VI. POINTED ITALIAN GOTHIC
CONTENTS.
Fresco paintings—Churches at Vercelli, Asti, Verona, and Lucca—Cathedral at Siena—Sta. Maria, Florence—Church at Chiaravalle—St. Petronio, Bologna—Cathedral at Milan—Certosa, near Pavia—Duomo at Ferrara.
CHRONOLOGY.
DATES. Bologna independent A.D. 1112 Countess Matilda at Florence 1115 Obizzo d’Este at Ferrara 1184 Enrico Dandolo takes Constantinople 1203 War between Genoa and Venice 1205 Azzo d’Este at Ferrara 1208 Martino della Scala at Verona 1259 Martino delle Torre at Milan 1260 Visconti Lord of Milan 1277 Taddeo de Pepoli at Bologna 1334 Conspiracy of Marino Faliero 1355 Gian Galeazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan 1395 Verona ceded to Venice 1409 Cosmo de’ Medici 1434
Before the commencement of the 13th century, the Italians had acquired such mastery over the details of their round-arched style, and had worked it into such originality and completeness, that it is surprising that they should so easily have abandoned it for that form of Pointed Gothic which they afterwards adopted. It is true the Italians never rose to the conception of such buildings as the great Rhenish cathedrals, like those of Spires and Worms, or the old churches at Cologne; nor did they perhaps even rival the quasi-classical grace and elegance of the Provençal churches; but at Verona, Modena, and indeed throughout the North of Italy, they had elaborated a complete round-arched style, all the details of which were not only appropriate and elegant, but seemed capable of indefinite development in the direction in which they were proceeding. They had also before their eyes the Romanesque style of Pisa and Lucca with all its elegance, and the example of Rome, where the architects steadily refused to acknowledge the pointed arch during the whole of the Mediæval period. Yet in the beginning of the 13th century— say 1220, when the cathedrals of Amiens, Salisbury, and Toledo were designed—Italy too was smitten with admiration for the pointed arch, and set to work to adapt it to her tastes and uses.
It would be difficult to account for this, were we not aware how deeply the feelings that gave rise to the Ghibelline faction were rooted in the Italian soil. In all the cities, except Rome, the cause of the Ghibellines was throughout the Middle Ages identified with that of freedom and local independence, in opposition to that of the Guelfs, which symbolised the supremacy of the Pope and the clerical party. Knowing how strenuously this was resisted, we naturally expect to find it expressed in the architecture of the country. Two, indeed, of the great churches of Italy, Assisi (1228) and Milan (1385), were erected by Germans in the German style of the day; but these are exceptional. The form which the pointed-arched style took on its introduction, was that of adaptation to the Italian style, in a manner which the Italians thought more consonant with beauty and convenience than that adopted north of the Alps. In this they were certainly mistaken. The elegance of the details employed by a refined and cultivated people, and based on classical traditions, goes far to redeem, in most instances, the defects of their designs; but they never grasped the true principles of Gothic art, and the fatal facility of the pointed arch led them more astray after mechanical clevernesses than even the Germans. Still, it is an original style, and, however imperfect, is well worthy of study.
Before proceeding to describe the style more in detail, it may be well to point out one of the principal causes which led to the more marked features of difference between the Gothic architecture of Italy and that of Germany and France. This was the distaste of the Italians for the employment of painted glass, or at least their want of appreciation of its beauties when combined with architecture.
It will be explained in a future chapter how all-important painted glass was to the elaboration of the Gothic style. But for its introduction, the architecture of France would bear no resemblance to what it was, and is. In Italy, indeed, the people loved polychromy, but always of the opaque class. They delighted to cover the walls of their churches with frescoes and mosaics, to enrich their floors with the most gorgeous pavements, and to scatter golden stars over the blue ground of their vaults; but rarely, if ever, did they fill, or design to fill, their windows with painted glass. Perhaps the glare of an Italian sun may have tended to render its brilliancy intolerable; but more probably the absence of stained glass is owing to its incompatibility with fresco-painting, the effect of which would be entirely destroyed by the superior brightness of the transparent material. The Italians were not prepared to relinquish the old and favourite mode of decoration in which they so excelled. This adherence to the ancient method of ornamentation enabled them, in the 15th and 16th centuries, to surpass all the world in the art of painting, but it was fatal to the proper appreciation of the pointed style, and to its successful introduction into the land.
The first effect of this tendency was that the windows in Italian churches were small, and generally devoid of tracery, with all its beautiful accompaniments. The walls, too, being consequently solid, were sufficient, by their own weight, to abut the thrust of the arches: so that neither projecting or flying buttresses nor pinnacles were needed. The buildings were thus deprived externally of all the aspiring vertical lines so characteristic of true Gothic. The architects, to relieve the monotony arising from the want of these features, were forced to recur to the horizontal cornices of the classical times, and to cover their walls with a series of panelling which, however beautiful in itself, is mere ornament—both unmeaning and inconsistent.
Internally, too, having no clerestory to make room for, and no constructive necessities to meet, they jumped to the conclusion that the best design is that which covers the greatest space with the least expenditure of materials, and the least encumbrance of the floor. With builders this is a golden rule, but with architects it is about the worst that can possibly be adopted. The Germans were not free from this fault, but the Italians carried it still further. If on four or five piers they could support the vault of a whole nave, they never dreamed of introducing more. A French architect, though superior in constructive skill, would probably have introduced eight or ten in the same space. An Italian aimed at carrying the vaults of the side-aisles to the same height as that of the nave, if he could. A Northern architect knew how to keep the two in their due proportion, whereby he obtained greater height and greater width in the same bulk, and an appearance of height and width greater still, by the contrast between the parts, at the same time that he gave his building a character of strength and stability perhaps even more valuable than that of size.
In the same manner the Northern architects, while they grouped their shafts together, kept them so distinct as to allow every one to bear its proportional part of the load, and perform its allotted task. The Italians never comprehended this principle, but merely stuck pilasters back to back, in imitation of the true architects, producing an unmeaning and ugly pier. The same incongruities occur in every part and every detail. It is a style copied without understanding, and executed without feeling. The elegance of the sculptured foliage and other details sometimes goes far to redeem these faults; for the Italians, though bad architects, were always beautiful carvers, and, as a Southern people, were free from the vulgarities sometimes apparent farther north, and never fell into the wild barbarisms which too often disfigure even the best buildings on this side of the Alps. Besides, when painting is joined to sculpture in churches, the architecture may come to occupy a subordinate position, and thus escape the censure it deserves. Unfortunately there are only two examples of any importance in this style that retain all their painted decorations—St. Francis at Assisi, and the Certosa near Pavia. From this circumstance they are perhaps the most admired in Italy. In others the spaces left for colour are still plain and blank. We see the work of the architect unaided by the painting which was intended to set it off, and we cannot but condemn it as displaying at once bad taste and ignorance of the true Gothic feeling.
One of the earliest, or perhaps the very first Italian edifice into which the pointed arch was introduced, is the fine church of St. Andrea at Vercelli, commenced in the year 1219 by the Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, and finished in three years. This prelate, having been long legate in England, brought back with him an English architect called, it is said, Brigwithe, and entrusted him with the erection of this church in his native place.
In plan, it is certainly very like an English church, terminating squarely towards the east, and with side chapels to the transepts, arranged very much as we find them at Buildwas, Kirkstall, and other churches of this class and size, only that here they are polygonal, which was hardly ever the case in England. But with the plan all influences of the English architect seem to have ceased, and the structure is in purely Italian style. Externally the pointed arch nowhere appears, all the doors and windows being circular-headed; while internally it is confined to the pier-arches of the nave and the vaulting of the roof. The façade is flanked at its angles by two tall, slender, square towers; and the intersection of the nave and transept is covered by one of those elegant octagonal domes which the Italians knew so well how to use, and which is in fact the only original feature in their designs. The external form of this church is interesting, as displaying the germs of much that two centuries afterwards was so greatly expanded by a German architect in the design of Milan cathedral.
A few years later, in 1229, a church was commenced at Asti, the tower of which was finished in 1266. This allowed time for a more complete development of the pointed style, which here prevails not only internally, but externally. Tall pointed windows appear in the flanks, and even the doorways assume that form, in their canopies, if not in their openings. The porch (Woodcut No. 493) is a later addition, and a characteristic specimen of the style during the 14th century. This church is also one of the earliest examples in which those elegant terra-cotta cornices of small intersecting arches seem to have been brought to perfection.
The most remarkable church of this age is that of St. Francis at Assisi, commenced in 1228, and finished, in all essentials at least, in 1253. It is said to have been built by a German named Jacob, or Jacopo. Certainly no French or English architect would have designed a double church of this class, though, on the other hand, no Italian could have drawn details so purely Northern as those of the upper church. In the lower church there are hardly any mouldings to mark the style, but its character is certainly rather German than Italian. This church depends for its magnificence and character much more on painting than on architecture. In the first place it is small, the upper church being only 225 ft. long, by 36 in. width; and though the lower one has side-aisles which extend the width to 100 ft., yet the upper church is only 60 ft. in height, and the lower about 30, so that it is far too small for much architectural magnificence. None of its details are equal to those of contemporary churches on this side of the Alps. The whole church is covered with fresco paintings in great variety and of the most beautiful character, which justly render it one of the most celebrated and admired of all Italy. On this side of the Alps without its frescoes, it would hardly attract any attention. It is invaluable as an example of the extent to which the polychromatic decoration may be profitably carried, and of the true mode of doing it; and also as an illustration of the extent to which the Italians allowed a foreign style and mode of ornamentation to be introduced into their country.
One of the purest and most perfect types of an Italian Gothic church is that of Sta. Anastasia at Verona, commenced apparently in 1260. It is not large, being only 285 ft. in length externally; but its arrangements are very complete, and very perfect if looked at from an Italian point of view. The square of the vault of the nave is the modulus, instead of that of the aisles, as in true Gothic churches: owing to which the pier-arches are further apart than a true artist would have placed them; there are also no buttresses externally, but only pilasters. The consequence of this is, that the arches have to be tied in with iron rods at the springing, which internally adds very much to the appearance of weakness, caused in the first instance by the wide spacing and general tenuity. These bad effects are aggravated by the absence of a string-course at the springing of the vault; and by the substitution of a circular hole for the triforium, and a hexafoiled opening of very insignificant dimensions for the glorious clerestory windows of Northern churches. Altogether, though we cannot help being pleased with the spaciousness and general elegance of design, it is impossible not to feel how very inferior it is to that of churches on this side the Alps.
