The large inlaid pieces on the lid are also based on the interlocking design of the pavement at Mistras.25 In addition, Barnsley photographed pieces such as an icon stand with inlaid geometric decoration in one of the churches at Monemvasia in the southern Peloponnese (Figure 9.11).26 This Byzantine-inspired technique of shallow geometric inlays cut into wood and filled with pieces of shell, ivory, silver, or contrasting wood continued to be used in Greek vernacular furniture until the nineteenth century, where it was known as ‘χωνευτό’ ‘honefto’ or ‘digested’ or ‘concealed’. It was developed in both Sidney Barnsley’s and Gimson’s mature work in the decoration of boxes, mirror frames, and more substantial pieces of furniture. Westminster Cathedral, London’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Victoria designed by J.F. Bentley between 1895 and 1903, is a powerful essay in Byzantineinspired brick building.27 Following Bentley’s death in 1902, the individual chapels were designed and furnished by other architects, and in 1913 the Fourth Marquess of Bute commissioned Schultz to design St Andrew’s Chapel. Many leading Arts and Crafts designers and friends of Schultz contributed to the furnishings of the Chapel. Among the most notable pieces are the seven clergy seats from the workshop of Gimson early in 1915 and the kneelers designed by Barnsley and made in the workshop of his son, Edward, at Froxfield, near Petersfield, Hampshire (Figure 9.12). These pieces were collaborative designs by Gimson and Barnsley developed out of close working relationships and many years of friendship with Schultz. The overall design of the ebony seats, with misericords below the flat seats and high arm rests, is more characteristic of Orthodox rather than western

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Figure 9.10 Walnut box inlaid with mother of pearl and abalone, designed and made by Barnsley, c. 1905 Source: Private collection; Author’s photo

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Figure 9.11 Photograph of inlaid icon stand in Elkomenos Christos Church, Monemvasia, 1888–90, by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley Source: BRF 02/01/14/116, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 9.12 Detail of Barnsley’s kneelers from St Andrew’s Chapel, Westminster Cathedral, London Source: Author’s photo

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churches. The inlaid decoration in bleached bone also recalls Byzantine work, while the circular motifs at the top of each seat are different, based on Byzantine motifs with at least one motif found on a carved detail from the iconostasis screen in the Great Church at Hosios Loukas drawn by Schultz and Barnsley for their 1901 publication The Monastery of St Luke in Stiris. The kneelers, dating from 1924, were a later addition to the Chapel. At this point in his working life, Sidney Barnsley was passing on many of his furniture designs to his son because of his back problems and architectural commitments. The four kneelers have a relationship with the clergy seats – like them, they were made in ebony and bleached bone – but the design is not identical. They have hexagonal uprights with different inlays ending in elegant pyramidal finials. According to the job book, the kneelers were made in the Barnsley workshop by W.H. Berry (827 hours) and Edward Barnsley (45 hours). They were among the final pieces of furniture designed by Sidney Barnsley before his death in 1926. Although Sidney Barnsley’s research visits to Greece took place at the start of his working life in the late 1880s, and he never returned, his detailed and thoughtful studies of Byzantine architecture had a profound influence on his future work, and indeed on that of his friends and associates, especially Ernest Gimson. The Church of the Wisdom of God at Lower Kingswood, Surrey, remains one of Barnsley’s major achievements and an important and very personal rendition of the Byzantine Revival in Britain. We also see the impact of the Byzantine in his furniture – in both the work for Kenton & Company and subsequently the Cotswolds. He brought together the emphasis on materials and techniques that he had absorbed in Greece with the decorative Byzantine approach and combined it with the English rural craft tradition to create new forms that have become known as Cotswold craft furniture. Sidney Barnsley’s ability to combine these different strands has enabled the tradition to grow, adapt, and survive into the twentieth century, and we can see elements of that tradition in contemporary work such as the furniture designed and made by Nicholas Hobbs for St Hugh’s Chapel in Lincoln Cathedral in 2017.

Notes 1 Sedding, J.D. 1893. Art and Handicraft (London), 80. 2 Weir, R.W.S. 1932. ‘William Robert Lethaby’, an unpublished paper read before the Art Workers’ Guild, London. 3 Tanner, R. (ed.) 1975. The Turn of the Century, Extracts from the Diaries of Dorothy Walker 1899, 1900, 1901 (published privately), 42. 4 Nevinson, H.W. 1923. Changes and Chances (London), 133. 5 Adams. K. to Cockerell, S. 1 November 1909. ‘Letters to and from Sydney Cockerell and Katharine Adams 1901–1912’ (London, British Library, Add. MSS. 71213). 6 Uncatalogued notebooks of Sidney Barnsley, The Edward Barnsley Workshop, Hampshire. 7 Comino, M. 1980. Gimson and the Barnsleys: Wonderful Furniture of a Commonplace Kind (London), 40. 8 Notebook of Robert Weir Schultz, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/SCH 14, British School at Athens.

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9 According to the visitor’s book at Hosios Loukas (consulted 2008), the previous western visitor had been Sir Thomas Wyse, the Irish politician and diplomat, in 1861. His account of his travels Impressions of Greece was published posthumously in 1871. 10 Uncatalogued notebook 4 of Sidney Barnsley, The Edward Barnsley Workshop, Hampshire. There are 27 notebooks between Barnsley and Schultz at the British School at Athens and 18 notebooks at the Edward Barnsley Workshop. 11 The Byzantine Research Fund Archive at the British School at Athens includes over 370 photographs taken specifically by Barnsley and Schultz in the late 1880s during their visits to Greece. 12 Cormack, R. 2008. ‘British Arts and Crafts Architects and Byzantium’, talk at the Hellenic Centre, London, 18 February 2008. 13 Notebook of Sidney Barnsley, 1888, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/BAR 1, British School at Athens. 14 Comino, M. 1980. Gimson and the Barnsleys: Wonderful Furniture of a Commonplace Kind (London), 51. 15 Schultz, R.W. 1909. ‘Reason in Building’, in Davison, T.R. (ed.), The Arts Connected with Building (London), 37. 16 Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art ’, The Architectural Review 1, part II, 249–50. 17 ‘The Arts and Crafts Exhibition, 1893’. 1894. The Studio 2, 15. 18 Uncatalogued notebook 3 of Sidney Barnsley, The Edward Barnsley Workshop, Hampshire. 19 Schultz, R.W. 1909. ‘Reason in Building’, in Davison, T.R. (ed.), The Arts Connected with Building (London), 37. The other four churches cited were Lethaby’s Brockhampton Church, 1903; A. Randall Wells’s Kempley Church, 1904; Kelling Place by E.S. Prior, 1905; and Roker Church, 1907, which Schultz ascribed to both Prior and Wells. 20 Archive photos in the Furniture and Woodwork Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Wilson, Cheltenham; and The Edward Barnsley Workshop, Hampshire. 21 Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art’, The Architectural Review I, part II, 250. 22 ‘Went on to Gimson & Barnsley and had dinner with them. Conceived wild idea of going to Greece with Barnsley in the autumn’, diary entry, Monday 11 April 1892, Diaries of Sir Sidney Cockerell, The Cockerell Papers, Add MSS 52630, British Library. 23 Cormack, R. 2008. ‘British Arts and Crafts Architects and Byzantium’, talk at the Hellenic Centre, London, 18 February 2008. 24 Morris, M. (ed.) 1914. The Collected Works of William Morris, vol. 22 (London), 6–7. 25 Uncatalogued notebook 1 of Sidney Barnsley, The Edward Barnsley Workshop, Hampshire. 26 Ibid. 27 See also, Tedeschi & Stamp in this volume.

Bibliography ‘The Arts and Crafts Exhibition, 1893’. 1894. The Studio 2, 15. Baker, P.L. 1981. ‘William Morris and His Interest in the Orient’, in William Morris and Kelmscott (London), 67–71. Barnsley, S.H. and Schultz, R.W.S. 1901. The Monastery of St Luke of Stiris, in Phocis, and the Dependent Monastery of St. Nicholas in the Fields, Near Scripou in Boetia (London). Brandon, M.J. 2001. The Lost Jewel in the Arts and Crafts Crown, the Church of the Wisdom of God (BA dissertation for Southampton Institute). Bullen, J.B. 2003. Byzantium Rediscovered (London).

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Carruthers, A. and Greensted, M. 1994. Good Citizen’s Furniture: The Arts and Crafts Collections at Cheltenham (Cheltenham and London). Clarke, G.W. (ed.) 1989. Rediscovering Hellenism (Cambridge). Comino, M. 1980. Gimson and the Barnsleys: Wonderful Furniture of a Commonplace Kind (London; reprinted Stroud 1991, as Greensted, M.). Cormack, R. and Jeffreys, E. (eds.) 2000. Through the Looking Glass: Byzantium Through British Eyes (Aldershot). Davison, T.R. (ed.) 1909. The Arts Connected with Building (London). Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive’, in Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture Through the British School at Athens (Athens), 125–44. McGrath, M. 2003. ‘Sidney Barnsley, a Quintessential Arts and Crafts Architect and Craftsman’, in Greensted, M. and Wilson, S. (eds.), Originality and Initiative: The Arts and Crafts Archives at Cheltenham (Aldershot and Cheltenham), 45–60. Morris, M. (ed.) 1914. The Collected Works of William Morris (London). Nevinson, H.W. 1923. Changes and Chances (London), 133. Schultz, R.W. 1897. ‘Byzantine Art’, The Architectural Review I, part I, 192–9; part II, 248–55. Schultz, R.W. 1909. ‘Reason in Building’, in Davison, T.R. (ed.), The Arts Connected with Building (London), 37. Sedding, J.D. 1893. Art and Handicraft (London). Stamp, G. 1981. Robert Weir Schultz, Architect, and his work for the Marquesses of Bute (Mount Stuart). Tanner, R. (ed.) 1975. The Turn of the Century, Extracts from the Diaries of Dorothy Walker 1899, 1900, 1901 (published privately), 42.

10 The Mosaic Landscape of Westminster Cathedral* Claudia Tedeschi

Introduction In order to understand what a mosaic is, we need to distinguish two of its most significant aspects. The first regards ‘the matter’ or ‘material’. Many different types of material have been used throughout the ‘history of mosaic making’: from natural ones, such as limestone of various colours, pebbles, marbles, shells, and motherof-pearl, up to man-made ones, like coloured smalti, gold, and fired clay. These materials have always been used very consciously, each time resulting from sophisticated, deliberate decisions based on aesthetic purposes as well as on questions of the artwork’s durability. The used material as such is, of course, not consubstantial, but the fact that a mosaic is composed of different elements does not justify the idea that a mosaic is a simple assembly of various pieces. It is not a typical twodimensional surface; on the contrary, mosaics are based on the tessera, the mosaic’s quintessential element that determines its three-dimensionality. By definition, the mosaic is about fragmentation, and so it was from the very beginning, thus from the preparation of the basis material (slabs of various materials cut into small cubes) to the point of the artwork’s final assembly, in which the previously executed division is reconstructed both in terms of the material and through the artwork’s visual perception. In this sense, mosaics are authentic weaves equipped with a communicative function not only due to the iconography they represent but also by reason of their almost ‘naturally’ inherent characteristics deriving from being created by means of a highly complex technique. And this is what our second aspect depends on: how in a language system a sign refers to a meaning, or, as Saint Augustine related in his Christian Doctrine,1 ‘aliquid stat pro aliquo’.2 As in semiotic studies, we can understand the meaning of a sign if we interpret the sign correctly. But why is this so? Referring to the terminology of Cesare Brandi concerning the bipolarity of an artwork’s material,3 an artwork’s various codes of communication are manifested in its appearance, that is, in its decorations, in the type of tiles, colours, materials etc., but also in its structure, i.e. the part that is usually beneath but that supports the visible part. In a panel painting, for instance, the paint represents the artwork’s appearance and the board its structure. Yet, when it comes to mosaics, the interaction between appearance and structure is much more complex in that the final underlayer – into which the tiles are inserted DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-13

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and which still pertains to the artwork’s structural aspect – is actually on the point of becoming one of the artwork’s communicative devices and thus a proper part of the artwork’s aesthetic; for all intents and purposes, this is a visual statement. In essence, the various communication codes of a mosaic concern various parameters related to the mosaic’s all-dominant element, the tessera. Those communication levels are as follows: dimension, shape, interstice, colour, andamento, inclination. These ‘codes’ establish the mosaic’s true identity and, according to their respective values and features, generate different results or, simply, different mosaics. Of course, these evaluation criteria need simultaneously to be extended by studies of the iconographical, archaeological, and architectural character that furnish fundamental information for the artwork’s contextualisation. If, though, as we have seen, it is so difficult to distinguish between appearance and structure, where does the boundary between them lie? Where, so to speak, does the first end and the second begin? To understand this, we need to take a look at the construction technique of wall mosaics (Figure 10.1).

Figure 10.1 Design of the technique used in the construction of wall mosaic in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (fifth–sixth century) Source: By author with graphic processing by G. Galli

242 Claudia Tedeschi The number of ground layers typically encountered in the examination of the Basilicas of Ravenna varies from two to three. Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (late fifth to sixth century), for example, possesses three layers. The substrate, was, in fact, composed of two preparatory layers directly applied onto the bricks (6). For the most part, these layers are notably coarse and thick. They are characterised by agglomerations (aggregates) of larger particles like ‘clay powder or even bits of brick as well as more or less fine sand and gravel’.4 At times, fragments of straw or even wood were added to the mixture, serving not only to release the right amount of moisture during the drying phase but also to enhance the material’s durability and cohesion without increasing its weight. These layers were secured to the brickwork by iron nails with large heads. The nails were driven into the joints of mortar between the single bricks, probably prior to the application of the preparatory layer from which the head of the nail protruded. Once the mortar was applied, the surface of the two layers was incised using the tip of a trowel in order to facilitate the adhesion between the various layers (4–5). The final layer, the actual substrate of the tiles, was thinner and shows a lower percentage of aggregates since the tiles themselves already are an aggregation of the size of a centimetre (3). Finally, before beginning to create the mosaic texture, the design that was to be carried out was painted on the still fresh mortar by means of a fresco with only a few colour shades and without any hints of nuances or details, which were entirely left to the artistic skills of the artists (2). The richness of the colour palette and the criterion by which specific colours were attributed to each material varied according to both the artists and the period in which the mosaic was produced (1). Turning back to our original question concerning the distinction between the visible surface of a mosaic (i.e. its appearance), on the one hand, and its structure, on the other, we can now offer a definitive answer. In reality, there is no real distinction between surface/appearance and structure, for, as we have seen, the substrate itself is at the point of playing a predominant part in the artwork’s appearance. Therefore, the colour of the mortar and the optional homogeneity of its components as well as the space (interstice) between the tiles all together become highly characteristic elements for a mosaic. Yet, even the inclination of the tesserae plays an important role in the harmoniously concerted ensemble of a mosaic in that the tiles’ inclination angle is responsible for the creation of the different light effects of the artwork. As the result of the pressure that the artists, pursuant to a precise purpose and deliberate choice, apply to the tiles during their placement, even the tiles’ inclination angle both contains and reveals individual traits in the truest sense of the word. The parameter of the tiles’ varying inclination, which used to be a typical feature of the ancient wall mosaics, was tragically lost in relatively recent times due to the introduction of the indirect method, which generates surfaces that are entirely flat, relatively lifeless, and lacking the sculptural drama of the earlier work. The understanding of what a mosaic really is and how it can be interpreted is not only of use in terms of historical analysis. Moreover, the understanding of what a mosaic is becomes fundamental for the understanding of modern,

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contemporary mosaic production, where the loss and/or transformation of the language of the mosaic through the introduction of artistic licenses that are hardly verifiable has determined the proliferation of artistic products of disputable quality. Thus, by interpreting its signs, we can read a mosaic almost like a written text in order to understand its style, its grammar, and sometimes even its calligraphy. Up to the present day, the technique of mosaic making has undergone a profound alteration of identity. Over the centuries, the ‘language of the mosaic’ and the ancient knowledge of mosaic making have undergone significant transformation, especially if we draw a comparison using Antiquity as the model of technical and formal perfection par excellence. Indeed, compared to Antiquity, mosaic artworks experienced a first substantial alteration between the Early Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages, including the distinction between floor and wall mosaics, from not only a technical but also an iconographic point of view; the floor became the space dedicated to terrestrial works, while the walls were reserved for theology, sacred stories, and heavenly visions. The mosaic in the Christian world, being intimately tied to its surrounding architectural forms from which it cannot be separated, has become a powerful and extraordinary medium between heaven and earth. Furthermore, it is a technique that has, across the ages, found support from great political ideologies for its intrinsic characteristics: durability, preciousness, and efficient communication.

Description of the Cathedral The construction of the Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, designed by architect John Francis Bentley in 1895 in the Neo-Byzantine style, is an authentic architectural jewel. On 10 May 1884, The Tablet reported the news to its readers about the new site of the Cathedral: The land acquired by the Westminster Land Company represented in the below map by the two plots of ground marked ‘Cathedral new site’ and ‘Surplus Land sold by Company’. Of these two plots, which represent the enclosure of the Tothill Fields Prison, the one marked ‘Cathedral new site’ will stand the Catholic Cathedral of Westminster.5 The Catholic Cathedral is dedicated to the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The exterior is characterised by a covering of red bricks, combined with white stone for the oriental domes, and above all by the high bell tower that stands out against the sky, reaching a height of 87 meters. The composite façade is articulated in a series of characterised overlapping orders from arches supported by columns, balconies, windows, and tympanum. The main entrance is emphasised by a central arc made out of a series of mouldings that encloses a lunette; this houses a mosaic with the depiction of Christ on His throne with Blessed Mary and St Peter placed on His left side, and on His right St Joseph

244 Claudia Tedeschi and St Edward. The mosaic uses a traditional iconography of the seated Christ in the act of blessing. The Holy Book is opened at the words ‘Ego sum ostium, per me si quis introierit salvabitur’.6 Before starting the design, during months of travel, Bentley undertook an extensive study of relevant buildings; this is reflected in the architectonic spatiality of the Cathedral and its decorative settings, which are obviously deeply inspired by Byzantine models in the smallest detail, becoming not a simple copy, but an extraordinary and faithful guide to the intimate spirituality and fervent sacredness typical of Byzantine buildings. This can be seen in the stone cornice, the marble coverings, the mosaic decorations, and also in the same wide and articulated architectonic space.7 The inside, decorated in marble and mosaics, has a Latin cross plan; it is made up of three naves, a transept, galleries, and various chapels (Figure 10.2). The space of the central nave is articulated with incredible elegance, helped by the sequence of the marble columns, which are also decorated in Byzantine style. At the rear, the altar and its grand baldachin stand out, supported by eight columns in yellow marble. Mosaics embellish the internal plan, realised between 1902 and 2016 (and still in progress), they cover the chapels, sanctuary arch, and many of the panels scattered along the walls. Such mosaics differ for various reasons, principally in their chronological development. However, even if, on the one hand, it represents a kind of linguistic paradigm, on the other, it has not always revealed itself as such (see the case of the Chapel of the Holy Souls 1902–3 and the Chapel of St Gregory and Augustine 1902–4, in which it is possible to identify astonishing differences in the techniques employed, the quality of the work, and the depth of significance of the iconography). Moreover, the diversities are characterised in the stylistic marks of the several artists and mosaicists, and above all in the formal choices adopted over time. Many of the masonry surfaces, the vertical made out of bricks and the curved surfaces of unreinforced concrete,8 are to this day still awaiting mosaic decoration, not yet accomplished (Figure 10.3). This condition, which in a way has become part of the Cathedral’s history, contributes to characterising a certain feeling of mystical space, which comes from the strong contrast between the dark surfaces of the masonry and the chromatic vivacity of the parietal coverings. These coverings have the task of ‘brightening’ the architectonic spaces with their absorbent surfaces, peculiar to marbles and stones, and reflective ones, distinctive of mosaic glass. The present chapter examines some examples of the mosaic decorations inside the Cathedral. Specifically, it focuses on the mosaics of the Chapels of Holy Souls (1902–3), Saint Gregory and Augustine (1902–4), Saint Andrew (1914–15), and, finally, the Lady Chapel (1930). It is possible through their study to gain a better understanding of the artistic and historical evolution of the decorations. The final part of the chapter contains some initial considerations on the completion of the mosaic decoration. This practice, from its origin, presents historical continuity and, as the work is still in progress, becomes increasingly relevant, making it the object of some reflections.

