Since I know classical architecture primarily through line drawings, I’ve understood it more as an aesthetic program than as a manner of building, as a very fine and particular language.  Now, after seeing the Pergamon Altarpiece at the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, I know that classical architecture is built from mortar and stone, and that it can possess an enveloping, elemental power.  There’s only part of the altarpiece in the gallery, a portion one third the size of the original.  Nonetheless its effect is spectacular.

I can’t justify the actions of the archaeologists who found this structure in Greece, dismantled it, shipped it to Berlin, and reassembled it here.  But I understand why they did it.  These men saw something powerful in the architecture and wanted to keep it for themselves.  What’s most surprising about the altarpiece is how fragmentary it is.  Most of the statuary in the friezes is only half present, with figures missing limbs, noses, and chunks of flesh, and what features remain abraded by centuries of weather and wear, and patched together with plaster.  There’s a terrible, tumultuous power in these fragments. They’re rich with feeling.