The church of San Martino at Lucca, built about a century after Sta. Anastasia (middle of 14th century), presents a strikingly happy compromise between the two styles. The pier-arches are still too wide—23 ft. in the clear; but the defect is remedied to some extent by the employment of circular instead of pointed arches, and the triforium is all that can be desired; the clerestory, however, is as insignificant as it must be where the sun is so brilliant and painted glass inadmissible. It would be easy to point out other defects; but, taking it altogether, there are few more elegant churches than this, and hardly one in Italy that so perfectly meets all the exigencies for which it was designed.
The cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto (the former commenced in 1243, the latter in 1290) are perhaps, taken altogether, the most successful specimens of Italian pointed Gothic. They are those at least in which the system is carried to the greatest extent without either foreign aid or the application of distinctly foreign details. These two buildings, moreover, both retain their façades as completed by their first architects, while the three great churches of this style—the cathedrals of Florence, Bologna, and Milan—were in this respect left unfinished, with many others of the smaller churches of Italy. The church at Siena illustrates forcibly the tendency of the Italian architects to adhere to the domical forms of the old Etruscans, which the Romans amplified to such an extent, and the Byzantines made peculiarly their own. I cannot but repeat my regret that the Italians alone, of all the Western Mediæval builders, showed any predilection for this form of roof. On this side of the Alps it could have been made the most beautiful of architectural forms. In Italy there is no instance of more than moderate success—nothing, indeed, to encourage imitation. Even the example now before us is no exception to these remarks, though one of the boldest efforts of Italian architects. In plan it ought to have been an octagon, but that apparently would have made it too large for their skill to execute, so they met the difficulty by adopting a hexagon, which, though producing a certain variety of perspective, fits awkwardly with the lines of columns, and twists the vaults to an unpleasant extent. Still, a dome of moderate height, and 58 ft. in diameter, covering the centre of the church, and with sufficient space around to give it dignity, is a noble and pleasing feature, the merit of which it is impossible to deny. Combined with the rich colouring and gorgeous furniture of the church, it makes up a whole of great beauty. The circular pier-arches, however, and the black and white stripes by which the exterior is marked, detract considerably from the effect of the whole—at least in the eyes of strangers, though the Italians still consider it a beauty. The façade of this cathedral is represented in Woodcut No. 498. It consists of three great portals, the arches of which are equal in size, though the centre doorway is larger than those at the sides. Above is the invariable circular window of the Italian architects, and the whole is crowned by steep triangular gables. Beneath the cathedral, or rather under the choir, is the ancient baptistery, now the church of St. John the Baptist; its front is in a much purer style of Gothic than the cathedral.[310]
The carved architectural ornaments of the façade are rich and elaborate in the extreme, though figured sculpture is used to a much less extent than in Northern portals of the same age. It is also observable that the strong horizontal lines do not harmonise with the aspiring character of pointed architecture.
The cathedral of Orvieto is smaller and simpler, and less rich in its decorations, than that at Siena, with the exception of its façade, which is adorned with sculpture and painting. Indeed the three-gabled front may be considered the typical one for churches of this class. The façades intended to have been applied to the churches at Florence, Bologna, Milan, and elsewhere, were no doubt very similar to that represented in Woodcut No. 498. As a frontispiece, if elaborately sculptured and painted, it is not without considerable appropriateness and even beauty; but, as an architectural object, it is infinitely inferior to the double-towered façades of the Northern cathedrals, or even to those with only one great tower in the centre. It has besides the defect of not expressing what is behind it; the central gable being always higher than the roof, and the two others merely ornamental appendages. Indeed, like the Italian Gothic buildings generally, it depended on painting, sculpture, and carving for its effect, far more than on architectural design properly so called.
Among the greatest and most complete examples of Italian Gothic is the church of Sta. Maria dei Fiori, the cathedral of Florence, one of the largest and finest churches produced in the Middle Ages—as far as mere grandeur of conception goes, perhaps the very best, though considerably marred in execution from defects of style, which are too apparent in every part.
The building of the church was commenced in the year 1294 or 1298 (it is not quite clear which), from the designs and under the superintendence of Arnolfo di Lapo, for unfortunately in this style we know the names of all the architects, and all the churches show traces of the caprice and of the misdirected efforts of individuals, instead of the combined national movement which produced such splendid results in France and England. It is not known how far Arnolfo had carried the building when he died, in 1310, but probably up to the springing of the vaults. After this the works proceeded more leisurely, but the nave and smaller domes of the choir were no doubt completed as we now find them in the first twenty years of the 14th century. The great octagon remained unfinished, and, if covered in at all, it was only by a wooden roof of domical outline externally, which seems to be that represented in the fresco in the convent of San Marco, till Brunelleschi commenced the present dome in 1420, and completed it in all essential parts before his death, which happened in 1444. The building may therefore be considered as essentially contemporary with the cathedral of Cologne, which it very nearly equals in size (its area being 84,802 ft., while that of Cologne is estimated at 91,000), and, as far as mere conception of plan goes, there can be little doubt but that the Florentine cathedral far surpasses its German rival. Nothing indeed can be finer than its general ground-plan. A vast nave leads to an enormous dome, extending into the triapsal arrangement so common in the early churches of Cologne, and which was repeated in the last and greatest effort of the Middle Ages, or rather the first of the new school—the great church of St. Peter at Rome. In the Florentine church all these parts are better subordinated and proportioned than in any other example, and the mode in which the effect increases and the whole expands as we approach from the entrance to the sanctum is unrivalled. All this, alas! is utterly thrown away in the execution. Like all inexperienced architects, Arnolfo seems to have thought that largeness of parts would add to the greatness of the whole, and thus used only four great arches in the whole length of his nave, giving the central aisle a width of 55 ft. clear. The whole width is within 10 ft. of that of Cologne, and the height about the same; and yet, in appearance, the height is about half, and the breadth less than half, owing to the better proportion of the parts and to the superior appropriateness in the details on the part of the German cathedral. At Florence the details are positively ugly. The windows of the side-aisles are small and misplaced, those of the clerestory mere circular holes. The proportion of the aisles one to another is bad, the vaults ill-formed, and altogether a colder and less effective design was not produced in the Middle Ages. The triapsal choir is not so objectionable as the nave, but there are large plain spaces that now look cold and flat; the windows are too few and small, and there is a gloom about the whole which is very unsatisfactory. It is nearly certain that the original intention was to paint the walls, and not to colour the windows, so that these defects are hardly chargeable to the original design, and would not be apparent now were it not that in a moment of mistaken enthusiasm the Florentines were seized with a desire to imitate the true style of Gothic art, and rival Northern cathedrals in the glory of their painted glass. This, in a church whose windows were designed only of such dimensions as were sufficient to admit the requisite quantity of white light, was fatal. Notwithstanding the beauty of the glass itself, which seems to have been executed at Lubeck, 1434, from Italian designs, it is so completely out of place that it only produces irritation instead of admiration, and has certainly utterly destroyed the effect and meaning of the interior it was intended to adorn.
Externally the façade was never finished,[311] and we can only fancy what was intended from the analogy of Siena and Orvieto. The flanks of the nave are without buttresses or pinnacles, and, with only a few insignificant windows, would be painfully flat except for a veneer of coloured marbles disposed in panels over the whole surface. For an interior or a pavement such a mode of decoration is admissible; but it is so unconstructive, so evidently a mere decoration, that it gives a weakness to the whole, and most unsatisfactory appearance to so large a building. This is much less apparent at the east end, where the outline is so broken, and the main lines of the construction so plainly marked, that the mere filling in is comparatively unimportant. This is the most meritorious part of the church, and, so far as it was carried up according to the original design, is extremely beautiful. Even the plainness and flatness of the nave serve as a foil to set off the varying outline of the choir. Above the line of the cornice of the side-aisles there is nothing that can be said to belong to the original design except the first division of the drum of the dome, which follows the lines of the clerestory. It has long been a question what Arnolfo originally intended, and especially how he meant to cover the great octagonal space in the centre. All knowledge of his intentions seems to have been lost within a century after his death: at least, in the accounts of the proceedings of the commission which resulted in the adoption of Brunelleschi’s design for the dome, no reference is made to any original design as then existing, and no one appears to have known how Arnolfo intended to finish his work. Judging from the structure as far as he carried it, and with the knowledge we now possess of the Italian architecture of that age, we can easily conjecture what his design for its completion may have been. Internally, it probably consisted of a dome something like the present, but flatter, springing from the cornice, 40 ft. lower than the present one, and pierced with large openings on each of its eight faces.
Externally, two courses were open to him. The first and most obvious was to hide the dome entirely under a wooden roof, as is done in St. George’s, Thessalonica (Woodcut No. 305), or in the baptistery in front of the cathedral, and is done in half the baptisteries in Italy—as at Parma, for instance (Woodcut No. 514). Had he done this, the span of the dome might have been very much larger, without involving any constructive difficulties, and the three towers over the choir and transepts might have sufficed to relieve its external appearance sufficiently for architectural effect. On the whole, however, I am rather inclined to believe that something more ambitious than this was originally proposed, and that the design was more like that of Chiaravalle near Milan, built in 1221, and one of the most complete and perfect of this class of dome now existing in Italy. Its external appearance may be judged of from Woodcut 502, and its constructive details from the section, Woodcut No. 503.
If the basement is sufficiently solid—and that at Florence is more than sufficient for any superstructure of the sort—it is evident the architect can dispose of such masses of masonry, that he can counteract any thrust or tendency to spread that can exist in any dome of this sort; and instead of being only 136 ft. across, 150 or 160 might easily have been attempted. Instead of 375 ft., which is the height of the present dome from the floor to the top of the cross externally, it might even with the present diameter have been carried up to at least 500 ft., or as high as the church was long,—70 to 100 ft. above the height of St. Peter’s at Rome.
Had this been done, the three smaller semi-domes must have been intended to be crowned with miniature octagonal spires of the same class with the great dome, and between these the vast substructures show that it was intended to carry up four great spires, probably to a height of 400 ft.
