The Decline of the Classical Orders

Architecture’s place among the fi ne arts came undone at the end of the seventeenth century. First in France, and then across Europe, critics began to wonder whether architecture was still related to painting and sculpture, the two genres traditionally most closely associated with grand buildings, or whether it should be counted as a technological fi eld, imbued more with the lessons of mathematics and engineering. This uncertainty had been initiated in Paris by a skeptical review of Renaissance theories of beauty in building. In 1683 Claude Perrault’s careful reading of the classical treatises questioned whether the proportions of the columnal orders—Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, and Tuscan—really did correspond to other mathematical relations in the cosmos, such as the ratios that produced musical tones in string instruments. The perceived correspondence between architectural rules and musical notes had long reinforced the belief that the universe itself was organized according to a divine mathematic order. Yet, as Rudolf Wittkower notes, “With the rise of the new science the synthesis which