Years active | Late 18th–present |
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Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and Admiral Nelson's defeat of the French Navy at the Battle of the Nile later that year. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition's work, the Description de l'Égypte , began in 1809 and was published as a series through 1826. The size and monumentality of the façades discovered during his adventure cemented the hold of Egyptian aesthetics on the Parisian elite. However, works of art and architecture (such as funerary monuments) in the Egyptian style had been made or built occasionally on the European continent since the time of the Renaissance.
Much of the early knowledge about ancient Egyptian arts and architecture was filtered through the lens of the Classical world, including ancient Rome. Prior to Napoleon's influence an early example is the Obelisk of Domitian, erected in 1651 by Bernini on top of the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in Piazza Navona, Rome, which went on to inspire several Egyptian obelisks constructed in Ireland during the early 18th century. It influenced the obelisk constructed as a family funeral memorial by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce for the Allen family at Stillorgan in Ireland in 1717, one of several Egyptian obelisks erected in Ireland during the early 18th century. Others may be found at Belan, County Kildare; and Dangan, County Meath. Conolly's Folly in County Kildare is probably the best known, albeit the least Egyptian-styled.
Egyptian buildings had also been built as garden follies. The most elaborate was probably the one built by Duke Frederick I of Württemberg in the gardens of the Château de Montbéliard. It included an Egyptian bridge across which guests walked to reach an island with an elaborate Egyptian-influenced bath house. Designed by Jean-Baptiste Kléber, later French commander in Egypt, the building had a billiards room and a bagnio.
During the 2nd half of the 18th century, with the rise of Neoclassicism, sometimes architects mixed the Ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian styles. They wanted to discover new shape and ornament ideas, rather than to be just faithful copyists of the past. [1]
New after the Napoleonic invasion was a sudden increase of the number of works of art and the fact that, for the first time, entire buildings began to be built to resemble those of ancient Egypt. In France and Britain this was at least partially inspired by successful war campaigns undertaken by each country while in Egypt.
For Napoleon's intention of cataloguing the sights and findings from the campaign, hundreds of artists and scientists were enlisted to document "antiquities, ethnography, architecture, and natural history of Egypt"; and later these notes and sketches were taken back to Europe. In 1803, the compilation of "Description de l'Égypte" was started based on these documents and lasted over twenty years. The content in this archaeological text, includes translation of the Rosetta Stone, pyramids and other scenes, arouse interests in Egyptian arts and culture in Europe and America.
According to James Stevens Curl, people started to present their imaginations about Egypt in various ways. First, combinations of crocodiles, pyramids, mummies, sphinxes, and other motifs were widely circulated. In 1800, an Egyptian opera festival was staged in Drury Lane, London, with Egyptian-themed sets and costumes. On the other hand, William Capon (1757–1827) suggested a massive pyramid for Shooter's Hill as a National Monument, while George Smith (1783–1869) designed an Egyptian-style tomb for Ralph Abercromby in Alexandria.
According to David Brownlee, the 1798 Karlsruhe Synagogue, an early building by the influential Friedrich Weinbrenner was "the first large Egyptian building to be erected since antiquity." [9] According to Diana Muir, it was "the first public building (that is, not a folly, stage set, or funeral monument) in the Egyptian revival style." [10] The ancient Egyptian influence was mainly shown in the two large engaged pylons flanking the entrance; otherwise the windows and entrance of the central section were pointed arches, and the overall plan conventional, with Neo-Gothic details.
Among the earliest monuments of the Egyptian Revival in Paris is the Fontaine du Fellah, built in 1806. It was designed by François-Jean Bralle. A well-documented example, destroyed after Napoleon was deposed, was the monument to General Louis Desaix in the Place des Victoires was built in 1810. It featured a nude statue of the general and an obelisk, both set upon an Egyptian Revival base. [11] Another example of a still standing site of Egyptian Revival is the Egyptian Gate of Tsarskoe Selo, built in 1829.
A street or passage named the Place du Caire or Foire du Caire (Fair of Cairo) was built in Paris in 1798 on the former site of the convent of the "Filles de la Charité". No. 2 Place du Caire, from 1828, is essentially in overall form a conventional Parisian structure with shops on the ground floor and apartments above, but with considerable Egyptianizing decoration including a row of massive Hathor heads and a frieze by sculptor J. G. Garraud. [12]
One of the first British buildings to show an Egyptian Revival interior was the newspaper office of the Courier on the Strand, London. It was built in 1804 and featured a cavetto (coved) cornice and Egyptian-influenced columns with palmiform capitals. [13] Other early British examples include the Egyptian Hall in London, completed in 1812, and the Egyptian Dining Room at Goodwood House (1806). There was also the Egyptian Gallery, a private room in the home of connoisseur Thomas Hope to display his Egyptian antiquities, and illustrated in engravings from his meticulous line drawings in his book Household Furniture (1807), were a prime source for the Regency style of British furnishings.