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Figure 10.2 Map of the mosaic Cathedral by St Ann’s Gate Architects

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Figure 10.3 Internal view Source: Author’s photo

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Holy Soul Chapel The Chapel of the Holy Souls is dedicated to those who, having passed through death, are awaiting the final purification, which will enable them to enjoy eternal union with God. The process and very essence of Purgatory is prominently represented in the mosaic above the altar of the Chapel. Framed by the archangels Raphael and Michael, we see a soul moving upward to Heaven, while others, in a rather painful attitude, are still awaiting their call in hope, while the prayer ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis’ is recited.9 On the opposite side, as if to illustrate and deepen the Purgatory scene and its theme of the purity of the souls, we find the pictorial representation of the Old Testament story of the Fiery Furnace.10 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who had refused to worship a golden image made by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, are represented here. The barrel vault ceiling confronts the viewer with the theme of death and new life. From the left springs Adam, the first man, shortly after the dawn of time, holding the tree, instrument of death by the serpent, and apple; from the right the risen Christ, the new Adam, clasping the tree of his crucifixion, proclaiming life and the dusk of time. The two almost touch at the apex of the vault, and in effect this placing of the two figures on a single plane tells the story of God’s plan for man’s salvation, according to Christian doctrine.11 A Latin quotation from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians accompanies the two scenes: ‘Et sicut in Adam omnes moriuntur ita et in Christo omnes vivificabuntur’.12 Perhaps it is significant that the Chapel of the Holy Souls is the only section within the entire cathedral that was completely designed by John Francis Bentley, the cathedral’s architect, who died in March 1902 during the church’s construction, and designer William Christian Symons. There are many who say Bentley’s employment of the Byzantine was purely a reflection of the times and the fashion for a Byzantine style. But the iconography and methods employed imply that his exploration of ancient Christian architecture and decoration signifies something deeper. Between the years 1902 and 1903, the mosaics were created by George Bridge and his 26 lady mosaicists. Initially, they intended to prepare much of the mosaic face downward on canvas in the studio, the so-called indirect method, but as this was not a success, this was soon abandoned and the direct method was applied instead. Thus, the glass tiles were inserted individually directly into the putty on the chapel’s walls and vault.13 Although Bentley’s design for the cathedral’s construction had been inspired by themes and technical solutions of Byzantine origin, the mosaics within the Chapel of the Holy Souls were carried out in complete freedom and autonomy and seem not to follow the Byzantine fashion slavishly. This also holds true for the chapel’s decorative marble panelling. The only accurate historical references to the Byzantine style in the Chapel of the Holy Souls are found in the use of ring-like cut glass for the gemstones used in the floral ornaments on the walls and in some frames, as well as certain enlargements of the interstices, i.e. the spaces between the individual mosaic stones. This

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Figure 10.4 The ‘gold’ background of the vault Source: Author’s photo

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is characteristic of both the Byzantine and post-Byzantine style of mosaics, and in some areas of the Chapel serves to intensify the overall pictorial themes therein. According to historical documents on the cathedral’s design, the vault forming the chapel’s ceiling was supposed to ‘be covered with silver mosaic, glazed with golden green and enriched with wreaths of green and gold’.14 And indeed, for the ‘wreaths of green and gold’, it is true that the chapel’s vault displays this essential geometric-figurative theme defined by garland-forming circular motifs. The artistic handling shows an interesting technique: the central areas, embraced by the garland, were executed in a language that broke with traditional methods used elsewhere in the processing of mosaics. Unlike traditional techniques, the position of the single tiles does not show a regular andamento, that is, the movement and flow of the tiles. As for their size, the tiles are rather large and have a triangular shape, and the interstices, the joints between them, are notably wide. Furthermore, the use of the triangular shape for the tiles creates an animated and vivid texture, which impressively contrasts with the rest of the background, entirely executed with quadrangular tiles. This effect, establishing various design layers, creates multi-dimensional visual levels: an effect that generates a lush mosaic landscape full of technical details that enhances the refined, elegant surfaces (Figures 10.4 and 10.5). In some areas of the mosaics, the tiles surround the represented figures, thereby accentuating their importance with a thick fascia (band), as is the case in the aforementioned representation of Adam. This artistic device, used in ancient times, defines single figures by seemingly detaching them from the background and thus helps the observer to distinguish them better. As for the material, taking into account information found in the archives, we are led to believe that the execution of the chapel’s background was carried out using silver tiles. In reality, though, the overall impression the viewer gets while admiring the chapel is that of being surrounded, if not virtually wrapped and engulfed by warm, golden tones. The specific kind of deterioration the (supposedly) silvery tiles has been subject to gives rise to the suspicion that, in fact, those tiles are not silvery but are instead gold-coloured. Therefore, we are led to deliberate further over the (slightly ambiguous) phrase mentioned in The Tablet from 1899, in which the cathedral’s designers expressed their will to cover the vault with silver as well as gold-plated tiles (‘glazed with golden green’). It seems, that – as shown in the analysis carried out by the Department of Chemistry of the Glasgow University in 1993 – the (alleged) silver would, in fact, be platinum mixed with other, slightly gilded tiles with an underlay.15 The present author ascertained this during research to evaluate the condition of the mosaic surfaces by, above all, observing the type and quality of the materials used; this was conducted in November 2011 without the use of special equipment. In doing so, the author noticed tiles constructed with metal leaf. Those tiles differ in quality as far as the colour of both their underlay (respectively support) and the metal leaf itself is concerned. The underlay of the tiles with metal leaf consists of green and transparent blue, while another type of underlay consists of opaque red enamel. The metal leaf, instead, seems to contain white gold of different quality

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Figure 10.5 Mosaic and drawing of the tesserae shape, space between the tesserae, and andamento of the tesserae Source: By Author

and caratage (gold content): this could explain the special golden effect of the mosaics’ surface, an effect that is reinforced by the lighting used inside the chapel. In some, though only a few, of the mosaic areas, however, the author noticed a particular kind of tiles made from plates with metal leaf covered with a coloured protection layer, the so-called cartellina.

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It is worth mentioning that the same kind of plates found in the Chapel of the Holy Souls were used in the mosaics of the Angelo Orsoni Furnace in Venice at the end of the eighteenth century. In fact, the artworks exhibited by the Orsoni Furnace at the World Exposition in Paris in 1889 still today show a vast colour palette of different mosaic shades, as well as silver and golden mosaic panels, each with a differently coloured cartellina. The kind of layer found in the mosaics of the Chapel of the Holy Souls is one that is normally used for gold-coloured panels, covered with a ruby red protection glass that modern technicians consider an extremely expensive product. The tiles in the Chapel of the Holy Souls and the various examples from Orsoni’s Venetian glazier’s workshop compared side by side demonstrate a very great similarity. Their comparison would almost suggest that the tiles used in the Chapel of the Holy Souls were, in fact, produced in Orsoni’s studio. Nevertheless, it is impossible to definitively link their production to that of Orsoni’s furnace; during the same period in Italy, similar panels were produced by other glasswork factories, such as in the studios of Lorenzo Radi and Antonio Salviati.16 This has been confirmed by Lucio Orsoni, the current Honorary President of the Orsoni Furnace.17 The standard production of this particular product with coloured cartellina raises questions about the divergent colouration in the chapel’s background tiles that use metal leaf. In fact, the different tones of these tiles may have been caused (and could thus be explained) by the protection layer’s slight yellow colouring, which in turn might have led this type of tile to have a warmer tone. A chemical analysis of both the cartellina and the metal alloy could certainly offer reliable data about the nature of the tiles’ different colours and would help us better understand both the initially desired and eventually obtained effects. Furthermore, it is probable that the tile adhesive (mastic) used for the installation of the tiles (red in colour, probably of minimum pigment?) accounts for the extremely vibrant golden tone (Figure 10.6).

St Gregory and St Augustine Chapel The mosaics of the Chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine were designed by J.R. Clayton and carried out in the indirect method between 1902 and 1904. The intended overall iconographic theme of the chapel was published in an article in the supplement of an international weekly Catholic journal in 1899. In this article, Edmund Bishop, an historian of Roman Catholic Liturgy, together with other clergymen, sought to draft a series of themes that were to be used for the Cathedral’s artistic design that would illustrate the history of the Catholic Church in England.18 According to this article, all the themes mentioned therein should have served to embellish the central nave of the Cathedral, but were then instead used for the chapel in question (which was funded by Lord Brampton, better known as Sir Henry Hawkins, a former London judge who had converted to Catholicism in 1898). The idea was to portray a series of individuals who had played significant roles in the history of English monasticism.

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Figure 10.6 Tesserae and mortar taken from the background of the west wall Source: Author’s photo

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The background of the vault is covered with a gold-coloured sky, embellished with the figures of six saints: on the south wall, Saint Oswald, Saint Bede, and Saint Edmund, and on the north wall Saint Wilfred, Saint Benedict, and Saint Cuthbert. The two areas dedicated to the chapel’s namesake patron saints – Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine – are located to the east and west above the altar. In the great lunette, the meeting is depicted between Saint Augustine and Ethelbert, the King of Kent – the first English king to convert to Christianity. Below the great lunette, there is another representation of St Augustine, this time showing him kneeling in front of St Gregory the Great. In the opposite lunette, within a medallion in gold in the midst of a starry sky, the saint is shown in the company of Saint John the Baptist. At the sides, there are other medallions showing young figures holding jars overflowing with sacred waters. Finally, in the west intrados, embedded between elegant decorative frames, the four rivers of the Garden of Eden are illustrated: the Euphrates, Gihon, Pishon, and Tigris. Even though the mosaic was made at the same time as that in the Chapel of the Holy Souls, its overall result appears less interesting and less vibrant than Symons’s mosaics. There are, indeed, many factors that contribute to this lower quality, first of which is the application method, i.e. the indirect method.19 This method, in fact, aimed at arranging the mosaic surface onto only one single, flat layer, thus depriving it of the soft modulations that are a substantial part and objective of mosaic making in its original sense. Another factor that contributes to the mosaic’s lower quality, especially in terms of the gold materials employed, is the use of tiles with standardised size and shape, as provided by the company producing the smalti, Antonio Salviati of Venice. Salviati had been entrusted with the production of the tiles by Clayton & Bell, which, for its part, first prepared the drafts 1:1, then cut them into sections and eventually sent them to Venice. In Venice, the actual mosaics were created by gluing the tiles laterally inverted onto the different sections, thus following the canonical technique of the indirect method. After their completion, the various sections were shipped to London, ready to be mounted under the direction of George Bridge and his assistants.20 Regarding the figures represented in the mosaic, it is possible to notice very narrow interstices between the single tiles, whereas the gaps between the tiles in the gold ground are much wider, even if not equally so. This is probably due to the fact that the two sections – i.e. the figures and the ground – were executed at different times. Finally, the choice of an extremely regular andamento, paralleling the vault, leads to a rather monotonous and repetitive aesthetic result (Figure 10.7). The ground mortar used for the Chapel of St Gregory and Augustine also differs, in all likelihood, from the mastic used in the Chapel of the Holy Souls, despite the mosaics’ contemporaneous execution.21 The character and especially the dark grey

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Figure 10.7 Detail of the gold ground mosaics of the St Gregory and St Augustine Chapel Source: Author’s photo

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colour of the mosaic in St Gregory and Augustine’s Chapel led us to the assumption that cement had been used, since this would have been an obvious choice, functional for the mosaic’s installation. Instead, a more specific analysis proved that mastic was applied in both Chapels, even if the work on the Holy Souls presumably required a rather longer process, and the mastic (or putty) used there not only allowed the artists more time to work, but also to return to particular details in case the results proved unsatisfactory. The indirect method, in contrast, required much shorter processing times. Therefore, the mortar needed to dry out much more rapidly since the affixed sections had to be anchored both easily and quickly to the masonry.

St Andrew’s Chapel Created between 1914 and 1915, the mosaics of the Chapel of St Andrew were designed by the architect Robert Weir Schultz, discussed in other chapters in this volume. Here again, the direct method was applied. The chapel’s sidewalls show various scenes from Saint Andrew’s life: Bethsaida, the saint’s birthplace, Constantinople, the place of his ministry (according to tradition, Saint Andrew was the founder and patron of the Church of Constantinople), and Patras, the site of his martyrdom and death (60 CE). In fact, St Andrew was crucified in Patras on a particular cross, called a crux decussata, an X-shaped cross, now commonly known as Saint Andrew’s Cross. St Andrew was said to have personally requested this, as he deemed himself unworthy of being crucified on the same type of cross as Jesus had been. On the chapel’s opposite wall, three other places are depicted, each of them connected to the translation and conservation of the saint’s relics: the Cathedral of Amalfi, Saint Andrew’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, and Saint Ambrose’s Cathedral in Milan, though no clear connection between the latter and the Saint’s relics has been established thus far. Particularly noteworthy are the precision and realism with which the mosaic illustrates the architectonic characteristics of the churches in Milan, Amalfi, and Constantinople (even though, as for the latter, the minarets were omitted). Above the altar, in the east lunette, the saint is depicted in the midst of nature, surrounded by trees and by deer. Above, an inscription in English summarises the saint’s life story.22 On the opposite wall, in the west lunette, we see the symbol of the saint’s martyrdom, the crux decussata, serving as the centre of a series of gold-coloured rays. Left and right of the cross, on two cruciform panels, we find an inscription with the prayer Saint Andrew is believed to have said upon seeing the cross on which he was to die. The prayer’s Latin version is inscribed on the left, the English translation, translated by the Marquess of Bute, on the right. The Marquess of Bute was the translator of the Roman Breviary, a liturgical book containing the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours) of the Catholic Church.23 As the chapel’s name suggests, it is entirely dedicated to the main events of the life of Saint Andrew. The chapel’s vault, already considered a masterpiece at the time of its creation, is set in a monochrome (plain-coloured) golden background in the form of a pelta (Figure 10.8). In antiquity, a pelta was a light, crescent-shaped elliptic shield, which gradually came to be associated with a similar looking ornamental motif. The pelta as artistic means, with all its variations, was progressively introduced into the ornamental scheme of ancient Roman art. In the times of the

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Figure 10.8 The gold background of the vault of the St Andrew Chapel Source: Author’s photo

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Byzantine Empire, the pelta was a popular, widely used motif, as evidenced in one of the world’s most famous mosaics, the twelfth-century Mosaic of the Deesis (Mosaic of Supplication) preserved in the Hagia Sofia of Istanbul. This masterpiece of late Byzantine art shows Jesus in its centre, carrying a book, flanked by his mother, the Virgin Mary, on the left, and John the Baptist on the right. The mosaic’s golden background is made of minute tesserae that are arranged in a particular form deriving from the pelta. It is probable that this extraordinary example of Byzantine art, created in the Middle Ages, was used as a reference point for the mosaics of the Chapel of St Andrew, as the execution of the chapel’s gold-coloured ceiling, except for a few differences, bears tremendous resemblance to the Deesis of Constantinople. In fact, the kind of processing used in the mosaics of the Chapel of St Andrew is the same kind used in the Deesis of Constantinople. In the Chapel of St Andrew, the pelta expands to such an extent that it can be described as a wave or a fan.24 The particular care and technical attention applied to the artwork’s implementation is of extraordinary sophistication and testifies to the artist’s advanced technical skills. Two andamenti that determine the pelta are made of notably large tiles, and both andamenti are repeated twice inside the pelta itself so as to maintain the motif’s harmony and regularity. The mosaic’s elaboration not only gives proof of the outstanding care exercised in the artwork’s assembly, but at the same time ensures a lively visual display (Figure 10.5). The life-size drafts for the mosaic were prepared by George Jack, whereas the mosaics themselves were carried out by a group of mosaic artists headed by Ernest Debenham, and under the direct leadership of Gaetano Meo, friend and assistant of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, William Blake Richmond and other artists.25 Except for one Italian craftsman, a mosaic specialist from Venice, the team was made up of entirely English mosaic makers.26 (Figure 10.9) The initial reception of the mosaics met with criticism, such as in an article published in The Observer on 23 January 1916, where, in particular, the figure of the Saint himself was severely criticised for being ‘so devoid of dignity and expression that we can only embrace the wise discretion that led the artist to refrain from depicting any other figures in the rest of the scheme’. Complimentary opinions defending the artwork were published in the same paper only a few weeks later, on 6 February, expressing the highest approval and appreciation of the artwork for illustrating simple forms in a dignified fashion consistent with ancient Byzantine standards. It is very interesting to note that the word ‘Byzantine’ frequently recurs in the reviews about the Cathedral’s mosaics, but the term seems to be used without legitimate reference to the original sense of the word in matters of art, style, and technique and is thus almost devoid of meaning. In the Chapel of St Andrew, as in the case of the Chapel of the Holy Souls, the mosaic’s ‘Byzantine’ character can only be determined in terms of the use of gold as well as a few other minor details. The Venetian mosaic tiles were cut into small pieces and set in an ordered, regular manner. The interstice, created in a notably regular manner, was deliberately planned to be ample and wide. All this resulted in a mosaic surface carried out with great mechanical skill, while the technical and artistic execution can be described as conventional.

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Figure 10.9 Design for the Chapel of Saint Andrew and the Saints of Scotland, Westminster Cathedral, Westminster, London, for the Third and Fourth Marquesses of Bute, drawn by Robert Weir Schultz Source: RIBA 126849, OA 1092/1(41), ©RIBA Collections

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The mastic of the substratum seems to be made of the same composition as the one used by William Blake Richmond for the mosaics of the Cathedral of Saint Paul’s. According to information found in the Cathedral’s archives, both the ingredients for the substratum as well as their respective modifications are identical to those that had been used in the fifteenth-century restoration of the Baptistery in Florence, Italy.27

Lady Chapel The Lady Chapel, designed by Gilbert Pownall, was carried out in the direct method in the year 1930 by the Cathedral’s own School of Mosaic Makers.28 The artist and architect first travelled to Monreale, to the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, and to Ravenna;29 this was the third and final time a Cathedral mosaic project was preceded by such an extensive study of ancient precedents. The mosaic is clearly structured: the walls show scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, beginning with her engagement and ending with the Dormitio Virginis. The composition in the apse is rich in figurative elements of highly symbolic meaning, representing themes inspired by the Holy Scriptures and images that have all gone through a development process in Christian iconography: Mary, with her hands held up in adoration, crushing the serpent’s head with her heel; angels and seraphim; the Tree of Life; Christ in Glory; the archangels Michael and Gabriel; and also Saint Peter, who, in his capacity as the patron saint of Westminster, is shown next to a model of the church. The coronation of the Virgin – a theme that had been of great importance in the Middle Ages, often reserved for the most prominent location inside a church, namely inside its apse – is placed on the wall facing the apse, in an almost secondary position. The gold ceiling functions as a means of conjunction: a wreath, supported by elegant angels, runs along the entire area of the vault. Furthermore, there are busts of holy martyrs in medallions embedded in the windows and many other decorative motifs of ancient character, such as the vine branches or the vases with festoons of fruit, reminiscent of the decorative motifs of Galla Placidia in Ravenna. The mosaic’s interesting characteristics might also be due to a certain continuity regarding some themes that connect the Lady Chapel to the chapel of the Holy Souls, such as the green wreath that runs in the vault like a thin thread, the gold in the ceiling used as functional ground colour, the richness of the symmetrical articulation of the images, and, not least, the method of execution, namely the direct method. Furthermore, as archival photographs show, pictorial drafts had been made by means of faked mosaic groundings and/or with areas of uniform colour in order to consolidate the technical details before the mosaic’s actual creation (Figure 10.10). Although some of the chapel’s stylistic elements had already been used in the art of the twelfth century, their composition does not slavishly follow the features of their medieval predecessors, as evidenced by the construction and shapes of the styliform (bristle-shaped) angels on the vault with their solemn expression and strong stylistic references of the time. Although the application of the direct method contributed to gaining a vibrant mosaic surface, the use of standard size tiles (especially the gold ones) lessens

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Figure 10.10 Pictorial draft in fake mosaic of the Virgin (left); G. Pownall at work in the apse (right) Source: ©By kind permission of the Administrator of Westminster Cathedral

the mosaic’s overall quality. Unlike the golden ground of the Chapel of the Holy Souls, where the mosaic’s unique composition makes it the bearer of innovative features that define its modernity (interrupted textures and predominance of triangular tiles), the ground of the Lady Chapel with its regular, one-way andamenti appears insignificantly dynamic, interrupted only by some ‘ladders’ on the surface resulting from a wider interstice that creates – contrary to expectation – a sort of striking textural disruption. Yet, it needs to be said that, as in the Chapel of the Holy Souls, extreme care was applied in determining both the shape and size of the images in proportion to the distance of the observer.

