Re: Re: reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

@gunter wrote:

That’s the stock Watkin argument . . . . . and it just doesn’t stand up.

You’ve posted hundreds of pictures that show how renaissance architecture retreived classicism slowly and painstakingly and always infused it with invention and creativity.

Yes the the whole renaisance movement aspired to re-learn what the ansients could teach and there was an aspiration to re-create the perceived purity of classical architecture, but every step taken was demonstably of it’s own time. Bramente built on Michelozzo, who built on Alberti who built on Brunelleschi and so on. The story is one of forward progression guided by an ever closer study of the proportions and details of classical remains, it’s the story of rediscovery, it’s not the story of reproduction.

You simply cannot equate the enormous intellectual investment of the renaissance in redescovering the classical language of architecture, to some guy photocopying a set of church plans in South Bend, Indiana.

Gunter

I was not actually quoting Watkin. It was a thought that struck myself. Put another way, is it impossible to retrieve the principles of classical architecture in contemporary circumstances and infuse them with creativity and invention? Or, are we posit that for some reason we are chained exclusively to modernism?

From the point of view of historiography, I am not so sure that I would would subscribe to the kind of historical “progressivism” with which you seem view the renaissance.