Architectural Antecedents

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CCI Newsletter, No. 25, May 2000

Architectural Antecedents

by Robert L. Barclay, Senior Conservator, Treatment and Development Division (Objects)

The ideology that underpins our beliefs as conservators is not as recent as we may think. The polarization between restoration and conservation first came to a focus early in the 19th century. The destruction of architectural elements that occurred in the name of restoration provided a platform for widely opposing views. Toward the middle of that century, art critic and social activist John Ruskin defined restoration as follows:

Neither by the public, nor by those who have the care of public monuments, is the true meaning of the word restoration understood. It means the most total destruction which a building can suffer:  a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered; a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed.1

The polemical tenor of this view reflects the violent antagonism between the Anti-Restoration movement, of which Ruskin and William Morris were key members, and the restorers of the school of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. In the introduction to an article in the Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle,Viollet-le-Duc wrote of restoration that:

Both the word and the thing are modern. To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it, nor to rebuild it; it means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time. 2

This polarity of views shows a maturing of awareness and signals the beginning of the rift between restoration as a creative and interpretive action and conservation as an activity aiding historical criticism. This example of the treatment of historic buildings shows that modern conservators of all disciplines live and work under a framework with long and diverse antecedents.

  1. Ruskin, J. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. New York: Wiley and Halstead, 1857, p. 161.
  2. Viollet-le-Duc, E.-E. Dictionnaire raisonné de l'architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle. Vol. 8. Paris: B. Bance, 1854, pp. 14–34.