The first Egyptian Revival building in the United States was the 1824 synagogue of Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia. [16] It was followed by a series of major public buildings in the first half of the 19th century including the 1835 Moyamensing Prison, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, the 1836 Fourth District Police Station in New Orleans and the 1838 New York City jail known as the Tombs. Other public buildings in Egyptian style included the 1844 Old Whaler's Church in Sag Harbor, New York, the 1846 First Baptist Church of Essex, Connecticut, the 1845 Egyptian Building of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and the 1848 United States Custom House (New Orleans). The most notable Egyptian structure in the United States was the Washington Monument, begun in 1848, this obelisk originally featured doors with cavetto cornices and winged sun disks, later removed. The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri, is another example of Egyptian revival architecture and art. [17]
Around the 1870s, Americans started to become interested in other cultures, including those of Japan, the Middle East and North Africa, leading to a second period of interest in Egyptian revival. Egyptian motifs and symbols were commonly used in the design including elements of "gilt bronze fittings shaped like sphinxes, Egyptian scenes woven into textiles, and geometric renderings of plants such as palm fronds". [18]
Some Americans in the 1880s believed that the United States was a nation without art and therefore wanted to innovate in the field of aesthetic design to distinguish it from Egyptian pyramids and obelisks, Greek temples, and Gothic spires. But implementing such innovations was difficult, and as Clarence King said, "Till there is an American race there cannot be an American style". The creation of the American style was also hindered by the fact that the ethnic mix of the American people did not constitute a race. [19] In the time that followed, however, America's own culture was assimilating Egyptian revivalist architecture, and their tectonic significance became unstable. This may be because the United States of the early 20th century was a confident nation, and the approach of defining one's own spiritual world by establishing a connection to a great civilization like ancient Egypt faded in such a cultural context. [20]
The South African College in the then-British Cape Colony features an "Egyptian building" constructed in 1841; the Egyptian Revival building of the Cape Town Hebrew Congregation is also still standing.
The York Street Synagogue was Australia's first Egyptian revival building, followed by the Hobart Synagogue, the Launceston Synagogue and the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, all by 1850. The earliest obelisk in Australia was erected at Macquarie Place, Sydney in 1818. [21]
The expeditions that eventually led to the discovery in 1922 of Tutankhamun's tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter resulted in a 20th-century revival. The revival during the 1920s is sometimes considered to be part of the Art Deco style. This phase gave birth to the Egyptian Theatre movement, largely confined to the United States. The Egyptian Revival decorative arts style was present in furniture and other household objects, as well as in architecture.
Many notable works in Britain featured attempts by architects to translate and depict messages in Egyptian hieroglyphs. [31] Although sincere attempts at compositions, understanding of hieroglyphic syntax and semantics has advanced since they were built and errors have been discovered in many of these works. Although both public and private buildings were built in Britain in the Egyptian Revival style, the vast majority of those with attempts at accurate inscriptions were public works or on entrances to public buildings. [31]
In 1824, French classical scholar and egyptologist Jean-François Champollion published Precis du systeme hieroglyphique des anciens Egyptiens in 1824, which spurred the first notable attempts to decipher the hieroglyphic language in Britain. [31] Joseph Bonomi the Younger's inscriptions in the entrance lodges to Abney Park Cemetery in 1840 was the first real recorded attempt to compose a legible text. An Egyptologist himself, Bonomi and other scholars such as Samuel Birch, Samuel Sharpe, William Osburne, and others [31] would compose texts for a variety of other British projects throughout the nineteenth century including Marshall's Mill in Leeds, an aedicula in the grounds of Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, and as part of an Egyptian exhibition in The Crystal Palace after it was re-erected in southeast London. [31]
The content of the inscriptions varied depending on the nature of their specific projects. The Crystal Palace exhibition features several different inscriptions, with the main inscription detailing the construction and content of the hall and proclaiming it as an educational asset to the community. It ends with a message to invoke good fortune, translated as 'let it be prosperous. [31] ' Other smaller inscriptions on the cornice of the exhibit entrance feature the names of the builders and a message in Greek wishing for the health and well-being of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, [31] members of the royal family. The main inscription is accompanied by an English translation, with the characters spaced to match the position of the English words. However, Chris Elliot notes that the translation overly relies on phonetic transliteration and features some unusual characters for words that were difficult to translate into hieroglyphs. [31]
Art Deco is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s, and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look, Art Deco has influenced bridges, buildings, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects including radios and vacuum cleaners.
A pyramid is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as triangular or quadrilateral, and its lines either filled or stepped.
In European architectural sculpture, an atlas is a support sculpted in the form of a man, which may take the place of a column, a pier or a pilaster. The Roman term for such a sculptural support is telamon.
An obelisk is a tall, slender, tapered monument with four sides and a pyramidal or pyramidion top. Originally constructed by Ancient Egyptians and called tekhenu, the Greeks used the Greek term obeliskos to describe them, and this word passed into Latin and ultimately English. Though William Thomas used the term correctly in his Historie of Italie of 1549, by the late sixteenth century, Shakespeare failed to distinguish between pyramids and obelisks in his plays and sonnets. Ancient obelisks are monolithic and consist of a single stone; most modern obelisks are made of several stones.