Had all this been done (and something very like it seems certainly to have been intended), neither Cologne Cathedral, nor any church in Europe, ancient or modern, would have been comparable to this great and glorious apse. As it is, the plain, heavy, simple outlined dome of Brunelleschi acts like an extinguisher, crushing all the lower part of the composition, and both internally and externally destroying all harmony between the parts. It has deprived us of the only chance that ever existed of witnessing the effect of a great Gothic dome; not indeed such a dome as might with the same dimensions have been executed on this side of the Alps, but still in the spirit, and with much of the poetry, which gives such value to the conceptions of the builders in those days.
But for this change of plan, the ambition of the Florentines might have been in some measure satisfied, whose instructions to the architect were, that their cathedral “should surpass everything that human industry or human power had conceived of great and beautiful.”
About a century later (1390), the Bolognese determined on the erection of a monster cathedral, which, in so far as size went, would have been more than double that at Florence. According to the plans that have come down to us, it was to have been about 800 ft. long and 525 wide across the transepts; at the intersection was to have been a dome 130 ft. in diameter, or only 6 ft. less than that at Florence; and the width of both nave and transepts was to have been 183 ft.: so that the whole would have covered about 212,000 ft., or nearly the same area as St. Peter’s at Rome, and three times that of any French cathedral! Of this vast design, only about one-third (Woodcut No. 504), 74,000 sq. ft., was ever carried out; but that fragment is quite sufficient to enable us to judge of the merits or defects of this style in its state of greatest perfection. The only other building in the same style on a sufficient scale to admit of comparison with this is the nave of the cathedral at Florence just described, but that is nearly as may be only half of its dimensions, or 36,000 ft. as compared with 72,000. The chapels, too, at Bologna add practically a fifth aisle, giving great variety and richness to the perspective. The varied heights and proportions of the central and side aisles are singularly pleasing, and there being six arches at Bologna instead of only four as at Florence, and twelve side chapels where none exist in the other example, go far to redeem the lean mechanical look which is the great defect of this style. The great advantage San Petronio has over the Florentine church is in the size and number of its windows, and these not being filled with stained glass the whole church has a bright and pleasing effect that contrasts most favourably with the gloom of its great rival. Notwithstanding this, the nave of San Petronio cannot be considered as a successful work of art. In the first place it is too mechanically perfect. The area of the points of support as compared with the voids is, as far as can be made out from such plans as exist, about one-twelfth, which would be a merit in a railway station, but something more is wanted in a monumental building. In the next there is a singular deficiency of either constructive or constructed ornament. On this side of the Alps an architect with vaulting shafts, string-courses, galleries, and fifty other expedients, would have relieved the bareness of the walls. At Bologna it probably was intended they should be painted, and this never having been executed may account for most of its apparent defects.
In Gothic architecture one of two systems seems indispensable: either painted glass with strongly-marked carved mouldings over the whole of the interior, or white glass with flat surfaces suitable for opaque paintings. Few cathedrals are complete in both respects at the present day, but in their imperfect state the Northern system has an immense advantage over the Southern. The architecture of our cathedrals is complete and beautiful even in ruins. An Italian church without its coloured decoration is only a framed canvas without harmony or meaning. Were San Petronio as complete in its coloured decoration as the Certosa at Pavia or Monreale at Palermo, it might stand a fair competition with the best interiors on this side of the Alps. As it is, it is only a splendid example of ornamental but unornamented construction, and, as was attempted to be explained in the Introduction, both elements are wanted for success in architectural design.
The exterior of the church is in too unfinished a state to enable us to judge of what its effect might have been if completed, but many of its details, especially of the façade, are of very great beauty, in many respects superior to what is to be found on this side of the Alps. Its central dome, however, never could have been a feature worthy of so vast a church. In diameter it is equal, or nearly so, to that of Florence, but the points of support are so small, and so far apart, that it must have been mainly if not wholly of wood. No such towering structure as Arnolfo’s vast substructures show that he intended, could have stood on the slim supports of the Bolognese church.[312]
The cathedral of Milan—at once the most remarkable and one of the largest and richest of all the churches erected in the Middle Ages—was commenced in the year 1385, by order of Gian Galeazzo, first Duke of Milan, and consecrated in 1418, at which date all the essential parts seem to have been completed, though the central spire was not finished till about the year 1440, by Brunelleschi.
The design is said to have been furnished by a German architect, Heinrich Arlez von Gemunden, or as the Italians call him, “da Gamondia,”—a statement which is corroborated by the fact that the details and many of the forms are essentially Northern; but it is equally certain that he was not allowed to control the whole, for all the great features of the church are as thoroughly Italian as the details are German: it is therefore by no means improbable that Marco da Campione, as the Italians assert, or some other native artist, was joined with him or placed over him.
In size it is, except Seville, the largest of all Mediæval cathedrals, covering 107,782 ft. In material it is the richest, being built wholly of white marble, which is scarcely the case with any other church, large or small; and in decoration it is the most gorgeous—the whole of the exterior is covered with tracery, and the amount of carving and statuary lavished on its pinnacles and spires is unrivalled in any other building of Europe. It is also built wholly (with the exception of the façade) according to one design. Yet, with all these advantages, the appearance of this wonderful building is not satisfactory to any one who is familiar with the great edifices on this side of the Alps. Cologne is certainly more beautiful; Rheims, Chartres, Amiens, and Bourges leave a far more satisfactory impression on the mind; and even the much smaller church of St. Ouen will convey far more pleasure to the true artist than this gorgeous temple.
The cause of all this it is easy to understand, since all or nearly all its defects arise from the introduction of Italian features into a Gothic building; or rather, perhaps, it should be said, from a German architect being allowed to ornament an Italian cathedral. Taking the contemporary cathedral of St. Petronio at Bologna as our standard of comparison, it will be seen that the sections (Woodcuts Nos. 505, 507) are almost identical both in dimensions and in form, except that at Milan the external range is a real aisle instead of a series of side chapels; but, at the same time, it will be perceived that the German system prevailed in doubling the number of the piers between the nave and side-aisles. So far, therefore, the German architect saved the church. The two small clerestories, however, still remain; and although the design avoids the mullionless little circles of Bologna, there is only space for small openings, which more resemble the windows of an attic than of a clerestory. The greater quantity of light being thus introduced by the tall windows of the outer aisle, the appearance is that of a building lighted from below, which is fatal to architectural effect.
The model still preserved on the spot shows that the German architect designed great portals at each end of the transepts. This, however, was overruled in favour of two small polygonal apses. Instead of the great octagonal dome which an Italian would have placed upon the intersection of the whole width of the nave and transepts, German influence has confined it to the central aisle, which is perhaps more to be regretted than any other mistake in the building. The choir is neither a French chevet nor a German or Italian apse, but a compromise between the two, a French circlet of columns enclosed in a German polygonal termination. This part of the building, with its simple forms and three glorious windows, is perhaps an improvement on either of the models of which it is compounded.
This is the nearest approach to the French chevet arrangement to be found in all Italy. It is extremely rare in that country to find an aisle running round the choir, and opening into it, or with the circlet of apsidal chapels which is so universal in France. The Italian church is not, in fact, derived from a combination of a circular Eastern church with a Western rectangular nave, but is a direct copy from the old Roman basilica.
The details of the interior of Milan cathedral are almost wholly German (Woodcut No. 508). The great capitals of the pillars, with their niches and statues, are the only compromise between the ordinary German form and the great deep ugly capitals—fragments, in fact, of classical entablatures—which disfigure the cathedrals of Florence and Bologna, and so many other Italian churches. Had the ornamentation of these been carried up to the springing of the vault, they would have been unexceptionable; as it is, with all their richness, their effect is unmeaning.
Externally, the appearance is in outline not unlike that of Sta. Maria dei Fiori; the apse is rich, varied, and picturesque, and the central dome (excepting the details) similar, though on a smaller scale, to what I believe to have been the original design of the Florentine church. The nave is nearly as flat as at Florence, the clerestory not being visible; but the forest of pinnacles and flying buttresses and the richness of the ornamentation go far to hide that defect. The façade was left unfinished, as was so often the case with the great churches of Italy. Pellegrini was afterwards employed to finish it, and a model of his design is still preserved. It is fortunate that his plan was not carried out. The façade was finished, as we now see it, from the designs of Amati, by order of Napoleon. It is commonplace, as might be expected from its age, but inoffensive. The doorways are part of Pellegrini’s design, and the Mediæval forms being placed over those of the cinque-cento, produce a strangely incongruous effect. For the west front several original designs are still preserved. One of these, with two small square towers at the angles, as at Vercelli and elsewhere, was no doubt the Italian design. The German one (Woodcut No. 509) is preserved by Bassi:[314] had this been executed, the façade would have been about one-third (viz. 100 ft.) wider than that of Cologne. Had the height of the towers been in the same proportion, they would have been the tallest in the world. In that case the effect here, as at Cologne, would have been to shorten and overpower the rest of the building to a painful extent. A design midway between the two, with spires rising to the same height as the central one, or about 360 ft., would perhaps have the happiest effect. At any rate, the want of some such features is greatly felt in the building as it stands.
The Certosa, near Pavia, was commenced about the same date (1396) as the cathedral at Milan. It is seldom that we find two buildings in the Middle Ages so close to one another in date and locality, and yet so dissimilar. There is no instance of such an occurrence on this side of the Alps, till modern times; and it shows that in those days the Italians were nearly as devoid of any distinct principles of architecture as we have since become.
The great difference between Pavia and Milan is that the former shows no trace of foreign influence. It is as purely Italian as St. Petronio, and by no means so complete or consistent in design. Nothing, in fact, can be more painful than the disproportion of the parts, the bad drawing of the details, the malformation of the vaults, and the meanness of the windows; though all these defects are completely hidden by the most gorgeous colouring, and by furniture of such richness as to be almost unrivalled. So attractive are these two features to the majority of spectators, and so easily understood, that nine visitors out of ten are delighted with the Certosa, and entirely forget its miserable architecture in the richness and brilliancy of its decorations.
Externally the architecture is better than in the interior. From its proximity to Pavia, it retains its beautiful old galleries under the roof. Its circular apses, with their galleries, give to this church, for the age to which it belongs, a peculiar character, harmonising well with the circular-headed form, which nearly all the windows and openings present. Even in the interior there are far more circular than pointed arches.