Addendum The construction of the magnificent new Catholic Cathedral by John Francis Bentley began in 1895. From the outset, the plan was to decorate the high vaults, arches, and domes with mosaics, obviously inspired by the famous Byzantine mosaic artworks that, to this day, can still be admired in the cities of Ravenna and Constantinople. Since its invention, and throughout its history, the ancient technique of mosaic construction has produced extraordinary works of sacred art; the exceptional durability and light intensity of mosaics reflects the eternal divine light of heaven. The completion of Westminster Cathedral’s ‘aesthetic mission’, however, has yet to occur, since the mosaics, still in progress more than a century after the laying of the foundation stone of the Cathedral, have not yet been completed. The author’s study, began in 2011, aimed at examining the Cathedral’s extraordinary mosaics and their historical development and was carried out at the specific

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request of his Excellency Cardinal Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who regarded this work as an opportunity to better understand this ancient technique, and also to gain a better understanding of the standard of the Cathedral’s mosaics in a much wider context, both historically and geographically. Significant assistance was provided by John Hughes, a member of the Cathedral Art and Architecture Committee and project coordinator of the planned work. With the feasibility of the completion of the mosaics under study, such considerations are appropriate given that the project to complete the mosaics of Westminster cathedral – a project of 8500 square meters – would correctly be ranked as one of the most significant artistic enterprises of our time and indeed in the history of Christian mosaics. In the history of Cultural Heritage, Europe represents a homogeneous territory of reference, in both a historical sense and a contemporary one, that declares an articulated epicentre of thoughts and ideas: fruit of secular debates and experience in the field. Its artistic and literary history is built upon shared ground, but each country has also preserved its own identity of views and different intervention methods. We can readily see the different positions but also common ground and exchanges that have inspired, to this day, the theoretical debates on the various ways of intervening on cultural heritage sites in Italy, England, or France – the three countries that have contributed most decisively to the theoretical and practical debate regarding interventions in Cultural Heritage. This introduction, which cross references much literature on the subject, is necessary since the object of the treatise concerns historical heritage. The Cathedral of Westminster has, since 1987, been recorded as a Grade I Listed Building (first date listed: 1 December 1987; date of most recent amendment: 15 February 1994; List Entry Number: 1066500; Grade I buildings are of exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important). This classification automatically recognises the building per se as a construction of exceptional interest and international importance, and as such, it is protected. The completion of its fabric ‘mutilates’ some mosaic decorations, having as it does to relate to the complex palimpsest of the decorative settings already present in the Cathedral, establishing, however, coherence and incoherence on the theoretical level, on which it is worth dwelling. In our case, the planning of new interventions, especially of an artistic type that will be inserted into what already exists, needs to be pondered and made possible through a critical reasoning process that can correctly support the whole development of the operation. If we try critically to place the temporal ‘position’ of the Cathedral’s mosaic setting, it is immediately clear that we are in the presence of a heritage of historical mosaic works, which are in every respect subject to the restrictions of legislative protection and all that that entails (mosaics from 1902 to 1960); as well as a series of mosaics that have not yet achieved the temporal instance or particular aesthetic merits to make them eligible for the above-mentioned lists. The new works still to be realised also raise numerous questions about their nature in light of their insertion into this articulated cultural–historical scenario represented by the whole Cathedral in its multiple aspects. It is therefore necessary to implement a set of

262 Claudia Tedeschi reflections, which should help us better not only to understand the iconographic, technical, or applicable themes relating to the new mosaic conception, but also to orient the reasoning (and especially to define the criteria) from which to begin a critical analysis of the whole context in order to meet this challenge, without fear of interfering with the operations. However, we cannot elude an additional consideration about the place and its far-reaching historical, religious, and cultural significance: like all great fabrica ecclesiae, Westminster Cathedral is in temporal continuity with its history, so much so as to enable it to think about the development and completion of the mosaics, an operation that is still in progress; the last significant mosaic decoration occurred last year with the making of the Chapel of St George and the Forty Martyrs. The reason lies in the traditional continuity of the place, which is not only a crystallised element designed to ensure its transmission to the future and to protect and defend through the articulated system of rules, but also works as a dynamic and functional space where liturgy and religious spirit are always present, by definition, free from the limits of time. In a somewhat provocative manner, some initial reflections were elaborated with the intention of establishing a relationship between the mosaic surfaces historically existing and the wide area where mosaics are missing, considering the latter as a great architectural lacuna. In this perspective, the act of integration – the pure operation of realisation of the mosaics – cannot be a simple operation of restoration or reparation because, first of all, mosaics have never existed on those building surfaces. On the other hand, the integration of the large lacuna would place the problem of critical interpretation and of a methodological, iconographic, and material choice, since the integration is an act ‘destiné à rétablir une continuité formelle interrompue, dans la mesure où la recostitution rend à la structure esthétique la clarté de lecture qu’elle avait perdue’;30 it also interacts significantly with what exists all around it. In fact, we have already noticed that the mosaics of the Cathedral, which develop in the open and contiguous spatiality of its surfaces, are at times defined strong stylistic and chromatic contrasts. The importance of programming and planning new mosaic cycles, in my opinion, plays a fundamental and inescapable role from the analysis of the existing contexts that would, on one hand, allow a more incisive valorisation of the voluminous spiritual, artistic, and architectonic heritage of the Cathedral and, on the other, characterise the best artistic choice that would assume an independent artistic function and at the same time visually unite all the pre-existing decorative settings. In fact, in this case, what should the integration of such a vast part aim at? One suggestion might be that it aims to give back the aesthetic continuity of the decorations in the dual aspect, physical and spiritual and, at the same time, to value what already exists. Integration should aim to recover the ‘psychological conditions’ of the entire context and ideally to reconstruct a concept (in our case, the new Byzantine expression of the Cathedral). The Cathedral’s existing mosaic heritage (both outstanding and poor) reminds us of the enormous lacuna to be closed (and thus healed) above. Respectful of the best in the Cathedral’s own past, the work above should at the same time rescue and revive

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some of the fundamental and distinctive characteristics of the antique mosaics and, in particular, of the Byzantine wall and vault mosaics. Some important lessons can be learned from the best earlier work, i.e. the superiority of the direct method, the prior close study of ancient precedents, and the employment of artists to execute the work. A ‘figurative language’ narrating the themes that have formed the great history of Christianity and the Christian Church is no longer required since this historical greatness can be (and indeed is) evoked by the expressive power of some aspects contained in mosaic’s ‘language of tradition’. In a functioning liturgical space, the questions of theology and iconography are fundamental and – given the scale, expense, and inevitable disruption entailed – unless this work is centred on the pastoral mission of the Church, it is unlikely to start. The mosaic heritage of the Cathedral (from the ‘historical’mosaics up to its contemporary works) represents a valuable resource in both its negative and positive aspects, and it also provides a useful point of departure to begin the dream of an ‘investment of light’ that shall eventually make the nave of this great Cathedral’s gloomy vaults, which have long (and almost too patiently) been awaiting completion, shine at last.

Notes * Warmest thanks to John Hughes for his generous suggestions. 1 The text contains the following words: ‘As when I was writing about things, I introduced the subject with a warning against attending to anything but what they are in themselves, even though they are signs of something else, so now, when I come in its turn to discuss the subject of signs, I lay down this direction, not to attend to what they are in themselves, but to the fact that they are signs, that is, to what they signify. For a sign is a thing which, over and above the impression it makes on the senses, causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself: as when we see a footprint, we conclude that an animal whose footprint this is has passed by; and when we see smoke, we know that there is fire beneath; and when we hear the voice of a living man, we think of the feeling in his mind; and when the trumpet sounds, soldiers know that they are to advance or retreat, or do whatever else the state of the battle requires’. 2 ‘Something stands for something else’. 3 Brandi 1969, 10. 4 Gerola 1917, 106. 5 The Tablet was launched in 1840 and is the oldest surviving Catholic weekly journal in Britain; The Tablet, 10 May 1884. 724. 6 ‘I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved’. 7 Proctor 2016, 19. 8 Macdonald 2003, 31. 9 ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them’. 10 Daniel 3:8–30. 11 This iconography is unique in the Cathedral for its theological depth. 12 The inscription recites a passage from 1 Corinthians 15:22: ‘In the same way that everyone dies in Adam, so also everyone will be given life in Christ’. 13 Rogers 2010, 30. 14 The Tablet 1899, 755. 15 The analysis by Dr N.H. Tennent of the Department of Chemistry of Glasgow University, identified as pure platinum in one case. 16 Antonio Salviati (Vicenza 1816–90) joined with master Muranese glass maker Lorenzo Radi (Venice 1803–74), who had developed a revolutionary new process for manufacturing glass mosaics.

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17 Orsoni Furnace has been part of TREND Group, a design company specialised in artistic and industrial mosaic, since 2003. www.orsoni.com/history-heritage/ 18 The Tablet 1899, 749–56. 19 A further notable difference is the iconography, which, compared to the profound theology of All Souls, is little more than decorative and encyclopaedic. 20 Rogers 2010, 23–4. 21 With thanks to John Hughes for his suggestions. 22 The use of the English language instead of traditional Latin is very interesting: ‘Saint Andrew / Our Lord’s First Apostle /A Fisherman Of Bethsaida In Galilee / Whom With His Brother Simon / Peter Jesus Saw Fishing And Called Them To Him Saying / ‘Follow Me, And I Will Make You Fishers Of Man’/ He Preached The Gospel In Scythia And In Greece / And Suffered Martyrdom On The Cross At Patras In Achai/ His Relics Were Translated To Constantinople / Afterwards In Part To Amalfi And Milan / And To Scotland Where The City & Cathedral Of Saint Andrew / Were Founded And Dedicated In His Honour / By King Angus And Saint Regulus/ The Scots Venerate Him As Their Patron Saint’. 23 In this case, the inscription presents Latin language alongside its English translation: ‘O Bona Crux, Quae Decorem / Et Pulchritùdinem De Membris Dòmini Suscepisti / [Diu Desiderata, Sollìcite Amata, / Sine Intermissione Quaesìta Et Aliquàndo / Iàm Concupiscenti Animo Praeparata;] / Àccipe Me Ab Homìnibus Et / Redde Me Magistro Meo, Ut Per Te Me / Recìpiat Qui Per Te Redèmit Me’; ‘O Precious Cross / Which The Members Of My Lord / Have Made So Fair & Goodly / Welcome Me From Among Men, / & Join Me Again To My Master That / As By Thee He Redeemed Me So By Thee Also / He May Take Me Unto Himself (Passio Sanctis Andreae Apostoli)’. 24 The Observer, 23 January 1916; The Scotsman, 29 November 1916. 25 Who was later admitted to membership of the prestigious Royal Academy. It is perhaps significant, and a guide for future work in the Cathedral, that this outstanding work was executed by a talented artist, a unique phenomenon in the Cathedral. 26 Westminster Cathedral Chronicle 1914, 206. 27 Ibid. 28 The latter came to be as a result of Cardinal Bourne sending Bentley’s successor, John Marshall, and the artist Gilbert Pownall to Monreale, to the Palatine Chapel in Palermo, to Ravenna, the third and last time a Cathedral mosaic project was preceded by such a study. Tea chests of spare smalti from the School can still be found in the galleries above. 29 Rogers 2010, XX. 30 ‘Destined to re-establish an interrupted formal continuity, since the re-building gives to the aesthetic structure the clarity it had lost’; Philippot and Philippot 1959, 5–19.

Bibliography AA.VV. 1920. Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie (Paris). Andreescu Treagold, I. 1992. ‘Materiali, iconografia e committenza nel mosaico ravennate’, in Storia di Ravenna, II. 2: Dall’età bizantina all’età ottoniana (Vencie), 189–208. Augustinus Hipponensis. 1887. Christian Doctrine, Book 2, 1.1. Trans. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, vol. II: St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, L.L.D. (Buffalo). Bede. 1722. ‘Venerable’, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum I, 25. Brandi, C. 1969. Teoria del restauro (Torino). De L’Hôpital, W. 1919. Westminster Cathedral and Its Architect (London). Gerola, G. 1917. ‘La tecnica dei restauri ai mosaici di Ravenna’, in Atti e Memorie della Reale Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di Romagna VII (Bologna).

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Macdonald, S. 2003. Concrete: Building Pathology (Oxford). Philippot, A. and Philippot, P. 1959. ‘Le probleme de l’intégration des lacunes dans la restauration des peintures’, in Bulletin de l’Institut Royal du patrimoine artistique II. (Bruxelles) Proctor, R. 2016. Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain – 1955 to 1975 (Oxford). Rogers, P. 2010. Reflections. The Westminster Cathedral Mosaics (London). The Tablet. 1884. International Catholic News Weekly. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ pt?id=uc1.e0000265686&view=1up&seq=738 The Tablet. 1899. International Catholic News Weekly. Tedeschi, C. 2010. ‘La tecnica costruttiva della cupola e i materiali utilizzati; La conservazione del mosaico fra conoscenza e operatività: principali elementi fondanti la professione’, in Il Battistero Neoniano. Uno sguardo attraverso il restauro (Ravenna), 55–71, 143–60. Tedeschi, C. 2012a. ‘Artificio e natura o anche smalti, pietre e conchiglie: il cantiere teodericiano e agnelliano di Sant’Apollinare Nuovo e marginalia’, in Compendio sulla storia dei restauri dei mosaici attraverso le carte, annotazioni e indagini di cantiere, in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Un cantiere esemplare (Ravenna), 59–80. Tedeschi, C. 2012b. Westminster Cathedral’s Rightful Place Within the Great Tradition of Mosaic Art (London, 10–12 June). Tedeschi, C. 2013. ‘Mosaics and Materials: Mosaics from the Fifth and Sixth Centuries in Ravenna and Poreč’, in New Light on Old Glass: Recent Research on Byzantine Mosaics and Glass (British Museum Research Publication 179) (London), 60–9. Westminster Cathedral Chronicle 1914, vol. VIII, January–December. 1914. Editorial Notes (London).

11 The Byzantine Research and Publication Fund Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962) His Academic Studies and His Architecture Richard J. Butler

In memory of Gavin Stamp (1948–2017)

In a 2012 article, I suggested that the most important influence on Walter Sykes George’s (1881–1962) artistic development and professional career was Edwin Lutyens, and in particular the formative years they spent together working in Delhi in the early 1920s (Figure 11.1). 1 I would now like to expand on this by offering a more detailed investigation of certain aspects of his life, and in particular his scholarly work with the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund. At the ‘Stylistic Dead-Ends? Fresh Perspectives on British Architecture Between the World Wars’ conference held in Oxford in the summer of 2013, several speakers highlighted the psychological tensions of the inter-war period – the underlying sense of crisis, evident in literature and art, the contradictions, the ironies, and the uncertainties of nation and empire. 2 It became apparent that there was room to re-imagine the architectural history of the period by focusing on the psychological and intellectual fabric of the architects and their patrons. Walter George is a uniquely interesting and unusual figure from this period: a British man who spent little of his adult life in Britain, a Quaker who crossed cultural, political, and artistic barriers during his long career, and a highly regarded architect in India up to the mid-1950s, who had started his professional life documenting Byzantine ruins in the Near East. His surviving writings give insight into a man who encountered many of the broader themes identified at the Stylistic Dead-Ends conference, and here I seek to understand his early career in more detail as a way of explaining some of what came afterwards in India. I also wish to introduce some newly discovered drawings by Walter George for Wyndham Hospital, Jodhpur, which have come to light since my earlier article. The two distinct phases of George’s career – his academic work with the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund and other British expeditions based DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-14

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Figure 11.1 ‘Walter and Lena George, and an Indian man’, from the A.G. Shoosmith Album (Album B35, folio 152, no.1), Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge Source: ©Reproduced courtesy of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

in the Near East and North Africa in the years before World War I, and his architectural practice in India – may owe more to each other than previously acknowledged. In particular, I would like to address four questions: how did George perceive and remember his work for the Fund later in life, from the great spatial and temporal distance of India? How did he manage to stay in India after 1947 and be so well accepted there by both colonial and native professional societies? What underlying factors led George to be able to forge such a deep and lasting connection with Lutyens in the 1920s? And, finally, how do we explain his later embrace of modernist architecture, which he termed in 1951 ‘the prospect before us’?3

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Psychological Dislocation Born in 1881 into an East Anglian family of architects and builders, George grew up in Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester. At the age of 13, he enrolled at the School of Art there, transferring to Manchester after five years, and to the Royal College of Art in London at the age of 20.4 There he studied with the formidable Arts and Crafts practitioners William Lethaby (1857–1931) and Arthur Beresford Pite (1861–1934) for six years, winning travel scholarships to see much of Europe, and the Soane Medallion in 1906.5 There he met his future wife, the watercolourist and engraver Lena George,6 and established an independent practice in London in 1911, regularly exhibiting paintings and architectural drawings at the Royal Academy and also forging connections with popular and successful architects of the time, such as Ernest Newton (1856–1922), for whom he produced drawings for Whiteley Park Village near Weybridge in Surrey around 1914. His houses for this project showed an artistic flair in their varied use of brick (Figure 11.2).7 Notwithstanding the hiatus caused by the war, George’s entry into such an elite and productive social network surely would have provided him a profitable career, should he have elected to remain in Britain. However, from this time onwards his academic work, and thereafter his move to India, served to isolate him from this familiar environment; his sense of place and home was distorted and fragmented by distance and time – upheaval and rebellion in the Near East, and partition and independence in India. This sense of dislocation is most apparent in how George later viewed his years working for the Fund. In 1952, writing to Anne Shearer, a friend of his wife who wished to learn more of the work and history of the Fund, George said: 40 or 50 years ago, my name would have been a word of power at the British School at Athens, and would have given you the run of the place, and all its works. Today, I do not even know who is in charge. Most of the men I worked with . . . are now either dead, or you would consider them crippled old dodderers. I have not seen them for 20 years, as I have not been home but some of them still remember me, though I think all now have very little connection with the School. Though far removed from the world of Byzantine archaeology in India, he still maintained strong views on the subject and its main practitioners, commenting that: You ought to go to the School . . . and if you want to know anything about Byzantine Greece, then read Finlay first,8 to give you the proper background. After, you may browse where you will, but (1) do not believe the Frenchmen, they are too imaginative and not thorough, except one ‘Choisy’.9 . . . (2) Do not believe the Germans, they are far too thorough, and not sufficiently human or imaginative, and (3) Avoid the Italians, and particularly Rivoira,10 like poison: almost all he writes is hoarded and twisted to support a theory, which is no way to write archaeologically. (If you go to the Library, DON’T read my St. Eirene:11 it is as dry as dust. You will find it really is, and that this is not false modesty.) [(Figure 11.3]

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Figure 11.2 A house designed by Walter S. George for Whiteley Park, Surrey, 1914

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Figure 11.3 View of the church of St Eirene from the roof of St Sophia, n.d. Source: George, W.S. 1912. The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople (London) p. iv.

