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WORLD OF RT

The Classical Language

of

Architecture

John

Sun1merson. 139 illustrations

Sir John Summerson s

brief

account

of

l sical architecture

has every right to be called a classic itself, nd for this

edition it has been completely redesigned and the number

of illustrations more than doubled . Few b oks can have

had such an enthusiastic reaction from th Iearned and

at the same time added so much to the la man s pleasure

in his surroundings. For to appreciate the classical style,

its variety and its strength, its wit and its ccasional

eccentricity, demands instruction. The a hor, one

of the

foremost

of

English architectural historia s, takes

u

easily

from the great originals

of

Greece and R me to the

recapitulations and innovations

of

the Re aissance,

the explosive rhetoric of the aroque an the grave

statements ofNeo-classicism; thence tot e exuberant

eclecticism of the Victorians and Edward ans and, finally,

to the stripped N eo-classicism of some

f

the moderns

every age using the cla

icallanguage to r ake its

own

statement.

Thames and Hudson

Revised and enlarged edition

On

r

ht

cnvcr:

Courty;lrd

of

Duel

l :lb\ l .

Urhino.

l,horo

ISBN 0 500 20177 3

: 1

7/26/2019 06. John Summerson - Classical Language of Architecture

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Sir John Summerson is

among thc;: g eatest of.English architecturJ historians.

Curator

of Si r ohn Soane's Muselll11 from 1945 until his

rerircm

ent

in 1

84,

he had been Slade l rofessor

of

Fine

Art at

both

Ox rd and Cambr idge and had lectured on rhe

history ofarchit cture at Birkbeck College, London. He died

1992

Of his many books, the best k nown are probably

Cc