The most beautiful and wonderful part of the building is the façade. This was begun in 1473, and is one of the best specimens in Italy of the Renaissance style. It would hardly, therefore, be appropriate to mention it here, were it not that the dome over the intersection of the nave and transepts is of the same age and style, but reproduces so exactly (except in details) what we fancy the Mediæval Italian Gothic dome to have been, that it may be considered as a feature of the earlier ages. Referring to Woodcut No. 502, it will be seen how like it is to that of Chiaravalle in outline. It is less tall, however, and, if translated into the details of the great church at Florence, would fit perfectly on the basement there prepared for such a feature.
Like many other churches in Northern Italy, the principal parts of the Certosa are built in brick, and the ornamental details executed in terra-cotta. Some of the latter, especially in the cloisters, are as beautiful as any executed in stone in any part of Italy during the Middle Ages; and their perfect preservation shows how suitable is the material for such purposes. It may not be appropriate for large details or monumental purposes, but for the minor parts and smaller details, when used as the Italians in the Middle Ages used it, terra-cotta is as legitimate as any material anywhere used for building purposes; and in situations like the alluvial plains of the Po, where stone is with difficulty obtainable, its employment was not only judicious but most fortunate in its results.
It would be a tedious and unprofitable task to attempt to particularise all the churches which were erected in this style in Italy, as hardly one of them possesses a single title to admiration beyond the very vulgar one of size. To this Santa Croce, at Florence, adds its association with the great men who lie buried beneath it, and Sta. Maria Novella can plead the circumstance—exceptional in that city—of possessing a façade;[315] but neither of these has anything to redeem its innate ugliness in the eyes of an architect.
There are two great churches of this period at Venice, the San Giovanni e Paolo (1246-1420) and the Frari (1250); they are large and richly ornamented fabrics, but are both entirely destitute of architectural merit.
A much more beautiful building is the cathedral at Como, the details of which are so elegant and so unobtrusively used as in great measure to make up for the bad arrangement and awkward form of the whole. In design it is, however, inferior to that of the Duomo at Ferrara (Woodcut No. 511). The latter does not display the richness of the façades of Siena or Orvieto, nor the elegance of that last named; but among the few Italian façades which exist, it stands pre-eminent for sober propriety of design and the good proportions of all its parts. The repose caused by the solidity of the lower portions, and the gradual increase of ornament and lightness as we ascend, all combine to render it harmonious and pleasing. It is true it wants the aspiring character and bold relief of Northern façades; but these do not belong to the style, and it must suffice if we meet in this style with a moderate amount of variety, undisturbed by any very prominent instances of bad taste.
The true type of an Italian façade is well illustrated in the view of St. Francesco at Brescia (Woodcut No. 512), which may be considered the germ of all that followed. Whether the church had three aisles or five, the true Italian façade in the age of pointed architecture was always a modification or extension of this idea, though introduced with more or less Gothic feeling according to the circumstances of its erection.
At Florence there is a house or warehouse, converted into a church,—Or (horreum) San Michele, which has attracted a good deal of attention, but more on account of its curious ornaments than for beauty of design—which latter it does not, and indeed can hardly be expected to, possess. The little chapel of Sta. Maria della Spina at Pisa owes its celebrity to the richness of its niches and canopies, and to the sculpture which they contain. In this the Italians were always at home, and probably always surpassed the Northern nations. It was far otherwise with architecture, properly so called. This, in the age of the pointed style, was in Italy so cold and unmeaning, that we do not wonder at the readiness with which the Italians returned to the classical models. They are to be forgiven in this, but we cannot so easily forgive our forefathers, who abandoned a style far more beautiful than that of Italy to copy one which they had themselves infinitely surpassed; and this only because the Italians, unable either to comSprehend or imitate the true principles of pointed art, were forced to abandon its practice. Unfortunately for us, they had in this respect in that age sufficient influence to set the fashion to all Europe.
Of late work in Dalmatia the most remarkable is the Cathedral of Sebenico (described in Mr. Jackson’s work), built entirely in stone and marble, and without any brick or timber in its construction. It is a cruciform building, covered over by a waggon-vault of stone, visible both inside and outside. It was commenced from the design of Messer Ambrosia, a Venetian architect, in 1435, to whom may be attributed the nave and aisles up to the string-course above nave arches. The work was continued after 1441 by another architect, Messer Giorgio, also from Venice, who died in 1475, leaving the building still incomplete. The style of the work is late Venetian Gothic, influenced in its later portions by the Renaissance revival. The cloisters of the Badia at Curzola, and of the Dominican and Franciscan convents at Ragusa, are also beautiful specimens of late Italian Gothic.
END OF VOL. I.
----------------------------
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
A
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE
IN ALL COUNTRIES,
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY.
BY JAMES FERGUSSON, D.C.L., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRIT. ARCHITECTS, &c. &c. &c.
IN FIVE VOLUMES.—VOL. II.
THIRD EDITION.
EDITED BY R. PHENÉ SPIERS, F.S.A., FELLOW ROYAL INST. BRITISH ARCHITECTS.
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, 1893. The right of Translation is reserved.
FERGUSSON’S ARCHITECTURE.
Third Edition, with 330 Illustrations, 2 vols., medium 8vo, 31s. 6d.
A HISTORY OF THE MODERN STYLES OF ARCHITECTURE.
By the late JAMES FERGUSSON, F.R.S.
A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Special Account of the Architecture of America.
By ROBERT KERR, Professor of Architecture at King’s College, London.
---------------------
BY THE SAME.
New and Cheaper Edition, with 400 Illustrations, medium 8vo, 31s. 6d.
A HISTORY OF INDIAN AND EASTERN ARCHITECTURE.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
II. ITALY
(Continued.)
CHAP. PAGE
VII. Circular churches—Towers at Prato and Florence—Porches— 1 Civic buildings—Town-halls—Venice—Doge’s Palace—Cà d’Oro— Conclusion
VIII. SICILY—Population of Sicily—The Saracens—Buildings at 22 Palermo—Cathedral of Monreale—Cefalu—The Pointed Arch
IX. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN PALESTINE—Church of Holy 32 Sepulchre, Jerusalem—Churches at Abû Gosh and Lydda—Mosque at Hebron
III. FRANCE
I. Division of subject—Pointed arches—Provence—Churches at 39 Avignon, Arles, Alet, Fontifroide, Maguelonne, Vienne— Circular churches—Towers—Cloisters
II. AQUITANIA—Churches at Périgueux, Souillac, Angoulême, 64 Alby, Toulouse, Conques, Tours—Tombs
III. ANJOU—Cathedral at Angers—Church at Fontevrault— 81 Poitiers—Angiovine spires
IV. AUVERGNE—Church at Issoire—Clermont—Fortified Church at 89 Royat
V. BURGUNDY—Church of St. Martin d’Ainay—Cathedral at le 94 Puy-en-Velay—Abbeys of Tournus and Cluny—Cathedral of Autun—Church of St. Menoux
VI. FRANKISH PROVINCE—Exceptional buildings—Basse Œuvre, 104 Beauvais—Montier-en-Der
VII. NORMANDY—Triapsal Churches—Churches at Caen— 110 Intersecting Vaulting—Bayeux
VIII. FRANKISH ARCHITECTURE—Historical notice—The pointed 120 arch—Freemasonry—Mediæval architects
IX. FRENCH GOTHIC CATHEDRALS—Paris—Chartres—Rheims—Amiens— 130 Other Cathedrals—Later style—St. Ouen’s, Rouen
X. Gothic details—Pillars—Windows—Circular Windows—Bays— 161 Vaults—Buttresses—Pinnacles—Spires—Decoration— Construction—Furniture of Churches—Domestic architecture
IV. BELGIUM AND HOLLAND
I. Historical notice—Old Churches—Cathedral of Tournay— 187 Antwerp—St. Jacques at Liège
II. Civil Architecture—Belfries—Hall at Ypres—Louvain— 199 Brussels—Domestic architecture
III. HOLLAND—Churches—Civil and Domestic Buildings 206
V. GERMANY
I. INTRODUCTORY—Chronology and Historical notice 209
II. Basilicas—Plan of St. Gall—Church at Reichenau— 213 Romain-Motier—Granson—Church at Gernrode—Trèves— Hildesheim—Cathedrals of Worms and Spires—Churches at Cologne—Other Churches and Chapels—Double Churches—Swiss Churches
III. CIRCULAR CHURCHES—Aix-la-Chapelle—Nymwegen—Fulda—Bonn— 247 Cobern
IV. DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE—Lorsch—Palaces on the Wartburg— 255 Gelnhausen—Houses—Windows
V. POINTED STYLE IN GERMANY—History of style—St. Gereon, 264 Cologne—Churches at Gelnhausen—Marburg—Cologne Cathedral— Freiburg—Strasburg—St. Stephen’s, Vienna—Nuremberg— Mühlhausen—Erfurt
VI. Circular Churches—Church Furniture—Civil Architecture— 292 Town-hall at Brunswick
VII. NORTHERN GERMANY—BRICK ARCHITECTURE—Churches at Lubeck— 302 in Brandenburg—in Ermeland—Castle at Marienburg
VI. SCANDINAVIA
I. Sweden—Norway—Denmark—Gothland—Round Churches—Wooden 313 Churches
VII. ENGLAND
I. INTRODUCTORY 335
II. SAXON ARCHITECTURE 341
III. ENGLISH MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE—Plans of English 345 Cathedral Churches—Vaults—Pier Arches—Window tracery— External Proportions—Diversity of Style—Situation— Chapter-Houses—Chapels—Parish Churches—Details—Tombs—Civil and Domestic Architecture
IV. ARCHITECTURE OF SCOTLAND—Affinities of Style—Early 418 Specimens—Cathedral of Glasgow—Elgin—Melrose—Other Churches—Monasteries
V. IRELAND—Oratories—Round Towers—Domical Dwellings—Domestic 443 Architecture—Runic Cross Decoration
VIII. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL
I. SPAIN—INTRODUCTORY 460
II. Romanesque Churches at Naranco, Roda, and Leon—Early 464 Spanish Gothic: Churches at Santiago, Zamora, Toro, Avila, Salamanca, and Tarragona—Middle Pointed style: Churches at Toledo, Burgos, Leon, Barcelona, Manresa, Gerona, Seville— Late Gothic style: Churches at Segovia, Villena—Moresco style: Churches at Toledo, Ilescas, and Saragoza
III. CIVIL ARCHITECTURE—Monastic Buildings—Municipal 502 Buildings—Castles
IV. PORTUGAL—Church of Batalha—Alcobaça—Belem 507
Book I
I. SARACENIC ARCHITECTURE IN CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES; OR, 512 BYZANTINE SARACENIC—Introduction
II. SYRIA AND EGYPT—Mosques at Jerusalem—El Aksah—Dome of 516 the Rock—Mosque at Damascus—Egypt—Mosques at Cairo—Mosque at Kerouan—Other African buildings—Mecca
III. SPAIN—Introductory Remarks—Mosque at Cordoba—Palace at 542 Zahra—Churches at Sta. Maria and Cristo de la Luz at Toledo—Giralda at Seville—Palace of the Alcazar—The Alhambra—Sicily
IV. TURKEY—Mosques of Mahomet II.—Suleimanie and Ahmedjie 556 Mosques—Mosques of Sultanas Validé, and of Osman III.— Civil and Domestic Architecture—Fountains, &c.