Returning to his own experience, he explained that his early career was something of an accident, formed by strong personalities: For myself, such reputation as I have archaeologically is as a Byzantinist, but I am no Byzantinist by choice: I was inveigled into it by a typical Scotchman of the odd name of Schultz,12 (an Edinboro Scot of pure Scotch type, with a far-off German ancestry) and another typical Scot, again with the queer Dutch name of Van Millingen.13 . . . Our country does not subsidise archaeology, even the poor little Byzantine Research Fund could never afford to publish what would have been a standard work on the Churches of Thessalonica, and of which I have measured and drawn in minute detail. The first drawings of

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the Mosaics in S. Demetrius Salonica were made by me, and I found some historic remnants, but archaeology is a game of first mention, and we were controlled by a Frenchman called Le Tourneau who came and photographed and published after working for three days where I had worked three years. My drawings will probably now never be published, and much of what I drew is now I believe destroyed, by fire, and by the devastating restorations of the Greeks.14 He made clear, though, at the end of the letter that granted these troubles, his memories of working in the eastern Mediterranean were positive: Some of the happiest times of my life were the fun excavating season[s] I spent at Sparta, living in a rough Greek house but with [men] picked new from the Universities, most of whom at first sniffed a little at this strange [sight] of an uneducated artist and architect, but began to change their tune and later became the best friends of my life, when they found I was singled out for discussion and companionship by their retired head, [Richard] Dawkins, who himself had had the somewhat unusual experience of joining as a ship engineer before he went to the [University . . .] What a [letter] I fear, too much about myself, but forgive me. Those days in Greece were (perhaps) the happiest in my life, and it is pleasant to remember them sometimes.15 ‘I am no Byzantinist by choice: I was invested into it’ is perhaps George’s most insightful remark. Much the same sense of not being the master of his own destiny emerges in his reflections on living and working in India. Writing in the late 1950s to the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Philip Hope Bagenal, who practised as an architect, acoustician, and theorist, he decried of missing a lecture Bagenal was soon to give on Lutyens: Why the; powers that rule this . . . world’ (you will recognise that phrase,16 and its uses) should have brought me to and kept me imprisoned in India I do not know, but the fact is that I was brought and am imprisoned. Why must I be in Delhi, and not in London, when you are going to talk on Lutyens?17 George’s anxiety with his own history went further than this: in later years he maintained that he had removed to India to ‘help Lutyens to see the whole of Delhi through’, in spite of a document that he signed in February 1929 where he clearly states that he went to India to take charge of ‘Sir Herbert Baker’s work’.18 As he aged, he allied himself more and more to Lutyens and his fame, perhaps naturally, writing to Bagenal that Lutyens’s architecture in New Delhi was not sufficiently appreciated by scholars and architects in Britain and elsewhere: So he was, but I would add, the greatest genius England has produced since Wren. . . . You and me are too near to [judge] him [. . .] No one has, so far

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Richard J. Butler as I know, except a journalist called Byron,19 even glimpsed what the Viceroy’s House means. It is the end of an epoch. No such building, designed for Ceremonial Living, will ever be built again. The Renaissance began in Florence under Brunelleschi’s dome on the Pazzi Chapel. It died in Delhi almost exactly 500 years later, with the Viceroy’s House.20

Embracing Foreign Cultures Yet if these dislocations in George’s life made for an architect who was always questioning his roots and his past, it also brought about a sensitive and openminded engagement with foreign cultures and traditions (except we might add those European archaeologists with whom he took exception in his correspondence with Shearer!). It is undoubtedly true that the lessons that George learned in Greece and Turkey in the pre-war years – cooperation, compromise, and understanding – contributed to his unusually successful interaction with Indian cultures and traditions in the 1920s through to the 1950s. As he recalled to Shearer, Turkey, when he arrived there in 1909, was quite a baptism of fire: I had to smuggle into Turkey every scrap of information I needed in the way of notes, and while there, every action was spied upon and every letter I wrote and received was opened. I was in Salonica when Mahmud Shefket [Pasha (1856–1913)] with the help of Salonica Jews such as [Mehmed] Djavid Bey [(1875–1926)] began the Turkish revolution. It was from Mahmud Shefket that I got permission later to go to S. Eirene at Constantinople which up to that time had been forbidden to all archaeologists. It happened to be in the Seraglio enclosure, and had been used as an armoury (first by the Seljouk and continued so) even since the Turkish conquest and then was under the War Office. On Shefket’s personal unwritten word, because I had helped the Turks with the repair of the roof of S. Demetrius (and Eski Djouma) at Salonica, I was permitted to go in, but no written [permission] could be given to me. Our Embassy at Constantinople worked their words of me but said I could go in . . . on my own risk and responsibility. They could take none for me, but promised to do their best to get me out of trouble if I got into it. Constantinople, in those days, was a city of terror. Educated Turks dared not even to dine with one another: if they did . . . one of them might mysteriously disappear.21 George kept a regular correspondence with Robert Weir Schultz throughout this period. From Thessaloniki in April 1907 we find him noting that ‘my soldierguard has been taken away and another man whom I am told is a spy has been put on but I don’t mind, although they say at the Hotel that my every movement is watched’.22 He found the priest at the Eski Djouma ‘hostile’, and much negotiation was required before George was permitted to study the building to the degree that he wished.23 Jokingly, he wrote to Schultz in the summer of 1909: ‘It has been suggested that I should go about with a card at back and front and also at the sides

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inscribed in Greek and Turkish “Don’t shoot! I am a peaceful architect”’.24 Friction with Russian expeditions, who were as keen as George to be the first to publish new discoveries, further complicated his work schedule.25 To succeed in this tense world he had to develop skills for polite negotiation and professional relationships with people on the ground. From Istanbul, he wrote to Schultz, saying that his ability to study the base of some columns in Hagia Eirene, then covered over with wooden sheeting, depended on more than usual graciousness on the part of the authorities. . . . They are very good to me so far – the matter is almost entirely a personal one, and depends upon the goodwill I can create in the Pasha himself and in his staff.26 As a non-practising Quaker with moderate political views, George seems to have been particularly adept at forging good personal relationships. Discussing with Bagenal his views on morality, he commented: I do not admit the right of any man to presume to tell other men how they should live, unless he himself models his living ‘in the world’ and ‘of the world’. He must not make his living, or any part of it, by telling others how to live.27 Undoubtedly such principles served him well in India, and we see particular evidence of it in Kashmir House, a private residence in Delhi that George co-designed with Lutyens for a wealthy Hindu banker in 1927–9 (Figure 11.4). There Lutyens, frustrated at the oft-changing desires of his patron, left the commission for George to complete, caustically remarking to his wife Emily that ‘every time I see [the patron] he changes his mind. . . . The [Indians] don’t understand that they can do anything, alter anything, and yet call it a Lutyens house’.28 As George later recalled, the patron ‘wished to entertain in western fashion, and to have western guests to stay with him, while he, and his family, lived in orthodox Hindu fashion, and he gave dinners in that fashion’, and Lutyens thought George ‘would understand better how an Indian gentleman liked to live’ from his years living and working in India.29 The final design incorporated these cultural traditions, which we can see in the location of the bedrooms and the puja room, the areas for food preparation and the separate ‘Western’ and ‘Hindu’ dining rooms. As much as George and Lutyens shared artistic and professional interests, there is little evidence in the archives that would suggest Lutyens’s casual racism and condescension towards native Indians rubbed off on his junior colleague. Of the four principal architects who followed Lutyens and Baker to New Delhi – George, Henry Medd, Robert Tor Russell, and Arthur Gordon Shoosmith – only George had extensive experience working professionally in foreign cultures and traditions before he arrived in India.30 Perhaps it is not a surprise then that he alone remained there after independence, building at the same time a new campus for St Stephen’s College, then a hot-bed for political agitation,31 and holding leadership positions in professional organisations such as the Indian Institute of Architects and the Indian Institute of

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Figure 11.4 The south-west façade of Kashmir House, Delhi, showing the loggias and the jack-arch Serlianas, designed by Walter S. George and Lutyens between 1927 and 1929 Source: Photograph by Penelope Chetwode, c. 1931, ©Reproduced courtesy of the late Gavin Stamp

Town Planning. These, Medd later wrote, were ‘high honours for an Englishman to hold in independent India’.32

Industry, Passions, and Hobbies None of this is to suggest that George was somehow a uniquely congenial architect: a colleague in India, J.B. Fernandes, remarked that George ‘prided himself on his outspokenness and was, in truth, often difficult to deal with [though] his great qualities far outweighed his idiosyncrasies’. 33 He also had a reputation for being obsessively, almost absurdly precise, with one obituary writer noting that ‘he set himself exacting standards. He had acquired the reputation for issuing as

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many as 800 drawings for a bungalow’.34 It may be that we can trace the origin of these traits to the discipline and ethic of his work for the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund. Soon after commencing work in Thessaloniki, he wrote to Schultz to confirm that he was earning his keep: ‘Usually I am out on the work at seven a.m. and stay until dark so I am putting in a good day’s work’.35 He often apologised for delays in responding to letters, owing, he said, to the punishing work schedule: ‘I work hard all day and in the hour or so after dinner, which is the only time I have to myself, I am usually too tired to tackle a long letter’.36 The work was slow, he said, and the conditions miserable in the winter time; nonetheless, a rushed job would inevitably have led to an incomplete record, something that he took issue with in the work of other archaeologists: ‘I am afraid’, he wrote to Schultz, that ‘I was not built for hasty work’.37 With time and money always in short supply, he received instructions from the Fund in an almost military fashion; for example, the following arrived for George in December 1909: (4) St. Irene. You will make a thorough study of this. A complete survey and all investigations, find out as much as you can and report regularly every week. Draw all mosaics and find out if there are any traces not distinctly visible and wash off whitewash if you can get leave in order to search for same. Spend a sum on special photos. . . . Especially photo the capitals (North Aisle and elsewhere) in full detail. Make a thorough investigation of the East end and go into question of additions on each side of Bema.38 Such training prepared George well for the long hours and gruelling climate of Delhi, producing many of the thousands of drawings and inspecting the many hundreds of worksites that made up the enormous imperial project of New Delhi. A photograph from Medd’s personal scrapbook showing some of his friends asleep on the grass one day after lunch, almost certainly including George, gives a fleeting impression of how exhausting the work could be (Figure 11.5).39 George would have recognised some of the directness of Schultz in his great mentor, Lutyens, in that he later commented: ‘Nothing . . . was decided by caprice, but everything had to have a rational basis. He could, and did produce a quick sketch with a string of dimensions, and say “Draw it out”’.40 Both George and Lutyens shared something of an anti-intellectual attitude, being both dismissive of university-educated architects, preferring instead an earlier tradition centred on a ‘purer’ understanding of geometry and draughtsmanship: as early as 1910, George disparagingly referred to scholars whom he regarded as ‘fed on books’ and made the curious remark that ‘I distrust most of the literature I have yet read’, preferring always to ‘trust the building’.41 While a love of architecture in its most tangible and visual format was the catalyst that brought George and Lutyens together, these other shared traits, views, and formative experiences, in Turkey and India, surely made their friendship all the more likely.

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Figure 11.5 ‘After Lunch! at Laughar’, from the H.A.N. Medd Album (Album A90–3, folio 24, no 24d), the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge Source: ©Reproduced courtesy of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

Historical Continuity Lutyens’s celebrated conversion to classicism – ‘Palladio is the game!’ – as he termed it in a letter to Herbert Baker in 1903, put a rather sudden end to his early adherence to the Arts and Crafts style. Later, from the 1920s onwards, he moved towards a highly distilled and abstracted classicism, termed ‘elemental’ by Christopher Hussey. However, he never welcomed or embraced modernism.42 George felt that Lutyens stood alone in his later years, and even went as far as suggesting, as I have noted elsewhere, that the Renaissance had ‘died’ with the Viceroy’s House.43 But while Lutyens embraced classicism mostly through textual sources and from his limited travels around Britain and France, George’s youthful experience of classicism was in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa, immediately accessible to his inquisitive and precise mind.44 Yet, it was also in many cases refracted and seen through the prism of later medieval Byzantine structures that surrounded earlier ruins. Arising out of his first expedition with the Fund, George exhibited at the Royal Academy the painting ‘Afterglow: The Acropolis, Athens’, later engraved by his wife Lena (Figure 11.6).45 In it, his passion for the ruins of ancient classicism is obvious, and more than 40 years later he laid the charge at Shearer, saying: If you want to know what real architecture is go and look at the Parthenon. You will find those huge blocks of marble are set ‘tight’ without any mortar. . . . The Greeks gave the extreme care and more, to the setting-out and the technical perfection of their buildings that we give to our aeroplanes, and their engines.

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Source: RIBA 127090, PB361/19, ©RIBA Collections

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Figure 11.6 ‘Afterglow: The Acropolis, Athens’, engraving by Lena George

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There can be little doubt that George had got hold of Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture (1923) since moving to India. The Parthenon, he argued, was ‘stream-lined’ to please not only the physical eye, but the intellectual eye that asks for proportion, following a law, so that every part, and every mass, should have exact geometrical relations of the most subtle kind, one of the universe undoubtedly has. Of what [all] this madness is, you may well ask, but I thoroughly believe that it is not madness, but that in some ways we cannot fathom [that] there is a human and psychological reaction to all this. Pure mysticism you will say.46 But, of course, most of George’s time was spent sketching and understanding – in great detail – not the classical buildings of antiquity but rather their Byzantine successors. When we consider how George moved with so few qualms from Edwardian classicism through to Lutyens’s ‘elemental mode’ at Kashmir House, and then to a kind of hybrid modernism late in his career, it may be that he felt such stylistic shifts were legitimised by the historical continuity that he saw around him in Greece and Turkey, these countries representing melting-pots for different architectural styles spanning thousands of years. His writings suggest that he viewed modernism as a further extension of this – an inevitable and productive descendant of his own particular flavour of Lutyensque classicism, and his Arts and Crafts training no doubt furthered this sense of pluralism. We ought to be sceptical, of course, but his published articles and private correspondence all suggest that he laid great credence on this sense of continuity, expressed in terms reminiscent of the ‘synechism’ theory of the American philosopher Charles Saunders Pierce.47 Following his detailed critique of the Parthenon in his letter to Shearer, he further developed these ideas, highlighting transmissions instead of breaks, while also stressing an Arts and Crafts concern with the role of the worker, saying: The same subtle kind of mathematical relationship . . . is in Government House, New Delhi – in every scrap of it, and no one knows of it but a few of us, but the superb workmanship of the Greeks is not there. The buildings of the Byzantines had little or nothing of the extreme finesse of craftsmanship, it is clumsy and bumbling beyond comparison, but something of the same geometrical setting out on a much lower scale remained, and was transmitted even into our own Gothic work.48 The same principles could be applied when looking to the future: by the same logic, there was little trouble adopting modernism, which he did publicly in an article for the Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects in 1951. Seeing its careful use as a necessary and legitimate development on what he perceived as the rational principles of classicism – a development echoing that between ancient classicism and the Byzantine style – he predicted that international modernism would in turn adopt Indian forms and habits, writing: India need have no fear of new developments, and may well drop her fears that her buildings will not remain sufficiently Indian. The full acceptance

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of all the world has to offer is, to my mind, a more hopeful procedure than a turning-back to her own origins. In the past, she has always adopted and absorbed all the influences that reached her and made them truly Indian. She will do so again.49 Such a permissive and pluralist application of style can be seen in a comparison of some of his earlier and later buildings. The Edwardian classicism of Maiden’s Hotel in Delhi, which he co-designed with C.J. Brandon in 1920, has obvious precedents in the large colonial buildings of both Delhi and Victorian Calcutta, but within a decade he had absorbed much from India’s Mughal past when he designed a new hospital in Jodhpur, built between 1929 and 1932 (Figure 11.7).50 A series of original drawings for this large project have surfaced in recent years and are now mostly in the care of the RIBA.51 Arguably, George’s most important break came with his aforementioned Kashmir House, which he co-designed with Lutyens, and soon afterwards also with St Thomas’s Church (built 1929–32 and now sadly lost), where he took much from Shoosmith’s celebrated St Martin’s Garrison Church of around the same time.52 St Thomas’s was almost entirely of brick, with the exception of a Delhi quartzite plinth, and there was some hint of George’s earlier interest in the architecture of the Near East in the recessed ground-floor windows and the stepped jambs of the main portal. Inside (Figure 11.8), the piers with their simple string-course capitals, the triple arcading in the sanctuary, and more generally the muscular use of pier, arch, and vault further enhanced this effect, as well as the altar and baldachin.53 The building suffered from problems with its foundations and no longer exists.54 With, as he said, ‘no fear of new developments’, George engaged with the modernist idiom from the early 1940s onwards, building for example the Lodi Housing Colony (c. 1947) (Figure 11.9) and the Tuberculosis Association of India Building (1950–2). In both cases he adapted the style to Indian conditions, using hoods, louvered shutters, and arcades to counter the heat of the Indian sun. Gavin Stamp – who first brought George’s work to my attention – has praised the Tuberculosis Association building as ‘rational modern architecture’, always ‘sensible and practical’, while George himself said ‘you could call [my buildings] Primitive or Egyptian or Greek or Gothic or Renaissance or Hindu or Chinese, but it derives some from all’.55 Such eclecticism was to come to the fore in his last known building, the chapel (Figure 11.10) for St Stephen’s College of 1952, for which George cast far and wide for his sources.56 Situated to the rear of the main sprawling campus building, previously illustrated, it is built of brick with white stone string courses and quartzite up to the springing point of the doorway arches; the main façade has two broken pediments, with circle motifs at their outer edges, much like one of the Lutyens staircases in the former Viceroy’s House. The façade’s overall form, though, with a hexagonal tower recessed at the top and capped with an ogee dome, comes from the sixteenth-century Gate of Virtue at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge – an appropriate symbol for St Stephen’s as it had originally been founded as an Anglican mission by the Cambridge Brotherhood, followers of Bishop Westcott.57 One enters (Figure 11.11) through a Serliana supported on fluted Doric columns, like those he used at Kashmir House, to find a

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Figure 11.7 ‘Proposed hospital at Jodhpur: side elevation of one ward block (south-west)’, drawn by Walter George, October 1929 Source: Private collection; Author’s photo

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Figure 11.8 St Thomas’s Church, Delhi, interior view as it appeared in 1987

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Figure 11.9 Lodi Housing Colony, Delhi, c. 1947 Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 11.10 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, chapel, exterior view, 1952 Source: Author’s photo

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Figure 11.11 St Stephen’s College, Delhi, chapel, interior view, 1952 Source: Author’s photo

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generously proportioned vaulted space, much like the nave of Shoosmith’s St Martin’s Church, providing shelter from the harsh Delhi sun in a manner similar to how the tall arched windows and heavy vault at Hagia Eirene closeted George during his months of work in Istanbul. Beyond simply any visual connections between George’s early years working with the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund and his distinguished career as an architect in India, there were a multitude of less apparent but equally relevant similarities, connections, and shared experiences. His impressionable years working with the Fund, ‘invested’ there as he himself said, by circumstance and luck, created professional and cultural obstacles that in turn challenged him and moulded his character, developing traits that made him perhaps uniquely qualified to succeed in the turbulent years in India before and after independence. His archaeological work in the heart of ancient classicism also laid the foundations for his fruitful relationship with Lutyens and provided for him the variety and eclecticism of architectural experiences that must have at least in part legitimised his own permissive and highly eclectic application of different styles in his later career as an architect in India.

Notes 1 Butler 2012, 237–68. 2 ‘Stylistic Dead-Ends? Fresh Perspectives on British Architecture Between the World Wars’, St John’s College, Oxford, 20–1 June 2013. 3 George 1951, 4. 4 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, and Admission Statement as a fellow of the RIBA, 7 Feb. 1929, Walter George Biographical File, RIBA Collections. 5 Admission Statement as a fellow of the RIBA, 7 Feb. 1929, Walter George Biographical File, RIBA Collections. 6 Medd 1962, 102. 7 Admission Statement as a fellow of the RIBA, 7 Feb. 1929, Walter George Biographical File, RIBA Collections. His Royal Academy exhibits include: ‘Afterglow’ (1908, no. 684), ‘Ichabod’ (1911, no. 658), ‘Mistra, a crusaders’ stronghold in Laconia’ (1912, no. 648), ‘Monument on the bank of the Rhine, near Cologne’ (1914, no. 1812), and ‘Competitive design for St. Paul’s Bridge: the abutment on the south side seen from the river’ (1915, no. 1626). See Johnson and Greutzner 1976, 196. For Whiteley Park Village, see ‘Specifications of works for twelve cottages, of three types, to be erected at Whiteley Park, Burhill, Surrey’, Jun. 1914, Walter George Papers, GeW/4, RIBA Collections; Pevsner et al. 1971, 520; Newton 1925, 186–7; Butler 2012, 239. 8 George Finlay (1799–1875), author of History of the Greek Revolution (London, 1861), Observations on Prehistoric Archaeology in Switzerland and Greece (Athens, 1869). See Runnels 2008, 9–25. 9 Auguste Choisy, French architectural historian, author of Histoire de l’architecture (1899). See Etlin 1987, 264–78. 10 Giovanni Teresio Rivoira (1849–1919), Italian archaeologist and architectural historian. 11 George 1912. 12 Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951). See Kakissis 2009, 125–44; Ottewill 1979, 88–115. 13 Alexander van Millingen (1840–1915), author of Byzantine churches in Constantinople (London, 1912). 14 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections.