This is a timeline of architecture, indexing the individual year in architecture pages. Notable events in architecture and related disciplines including structural engineering, landscape architecture, and city planning. One significant architectural achievement is listed for each year.
Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors.
Synagogue architecture often follows styles in vogue at the place and time of construction. There is no set blueprint for synagogues and the architectural shapes and interior designs of synagogues vary greatly. According to tradition, the Shekhinah or divine presence can be found wherever there is a minyan, a quorum, of ten. A synagogue always contains an Torah ark where the Torah scrolls are kept, called the aron qodesh by Ashkenazi Jews and the hekhal by Sephardic Jews.
A festoon is a wreath or garland hanging from two points, and in architecture typically a carved ornament depicting conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons. The motif is sometimes known as a swag when depicting fabric or linen.
Spanning over three thousand years, ancient Egypt was not one stable civilization but in constant change and upheaval, commonly split into periods by historians. Likewise, ancient Egyptian architecture is not one style, but a set of styles differing over time but with some commonalities.
The history of architecture traces the changes in architecture through various traditions, regions, overarching stylistic trends, and dates. The beginnings of all these traditions is thought to be humans satisfying the very basic need of shelter and protection. The term "architecture" generally refers to buildings, but in its essence is much broader, including fields we now consider specialized forms of practice, such as urbanism, civil engineering, naval, military, and landscape architecture.
Architectural sculpture is the use of sculptural techniques by an architect and/or sculptor in the design of a building, bridge, mausoleum or other such project. The sculpture is usually integrated with the structure, but freestanding works that are part of the original design are also considered to be architectural sculpture. The concept overlaps with, or is a subset of, monumental sculpture.
Mayan Revival is a modern architectural style popular in the Americas during the 1920s and 1930s that drew inspiration from the architecture and iconography of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures.
There have been many architectural styles used in Egyptian buildings over the centuries, including Ancient Egyptian architecture, Greco-Roman architecture, Islamic architecture, and modern architecture.
Heliopolis style is an early 20th-century architectural style developed in the new suburb of Heliopolis in eastern Cairo, Egypt. The Belgian Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company, responsible for planning and developing the new suburb, created the new style to implement an exclusive distinctiveness to the design of its buildings. This revivalist style is a synthesis of Medieval Egyptian Revival, Moorish Revival, Persian Revival, and European Neoclassical architecture styles.
In architecture and the decorative arts, a mascaron ornament is a face, usually human, sometimes frightening or chimeric, whose alleged function was originally to frighten away evil spirits so that they would not enter the building. The concept was subsequently adapted to become a purely decorative element. The most recent architectural styles to extensively employ mascarons were Beaux Arts and Art Nouveau. In addition to architecture, mascarons are used in the other applied arts.
The Luxor Obelisks are a pair of ancient Egyptian obelisks, over 3,000 years old, carved to stand either side of the portal of the Luxor Temple in the reign of Ramesses II. The right-hand (western) stone, 23 metres (75 ft) high, was moved in the 1830s to the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France, while the left-hand (eastern) obelisk remains in its location in Egypt.
The architecture of Mumbai blends Gothic, Victorian, Art Deco, Indo-Saracenic & Contemporary architectural styles. Many buildings, structures and historical monuments remain from the colonial era. Mumbai, after Miami, has the second largest number of Art Deco buildings in the world.
Egyptian Revival architecture in the British Isles is a survey of motifs derived from Ancient Egyptian sources occurring as an architectural style. Egyptian Revival architecture is comparatively rare in the British Isles. Obelisks start appearing in the 17th century, mainly as decorative features on buildings and by the 18th century they started to be used in some numbers as funerary or commemorative monuments. In the later 18th century, mausoleums started to be built based on pyramids, and sphinxes were used as decorative features associated with monuments or mounted on gate piers. The pylon, a doorway feature with spreading jambs which support a lintel, also started to be used and became popular with architects.
Ottoman architecture in Egypt, during the period after the Ottoman conquest in 1517, continued the traditions of earlier Mamluk architecture but was influenced by the architecture of the Ottoman Empire. Important new features introduced into local architecture included the pencil-style Ottoman minaret, central-domed mosques, new tile decoration and other characteristics of Ottoman architecture. Architectural patronage was reduced in scale compared to previous periods, as Egypt became an Ottoman province instead of the center of an empire. One of the most common types of building erected in Cairo during this period is the sabil-kuttab.
Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, has a unique and diverse architectural history. Encompassing government, monumental, commercial, and residential buildings, D.C. is home to some of the country's most famous and popular structures designed by some of the leading architects of their time. The popularity of the city's buildings is reflected in the findings of a 2007 poll of Americans by the American Institute of Architects, which found that six of the top 10 most popular U.S. structures were located in Washington, D.C. Overall, the poll found, 17 of the top 150 most popular structures were located in the capital.