V. PERSIA—Historical notice—Tombs at Bagdad—Imaret at 567 Erzeroum—Mosque at Tabreez—Tomb at Sultanieh—Bazaar at Ispahan—College of Husein Shah—Palaces and other Buildings—Turkestan
II. ANCIENT AMERICA
I. INTRODUCTORY 583
II. CENTRAL AMERICA—Historical notice—Central American 589 style—Temples—Palaces—Buildings at Palenque—Uxmal, &c.
III. PERU—Historical notice—Titicaca—Tombs—Walls of Cuzco, 600 &c.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
NO. PAGE
Frontispiece.—Portal of the Convent at Belem, near Lisbon.
Vignette to Title-page.—Façade of Church at Tourmanin.
Frontispiece to Part II. (continued).—View of Cologne Cathedral xvi
513. Plan of Baptistery, Parma 2
514. Baptistery at Parma, half Section half Elevation 2
515. View of the Duomo at Prato 3
516. Torracio at Cremona 4
517. Campanile, Palazzo Scaligeri, Verona 5
518. Campanile, S. Andrea, Mantua 6
519. Campanile at Florence 7
520. North Porch, Sta. Maria Maggiore, Bergamo 9
521. Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona 11
522. Broletto at Como 12
523. Ornamental Brickwork from the Broletto at Brescia 13
524. Window from the Cathedral of Monza 14
525, 526. Windows from Verona 15
527. Central Part of the Façade of the Doge’s Palace, Venice 16
528. Palace of Cà d’Oro, Venice 18
529. Angle Window at Venice 19
530. Ponte del Paradiso, Venice 20
531. San Giovanni degli Eremiti, Palermo 25
532. Plan of Church at Monreale 26
533. Portion of the Nave, Monreale 27
534. Lateral Entrance to Cathedral at Palermo 28
535. East End of Cathedral at Palermo 29
536. Plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem 34
537. Holy Sepulchre—Plan and Elevation as it existed before the fire in 1808 35
538. Plan of Church at Abû Gosh 36
539. Section of East End of same 36
540. Section of East End of Church at Lydda 37
541. Plan of Apse of Church at Lydda 37
542. Plan of Mosque at Hebron 38
543. Diagram of the Architectural Divisions of France 41
544. Diagram of Vaulting 46
545. Diagram of Dome pendentives 47
546. Section of Church at Carcassonne, with the outer aisles added in the 14th century 48
547. Porch of Notre Dame de Doms, Avignon 51
548. Porch of St. Trophime, Arles 52
549. Apse of Church at Alet 53
550. Internal Angle of Apse at Alet 54
551. Elevation of half one Bay of the Exterior of St. Paul-Trois-Châteaux 55
552. Half bay of Interior of same 55
553. Longitudinal and Cross Section of Fontifroide Church 56
554. Doorway in Church at Maguelonne 57
555. Plan of Cathedral, Vienne 58
556. Plan of Church at Planes 59
557. Tower at Puissalicon 60
558. Church at Cruas 61
559. Cloister at Fontifroide 62
560, 561. Capitals in Cloister, Elne 62
562. Plan of St. Front, Périgueux 64
563. Part of St. Front, Périgueux 65
564. Interior of Church at Souillac 67
565. Plan of Cathedral at Angoulême 68
566. One Bay of Nave, Angoulême 68
567. Plan of Church at Moissac 69
568. Plan of Cathedral at Alby 69
569. Plan of Church of the Cordeliers, at Toulouse 70
570. Section of Church of the Cordeliers 71
571. Angle of Church of the Cordeliers 71
572. Plan of St. Sernin, Toulouse 72
573. Section of St. Sernin 72
574. Plan of Church at Conques 73
575. Plan of St. Martin at Tours 74
576. Plan of Church at Charroux 75
577. Plan of St. Benigne, Dijon 75
578. St. Sernin, Toulouse 77
579. Church at Aillas 78
580. Church at Loupiac 78
581. St. Eloi, Espalion 79
582. Tomb at St. Pierre, Toulouse 80
583. Plan of Cathedral at Angers 82
584. Plan of St. Trinité, Angers 82
585. View of the Interior of Loches 83
586. Plan of Church at Fontevrault 83
587. View of Chevet at Fontevrault 84
588. Elevation of one of the Bays of the Nave at Fontevrault 84
589. Façade of Church of Notre Dame at Poitiers 85
590. Plan of Cathedral at Poitiers 86
591. Spire at Cunault 87
592. Plan of Church at Issoire 89
593. Elevation of Church at Issoire 90
594. Section of Church at Issoire, looking East 90
595. Elevation of Chevet, Notre Dame du Port, Clermont 91
596. Plan of Chevet of same 92
597. Fortified Church at Royat 93
598. Façade of Church of St. Martin d’Ainay, Lyons 95
599. Cloister of Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay 96
600. View of Interior of Abbey at Tournus 97
601. Plan of Abbey Church at Cluny 98
602. View in Aisle at Autun 100
603. View in Nave at Autun 100
604. Section of Narthex at Vezelay 101
605. East End, St. Menoux 102
606. Chevet, St. Menoux 103
607. Plan and Section of Basse Œuvre, Beauvais 105
608. External and Internal View of Basse Œuvre 106
609. Decoration of St. Généreux 107
610. Section of Eastern portion of Church of Montier-en-Der 108
611. Triapsal Church at Querqueville 110
612. Plan of the Church of St. Stephen, Caen 112
613. Western Façade of same 113
614. Section of Nave of same 114
615. Diagram of Vaulting of same 115
616. Elevation of Compartment of Nave of St. Stephen, Caen 115
617. Compartment, Abbaye-aux-Dames, Caen 116
618. East End of St. Nicolas, Caen 117
619. Lower Compartment, Nave, Bayeux 118
620. Plan of Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris 132
621. Section of Side-aisles, of same 133
622. External Elevation of same 133
623. Plan of Chartres Cathedral 134
624. Plan of Rheims Cathedral 135
625. Plan of Amiens Cathedral 135
626. View of the Façade of the Cathedral at Paris 136
627. North-west View of the Cathedral at Chartres 138
628. Buttress at Chartres 139
629. Buttresses at Rheims 139
630. Bay of Nave of Beauvais Cathedral 142
631. Doorway, South Transept, Beauvais 143
632. Plan of Cathedral at Noyon 144
633. Spires of Laon Cathedral 145
634. View of Cathedral at Coutances 146
635. Lady Chapel, Auxerre 147
636. Plan of Cathedral at Troyes 148
637. Façade of Cathedral at Troyes 149
638. Window of Cathedral at Lyons 150
639. Plan of Cathedral at Bazas 150
640. Plan of Cathedral at Bourges 151
641. Section of Cathedral at Bourges 152
642. View in the Church of Charité sur Loire 154
643. Chevet, Pontigny 155
644. West Front of Ste. Marie de l’Épine 156
645. Plan of Church of St. Ouen at Rouen 157
646. Church of St. Ouen from the S.E. 158
647. Southern Porch of same 159
648. Diagram of plans of Pillars 162
649. Window, St. Martin, Paris 163
650. Window in Nave of Cathedral at Chartres 163
651. Window in Choir of Cathedral at Chartres 163
652. Window at Rheims 164
653. Window at St. Ouen 164
654. Window at Chartres 165
655. West Window, Chartres 166
656. Transept Window, Chartres 166
657. West Window, Rheims 166
658. West Window, Evreux 166
659. West Window, St. Ouen 167
660. Diagram of Vaulting 169
661. Abbey Church, Souvigny 170
662. Diagram of Buttresses 172
663. Flying Buttresses of St. Ouen 172
664. Flying Buttress at Amiens 173
665. St. Pierre, Caen 176
666. Lantern, St. Ouen, Rouen 177
667. Corbel 178
668. Capitals from Rheims 178
669. Rood-Screen from the Madeleine at Troyes 181
670. Hôtel de Ville of St. Antonin 182
671. House at Cluny 183
672. House at Yrieix 184
673. Portal of the Ducal Palace at Nancy 185
674. View of West End of Church at Nivelles 190
675. Plan of Cathedral at Tournay 191
676. Section of Central Portion of same, looking South 192
677. West Front of Notre Dame de Maestricht 192
678. Spire of the Chapel of St. Sang, Bruges 193
679. Window in Church at Villers, near Genappe 193
680. Plan of the Cathedral at Antwerp 195
681. Plan of St. Jacques, Liège 197
682. Belfry at Ghent 200
683. Cloth-hall at Ypres 201
684. Town-hall, Brussels 203
685. Part of the Bishop’s Palace, Liège 205
686. Reduction of an original plan of a Monastery at St. Gall 215
687. Plan of Church at Mittelzell, in the island of Reichenau 217
688. Elevation of West End of same 217
689. Plan of the Church of Romain-Motier 218
690. View of same 218
691. Section of Church at Granson 219
692. Plan of Church at Gernrode 220
693. View of West End of Church at Gernrode 220
694. View of West End of Abbey of Corvey 221
695. Plan of original Church at Trèves 223
696. Plan of Mediæval Church at Trèves 223
697. Western Apse of Church at Trèves 224
698. Eastern Apse of Church at Trèves 224
699. Internal View of the Church of St. Michael at Hildesheim 225
700. Plan of same 225
701. Plan of Cathedral of Worms 227
702. One Bay of Cathedral at Worms 227
703. Side Elevation of same 228
704. Plan of the Cathedral at Spires 229
705. Western Apse of Cathedral at Mayence 230
706. Church at Minden. Cathedral at Paderborn. Church at Soest 231
707. Plan of Sta. Maria in Capitolio, Cologne 232
708. Apse of the Apostles’ Church at Cologne 233
709. Apse of St. Martin’s Church at Cologne 234
710. East End of Church at Bonn 235
711. Plan of Church at Laach 236
712. View of Church at Laach 236
713. Church at Sinzig 237
714. Rood Screen at Wechselburg 238
715. Crypt at Göllingen 238
716. Façade of Church at Rosheim 239
717. Church at Marmoutier 240
718. Section of Church of Schwartz Rheindorf 241
719. View of same 242
720. Plan of Chapel at Landsberg 243
721. Section of Chapel at Landsberg 243
722. View and Plan of the Cathedral at Zurich 243
723. Doorway at Basle 244
724. Plan of Church at Aix-la-Chapelle 248
725. Church at Nymwegen 249
725a. Plan of Church at Mettlach 249
725b. Capital of Triforium of same 250
726. Church at Petersberg 251
727. Plan of Church at Fulda 251
728. Plan of Church at Drüggelte 251
729. Baptistery at Bonn 252
730. Chapel at Cobern on the Moselle 253
731. Porch of Convent at Lorsch 255
732. Arcade of the Palace at Gelnhausen 257
733. Capital, Gelnhausen 257
734. View of the Palace on the Wartburg 258
735. Cloister at Zurich 266