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15 Ibid. 16 1 Corinthians 2:6–8. 17 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 18 Quoted in Fernandes 1961, 3; Admission Statement as a fellow of the RIBA, 7 Feb. 1929, Walter George Biographical File, RIBA Collections; Butler 2012, 239. 19 Robert Byron (1905–41), travel-writer, art critic, Oxford aesthete. See Byron 1931a, 1931b, 1931c, 1931d, 1931e; see also Knox 2003. 20 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 21 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. 22 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 18 Apr. 1907, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 23 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 9 May 1907, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 24 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 30 June 1909, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 25 Letters from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 3 Dec. 1909 and 28 Dec. 1909, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 26 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 28 Dec. 1909, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 27 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959. Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 28 Letter from Lutyens to Lady Emily, 14 Feb. 1929, Edwin Lutyens Papers, LuE/19/12/7, RIBA Collections. 29 George 1960, 20–2; See also Butler 2012, 246–51. 30 For these four architects, see Stamp 1976, 365–6, 1981, 376, 1982, 80–1, 2002, 195–6. See also 2004b, 415–16. Shoosmith had spent much of his childhood years in Russia and Finland. 31 Monk 1935, 2, 112, 149, 228–9 and 240; Jaitly 2006, 20–47. See also Butler 2012, 253–5. 32 Medd 1962, 102; Butler 2012, 261. 33 Fernandes 1961, 3. 34 Anon. 1962, 35. 35 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 18 Apr. 1907, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. See Cormack 1985. 36 Letters from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 9 May 1907 and 28 Dec. 1909, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. 37 Letters from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 9 May 1907 and 2 Mar. 1910, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. George was often critical of the work of other archaeologists – see Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, 13 May 1907, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens, and Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. 38 Letter from Robert Weir Schultz to Walter George, 14 Dec. 1909, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. The book, published as The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople (1912), was praised by an anonymous reviewer for The Burlington Magazine as a ‘model of what such a record should be’ – see Anon. [A.L.P.] 1913, 116. 39 ‘After Lunch! at Laughar’, photograph from the H. A. N. Medd Album, Medd Collection, album A90–3, folio 24, no. 24d., Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge.

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40 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 14 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 41 Letter from Walter George to Robert Weir Schultz, [n.d.] Sept. 1910. Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 2a, British School at Athens. For George’s views on Lutyens and their shared interest in geometry see, Letters from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959 and 14 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. See also Butler 2012, 261. For further commentary on Lutyens, see Watkin 1996, 549–554; Ridley 2003. 42 See Metcalf 1989, 176. Lutyens to Baker, 15 Feb. 1903, quoted in Hussey 1950: 121. For a discussion of Lutyens’s ‘elemental mode’, see Hussey 1950, 462. See also Irving 1984, 166–7; Lutyens 1931, 775–7. 43 Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 44 Stamp 2004a, 817–9. See also Brodie et al. 2001, 85, where Lutyens’s travels are recorded simply as ‘England and France’. 45 ‘Afterglow: The Acropolis, Athens’, exhibited Royal Academy, 1908. George states that Lena engraved it in ‘1912–13, or thereabouts’ – see Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. The mezzotint was given to the RIBA by Shearer in 1985. 46 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. 47 Pierce 1992, 242–70. 48 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. For more Arts-and-Crafts discussion, see Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 49 George 1951, 5. 50 The attribution for these buildings arises from Medd 1962, 102; and Admission Statement as a fellow of the RIBA, 7 Feb. 1929, Walter George Biographical File, RIBA Collections. 51 For Wyndham (now Mahatma Gandhi) Hospital, Jodhpur, see Anon 1933, 32, and plan and elevation drawings for a ‘Proposed hospital at Jodhpur’, 1929–31, signed by Walter George (originally in the possession of John Hayward of Cirencester, Gloucestershire, now at the RIBA). 52 Butler 2012, 250–3. See also George 1960, 20–1; Irving 1984, 331–9. For recent developments, see Pew n.d. [2014], 9–15. I am grateful to the late Gavin Stamp for bringing this booklet to my attention. 53 Gavin Stamp et al. 1981, 184; Irving 1984, 331–4. 54 See Sharma 1988, 1365–9. I am grateful to Sagar Chauhan for this reference. 55 Stamp 1982, 79 and Letter from Walter George to Hope Bagenal, 2 Jan. 1959, Hope Bagenal Papers, BaHo/1/3, RIBA Collections. 56 Jaitly 2006, 36–7. 57 The Lutyens staircase is illustrated in Irving 1984, 203. The Gate of Virtue is dated 1565–7 – see Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England 1959, 78–9. For the history and formation of St Stephen’s College, see Monk 1935.

References Anon. [A.L.P.] 1913. ‘Review’, The Burlington Magazine 23, no. 122, 116. Anon. 1933. Jodhpur 1933 (New Delhi). Anon. 1962. ‘Obituary: Walter George’, The Indian Architect, 35–7. Brodie, A. et al. 2001. Directory of British Architects, 1834–1914 (London and New York).

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Butler, R. 2012. ‘The Anglo-Indian Architect Walter Sykes George (1881–1962): A Modernist Follower of Lutyens’, Architectural History 55, 237–68. Byron, R. 1931a. ‘New Delhi’, Architectural Review 69, no. 410, 1–30. Byron, R. 1931b. ‘New Delhi’, Country Life 69, 708–16. Byron, R. 1931c. ‘New Delhi’, Country Life 69, 754–61. Byron, R. 1931d. ‘New Delhi’, Country Life 69, 782–9. Byron, R. 1931e. ‘New Delhi’, Country Life 69, 808–15. Cormack, R. 1985. The Church of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki: The Watercolours and Drawings of W. S. George (Thessaloniki). Etlin, R.A. 1987. ‘Le Corbusier, Choisy, and French Hellenism: The Search for a New Architecture’, The Art Bulletin 69, no. 2, 264–78. Fernandes, J.B. 1961. ‘Obituary: Walter George’, Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects 27, no. 3, 1–3. George, W.S. 1912. The Church of Saint Eirene at Constantinople (Oxford). George, W.S. 1951. ‘Indian Architecture: The Prospect Before Us’, Journal of the Indian Institute of Architects 17, no. 1, 3–11. George, W.S. 1960. ‘The Architecture of Walter George’, in Design (Bombay), 20–1. Hopkins, A. and Stamp, G. (eds.) 2002. Lutyens Abroad (London). Hussey, C. 1950. Life of Sir Edwin Lutyens (London). Irving, R.G. 1984. Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker and Imperial Delhi (New Haven and London). Jaitly, A. 2006. St Stephen’s College (New Delhi). Johnson, J. and Greutzner, A. 1976. The Dictionary of British Artists, 1880–1940: An Antique Collectors’ Club Research Project Listing 41,000 Artists (Woodbridge). Kakissis, A.G. 2009. ‘The Byzantine Research Fund Archive: Encounters of Arts and Crafts Architects in Byzantium’, in Llewelyn Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and Kalligas, E. (eds.), Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture through the British School at Athens (Athens), 125–44. Knox, J. 2003. Robert Byron: A Biography (London). Lutyens, E. 1931. ‘What I Think of Modern Architecture’, Country Life 69, 775–7. Matthew, C. and Harrison, B. 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford). Medd, H. 1962. ‘Obituary: Walter Sykes George’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects 69, 102. Metcalf, T. 1989. An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (London). Monk, F.F. 1935. A History of St Stephen’s College, Delhi (Calcutta). Newton, W.G. 1925. The Work of Ernest Newton, R.A., Containing a List of His Works (London). Ottewill, D. 1979. ‘Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951): An Arts and Crafts Architect’, Architectural History 22, 88–115. Pevsner, N., Nairn, I. and Cherry, B. 1971. The Buildings of England: Surrey (Harmondsworth). Pew, W.S., n.d. [2014]. ‘The Story of Our Church’, in anon., St. Thomas’ Church (Diocese of Delhi): Annual Fete 2014 (New Delhi). Pierce, C.S. 1992. Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, ed. Ketner, K.L. (Cambridge, MA.). Ridley, J. 2003. Edwin Lutyens: His Life, His Wife, His Work (London). Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England. 1959. An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Cambridge (London). Runnels, C. 2008. ‘George Finlay’s Contributions to the Discovery of the Stone Age in Greece’, The Annual of the British School at Athens 103, 9–25.

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Sharma, D. 1988. ‘Foundation Failure of the St. Thomas Church, New Delhi’, International Conference on Case Histories in Geotechnical Engineering 30, 1365–9. Stamp, G. 1976. ‘Indian Summer’, Architectural Review 159, 365–72. Stamp, G. 1981. ‘British Architecture in India, 1857–1947’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 129.5298, 357–79. Stamp, G. 1982. ‘India: End of the Classical Tradition’, Lotus International 34, 67–81. Stamp, G. 2002. ‘Lutyens, India, and the Future of Architecture’, in Hopkins, A. and Stamp, G. (eds.), Lutyens Abroad (London), 195–6. Stamp, G. 2004a. ‘Edwin Landseer Lutyens’, in Matthew, C. and Harrison, B. (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford), 34, 817–19. Stamp, G. 2004b. ‘Arthur Gordon Shoosmith’, in Matthew, C. and Harrison, B. (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford), 50, 415–16. Stamp, G. et al. 1981. Lutyens. Hayward Gallery Catalogue (London). Watkin, D. 1996. A History of Western Architecture (2nd ed., London).

12 Scottish Byzantinists Architects, Scholars, and Their Networks* Annette Carruthers and Simon Green

For myself, such reputation as I have archaeologically is as a Byzantinist, but I am no Byzantinist by choice: I was inveigled into it by a typical Scotchman of the odd name of Schultz, (an Edinboro Scot of pure Scotch type, with a far-off German ancestry) and another typical Scot, again with the queer Dutch name of Van Millingen.1

Walter Sykes George (1881–1962), the author of this passage, was one of several talented young men ‘inveigled’ into the study of Byzantine architecture by Robert Weir Schultz (1860–1951), whose role in the British Byzantine Revival is now well recognised. Schultz emerged as the hero of the Byzantium and British Heritage conference, both for his academic work researching, recording, and publicising Greek Byzantine buildings over a long career, and for his own architectural achievements in Britain and Sudan. His association with the Third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900) on Byzantinist and other projects has been well documented by Gavin Stamp and is covered in more detail by Ruth Macrides and others in this volume; it was continued by the Fourth Marquess after his father’s death in 1900 and was clearly vital for Scottish Byzantinism.2 The role of other Scots in the story of the Byzantine Revival is less well known, however, and there has been little research on the occurrence in Scotland of architecture and design work influenced by it. This is at least partly because of the occasional difficulty involved in identifying Scottish architects and scholars, as George’s mention of van Millingen highlights. Alexander van Millingen (1840–1915), author of Byzantine Constantinople (1899), Byzantine Churches in Constantinople (1912), and other works, was evidently a significant figure in the story of early twentieth-century Byzantinism but is not usually discussed as a Scot, and his case shows the difficulty involved in definitions.3 He was born in Constantinople, where his father Julius Millingen was a doctor – said to have been one of two responsible for the death of Lord Byron in Greece through too much leeching, but otherwise a noted philhellene. Julius Millingen was born in London, so Alexander’s Scottish connection was not paternal. His mother, Zafira Raffi, like most women of this period, is not mentioned in the histories but was also not a Scot. For some reason – perhaps simply the noted DOI: 10.4324/9781351119825-15

Scottish Byzantinists 291 quality of Scottish education – Alexander van Millingen was sent to school at Blair Lodge Academy at Polmont near Stirling in central Scotland and with his brother attended Edinburgh University, where his father had also studied, before being ordained in the Free Church. He served the Union Church in Constantinople and in 1903 was made an Honorary Doctor of Divinity at the University of St Andrews. His career was based at Robert College in Constantinople, where he was a theologian, noted linguist, and Professor of History. Many of his books were left to the College but some of his papers are in the King’s College Archive in London, though his connection there is unrecorded.4 He must have had a Scottish accent for George to identify him as a ‘typical Scot’, but does this make him so? And does it matter? This was a period when Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were probably more closely linked than at any other time because of the wealth of the British Empire, to which Scots made a major contribution and from which they were reaping rewards, especially in the 1890s. Lord Bute himself, though born at Mount Stuart and largely based in Scotland at his numerous country estates, gained much of his income and most of his recognition as a patron of architecture from his valuable land holdings in Wales. There he developed the Cardiff Docks, promoted coal mining, and spent part of his fortune commissioning William Burges to create fantasy castles from ancient foundations for his delight. He was a British figure as much as he was a Scot, though he was also unusual in being a Scottish nationalist at a time when few would identify themselves as such.5 As is the situation today, many ambitious Scots moved to London for wider opportunities, and Schultz was not alone in the heartland of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the offices in and around Gray’s Inn Square where fellow Scots Norman Shaw, Francis Troup, George Jack, and others were based. But the later 1880s and the 1890s were years in which it was also possible to establish a successful career as an architect in Scotland, a noted achievement of Robert Rowand Anderson (1834–1921), followed by his former pupil Robert Lorimer. Both gained experience in London but returned to Edinburgh to practise. There were considerable links between Edinburgh and London, particularly in the person of Schultz, who features in Lorimer’s letters quite frequently, but there was also a stronger sense than before of Scotland having its own networks and interests. So, although one could argue that looking at the Scots separately in this definitively British period is anachronistic, there are valid reasons to investigate similarities and differences. Scotland is a small country and relatively easy to survey. In the field of architecture, the task is made infinitely easier by the existence of an online Dictionary of Scottish Architects, which enables us to find detailed information on the careers of individuals and to make links between them: lists of apprentices and pupils, for instance, or records of who nominated whom for associateship of the RIBA, are invaluable for tracing the web of patronage, friendships, and shared interests.6 Professionals had their own societies and clubs, evolving in a different timeframe to the English equivalents, and the work of the architectural associations and ecclesiological groups was well recorded in minutes and accounts of lecture meetings and other gatherings. Also significant was the fact that Scotland

292 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green had its own national Church and many other ecclesiastical bodies with different preoccupations from the English or Welsh Churches, which may reveal significant issues. One major question is what it meant to them. Whereas in England the Byzantine style was predominantly employed in Catholic or High Anglican churches, in Scotland it does appear in these, as one might expect, but it is also found in Church of Scotland and United Free churches, buildings that are normally rather austere and undecorated. It seems worthwhile, therefore, to consider the role of Scottish architects and scholars in the Byzantine Revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the contribution of several scholarly English Byzantinists who worked in Scotland in this period. The aim is to discuss the circulation of ideas about Byzantine architecture and the role of the Byzantine Research Fund in this. Social and professional connections between those involved in the revival are made, and brief descriptions are given of the buildings known to have been influenced by it. These were not numerous and their architects are not household names outside Scotland (or even within it), but they make up an interesting and potentially illuminating group. Consideration is also given to why this style appealed to Scottish clients. Most of the discussion is of people, publications, and ecclesiastical projects, but a few secular examples of Scottish Byzantinism also appear in passing.

From the Modern Athens to the Stones of Venice From the eighteenth century, Scottish artists, architects, thinkers, and writers showed a strong interest in Greek culture. Greek and Latin were compulsory elements of a Scottish university education until the curriculum was revised in the late nineteenth century, and by 1820 the city of Edinburgh had been closely associated with Athens by the artist Hugh William Williams, whose adventures and subsequent exhibitions earned him the nickname ‘Grecian’ Williams. In his Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands, Williams referred to Edinburgh as the ‘modern Athens’, making a connection between the landscape settings of the two cities.7 The idea of the ‘modern Athens’ also appealed because of the Scottish capital’s reputation as a hotbed of philosophy but was later a title used satirically because of the city’s failure to complete its national monument – planned as a facsimile of the Parthenon – on Calton Hill (1822–9).8 While this remains unfinished to this day, however, Playfair’s Royal Scottish Academy (1822–6 and 1831–6) and nearby National Gallery (1850–4) placed classical Greek style in the centre of the city between the old High Street and the grid-planned New Town, while Thomas Hamilton’s Royal High School (1825–9) has been described as ‘one of the setpieces of archaeological Hellenism in Europe’.9 John Lowrey has argued convincingly that by adopting Greek style for its major public, educational, and medical institutions Edinburgh positioned itself as a cultural centre distinct from the predominantly Roman image promoted by the British imperial state.10 Monumental and stylish Greek-inspired architecture also appeared in Aberdeen in glistening granite, most notably by Archibald Simpson and John Smith; and in Glasgow, designed by William Stark, John Baird, and Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson. Grecian style was one

Scottish Byzantinists 293 among many in this period of eclecticism, but it made its mark in the cities and occasionally in the smaller towns and country estates. While a taste for the so-called Grecian was fashionable in the nineteenth century, interest in Greek Byzantine art and architecture was a minority pursuit confined to wealthy people with the means to travel further than the established route of the Grand Tour and those with enquiring minds, who looked beyond the usual tourist sites and, in some cases, involved themselves in the politics and history of Greece. The Scots have long had a reputation for willingness to travel abroad, for business or adventure, in search of opportunities or ideals.11 Among these was a friend of Byron and Julius Millingen, George Finlay (1799–1875), a Scotsman who was attracted to the country by revolutionary fervour as a young man, and from 1832 settled in Athens. His histories of Greece were produced by the Edinburgh publisher Blackwood’s from 1844 to 1866 and as a revised set in Oxford in 1877; the History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires From DCCXVI to MCCCCLIII (1853–4) was pioneering as a serious study in English and was evidently influential. Walter George recommended it in these terms: You ought to go to the School. You will find there a Library, and in the Library a bronze tablet to one Finlay (a Scot naturally) which I did, and if you want to know anything about Byzantine Greece, then read Finlay first, to give you the proper background.12 Finlay is regarded as a significant figure in the revival of scholarship in Byzantine culture.13 There were other historians of Scottish birth or parentage who wrote on the topic, including James Fergusson (1808–86) and Alexander Crawford Lindsay, 25th Earl of Crawford (1812–80), though for most artists and architects in the second half of the nineteenth century John Ruskin (1819–1900) was the chief guide to the qualities of Byzantine architecture, seen via its manifestations in Italy.14 The Stones of Venice (1851–3) not only encouraged readers to look again at the neglected and ruined palaces of the northern city but also provided many illustrations of carved ornament and comparative views and profiles of arches, capitals, and other elements. Although Rowand Anderson criticised Ruskin as a ‘blind guide’ to architecture because of his focus on decoration,15 and in Anderson’s view Italian architecture had none of the real essentials of constructive art, Ruskin remained – in Scotland as elsewhere – an essential influence on architects and scholars.