736. Dwelling-house, Cologne 261
737. Windows in back of same 262
738. Windows from Sion Church, Cologne 262
739. Windows from St. Quirinus at Neuss 262
740. Section of St. Gereon, Cologne 265
741. Plan of St. Gereon, Cologne 265
742. East End of Church at Gelnhausen 266
743. Plan of Church at Marburg 267
744. Section of Church at Marburg 267
745. Plan of Church at Altenberg 268
746. Plan of Cathedral at Cologne 269
747. Western Façade of Cathedral of Cologne 272
748. View of Church at Freiburg 274
749. Plan of Strasburg Cathedral 276
750. West Front of same 277
751. Plan of Ratisbon Cathedral 280
752. View of the Spire of St. Stephen’s, Vienna 281
753. Plan of the Franciscan Church at Salzburg 283
754. Plan of St. Lawrence’s Church, Nuremberg 284
755. Plan of Church at Kuttenberg, taken above the roof of the aisles 284
756. Section of the Church of same 285
757. Plan of Church of St. Victor at Xanten 287
758. View of Marien Kirche, Mühlhausen 289
759. Plan of Marien Kirche, Mühlhausen 289
760. St. Severus Church at Erfurt 290
761. Anna Chapel at Heiligenstadt 292
762. Sacraments Häuschen, Nuremberg 293
763. Doorway of Church at Chemnitz 294
764. Schöne Brunnen at Nuremberg 296
765. Todtenleuchter, Vienna 297
766. Bay Window from St. Sebald’s Parsonage, Nuremberg 298
767. Façade of House at Brück-am-Mur 299
768. Town-hall at Brunswick 300
769. Plan of Cathedral, Lubeck 303
770. Plan of Marien Kirche, Lubeck 304
771. View of same 305
772. Tower in the Kœblinger Strasse, Hanover 306
773. Church at Frauenburg 307
774. Church at Santoppen 308
775. Façade of Marien Kirche, Brandenburg 309
776. Façade of the Knight-hall in the Castle of Marienburg 310
777. Plan of Upsala Cathedral 314
778. Apse of Lund Cathedral 315
779. Old Country Church and Belfry 316
780. Plan of Cathedral of Trondhjem 317
781. View of Cathedral of Trondhjem 318
782. Elevation of Domkirche: Roeskilde 319
783. Plan of same 319
784. Frue Kirche, Aarhuus 319
785. Church of Kallundborg 320
786. Helge-Anders Church, Wisby 322
787. Interior of Church at Gothem 323
788. Folö Church, Gothland 324
789. Portal, Sandeo Church, Gothland 325
790. Portal, Hoäte Church, Gothland 326
791. View of Round Church, Thorsager, Jutland 327
792. Section and Ground-plan of same 328
793. Round Church of Oester Larsker, Bornholm 329
794. View and plan of Hagby Church, Sweden 330
795. Läderbro Church and Wapenhus, Gothland 331
796. Plan of Church at Hitterdal 332
797. View of Church at Hitterdal 333
798. Church of Urnes, Norway 334
799. Tower of Earl’s Barton Church 341
800. Windows, Earl’s Barton 342
801. Saxon Doorway at Monkwearmouth 343
802. Plan of Norwich Cathedral 346
803. Plan of Canterbury Cathedral 347
804. Plan of Durham Cathedral 348
805. Plan of Salisbury Cathedral 349
806. Plan of Winchester Cathedral 350
807. Plan of Ely Cathedral 351
808. Octagon at Ely Cathedral 352
809. Plan of Westminster Abbey 354
810. Nave of Peterborough Cathedral 357
811. Nave of Lincoln Cathedral 359
812. Nave of Lichfield Cathedral 360
813. Choir of Gloucester Cathedral 361
814. Diagrams of Vaulting 362
815. Vault of Cloister, Gloucester 363
816. Vault of Aisle at St. George’s, Windsor 364
817. Aisle in Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster 364
818. Retro-choir, Peterborough Cathedral 365
819. Choir Arches of Oxford Cathedral 366
820. Transformation of the Nave, Winchester Cathedral 368
821. Choir of Ely Cathedral 369
822. Two Bays of the Nave of Westminster Abbey 370
823. One Bay of Cathedral at Exeter 370
824. The Five Sisters Window, York 372
825. Ely Cathedral, East End 373
826. Lancet Window, Hereford Cathedral 374
827. East End of Lincoln Cathedral 375
828. North Transept Window, Lincoln 376
829. Window in Chapter-house at York, English Geometric Tracery 377
830. Window in St. Anselm’s Chapel, Canterbury 377
831. East Window of Carlisle Cathedral 378
832. South Transept Window, Lincoln 378
833. Perpendicular Tracery, Winchester Cathedral 379
834. Salisbury Cathedral, from the N.E. 381
835. View of Lichfield Cathedral 382
836. Lincoln Cathedral 383
837. View of the Angel Tower and Chapter-house, Canterbury 384
838. West Front of Peterborough Cathedral 385
839. Chapter-house, Bristol 389
840. Chapter-house, Salisbury 390
841. Chapter-house, Wells 391
842. Chapter-house, York 392
843. Internal Elevation of St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster 394
844. Plan of Ste. Chapelle, Paris 395
845. Plan of St. Stephen’s. Westminster 395
846. Interior View of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge 396
847. Plan of Circular Church at Little Maplestead 398
848. Spire of Great Leighs Church, Essex 398
849. Tower of Little Saxham Church, Suffolk 398
850. Roof at Trunch Church 400
851. Roof of Aisle in New Walsingham Church 400
852. Plan of Church of Walpole St. Peter’s, Norfolk 401
853. Staircase at Canterbury Cathedral 402
854. Norman Gateway, College Green, Bristol 403
855. Capitals, &c., of Doorway leading to the Choir Aisles, Lincoln 404
856. West Doorway, Lichfield Cathedral 405
857. Tomb of Bishop Marshall, Exeter Cathedral 405
858. The Triple Canopy in Heckington Church, Lincolnshire 406
859. Prior d’Estria’s Screen, Canterbury Cathedral 406
860. Doorway of Chapter-house, Rochester Cathedral 407
861. Tomb of the Black Prince, Canterbury Cathedral 408
862. Tomb of Edward III. in Westminster Abbey 409
863. Tomb of Edward II. in Gloucester Cathedral 410
864. Tomb of Bishop Redman in Ely Cathedral 411
865. Waltham Cross (restored) 412
866. Plan of Westminster Hall 414
867. Section of Westminster Hall 414
868. Hall of Palace at Eltham 415
869. Window, Leuchars 420
870. Pier-Arch, Jedburgh 421
871. Arches in Kelso Abbey 422
872. Plan and three Bays of Choir, Kirkwall Cathedral 423
873. North Side of the Cathedral at Kirkwall 424
874. 1. Plan of Glasgow Cathedral. 2. Plan of Crypt, Glasgow Cathedral 425
875. View in Crypt of Glasgow Cathedral 426
876. Crypt of Cathedral at Glasgow 427
877. Clerestory Window, Glasgow Cathedral 427
878. East End of Glasgow Cathedral 428
879. East End, Elgin Cathedral 429
880. South Transept, Elgin Cathedral 430
881. Ornament of Doorway of same 430
882. Plan of Elgin Cathedral 431
883. Aisle in Melrose Abbey 432
884. East Window, Melrose 433
885. Chapel at Roslyn 434
886. Under Chapel, Roslyn 434
887. Stone Roof of Bothwell Church 435
888. Exterior of Roof of Bothwell Church 435
889, 890. Ornamental Arcades, from Holyrood 436
891. Interior of Porch, Dunfermline 437
892. Window at Dunkeld 438
893. Doorway, Linlithgow 439
894. Doorway, St. Giles’s, Edinburgh 440
895. Doorway, Pluscardine Abbey 441
896. Window in Tower, Iona 441
897. Aisle in Trinity College Church, Edinburgh 442
898. Cloister, Kilconnel Abbey 445
899. Oratory, Innisfallen, Killarney 447
900. Cormac’s Chapel, Cashel 448
901. Section of Chapel, Killaloe 448
902. St. Kevin’s Kitchen, Glendalough 449
903. Doorway in Tower at Um Rasas 451
904. Round Tower and Chancel Arch of Fineens Church, Clonmacnoise 452
905. Doorway in Tower, Kildare 452
906. Doorway in Tower, Donoughmore, Meath 453
907. Doorway in Tower, Antrim 453
908. Tower, Devenish 453
909. Tower, Kilree, Kilkenny 453
910. Tower, Kinneth, Cork 454
911. Tower, Ardmore 454
912. Floor in Tower, Kinneth 455
913. Doorway, Monasterboice 455
914. Doorway, Kilcullen, Kildare 455
915. Windows in Round Towers 455
916. Window, Glendalough 455
917. Oratory of Gallerus 457
918. Tower, Jerpoint Abbey 457
919. House, Galway 458
920. Ballyromney Court, Cork 458
921. Cross at Kells 459
922. View of Church at Naranco 465
923. Plan of Church at Naranco 465
924. Plan of S. Pablo 466
925. Detail of S. Pablo 466
926. Church at Roda 466
927. Panteon of St. Isidoro, Leon 467
928. Plan of Santiago di Compostella 468
929. Santiago Cathedral. Interior of South Transept, looking North-East 469
930. Interior of S. Isidoro, Leon 470
931. Cathedral at Zamora 471
932. Collegiate Church at Toro 472
933. Lérida Old Cathedral. Door of South Porch 473
934. San Vincente, Avila. Interior of Western Porch 474
935. Exterior of Lantern, Salamanca Old Cathedral 475
936. Section of Cimborio at Salamanca 476
937. Plan of St. Milan, Segovia 476
938. Tarragona Cathedral. View across Transepts 477
939. Church of the Templars at Segovia 478
940. Plan of Cathedral at Toledo 479
941. View in the Choir of the Cathedral at Toledo 480
942. Plan of Burgos Cathedral 481
943. West Front of Burgos Cathedral 482
944. Plan of Leon Cathedral 483
945. Bay of Choir, Leon Cathedral 484
946. Compartment of Nave, Burgos Cathedral 484
947. Plan of Cathedral at Barcelona 485
948. Sta. Maria del Mar, Barcelona 486
949. Sta. Maria del Pi, Barcelona 486
950. Interior of Collegiate Church, Manresa 487
951. Plan of Cathedral at Gerona 488
952. Interior of Cathedral at Gerona, looking East 489
953. Cimborio of Cathedral at Valencia 490
954. Plan of Cathedral at Seville 491
955. Plan of Cathedral at Segovia 493
956. Section of Church at Villena 493
957. Plan of Sta. Maria la Bianca 495
958. Interior of Sta. Maria la Bianca 496
959. Apse of St. Bartolomeo 497
960. Chapel at Humanejos 498
961. Tower at Ilescas 499
962. St. Paul, Saragoza 500
963. Doorway from Valencia 501
964. Cloister of the Huelgas, near Burgos 502
965. Cloister, Tarazona 503
966. The Casa Lonja, Valencia 504
967. Castle of Cocos, Castille 505
968. Plan of the Church at Batalha 508
969. Portal at Belem 510
970. Plan of the Mosque el-Aksah at Jerusalem 517
971. View in the Mosque el-Aksah 518
972. Plan of the Dome of the Rock (Mosque of Omar) 520
973. View in Aisle of same 521
974. Capital in Dome of the Rock 521
975. Order of the Dome of the Rock 522
976. Plan of Mosque at Damascus 523
977. Plan of Mosque of Amru, Old Cairo 526
978. Arches in the Mosque of Amru 527
979. Mosque of Ibn Tooloon at Cairo 528
980. Window in Mosque of same 529
981. Plan of Mosque of Sultan Hassan, Cairo 531
982. Section of same 532
983. Plan of Mosque and Tombs of Sultan Berkook, Cairo 533
984. Section of Mosque of Berkook 533
985. Mosque of Kaitbey 535
986. Plan of Great Mosque at Mecca 537
987. Plan of Great Mosque of Kerouan 538
988. Main Entrance in Court of same 539
989. Minaret at Tunis 540
990. Plan of Mosque of Cordoba 544
991. Interior of Sanctuary at Cordoba 545
992. Exterior of the Sanctuary, Cordoba 546
993. Screen of the Chapel of Villa Viciosa, Mosque of Cordoba 547
994. Church of San Cristo de la Luz, Toledo 548
995. The Giralda at Seville 550
996. Plan of the Alhambra, Granada 552
997. Plan of Suleimanie Mosque 559
998. Section of Suleimanie Mosque 560
999. View of Suleimanie Mosque 561
1000. Plan of Ahmedjie Mosque 563
1001. Plan of Tomb of Zobeidé, Bagdad 568
1002. View of Tomb of Zobeidé 568
1003. Tomb of Ezekiel, near Bagdad 569
1004. Imaret of Oulou Diami at Erzeroum 570
1005. Plan of Mosque of Tabreez 572
1006. View of Ruined Mosque at Tabreez 573
1007. Tomb of Sultan Khodabendah at Sultanieh 574
1008. Section of the Tomb at Sultanieh 574
1009. View of the Tomb at Sultanieh 575
1010. Plan of Great Mosque at Ispahan 576
1011. Madrissa of Sultan Husein at Ispahan 578
1012. Throne-room at Teheran 579
1013. Palace at Ispahan 580
1014. Pavilion in the Khan’s Palace at Khiva 581
1015. Pyramid of Oajaca, Tehuantepec 590
1016. Plan of the Temple at Mitla 591
1017. View of the Palace at Mitla 592
1018. Elevation of Teocalli at Palenque 594
1019. Plan of Temple 594
1020. Elevation of Building at Chunjuju 596
1021. Elevation of part of Palace at Zayi 596
1022. Plan of Palace at Zayi 597
1023. Casa de las Monjas, Uxmal 597
1024. Interior of a Chamber, Uxmal 598
1025. Apartment at Chichen Itza 599
1026. Diagram of Mexican construction 599
1027. Ruined Gateway at Tia Huanacu 601
1028. Gateway at Tia Huanacu 602
1029. Tombs at Sillustani 603
1030. Ruins of House of Manco Capac in Cuzco 604
1031. House of the Virgins of the Sun 605
1032. Peruvian Tombs 606
1033. Elevation of Wall of Tambos 606
1034. Sketch Plans of the Walls of Cuzco 607
1035. View of Walls of Cuzco 607
FRONTISPIECE TO PART II.
(Continued.)
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
II. CHRISTIAN ARCHITECTURE
Continued.
VII. CONTENTS
Circular churches—Towers at Prato and Florence—Porches—Civic buildings— Town-halls—Venice—Doge’s palace—Cà d’Oro—Conclusion.
CIRCULAR BUILDINGS.
THERE are very few specimens in Italy of circular or polygonal buildings of any class belonging to the Gothic age. As churches, none are to be expected. Baptisteries had passed out of fashion. One such building, at Parma, commenced in 1196, deserves to be quoted, not certainly for its beauty, but as illustrating those false principles of design shown in every part of every building of this age in Italy. Externally the building is an octagon, six storeys in height, the four upper ones being merely used to conceal a dome, which is covered by a low-pitched wooden roof. The lowest and the highest storeys are solid, the others are galleries supported by little ill-shaped columns. It is probable that this was not the original design of the architect, Antelami. No doubt he intended to conceal the dome, or at all events to cover it, as was the universal practice in Italy; but instead of a mere perpendicular wall, as here used, the external outline should have assumed a conical form, which might have rendered it as pleasing as it is now awkward. We have no instance of a circular building carried out by Italian architects according to their own principles sufficiently far to enable us to judge what they were capable of in this style, unless perhaps it be the tombs of the Scaligers at Verona. These take the circular or polygonal form appropriate to tombs, but are on so small a scale that they might rather be called crosses than mausolea; and though illustrating all the best principles of Italian design, and evincing an exuberance of exquisite ornament, they can hardly be regarded as important objects of high art. It is only from small buildings like these that we may recover the principles of this art as practised in Italy. Not being, like the Northern styles, a progressive national effort, but generally an individual exertion, if the first architect died during the progress of a larger building, no one knew exactly how he had intended to finish it, and its completion was entrusted to the caprice and fancy of some other man, which he generally indulged, wholly regardless of its incongruity with the work of his predecessor.
TOWERS.
The Italians in the age of pointed architecture were hardly more successful in their towers than in their other buildings, except that a tower, from its height, must always be a striking object, and, if both massive and high, cannot fail to have a certain imposing appearance, of which no clumsiness on the part of the architect can deprive it. Such towers as the Asinelli and Garisenda at Bologna possess no more architectural merit than the chimneys of our factories. Most of those subsequently erected were better than these, but still the Italians never caught the true idea of a spire.
Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages they retained their affection for the original rectangular form, making their towers as broad at the summit as at the base. With very few exceptions, they are without buttresses, or any projection on the angles, to aid in giving them even an appearance of support. In consequence, when a spire was placed on such an edifice it always fitted awkwardly. The art by which a tower was prepared for its termination, first by the graduated buttresses at its base, then by the strongly marked vertical lines of its upper portion, and above all by the circle of spirelets at the top, out of which the central spire shot up as an absolute necessity of the composition—this art, so dear and so familiar to the Northern builders, was never understood by the Italians. If they, on the contrary, placed an octagon on their square towers, it looked like an accident for which nothing was prepared, and the spire was separated from it only by bold horizontal cornices, instead of by vertical lines, as true taste dictated.
In fact, the Italians seem to have benefited less by the experience or instruction of their Northern neighbours in tower-building than in any other feature of the style, and to have retained their old forms in these after they had abandoned them in other parts of their churches.
The typical tower of its class is the Torracio of Cremona. It is a monumental tower commenced in 1296 to commemorate a peace made between Cremona and the neighbouring states after a long and tedious contest for supremacy. It is not an ecclesiastical edifice, but partakes, therefore, like those of St. Mark, Venice, and of Modena, more of the character of a civic belfry than of a church tower, such as those previously mentioned. It is the highest and largest, and consequently, according to the usual acceptation of the term the finest, of Italian towers. Its whole height is 396 ft., about two-thirds of which is a square ungainly mass, without either design or ornament of any importance. On this is placed an octagon and spire, which, though in themselves perhaps the best specimens of their class in Italy, have too little connection either in design or dimensions with the tower on which they stand.
The celebrated tower of the Ghirlandina at Modena is, perhaps, one of the best to enable us to compare these Italian towers with the Cis-Alpine ones, since it possesses a well-proportioned spire, which is found in few of the others. From its date it belongs to the second division of the subject, having been commenced in the 13th and finished in the 14th century; but, as before remarked, there is no line of distinction between the round-arched and pointed-arched styles in Italy, and though this campanile seems to be wholly without any pointed forms, we may describe it here.
Its whole height is about 315 ft., of which less than 200 are taken up in the square part—which thus bears a less predominant proportion to the spire than any other Italian example. It is evidently meant to rival the famous German spires which had become such favourites in the age in which it was built; and although it avoids many of the errors into which the excessive love of decoration and of tours de force led the Germans, still the result is far from satisfactory. The change from the square to the octagon is abrupt and unpleasing, and the spire itself looks too thick for the octagon. Everywhere there is a want of those buttresses and pinnacles with which the Gothic architects knew so well how to prepare for a transition of form, and to satisfy the mind that the composition was not only artistically but mechanically correct. The Italians never comprehended the aspiring principle of the Gothic styles, and consequently, though they had far more elegance of taste and used better details, their works hardly satisfy the mind to a greater extent than a modern classical church or museum.