Scottish Byzantinist Buildings If it is difficult to define Scottishness, it should be said that the Byzantine style, when translated into Scottish architecture, can also be hard to identify. Perhaps the earliest example of Neo-Byzantine in Scotland is the Monteath Mausoleum near Ancrum in the Borders, designed by Peddie and Kinnear in 1864 and echoing the mausoleum of the client’s cousins in Glasgow, which is ascribed to neo-Norman.16 Then the Garnethill Synagogue in Glasgow of 1878–9 by John McLeod has been

294 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green described as in ‘Romanesque-cum-Byzantine style with Moorish touches’,17 influenced by the Bayswater synagogue in London designed by McLeod’s adviser on the project, Nathan Solomon Joseph. More research remains to be done on the origins of the Byzantine Revival in Scotland, but the first real evidence appears to be a substantial church built in 1884–5 by Anderson for the Marquess of Bute, who had conceived the idea of providing a Roman Catholic community in Ayrshire with a place of worship based on the model of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, which he had visited in his youth. Anderson himself was a scholar with a particular enthusiasm for French and Italian Gothic domestic architecture and medieval Scottish churches, but Bute had been fascinated by Greece since his first visit to Athens in 1877, when he studied the antiquities and investigated the practices of the Orthodox Church, his faith being central to all his interests. In the 1880s he published ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’18 and translations of articles by his friend Demetrios Bikelas (1835–1908), a historian of Christian Greece,19 and Lord Bute’s continuing interest in Byzantine architecture was essential for the revival in Scotland. Schultz’s notebook of 1889,20 for instance, contains notes from Bute’s article, and he recommended it to several later researchers. St Sophia at Galston, Ayrshire, is a large church in Greek-cross form on a prominent site, constructed in red brick with horizontal banding and other details in stone (Figure 12.1). Anderson had visited Athens with Bute in October 1884 and had the opportunity to see for himself the subject of his client’s passion; according to McKinstry, his church fulfilled all of Bute’s requirements, except that Anderson persuaded him that a conical slated spire would be more practical than a dome in the wet climate of the West of Scotland.21 Its complicated construction brought the price of work to more than £5000, higher than a Gothic church of similar size, though one of the attractions of the Byzantine style was supposed to be its lower cost. The interior is whitewashed and simple, flooded with light from the numerous windows and much plainer than most of the other projects with which Lord Bute was associated. Anderson worked again for Bute, but not again in Byzantine style, presumably because his former pupil Weir Schultz gained this great patron’s attention as someone who loved the original work as much as he did. It was Schultz who was asked to design the chapel at Dumfries House in 1899, a two-storey structure that was built but never completed, despite his preparation in 1906 of an elaborate Byzantine scheme of decorative carving and marble sheathing of the walls (Figure 12.2). Then, on Lord Bute’s death in 1900, Schultz executed one more Byzantine project for him, a chapel for the Archbishop of Edinburgh, for which Bute had made provision in his will (Figure 12.3). This was an unusual job because Schultz was to provide a building to accommodate interior fittings designed by William Frame that had been removed from Falkland House in Fife. The small stone chapel with carved, almost Celtic, interlaced detailing and a distinctive copper dome was completed in 1907 and provides a welcome element of variety and vivid colour among the villas of Morningside. In this same period, another pupil of Rowand Anderson produced a Byzantineinspired interior at St Cuthbert’s Parish Church in Colinton, Edinburgh (1906–8)

Source: ©Crown Copyright: HES

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Figure 12.1 St Sophia, Galston, Ayrshire, 1884–5, by Robert Rowand Anderson

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Figure 12.2 Design for the chapel at Dumfries House, Ayrshire, 1906, by Robert Weir Schultz Source: ©The Bute Archives of Mount Stuart, ©Courtesy HES

Source: Photo ©Mike Brooks

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Figure 12.3 Robert Weir Schultz, Chapel at the Roman Catholic Archbishop’s house in Morningside, Edinburgh, 1904–7

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Figure 12.4 Sydney Mitchell, interior of St Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Colinton, Edinburgh, as altered in 1906–8 Source: ©Courtesy HES

(Figure 12.4). Sydney Mitchell (1856–1930) had been trained in Anderson’s office in the years when Schultz was there and they may have remained in touch, though the influence of Anderson’s scholarly approach and openness to a variety of historic stimuli was probably the major factor. Mitchell’s father had also been a distinguished Secretary and President of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and he himself was an accomplished designer in a range of ancient and modern styles. St Cuthbert’s was an eighteenth-century building that Mitchell transformed, adding pink sandstone columns with carved angels on the capitals, an apse within a grey marble frame and boldly lettered cross-beam, and a series of static angels in low relief on the spandrels of the nave roof. Oak fittings designed by Mitchell include a lectern carved with Greek-cross motifs. The next Byzantine Revival church built in Scotland was by Henry Kerr (1855– 1946) in Dalziel, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, for the United Free Church (1911–15) (Figure 12.5). One attraction for the United Frees was that Byzantine was an early Christian form, but was neither classical nor Gothic and therefore provided a distinctive celebration of difference from the established national Church, without the association with a priesthood that was implicit in the Gothic. Also, the site was restricted and the square plan gave the greatest accommodation for the space available, while an existing manse and plain Romanesque church halls must have influenced the choice.22 Kerr was another scholar-architect, associated with Anderson through the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and with Gerard Baldwin Brown

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Figure 12.5 Henry Kerr, United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, 1911–5 Source: ©Crown Copyright: HES

(1849–1932) via the Edinburgh Architectural Association. He was familiar with the recent literature on Byzantine churches by Lethaby and Swainson, A.E. Henderson, and van Millingen and had heard Baldwin Brown lecture on ‘The Dome as an Architectural Form’ in 1902, at which Brown promoted the triapsidal plan and central dome as ‘free from the suggestion of mystical sacerdotalism which clung to the medieval fane’.23 One of Kerr’s notebooks is devoted to Byzantine sketches and notes, and he must have welcomed the opportunity to harness his knowledge in service of a new creation. Kerr had a satisfactory budget of £7000 and designed a striking edifice with a dominating campanile at the corner of a roughly square church in textured sandstone, capped with several shallow domes. The tower is Italianate and a tripartite

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Figure 12.6 Henry Kerr, interior of the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, 1911–5 Source: ©Courtesy HES

window is framed by free-style Ionic columns and pilasters and a triangular pediment, but much of the detailing on the exterior and the whole impact of the main auditorium are Byzantine (Figure 12.6). Its large central dome has 16 arched windows illuminating an impressive space framed by eight columns with superb foliate capitals carved by Thomas Beattie, who later worked for Robert Lorimer on the Scottish National War Memorial. The capitals were a matter of some pride to the architect, who produced a booklet explaining their iconography, which included symbols of the evangelists and apostles (Figures 12.7a and 12.7b). These, along with the hanging light fittings pierced with Celtic interlace patterns, could be described as ‘Celto-Byzantine’, a term also used in relation to a tiny church in Linlithgow, West Lothian, by William James Walker Todd (1884–1944).

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Figure 12.7a Capital in the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, c. 1914–5 Source: ©Courtesy HES

Figure 12.7b Capital in the United Free Church, Dalziel, Motherwell, c. 1914–5 Source: ©Courtesy HES

St Mildred’s (now St Peter’s) (Figure 12.8) was built for a small Scottish Episcopal congregation in Linlithgow, and the funds available were nothing like the donations that had enabled Anderson and Kerr to build their substantial monuments: in 1926 Bishop Walpole acquired a site between two houses in the High

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Figure 12.8 William James Walker Todd, St Mildred’s (now St Peter’s), Linlithgow, West Lothian, 1926–8 Source: Photo ©Annette Carruthers

Street for £100 and announced that £1600 was estimated for construction costs, but the building fund then stood at a mere £6. The Bishop committed himself to the project and Walker Todd was engaged with a proposed budget of about £1000.24 The fund was still open when the church was dedicated in May 1928, but Walker Todd had succeeded in erecting an attractive and distinctive addition to the already rich architectural streetscape of this historic town. Emphasising variety in the forms and materials was a clever choice for a small building placed between two houses of a standard Scottish urban type, especially since the church is set back from the building line, providing a gathering space in front. Its conical roof sits above a domed semi-circular apse at the back and a Diocletian window and round-arched doorway on the front, with fine carved decoration highlighting the entrance. Snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings was used for the walls, while slates and red tiles appear both on the roofs and as structural elements in the arches above the windows. Despite the absence of side windows, the interior is well lit by the eight windows of the tower, and this may have been a practical factor in Walker Todd’s choice of style on the limited site. Perhaps

Scottish Byzantinists 303 surprisingly, since Episcopal churches are often lavishly decorated, this one is as plain inside as Anderson’s St Sophia, though on a diminutive scale; the congregation remained small and presumably had little money to spend. For Walker Todd, this tiny project seems to have had a disproportionate impact, however, in that he subsequently received important commissions in Linlithgow for a cinema, the County Buildings, and the Police Headquarters and Sheriff Court.25 In addition to these Byzantine Revival works by Scottish architects in Scotland, there were a number of relevant projects by English designers, including St Ninian’s in Gretna, Dumfriesshire (1917–18), by Charles Evelyn Simmons (1879– 1952); additions to All Saints in St Andrews, Fife (1919–24), by Paul Waterhouse (1864–1924); and St Anne’s in Dennistoun, Glasgow (1931–3), by Jack Coia (1898–1981), though here again the definitions are complicated, since Coia was born in England in Wolverhampton to Italian parents, but had arrived in Glasgow as an infant, received most of his education there and practised and taught in the city until his death. St Ninian’s was one of three new churches built for munitions workers brought to the booming township of Gretna during World War I. Old Country Life photographs give an impression of grandeur (Figure 12.9), but it is another bijou church with complex massing and beautifully executed details. Built of red brick and red pantiles, with limestone floor and plain plaster ceilings, it has little in the way of decoration but succeeds through what Sir Robert Lorimer described as ‘rhythm and proportion and fitness’ and the architect’s ability to handle his ordinary materials.26

Figure 12.9 Charles Evelyn Simmons, St Ninian’s, Gretna, Dumfriesshire, 1917–8 Source: ©Courtesy HES

304 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green By contrast, All Saints’ Episcopal Church in St Andrews has a more decorative interior, including a chapel with carved and gilt Gothic details, but walls lined in sumptuous green and black marble supplied by Farmer and Brindley and reminiscent of Schultz and Barnsley’s drawings of St Luke of Stiris and Schultz’s chapel at Westminster. Waterhouse – or perhaps his client – was keen on marble and employed it again in his massive Art Deco-flavoured Greek-revival Younger Hall built nearby for the University a few years later and paid for by the same family. St Anne’s was Coia’s first major commission; it marked the point at which he inherited the Gillespie & Kidd practice and became the sole partner, as Gillespie, Kidd, & Coia, which came to dominate the field in Glasgow as the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a campaign to build distinctive, modern structures to attract their congregations. It has a square Greek-cross plan and is of concrete and brick with stone dressings, carved capitals, and keystones by Archibald Dawson. Coia had studied in the Glasgow School of Architecture under Professor Charles Gourlay (1865–1926), who had published several articles in the RIBA journal on Byzantine subjects. On winning two prizes, Coia had travelled to Italy in 1923 on a study visit, where he spent most of his time in Venice. This clearly provided inspiration, but the Byzantine elements of his church were combined with Renaissance, Celtic, and modern features in a developing style of his own. As might be expected, all these buildings inspired by early Christian Byzantine architecture are ecclesiastical, though there was also at least one Scottish secular example, a ‘Byzantine Smoke Room’ at Anderson’s Royal Polytechnic Warehouse in Glasgow with murals painted by Alf Webster around 1910.27 The connection here was presumably simply with the idea of Turkey as a source of tobacco. In churches, the Byzantine offered an opportunity to avoid the associations inherent in other styles – of classicism with paganism and High Gothic with the established Church. Apart from Mitchell’s Colinton project, all these buildings were for congregations differentiating themselves from the national Church, and Byzantine style (and the Celtic with which it was often combined) had the advantage of alluding to a pre-Reformation period of unity within Christendom. Practical considerations of how to make the most of awkward sites also seem to have played a part, and the relatively cheaper cost of Byzantine than Gothic may have been a factor, though not in all cases. The influence of Ruskin’s writings and the rise of the Arts and Crafts Movement in these years were major factors, since the Byzantine style gave the chance to show appreciation of mixed materials and craft techniques, and it is clear that all of these architects were concerned with the quality of the work and employed local craftsmen. Perhaps the main stimulus, however, was the appeal of the unusual and slightly niche, the desire to create something different from the norm, using specialist knowledge from travel or from recent publications. These architects were also recognised as scholars, and most of them were known to each other through the architectural associations that developed in the late nineteenth century.

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Architectural and Other Associations There is more to be discovered about Byzantinism in Scotland, but what can we gather from this selection of works? Firstly, it is clear that Robert Rowand Anderson was a link between most of these architects, partly through the training he offered in his office but also because of his domination of the Edinburgh architectural scene from the 1880s to the 1920s. He was a major figure who, among other activities, instigated the School of Applied Art in 1892 and the National Art Survey in 1893, encouraging the study of historic architecture and publishing the results of students’ endeavours. Among those who attended the School of Applied Art were Walker Todd and Ramsay Traquair (1874–1952), and both won prizes for their National Art Survey work. Anderson was also a leading light in the Edinburgh Architectural Association (EAA), which organised lectures and site visits and, from 1891, published Transactions recording its activities.28 It was important as a meeting place for those with shared interests: in 1893–4, for instance, Anderson was a vice-president, while Baldwin Brown and Henry Kerr served together on the Library and Publication Committees. Baldwin Brown’s talk on ‘the dome’ seems to have been the first that made reference to Byzantine work, but in 1907 Ramsay Traquair lectured twice with lantern slides on his tour of Greece and once on Hagia Sophia and the mosques of Constantinople, while in the same year a visit was made to Schultz’s chapel in Morningside. The EAA also reprinted articles from the RIBA Journal by Charles Gourlay, a Glasgow architect and academic, including one on Thessaloniki in 1907 and one on Hagia Sophia in 1928.29 Gourlay taught at the Glasgow School of Architecture, where Jack Coia studied during his training, and had travelled widely in Greece, Asia Minor, and Turkey. The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland also provided regular meetings and opportunities to publish scholarly articles, as did the Scottish Ecclesiological Society. This developed some 50 years later than in England because of Presbyterian resistance to decoration and display in churches, but groups were established in Aberdeen and Glasgow in the 1890s and amalgamated as a national society in 1904. Anderson was elected Honorary Vice President by Aberdeen for his pioneering role in designing ecclesiologically correct churches and Henry Kerr published articles in the society’s Transactions. John Arnott Hamilton (1891–1959), a minister in the Church of Scotland, also contributed to this publication and wrote several books on Byzantine subjects, including Byzantine Architecture and Decoration (1933). This was based on the PhD he gained from the University of Edinburgh in 1925, having begun his studies in 1913–14 with a Blackie Scholarship that enabled him to spend a winter at the BSA. It seems likely that he was supervised by Baldwin Brown, who was Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art in the University from 1880 to 1930, but a definite link has not yet been found. There was an acknowledged connection, however, between Baldwin Brown and van Millingen, which presumably came about through informal means because of shared interests in conservation and Byzantine architecture, rather than via the university. In his 1905 book on The Care of Ancient Monuments, Baldwin Brown

306 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green credited his friend Professor A. van Millingen for helping with the translation of a Turkish law of 1884 on archaeological excavations,30 and in 1912 van Millingen returned the compliment, thanking Baldwin Brown ‘for his unfailing kindness whenever I consulted him in connection with my work’.31 Another significant factor among the architects who became interested in Byzantine Studies was that many of them were prize winners, which enabled them to be more ambitious in their travel plans than others and perhaps gave them confidence to pursue more unusual paths than their peers. Their receipt of prizes also recommended them to others in the field; Weir Schultz, for instance, recruited several young architects who had already distinguished themselves in their studies, and Traquair gained an academic post in Canada in 1913, despite not having taken a degree, because of his record of research and publication. Much of this was carried out at the BSA, including a period on a Byzantine Research Fund studentship. In his new life, Traquair turned himself into an expert in French Canadian architecture and his Byzantine research became just part of his early experience, as it was for most of the architects discussed. For Weir Schultz, however, it remained a subject of fascination for more than 50 years.

Robert Weir Schultz and the Byzantine Research Fund Schultz’s later achievements at Khartoum Cathedral – built for the Scottish Governor-General and supervised by a Scottish Clerk of Works – and Westminster Cathedral, where his richly fitted Chapel of St Andrew represents Scotland in the heart of London, are discussed in detail by others in this volume.32 His work at the British School at Athens and the effort he put into establishing the Byzantine Research and Publications Fund have also been described, but it is worthwhile to emphasise how much this involved since it became such an essential influence on the British Byzantine Revival. The scale of his contribution only really becomes apparent when one looks at the extensive archives. Schultz was able to travel to Greece initially because he gained the Royal Academy Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship in 1887. He first visited in 1888 for six months, together with Sidney Barnsley, and they then returned for a full year from late 1889 to late 1890. Both times they were based at the British School and journeyed widely across the country, funded by a group of subscribers interested in their research. They filled sketchbooks, made measured plans and rubbings, and also produced some drawings coloured on the spot (Figure 12.10). They took many photographs – of landscapes, towns, single buildings, interiors, and details of furniture fittings and mosaics – and over time Schultz bought more from commercial photographers, building up a huge collection that is now held by the BSA and RIBA. The original idea was to study all the Byzantine churches in Greece and publish them together, but this changed into a plan for a series of uniform volumes, since funding was hard to find. In 1901, Schultz and Barnsley published their work on the monastery of St Luke of Stiris in Phocis, explaining in the Preface that their delay was caused by scant leisure from their professional work. Schultz had earlier written: ‘we gave our whole time in Greece for a year and also a very considerable amount of time in England to this work’.33 He clearly

Source: BRF 3/Sch-5, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

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Figure 12.10 Coloured drawing of St Theodore, Athens, from Schultz’s sketchbook, 22 March 1888

308 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green considered it a duty to publish the material he had collected and conserved, but there is also the hint that funds should be forthcoming from others because of the effort he had already expended. Following his return to Britain he wrote memoranda to sort out copyright and ownership issues, found sponsors for the publication and space for the archive, gathered a committee, and, in March 1908, set up the Byzantine Research and Publications Fund (BRPF). On its behalf over the next 40 years, he recruited a series of young architects to carry on the work, advising them on background reading such as the Marquess of Bute’s article, sending photographs, drawings, and money, arranging opportunities to show their drawings, and steering them away from duplication of effort. These included Ramsay Traquair, who prepared many fine and distinctive drawings of churches in central Greece in several separate visits to the BSA (Figure 12.11).

Figure 12.11 Drawing of Hagios Taxiarchos, Areopolis, Mani, 1909, by Ramsay Traquair Source: BRF 01/01/14/140, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, ©British School at Athens

Scottish Byzantinists 309 The BSA Archive holds many boxes of paperwork documenting meetings, ideas, and appeals for subscriptions. Files of memoranda about publication, copyright, and ownership give the impression of an obsessive approach that was perhaps a common feature among the committed Byzantinists of this period; Walter George’s papers in the RIBA Collections, for instance, have a similar quality as he itemised his activities and listed his grievances.34 The BRF never had enough money and Schultz expected the work to be done anyway, though in George’s case he also found paid work for him in his own office. He tried to direct the researchers to suitable sources of funds for particular pieces of work – as when he advised George that the Fourth Marquess of Bute (1881–1947) was interested in domestic architecture and might pay for drawings of Byzantine houses in Mistra – but his focus was on getting the finished records from the scholars.35 For George, the experience he gained at the BSA compensated for the pressure, and he later wrote that his days in Greece had been ‘perhaps the happiest in my life’,36 despite the disappointment that some of his best work was never published, because it was forestalled by more speedy publication by others. Schultz and George saw the work as archaeology, a matter of accurate recording and analysis requiring strict specifications, and as a competitive field in which first publication was essential and French and German scholars were rivals and potential threats. George later grumbled that Le Tourneau had made his work on the churches of Thessaloniki unpublishable by producing an account illustrated with photographs taken in only three days, whereas George’s detailed drawings had taken three years.37 Schultz guided his new recruits to areas that had not been covered, but when it became clear that others were already in the field, and that compromise was possible, this is what happened. Collaboration with Alexander van Millingen, for instance, resulted in his book on Byzantine Churches in Constantinople being illustrated with drawings by George and Traquair. As Secretary of the BRF from its foundation in 1908 to its transfer to the BSA in 1937, Schultz was involved in all its activities. He resisted proposals from the committee in 1919 to forge stronger links with the Hellenic Society or to become a branch of the BSA, but by the 1930s it was clear that the future of the collection needed to be safeguarded. In 1936 – in liaison with David Talbot Rice (1903–72), the new Watson Gordon Professor in Edinburgh, and with the Scottish architect Theodore Fyfe (1875–1945) – Schultz assisted with the preparation of an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London of British Archaeological Discoveries in Greece and Crete 1886–1936. BRF records and drawings were shown in a Byzantine Room, beautifully displayed according to Schultz by John Forsdyke, the Director of the British Museum, who had been on the committee for years. Relations with Fyfe seem to have been a little prickly, since Schultz suspected him of trying to take over the exhibition. With Talbot Rice he was more friendly, but correspondence in the archive shows that the younger man became impatient in the late 1940s about Schultz’s desire to publish old material that really needed updating, and that Schultz had a defender in the shape of Eileen Clay, the Secretary of the BSA in London.38 Throughout the 1940s in his retirement from practice Schultz continued to organise the drawings, stamping them with a BRPF stamp and working for their preservation, though he sent his own designs for war salvage.

310 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green He was still hoping to publish BRPF records of St Demetrios in Thessaloniki, and especially Walter George’s mosaic drawings, which had been a hard-won achievement by George and an important record, since some of the mosaics were afterwards destroyed by fire. This project lingered on over years of negotiation with George Sotiriou (1888–1963) but was eventually published in 1952 by Sotiriou alone with brief acknowledgement to the British scholars. George’s beautiful drawings were not included. Sotiriou was an important figure in Byzantine studies, the founder and first Director of the Byzantine Museum in Athens, and this publication could be seen as a proper wresting of control by Greek scholars away from the imperial forces of Britain. One cannot help thinking, however, that more international cooperation and less national rivalry would have served the cause of scholarship better. Robert Weir Schultz had died in 1951 and was probably turning in his grave, but his own achievements as a Byzantinist scholar and a Byzantine Revival architect in Britain were clearly considerable, not least in the fact that he involved so many younger people in the work, ensuring the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next by inspiring and encouraging their interest. The revival was very much a minority pursuit – and there is more research to be done on its full extent in Scotland and on work by Scots based in England39 – but Scottish architects and scholars made their mark both at home and abroad.

Notes * Annette Carruthers would like to thank the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for a grant that enabled her to travel to London and Athens for research on the Byzantine Research Fund, Amalia G. Kakissis for her help in the archive, and Professor David Walker for his knowledge and advice. We are also grateful to the British School at Athens, Mike Brooks, the Bute Archives, Country Life, and Historic Environment Scotland for the use of photographs. 1 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. It appears that the recipient of this letter, Mrs Anne Shearer, was a Scot herself and George therefore emphasised any relevant connections. Schultz was in fact not from Edinburgh, but from Port Glasgow. 2 Stamp 1981. 3 Even his name raises questions, since it is not clear when or why he added ‘van’ to Millingen. We use the longer version throughout. 4 Professor Alexander Van Millingen Papers (1840–1915), GB0100 KCLCA Millingen (formerly K/PP139), King’s College London College Archives, King’s College London 5 Harvie 1998, 17. 6 www.scottisharchitects.org.uk. 7 Williams 1820, vol. 1, 202; vol. 2, 419. 8 Allan 2001. 9 Glendinning et al. 1996, 202. 10 Lowrey 2001. The issue of the use of Gothic by the establishment in both England and Scotland is another question. 11 Calder 1986. 12 Finlay was another Scot born outside Scotland but largely educated there. Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. 13 Potter 2009.

Scottish Byzantinists 311 14 Ruskin, too, was the son of Scottish parents and his first biographer, W.G. Collingwood, described him as essentially a Scotsman. 15 NAAAAI 1890, 144. 16 See http://friendsofthemonteathmausoleum.org.uk/Welcome.html and www.glasgowne cropolis.org/profiles/archibald_douglas_monteath/ (accessed 4.6.2016) 17 Williamson et al. 1990, 264. 18 Crichton-Stuart 1885. 19 A series of articles by Bikelas was published in The Scottish Review between 1886 and 1889. Lord Bute became the owner of this publication in 1886 and is said by Hannah (2012, 223) to have translated two of the articles, but it is not evident which. 20 Notebook by Robert Weir Schultz 1889, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 3/SCH 9, British School at Athens. 21 McKinstry 1991, 108–9. 22 McKinstry 1982. 23 The Scotsman 1902. 24 The church was dedicated to St Mildred in memory of the Bishop’s late wife and much of the funding came from a lecture tour he undertook in the US in 1926. 25 Walker Todd had no work in Linlithgow before St Mildred’s, but acquired these four commissions between 1929 and 1937. 26 Lorimer 1918, 137. 27 Kinchin 1991, 147, Figure 101. 28 Volume 1 is dated 1889 in the preface, but 1891 on the title page. 29 Gourlay died in 1926, so the article was published posthumously. 30 Brown 1905, 216. 31 Millingen 1912, xi. 32 General Wingate, Governor-General of the Sudan 1899–1917, was also from Port Glasgow and commissioned a house in Dunbar, East Lothian, from Schultz in 1907; the client for St Andrew’s Chapel was the Fourth Marquess of Bute, so this was also a truly Scottish project. 33 Memorandum (unpublished) written by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley to the Committee of the British School at Athens, November 1898, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 9, British School at Athens. 34 Document on work for the Byzantine Research and Publication Fund, November 1911, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/1, RIBA Collections. 35 Letters from Robert Weir Schultz to Walter George, 1 Nov. 1908 & 24 Mar. 1910, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/2, RIBA Collections. 36 Letter from Walter George to Anne Shearer, 14 Mar. 1952, Walter George Papers, GeW/1/9, RIBA Collections. 37 Ibid. 38 Talbot Rice criticised Schultz for his lack of knowledge of more recent literature, such as a French book of 1912 that he claimed not to have read, but Miss Clay reported that ‘old Mr Weir’ had subsequently found the copious notes he had made from this book and forgotten. Letters between D. Talbot Rice and Edith Clay, London Secretary of the British School at Athens, 21 & 22 October 1948, Byzantine Research Fund Archive, BRF 4/Temp Folder 7, British School at Athens. 39 George Jack (1855–1931), for instance, worked with Schultz on the mosaics at Westminster Cathedral and John James Burnet (1857–1938) built a large brick Byzantineinspired Second Church of Christ Scientist in Notting Hill, London, in 1921–6.

References Allan, D. 2001. ‘The Age of Pericles in the Modern Athens: Greek History, Scottish Politics, and the Fading of Enlightenment’, The Historical Journal 44, no. 2 (June), 391–417.

312 Annette Carruthers and Simon Green Brown, G.B. 1905. The Care of Ancient Monuments (Cambridge). Calder, J. (ed.) 1986. The Enterprising Scot: Scottish Adventure and Achievement (Edinburgh). Crichton-Stuart, J.P. 1885. ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’, The Scottish Review 6 (July), 85–123. Finlay, G. 1853–54. History of the Byzantine and Greek Empires from DCCXVI to MCCCCLIII (Edinburgh). Glendinning, M., MacInnes, R. and MacKechnie, A. 1996. A History of Scottish Architecture (Edinburgh). Hamilton, J.A. 1933. Byzantine Architecture and Decoration (London). Hannah, R. 2012. The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh). Harvie, C. 1998. Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics, 1707 to the Present (3rd ed., London). Kinchin, P. 1991. Tea and Taste: The Glasgow Tearooms 1875–1975 (Wendlebury). Llewellyn Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and Calligas, E. (eds.) 2009. Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture Through the British School at Athens (Athens). Lorimer, R.S. 1918. ‘Gretna: The Home of an Industrial Army’, Country Life 17, no. 8, 132–8. Lowrey, J. 2001. ‘From Caesarea to Athens: Greek Revival Edinburgh and the Question of Scottish Identity within the Unionist State’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 2 (June), 136–57. McKinstry, S. 1982. ‘What Factors Influenced the Design of Dalziel United Free Church, Motherwell, Built 1911–1915?’ Open University, 5.10.1982. National Monuments Record of Scotland, D11 53 DAL. McKinstry, S. 1991. Rowand Anderson: ‘The Premier Architect of Scotland’ (Edinburgh). Millingen, A. van. 1899. Byzantine Constantinople (London). Millingen, A. van. 1912. Byzantine Churches in Constantinople: Their History and Architecture (London). NAAAAI. 1890. Transactions of the National Association for the Advancement of Art and its Application to Industry Edinburgh Meeting, MDCCCLXXIX (London). Potter, L. 2009. ‘“Two Thousand Years of Suffering”: George Finlay and the History of Greece’, in Llewellyn Smith, M., Kitromilides, P.M. and Calligas, E. (eds.), Scholars, Travels, Archives: Greek History and Culture Through the British School at Athens (Athens), 13–26. Ruskin, J. 1851–53. The Stones of Venice (London). Anon. 1902. ‘Edinburgh Architectural Association’, The Scotsman, 23 January 8. Stamp, G. 1981. Robert Weir Schultz Architect and His Work for the Marquesses of Bute: An Essay (Mount Stuart). Williams, H.W. 1820. Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands (Edinburgh and London). Williamson, E., Riches, A. and Higgs, M. 1990. The Buildings of Scotland: Glasgow (London).

Notes on Contributors

J.B. Bullen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Reading and holds the London Chair of English Literature and Culture in the Department of English Literature, Royal Holloway College. He has had a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary studies from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries with particular focus on the relationship between word and image. He has written widely on the subject including, The Myth of the Renaissance in NineteenthCentury Writing (1994), and Byzantium Rediscovered (2003). Richard J. Butler is Director of Research at Mary Immaculate College (MIC), Limerick, Republic of Ireland. His first monograph, Building the Irish Courthouse and Prison: a Political History, 1750–1850, was published by Cork University Press in 2020. His research on British colonial architecture in India has been published in Architectural History. He is currently writing a book about the Catholic Church and the building of Irish cities in the twentieth century. Annette Carruthers was a curator of decorative arts at Leicestershire and Cheltenham Museums before joining the University of St Andrews as a researcher and lecturer. She has published widely on the Arts and Crafts Movement, domestic design and furniture. Her most recent books are The Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland: A History (2013) and Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect (co-written with Mary Greensted and Barley Roscoe, 2019). Eleni-Anna Chlepa is an architect and architectural historian who has spent her career investigating built heritage and involved in the restoration of cultural heritage sites. She has lectured on the history of conservation and restoration projects at Greek and Italian universities and published on Hellenistic and Byzantine architecture and the history of architectural conservation restoration works, and theoretical aspects on cultural heritage preservation. She has been awarded national and international prizes including Europa Nostra in 2006 and 2010. Robin Cormack is Professor Emeritus in the History of Art, Courtauld Institute of Art, and teaches Classical Art and Archaeology in the University of Cambridge. Specializing in Byzantine Art, he has curated exhibitions and published widely on the subject, including, The Church of St Demetrios of Thessaloniki. The

314 Notes on Contributors Watercolours and Drawings of W.S. George, catalogue of an exhibition in Thessaloniki and Athens (1985) and Byzantium 330-1453, catalogue of an exhibition at the Royal Academy (2008). Simon Green is an architectural historian working in the Survey and Recording Section of Historic Environment Scotland. He is also responsible for the Buildings at Risk Register and its development. His research interests include ecclesiastical architecture, the Scottish Baronial and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Scotland. He has published Dumfries House, an Architectural Story. He is a trustee of the Historic Churches Scotland Trust (formerly SRCT) and is also the President of the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland. Mary Greensted is a former museum curator who built up the major Arts and Crafts collection at Cheltenham. She has published widely including most recently Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect (with Annette Carruthers and Barley Roscoe) for Yale in 2019. She undertook pioneering research on the links between Britain and Greece as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement and now works freelance as a curator and exhibition organiser with particular emphasis on twentieth-century design and contemporary craftwork. Julian Holder is Senior Associate Tutor in Architectural History at the University of Oxford and a Visiting Fellow of Kellogg College. He has held a variety of posts in academia and conservation including Inspector of Historic Buildings with English Heritage, Director of the Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, and is an Expert Advisor on twentieth-century heritage to the Getty Conservation Institute in Los Angeles. His recent publications include ‘Neo-Georgian architecture; a re-appraisal 1880–1970’ (English Heritage, 2016) and ‘Beauty’s awakening; Arts and Crafts Architecture’ (Crowood Press, 2021). Dimitra Kotoula is an art historian who specializes in Byzantine art, and a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Her research, which has been sponsored by, among others, the British Academy, the Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C., and Princeton University focuses on issues of form, function and politics in Byzantine architecture and art, with emphasis on eschatology, post-Byzantine icon-painting and modern perceptions of Byzantium. In 2016, she was Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College, London. Kostis Kourelis is Associate Professor of Art History at Franklin & Marshall College. He is an architectural historian who specializes in the archaeology of the Mediterranean and how it shapes modern notions of identity, space, and aesthetics. His recent fieldwork focuses on the archaeology of labour, housing, and forced migration. He directs archaeological surveys of deserted villages and refugee camps in Greece, as well as ethnic slums, temporary housing, and incarceration camps in the U.S. Ruth Macrides (1949–2019) was Reader in Byzantine Studies in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, co-editor of the journal, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies and a

Notes on Contributors

315

Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. Her expertise was in Byzantine historiography; late Roman and Byzantine law; social and kinship structures in the middle and late Byzantine period; western travellers to the east Mediterranean; and the reception of Byzantium in Britain and Greece in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gavin Stamp (1948–2017) was an architectural historian of British architecture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He wrote about the work of Edwin Lutyens, the Gilbert Scott dynasty, Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson and, following a commission from the late John, 6th Marquess of Bute, in 1981, on Robert Weir Schultz. He taught for a decade at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, and was also an honorary professor of both the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. Claudia Tedeschi is a freelance conservation consultant who also works with the Italian Ministry of Culture. Her research focuses on reconstructing technical phases of ancient and modern mosaics. She has led very important conservation projects on monuments in Rome (S. Pietro Vaticano), Ravenna (Battistero Neoniano), Milan (S. Aquilino and S. Vittore in Ciel d’Oro Chapels), Istanbul (Hagia Sophia), London (Westminster Cathedral). She has most recently completed the restoration of the medieval wall mosaics of some sides of San Giovanni Baptistery in Florence.

Index

Abadie, Paul 10, 12, 13 Adams, Katharine 220 America/n: archaeology 82, 160–1, 172; architects 179; design 21, 123, 130; Great Depression 140; thought 162, 175, 278; see also Millingen, Alexander van Anderson, Robert Rowland: architectural practice 70, 298, 301–5; collaboration with Bute 68, 82, 90–102, 192, 294, 295; on Ruskin 293; students 191, 220, 291, 298, 305 anti-restoration movement 57, 68, 70, 74, 181 Anti-Scrape Society see Society for the Protection for Ancient Buildings (SPAB) archaeology: and Arts and Crafts movement 145; and Bute 82, 89; and Byron 26–8; Byzantine 119, 164, 169–71, 208, 268, 270–1; discipline of 159, 309; Greek 161, 179–82; Institute of (London) 196 architectural elements: arches 16–17, 48– 9, 144, 148–9, 193–4, 198, 202, 207–8, 243, 260, 279, 293, 300–2; capital/s 99, 123, 149, 275, 279, 293, 298, 300, 301, 304, 308 Architectural Review (journal) 111, 123–5, 208 architectural style: classical/neoclassical 10, 22, 26–7, 31–2, 37, 57, 85–9, 116, 140–4, 159, 161–81, 276–9, 285, 304; domestic 34, 159–88, 198, 202, 294, 309; Eclecticism 143, 279, 293; English Free 116, 120, 128, 130; Frankish 34, 119, 140, 161–3, 172, 177; Gothic 10, 14–23, 34, 48–9, 57, 62, 82, 114–15, 121–30, 140–4, 162–4, 170–1, 192, 207–8, 217, 278–9, 294–8, 304;

Modernism 115, 131, 152, 161, 180–1, 215, 276–8; Mycenaean 49; Norman 16, 293; Palladian 37, 198, 202; ‘Queen Anne’ 143; Romanesque 4–7, 10, 12, 14, 16–17, 141, 144, 294, 298 Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (book) see Lethaby, William Arta (Epirus, Geece), Hagios Vasileios 224–5, 225 Arts and Crafts Exhibition (London 1893) 23, 114, 208, 225 Arts and Crafts Movement: aesthetics/ beliefs 110, 116, 125, 140–1, 148–51, 162–3, 181, 189, 202–3, 232, 304; churches 120–1, 128; Cotswold 230; people 114–15, 123, 152, 164, 189, 191, 218, 220; Scottish 163, 191 Art Workers’ Guild 23, 70, 114, 191, 203, 220; Northern 130 Athens: Acropolis/Parthenon 28, 30, 34, 68, 85, 92, 161, 171, 176–9, 181, 192, 220, 276, 277; Archaeological Society 50, 57; Hagioi Apostoloi 68, 70, 74; Hagioi Asomatoi 194; Hagioi Theodoroi 49; Kaisariani 221, 222; Syntagma 90, 91 Austria/n 59, 141 Bagenal, Philip Hope 271, 273 Baker, Herbert 37, 159, 169, 171, 173, 176 Baldwin Brown, Gerard 298–9, 305–6 Ball, Joseph Lancaster 121, 128, 218 Barnsley, Ernest 128, 218, 224, 232 Barnsley, Sidney Howard: Arts & Crafts movement 164, 232; background/ training 21, 112, 164, 217–18; Church of the Wisdom of God (Lower Kingswood, Surrey) 45, 99, 120–3, 149, 150, 192, 224–30, 237; furniture making 217–37; and Greece 40–9,

Index 62, 99, 113, 138, 140, 145–9, 160–7, 189–94, 206–7, 218–33, 304, 306; legacy 217, 237; philosophy 117, 152; professional appointments 117 Bayet, Charles 116, 143 Beaux Arts: American 130; French 116, 162, 170, 172 Bell, Gertrude 119 Bell, Ingress 130 Bentley, John Francis 3, 121–5, 130, 149, 202, 233, 243–7, 260; see also Westminster Cathedral Beylié, Léon de 175 Bikelas, Demetrios 68, 181, 193–4, 294 Birmingham: architects/ure 128, 218–218, 232; Arts & Crafts movement 128–30; Office Building 120; St Basil 129; St Gregory the Great 128; University 130 Blomfield, Reginald 114, 230 Boisserée, Sulphiz & Melchoir 3–5, 9, 57 Boito, Camillo 58 Bonanno brothers 60 Bonsor, Sir Henry Cosmo Orme 149, 224 brick see building materials Bridge, George 247, 253 Britain/British: Library 31; Museum 31, 89, 112, 115, 119, 152, 309; School at Athens 34–6, 62, 90, 99, 119, 140, 149, 159–66, 169–70, 179, 182, 189–91, 268, 306; School at Rome 119 Buchon, Jean-Alexandre 164, 169–71 building materials: brick 96, 120–8, 130–1, 192, 210, 217, 224, 233, 242, 258, 279, 294, 303–4; concrete 49, 102, 121–8, 131, 141, 207, 244, 304; stone 48, 120, 130, 202, 243–4, 279, 294, 304; tile 120, 130, 240–60, 302–3; see also glass Bunsen, Christian 5, 7 Burges, William 181–2, 192, 196, 291 Burn, William 196 Burne Jones, Edward 21–2, 57, 257 Bute see Crichton-Stuart, John (Third Marquess of Bute); Crichton-Stuart, John (Fourth Marquess of Bute); Crichton-Stuart, John (Sixth Marquess of Bute) Byron, Lord (George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron) 26–30, 290, 293 Byzantine Research and Publications Fund (BRPF) 119, 133, 306–10 Byzantine Research Fund (BRF) 138, 140, 159–63, 167, 170–2, 178–82, 224, 270, 292, 306

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calligraphy/illumination 31, 243 Canada 36, 161–4, 306 Carlyle, Thomas 57 Carpenter, Rhys 161, 179 Cathedral Church of All Saints/Anglican Cathedral (Khartoum) see Schultz, Robert Weir Cavafy, Constantine 181 Central School of Arts and Crafts (London) 120, 208 chandelier/s 227, 227 Chatzikes, Manuel Laskaris 87–9 Choiseul-Gouffier, Auguste de 28, 31 Choisy, Auguste 110, 116, 122, 123, 148, 168 Christian Archaeological Society 58–60, 68, 74, 90, 143 Christianity 10, 93, 253; Coptic 49, 208; Greek Orthodox 31–2, 81–2, 85, 99, 203, 221, 233, 294; Protestant 5, 7, 12, 133, 181; Roman Catholic 7, 10, 14, 16–17, 81–7, 96, 121, 132–3, 192–4, 207, 210, 230–3, 243, 260, 294, 297, 304 The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building (monograph) see Lethaby, William Richard Clayton, J. R. 251, 253 Cockerell, Sydney 115, 232 Coia, Jack 303–5 concrete see building materials Constantine: XI 89; XIII 87; Roman Emperor 7, 17, 46, 49 Constantinople see Istanbul (Turkey) Corbusier 278 Corinth (Greece) 79–82, 161–2 Coronio, Aglaia 22, 143 Couchaud, André 101–2, 144, 147, 196 Crichton-Stuart, John (Fourth Marquess of Bute) 34, 190, 192, 198, 202, 207, 209, 233, 258, 309 Crichton-Stuart, John (Sixth Marquess of Bute) 189 Crichton-Stuart, John (Third Marquess of Bute); background and interests 81–2; friendship with Bikelas 93–4, 181; and George, W. S. 167, 290; Mount Stuart 82–5, 94, 191–8; and Schultz, R. W. 68–70, 74, 99–102, 138, 163, 191, 220, 233; ‘Some Christian Monuments of Athens’ (article) 92–3, 99; travels, Greece/Turkey 86–91, 192, 294; wealth 81, 291; see also Christianity, Roman

318

Index

Catholic; Scotland; Sophia, Hagia/Saint/ Santa/Sancta/Church of (Istanbul) Crystal Palace Exhibition (Sydenham, UK) 19 Curzon, Robert 30–4 Cyprus 162 Daneway workshops 203, 230, 232 Daphni (Attica, Greece), Katholikon: conservation work 58–64; Millet 34, 170–2; Pickenham Hall, model for 70; Schultz and Barnsley 40, 45–7, 72, 145–6, 230 Dawkins, Richard M. 119, 160, 165–8, 271 Debenahm, Ernest 257 Delacoulonche, Alfred 143 Dickie, A. C. 119 Didron, Adolphe-Napoléon 31, 143–4 Disraeli, Benjamin 58, 81 Dixon, A. S. 128, 129 Duban, Félix 10 Duc, M. 121 earthquake/s 43–5, 59–60 Eastern Churches Association (UK) 127, 130 ebony see wood Edinburgh (Scotland): architects 167, 191, 220, 291, 299, 305; Arts & Crafts movement 37; and Greece 292–4; Review (journal) 114; Saint Cuthbert’s Parish Church 294, 298; University 291, 305; see also Schultz, Robert Weir Egypt 22, 30–2, 45, 117, 161, 168, 207–9; see also Sudan Elgin, Lord (Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin) 28, 30–1, 100 England: All Saints (Brockhamptom) 120; Church of the Wisdom of God (Lower Kingswood, Surrey) 45, 99, 120–3, 149, 150, 192, 224–30, 237; Guildford Cathedral 132, 133; Lincoln Cathedral 237; St Andrew (Barnet Green) 130; St Basil (Deritend) 129, 130; Saint Cuthbert Mayne (Launceston) 130, 131; St Giles (Rowley Regis) 130; Saint John the Baptist (Rochdale) 131, 132; St Mary and St Nicholas (Wilton) 17; St Mary’s church (Wreay) 17, 18; Woolmer Green Church (Hertfordshire) 233; see also Birmingham; London; Liverpool Espérandieu, Henri 14 Esplin, Mabel 49

Eustache, M. Henri 170, 172, 175; see also Beaux Arts, French excavations see archaeology Fairlie, Reginald 192 Faulkner, Charles 57 Finlay, George 22, 143, 149, 268, 293 Fiorelli, Guiseppe 60 Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) 32 Fossati, Guiseppe and Gaspare 141 Frame, William 196, 202, 294 France/French: architecture 5, 9–17, 141, 164, 218, 272; Art Nouveau 162; historical studies 141, 261; Napoleonic 7; School in Athens 163–4, 170; Third Republic 14; see also Marseilles (France); Paris (France) Freeman, Edward Augustus 17, 179 Freshfield, Edwin 93, 99, 113, 119, 138, 149, 192, 224 Freud, Sigmond 181 Friedrich Wilhelm IV (King of Prussia) 5 Fulton, J. B. 117 furniture 49, 51–4, 145, 206, 217, 306; see also Barnsley, Sidney Howard Fyfe, Theodore 309 Gardner, E. A. 34 Gatty, Charles Tindal 86 Gennadios, Ioannis 68 George, Ernest 119, 191, 218 George, Lena 268, 276 George, Walter Sykes: academic studies and architecture 266–85; Arts and Crafts movement 138; Greece 1906–1911 37, 46–52, 49, 138, 290, 309–10; India 37–40, 266–79, 285; and Millingen, A. van 37, 120, 290, 309; Mistra/s, domestic architecture survey 159–88; Scotland 291 Germany/German: Bauhaus 162; Byzantine revival architecture 3, 7, 9, 12, 16–17, 22; culture 12; historical studies 141; Munich, Allerheiligen-Hofkirche 5, 6; Potsdam, Heilandskirche/ Friedenskirche 7, 8 Gibbon, Edward 30, 175 Gilliéron, Emile 92, 101–2, 143 Gimson, Ernest 45, 49, 203–6, 221–5, 230–3, 237 Gladstone, William 5 Glasgow: architects/ure 292–3, 303–5; Garnethill Synagogue 293; St Anne’s 303; School of Architecture 304–5;

Index Schultz, R. W. 191; Sixth Earl of 207; University 249 glass 19, 21, 247, 251; stained 34, 35, 49, 92; Venetian 21, 60, 251 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 3–4, 170–1 Gore, Charles 128, 130 Gourlay, Charles 304–5 Grand Tour/ists 27, 82, 94, 140, 293 Great Depression see America/n Great War see World War I Greece see individual cities/locations Green, Arthur Romney 233 Green, William Curtis 120, 123, 206 Grissell, Hartwell de la Garde 86 Hamidic culture 168 Hamilton, John Arnott 305 Hansen: Christian 58–9, 142; Theophilus 142 Harvey, William 120, 138–46, 148–52, 165 Headlam, A.C. 120, 125 Heal, Ambrose 230 Henderson, Arthur E. 299 Hess, Heinrich 5–6 Hill, Oswald 132, 133 Historical and Enthnographical Society 58 Hobhouse, John 28, 30 house/s see architectural style, domestic Hussey, Christopher 276 illumination see calligraphy/illumination India 37–40, 159–61, 164, 169, 182, 266–79, 285 inlay: bone 203, 237; holly/ebony 225, 230; mother of pearl 197 Ionides, Alexander 181 Islam/ic 34, 117, 164 Israel: Church of the Nativity (Bethlehem) 120, 125, 152, 192; Jerusalem 116, 120, 130 Israel, Jerusalem 120 Istanbul (Turkey): Hagia Eirene 37, 40, 120, 128, 149, 150, 152, 164, 224, 270, 272–3, 285 Italy see individual cities/locations Jack, George 206, 257, 291 Jones, Owen 19, 20 Kalogeropoulo, Panagiotes 68, 86–7, 93–4 Kenton & Company 224–5, 230–2, 237 Kerr, Henry 298–301, 305 Klenze, Leo von 5, 6 Kluge, Nicholas K. 148

319

Knight, Henry Gally 17, 179 Kos, Saint John Prodomou 74, 194 Kunst und Altertum (journal) 24 Laborde, Alexander/re 10, 141 Lambakes, Emmanuel 144–8 Lambros/ou, Spyridon 62, 143–4 Lampakis, George 58, 60–2, 68–74, 89–93, 99 Layard, Henry 21 Lear, Edward 32, 33 Lee, J. Stirling 125, 206–7 Le Globe (journal) 9 Leo XII (Pope) 4 Lethaby, William Richard: Architecture, Mysticism and Myth (book, 1891) 116, 194, 230; Arts and Crafts movement 3, 21, 114, 191; BRPF 119–20, 191; Byzantine revival 120, 128–33, 140; The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building (book with Swainson, H. 1894) 34, 96, 110–25, 133, 164, 191, 218, 299; Fulton, J. B. 117; influenced by 114, 148; legacy 217; move to academia 115, 152, 207; and Schultz 113, 116, 152; students/followers 114, 145, 160, 164, 180, 206–7, 218, 268 Le Tourneau, Marcel 148, 271, 309 Lindsay, Alexander Crawford (25th Earl of Crawford) 17, 19, 141, 293 lithograph/s 7, 141 Liverpool: Anglican Cathedral 123–33, 207; Museum 86; Roman Catholic Cathedral 132; University 168 London: Christ Church (Brixton) 123; Christ Church (Streatham) 17; Ham House 197; Society of Antiquaries 92–3, 99, 119–20; South Kensington Museum 115; Victoria and Albert Museum 119, 167; see also St Andrew’s Chapel; Saint John’s Lodge; Schultz, Robert Weir; Westminster Cathedral Lorimer, Robert 291, 300, 303 Ludwig I (King of Bavaria) 4–9, 12, 19, 23 Lutyens, Edwin: India/with George, W. S 37, 159, 169, 266–7, 271–9, 285; Liverpool Cathedral 133; rejection of Arts & Crafts movement 27, 276 Mallay, A. C. 14 Manchester: School of Art 268; University 119, 130 Mani (Greece): churches 36, 120, 165, 308

320

Index

Marseilles (France): Notre-Dame-de-laGarde 12, 15, 141; Saint-Marie-Majeure 9, 12, 14 Maufe, Sir Edward 133 Mazenod, Eugène de 14 Medd, Henry 273–6 Meduna, Giovanni Battista 58 Megaw, Peter (A.H.S.) 162–4, 182 Millet, Gabriel 34, 40, 87, 144–8, 163, 170–7 Millingen, Alexander van 37, 120, 290–1, 299, 305–6, 309 Mistra/s (Laconia, Greece) 87–8, 146, 160; houses 159–82; religious buildings 34, 70–1, 190, 233 Mitchell, Sydney 298, 304 Modern/ism see architectural style Monemvasia (Greece) 167, 233, 235 Morris, William: Arts & Crafts philosophy/ leadership 21, 114, 149, 218; and Byzantine art/culture 3, 21–3, 114, 141, 232; Gallery (Walthamstow, London) 230; influence of Ruskin 3, 22, 140, 218, 220; and Lethaby, W. 114–15, 128; SPAB 57 mosaic/s: Anglican Cathedral (Khartoum) 206; Arts & Crafts movement 21; Church of the Wisdom of God (Lower Kingswood) 224, 229–30; Greece 30, 40–5, 59, 310; Italian 21, 58, 60, 140, 240; opinions of Byzantine 17, 19, 140– 1, 149; Westminster Cathedral (London) 240–63 Musée du Louvre (Paris) 30 muslim see Islam/ic Myers, John Linton 119 Nairn, Ian 206 New Liturgical Movement (UK) 123, 128, 130, 133 Newton, Ernest 268 Nobb, Percy 164 Northern Art Workers’ Guild see Art Workers’ Guild Novelli, Carlo 60 Novo, Francesco 62 Orlandos, Anastasios 163, 171–2, 175, 178 Otto (King) 92 Ottoman period see Turkey/ish Oxford: and Arts & Crafts movement 21, 143, 149; University of 21, 119, 140, 149, 179, 266

painting: Byzantine 31, 143; mural 92; Nazarene 5, 7, 144; oil 32; watercolour/s 32, 92, 100, 132, 165, 198, 230 Palamas, Kostis 181 Palermo (Sicily) 4–5, 60, 259 Palestine Exploration Fund 116–19 Palladian see architectural style, Palladian Paparrigopoulos, Contantinos 57, 142 Papety, Diminique Louis 141, 142 Paris (France) 172; Notre-Dame du Raincy 128; Sacré-Coeur 9, 13; World Exposition (1889) 251 Payne, Humfry 164 Perrot, Georges 143 Petit de Julleville, Louis 17, 143–4 Petrie, William 168 Pevsner, Nicholas 206 photographs/photography 45, 075, 100, 107, 196, 219, 224, 275 Pikionis, Demetris 161, 181 Pite, Arthur Beresford 120, 123–4, 130, 268 Popplewell-Pullam, Richard 144, 192 pottery: Byzantine 167 Powell, James (of Whitefriars) 230 Pownall, Gilbert 259–60 Pre-Raphaelite/s 32, 162, 181 Radi, Lorenzo 19, 251 Ravenna: churches 21, 193, 206; Galla Placidia 21, 193, 259; mosaics 60, 140, 241–2, 259; San Vitale 114, 121 Renaissance, the 81, 121, 169–71, 175, 272, 276, 279, 304 Reynolds, W. Bainbridge 120, 206 Rice, David Talbot 113, 164, 309 Riegl, Alios 59 Ringseis, Emile 4 Robertson, Manning 131 Romanticism 3, 19, 140, 144, 149 Rome/an: American Church 21–2; Constantine (Emperor) 49; Megali Panagia/Hadrian’s Library/Stoa of Hadrian 60, 74, 90, 92, 96, 100–1; Saint Costanza 68, 194; Saint Paul’s 21; San Clemente 7; San Paolo fuori le Mura 3, 5; Santa Maria in Cosmedin 7 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 5, 57, 257 Roussopoulos, Athanasios 68 Royal Academy of Arts (London) 46, 133, 138, 165, 191, 208, 218, 268, 276, 309; Gold Medal and Travelling Scholarship 21, 159, 306

Index Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) 116, 140–4, 218, 279, 291, 304–9 Ruskin, John: ideas/ideals 3, 17, 22, 57, 115–16, 140, 148, 159–64, 172, 175–82, 218–20, 293, 304; The Seven Lamps of Architecture (book, 1849) 19; The Stones of Venice (book, 1863) 19, 21–3, 30, 34, 57–8, 116, 141, 175–9, 218 Russell, Gordon 230 Russell, Robert Tor 273 Russia/n/Russo 22, 34, 119, 146–8, 273 Saccardo, Pietro 58 Sacrow see Germany/German, Potsdam Saint-Simonian theory 10, 12, 14 Salviati, Antonio/Julius/ Company 19, 21, 60, 251–3 Salzenberg, Wilhelm/William 7, 141 Schinkel, Friedrich 7 Schlegel, Friedrich von 4 Schliemann, Heinrich 92 Schultz, Robert Weir: Arts & Crafts movement 40, 49, 70, 102, 114, 125, 149–52, 163–4, 189, 198, 220, 232, 291; background/training 21, 70, 119, 164, 167, 191, 294–8; BRPF 119, 306– 10; and Bute (Marquesses of) 189–210; Cardiff University 209; Cathedral Church of All Saints/Anglican Cathedral (Khartoum) 45–54, 151, 189, 207–8; Church of the Nativity (Bethlehem) 152; furniture/decoration 49, 230; and George, W. S 270–5; House of Falkland 196–202; and Lethaby, W. 23, 112–15, 120, 125, 140, 164, 191, 218; Liverpool Cathedral 125, 207; as a mentor 138, 306; The Monastery of St Luke of Stiris, in Phocis (book 1901) 99, 112–13, 117, 152, 163, 192, 237; Morningside (Edinburgh) 202–3, 294, 297; Pickenham Hall (Swaffham) 70, 73; Rothesay 207; St John’s Lodge (London) 74, 100–1, 192–6; St Sophia, Church of (Galston) 102; as a Scot 270, 290–1; Westminster Cathedral/Saint Andrew’s Chapel 149–50, 189, 233, 255–9; work in Greece (1888–90) 40–5, 62, 72, 74, 92, 138–49, 160, 164, 172, 190, 191, 219, 220, 293 Scotland/Scottish: All Saints (St Andrews) 303; architects 290–310; Dumfries House 198–202, 294, 296; Monteath Mausoleum (Ancrum) 293; National Art

321

Survey (1883) 305; The Old Place of Mochrum (Wigtownshire) 233; Our Lady and St Meddan (Troon) 192; Review (journal) 93; Saint Mildred’s (now Saint Peter’s) (Linlithgow) 301, 302; Saint Ninian’s (Gretna) 303; St Sophia (Galston) 95–9, 102, 191–5; School of Applied Art 305; Society of Antiquaries 298, 305; United Free Church, Dalziel 298, 299, 300, 301; see also Bute (Marquesses of); Edinburgh; Glasgow; Schultz, Robert Weir Scott, George Oldrid 99 Scott, Giles Gilbert 207 Sedding, John Dando 124, 140, 144, 218, 220 Sellers, James H. 130, 133 serpentine 19 The Seven Lamps of Architecture (book) see Ruskin, John Shaw, Richard Norman 70, 112–14, 128, 140, 145, 167, 180, 191, 218, 291 Shoosmith, Arthur Gordon 273, 279, 285 Simmons, Charles Evelyn 303 smalti see mosaic/s Society of Antiquaries of London see London Society of Antiquaries of Scotland see Scotland/Scottish Society of the Dilettanti 140 Society for the Protection for Ancient Buildings (SPAB) 57, 114, 159, 163, 172 Sophia, Hagia/Saint/Santa/Sancta/Church of (Istanbul): as architectural inspiration 131–3, 141, 208, 227, 294; and Bute (Third Marquess of) 94, 102; and Friedrich Wilhelm IV 7; and Hobhouse, H. 30; and Morris, W. 3, 22, 232; and Texier 144; see also Lethaby, William Richard; The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building Sotiriou, George 310 South Kensington Museum see London South Korea: Anglican Cathedral in Seoul 130 Sparta (Laconia, Greece): archaeological excavations 27, 159–69, 175, 182, 271 Spiers, Richard Phene/Phené 115–19, 140 Spooner, Charles 233 Stiris (Phocis, Greece), Saint Luke/Hosios Loukas 21, 30, 99, 112–13, 117, 152, 192, 221, 237, 304–6; see also Schultz, Robert Weir

322

Index

stone see building materials The Stones of Venice (book) see Ruskin, John Street, George E. 21, 140 Stryzygowski, Joseph 34 Sudan see Cathedral Church of All Saints/ Anglican Cathedral (Khartoum) Swainson, Harold 116–17; see also Lethaby, W., The Church of Sancta Sophia, Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Building Symons, William Christian 247, 253 ‘synechism’ 278 Syria 22 Tegea (Arcadia, Greece), Dormition of Theotokos 62–8 tesserae see mosaic/s Texier, Charles 116, 144 Thessaloniki (Greece): Hagios Demetrios 37, 49, 146, 151, 164, 207, 310; Hagios Georgios 194 tile/s see building materials Todd, William James Walker 300, 302–5 Townsend, Charles Harrison 206 Trades Guild of Learning (London) 232 Traquair, Ramsay 36–7, 120, 161–7, 305–9 Tredegar, Lord 209 Trikala (Thessaly, Greece): Megalon Pylon 60 Turkey/ish: rule/Ottoman 27, 31, 117, 138– 44, 149, 169, 177–9, 191–4; see also Istanbul (Turkey); Sophia, Hagia/Saint/ Santa/Sancta/Church of (Istanbul) USA see America/n Vaudoyer, Léon 10–14, 15, 141 Venice (San Marco/St. Mark) 3, 10, 19, 23, 57–8, 90, 114, 128, 141

Verneilh, Félix 10, 16, 141–3 Verstage, Arthur Halcrow 120 Victoria and Albert Museum see London Vikelas, Demetrios see Bikelas, Demetrios Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 10, 12, 148, 172 Vitet, Ludovic 9 Wace, Alan J. B 160–1, 168 Wagner, Otto 94 Wales 82, 196, 209, 291 War: I/Great War 131, 152, 208, 267–8, 272, 300, 303; II 133, 164–5, 266, 309; Memorials Exhibition (London) 208 Webb: Aston 120, 130; Benjamin 19; Philip 57, 114–16, 121–3, 140, 145, 148, 220; Stephen 230 Weir Schultz, Robert see Schultz, Robert Weir Westminster Cathedral (London) 149–50, 189, 233, 255–9 Wheeler, Mortimer 161 Whewell, William 16 Wilson, Henry 123–8, 207–8 Wingate, Alexander 123 wood: ebony 203, 225, 230, 233, 237; holly 225; oak 196, 230–2, 298 Woolf, Virginia 181 World War I 130–1, 152, 266–7, 303 Wyatt, Digby 19 Yeats, William Butler 3, 23 Zachos, Aristotelis 164 Zambon, Guiseppe 62 Zezos, Demetrios 142 Ziller, Ernst 58, 67–8 Zorzi, Alvaro Piero 58