The same remarks apply to the towers of Siena, Lucca, Pistoja, and indeed to all in the North of Italy: all have some pleasing points, but none are entirely satisfactory. None have sufficient ornament, or display enough design, to render them satisfactory in detail, nor have they sufficient mass to enable them to dispense with the evidence of thought, and to impress by the simple grandeur of their dimensions.
The towers of Asti (1266) and Siena (rebuilt in 1389) are illustrated in Woodcuts Nos. 493 and 498. They certainly display but little art. A more pleasing specimen is the tower (Woodcut No. 515) attached to the Duomo at Prato (about 1312), which may be considered as a specimen of the very best class of Italian tower-design of the age, although in fact its only merit consists in the increase in the size of the openings in every storey upwards, so as to give a certain degree of lightness to the upper part. On this side of the Alps the same effect was generally attained by diminishing the diameter. When a spire is to be added, that is the only admissible mode; but when the building is to be crowned by a cornice, as at Prato, the mode there adopted is perhaps preferable.
The tower which is attached to the palace of the Scaligeri at Verona (Woodcut No. 517) is perhaps as graceful as any other, and as characteristic of the Italian principles of tower-building. The lower part is absolutely plain and solid, the upper storey alone being pierced with one splendid three-light window in each face, with a boldly projecting cornice over it marking the roof. On this is placed an octagonal lantern two storeys in height. Had the lower portion of the lantern been broken by turrets or pinnacles at the angles, the effect would have been greatly improved. As it is, it seems only a makeshift to eke out the height of the whole; though the octagon with its boldly projecting cornice is as graceful as anything of the kind in Italian architecture.
The campanile attached to the church of St. Andrea at Mantua (Woodcut No. 518) is more nearly Gothic both in design and details. Its vertical lines are strongly marked, and the string-courses and cornices are of moulded brickwork, which is a pleasing and characteristic feature in the architecture of Lombardy.
The worst part of this design is the smallness of the octagon and spire, and the unconnected mode in which they are placed on the roof of the tower.
The typical example of the Italian towers is that erected close to the Duomo at Florence from designs by Giotto, commenced in 1324, and considerably advanced, if not nearly finished, at the time of his death, two years afterwards.
Though hardly worthy of the praise which has been lavished on it, it is certainly a very beautiful building. Being covered with ornament from the base to the summit, it has not that nakedness which is the reproach of so many others, and the octagonal projections at the angles give it considerable relief. Besides this, the openings are very pleasingly graduated. It is virtually solid for about one-third of its height. The middle division consists of two storeys, each with two windows, while the upper part is lighted by one bold opening on each face, as at Prato. All this is good. One great defect of the composition is its parallelism. The slightest expansion of the base would have given it great apparent stability, which its height requires. Another fault is its being divided by too strongly marked horizontal courses into distinct storeys, instead of one division falling by imperceptible degrees into the other, as in the Northern towers. It has yet another defect in common with the Duomo, to which it belongs, namely, the false character of its ornamentation, which chiefly consists of a veneer of party-coloured slabs of marble,—beautiful in itself, but objectionable as not forming a part of the apparent construction.
The tower now rises to a height of 269 ft., and it was intended to have added a spire of about 90 ft. to this; but unless it had been more gracefully managed than is usual in Italy, the tower is certainly better without it. There is nothing to suggest a spire in the part already executed, nor have we any reason to believe that Giotto understood the true principles of spire-building better than his contemporaries.
PORCHES.
Another feature very characteristic of the Gothic style in Italy is to be found in the porches attached to the churches. Generally they are placed on the flanks, and form side-entrances, and in most instances they were added after the completion of the body of the building, and consequently seldom accord in style with it. One has already been illustrated as attached to the church at Asti (Woodcut No. 493); another (Woodcut No. 501), belonging to the church of Sta. Maria dei Fiori at Florence, is an integral and beautiful part of the design.
One of the most characteristic specimens of the class in all Italy is that attached to the northern flank of the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Bergamo (Woodcut No. 520). The principal archway and the doorway within it are circular in form, although built in the middle of the 14th century, and are ornamented with trefoils and other details of the age. Above this are three trefoiled arches, the central one containing an equestrian statue of a certain Duke Lupus, at whose expense the porch was probably built, and above these is a little pagoda-like pavilion containing statues of the Virgin and Child.
The whole design is so unconstructive that it depends more on the iron ties that are everywhere inserted to hold it together than on any system of thrusts or counterpoises, which a true Gothic architect would certainly have supplied.
The two main pillars rest on lions, as is universally the case in these porches throughout Italy, though rarely found elsewhere.
Like most of these Italian porches, this one will not stand criticism as a purely architectural object; but its details are so beautiful and its colours so fascinating that it pleases in spite of all its defects of design, and is more characteristic of the truly native feeling shown in the treatment of the pointed style of architecture than the more ambitious examples which were erected under direct foreign influence.
CIVIC BUILDINGS.
The free towns of Italy required civic buildings almost to the same extent as the contemporary cities in Belgium, though not quite of the same class. Their commerce, for instance, did not require trade halls, but no town was without its town-hall, or palazzo pubblico, and belfry. The intrinsic difficulty of the designing of buildings of this class, as compared with churches, has already been pointed out. It cannot therefore be expected that the Italians, who failed in the easier task, should have succeeded in the harder. The town-hall at Siena is perhaps the best existing example, most of the others having been so altered that it is difficult to judge of their original effect. This must be pronounced to be a very poor architectural performance, flat and unmeaning, and without any lines or style of ornament to group the windows together into one composition, so that they are mere scattered openings in the wall.
That at Perugia seems originally to have been better, though now greatly disfigured. At Florence the Palazzo Vecchio is more of a feudal fortalice (required, it must be confessed, to keep the turbulent citizens in order) than the municipal palace of a peaceful community. In Ferrara and other cities the palazzo pubblico is really and virtually a fortress and nothing else.
At Piacenza it consists of a range of bold pointed stone arches, supporting an upper storey of brick, adorned with a range of circular-headed windows, richly ornamented, and a pleasing specimen of the mode in which the Italians avoided the difficulty of filling the upper parts of their windows with tracery (which they never liked) and at the same time rendered them ornamental externally.
At Padua and Vicenza are two great halls supported on arcades, in intention like that of Piacenza, but far from possessing its beauty. That at Padua remains in all its pristine ugliness, as hideous an erection as any perpetrated in the Middle Ages. The hall is one of the largest in Europe, measuring 240 ft. in length by 84 in width (Westminster Hall is 238×67), but wholly without ornament or beauty of proportion. Externally the arcades that are stuck to its sides do not relieve its mass, and are not beautiful in themselves. That at Vicenza, though originally very similar, has been fortunate in having its outside clothed in one of Palladio’s most successful designs,—perhaps the only instance in which an addition of that age and style has improved a building of the Gothic period. Comparing this hall as it stands with that at Padua, it must be admitted that the Italians were perfectly correct in abandoning their Gothic for the revived classical style, the improvement being apparent on the most cursory inspection.
A number of the town-halls or Brolettos in the smaller towns still remain unaltered, or nearly so, and retain all the peculiarities of their original design. The Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona for instance (Woodcut No. 521) only requires its lower arcades to be again opened to present all its original features, which resemble in almost every respect those of the palazzo at Piacenza above mentioned, except that the latter has five arches below and six windows above, instead of two and three as here shown. This building is wholly of brick, like most other civic buildings in the North of Italy. Sometimes, as at Piacenza, they are of stone below and brick in the upper storeys. Sometimes, though rarely, they are entirely faced with party-coloured marbles like the Broletto at Como (Woodcut No. 522), which, though not extensive, is a very beautiful specimen of the best form of civic architecture of the best age in the North of Italy, and standing as it does between the cathedral on the one hand and its own rude old belfry on the other, makes up an extremely pleasing group.[316]
One of the most important buildings of this style is the Great Hospital, Milan. It was founded in the year 1456, and consequently belongs to an age when the style was dying out. It still retains more of the pointed style and of Gothic feeling than could have been found in any city farther south, or in any one less impregnated, as it were, with German blood and feeling.
Almost all the windows in the part originally erected are pointed in form and divided by mullions. Their principal ornament consists of garlands of flowers interspersed with busts and masks and figures of Cupids, which surround the windows, or run along the string-courses. The whole of these are in terra-cotta, and make up a style of ornamentation as original as it is beautiful. It is besides purely local, and far superior to the best copies of Northern details, or to the misapplied forms of Gothic architecture which are so common in Italy.
There is perhaps nothing in the North of Italy so worthy of admiration and study, as the way in which moulded bricks of various kinds are used for decoration, especially in the civic buildings, and also occasionally in the churches. Sublimity is not perhaps to be attained in brickwork; the parts are too small; and if splendour is aimed at, it may require some larger and more costly material to produce the desired effect; but there is no beauty of detail or of design on a small scale that may not be obtained by the use of moulded bricks, which are in themselves far more durable, and, if carefully burnt, retain their sharpness of outline longer, than most kinds of stone.
The most common way in which the Italians used this material was by repeating around their openings or along their cornices small copies of Gothic details, as in this example from a circular window in the Broletto at Brescia (Woodcut No. 523). Where the details are small and designed with taste, the effect is almost equal to stone; but where the details are themselves on a large scale, as is sometimes the case, the smallness of the materials becomes apparent. Even in this example the semi-quatrefoils of the principal band are too large for the other details, though not sufficiently so to be offensive.
Though not so rich, the effect is almost equally pleasing where the brick is merely moulded on its edge, without any very direct repetition of Gothic details, as in the upper part of the window shown in Woodcut No. 524, from the cathedral of Monza. Where great depth is given so as to obtain shadow, and long tiles are used for the upper arch, as was done by the Romans, an appearance of strength and solidity is given to the construction unsurpassed by that obtained in any other material.
Perhaps the most pleasing application of terra-cotta ornaments is where bricks of different colours are used so as to produce by variety of pattern that relief which cannot so well be given by depth of shadow—a perfectly legitimate mode of ornament when so small a material is used, and when beauty only, not sublimity, is aimed at.
This is sometimes produced in Italy by introducing stone of a different colour among the bricks, as in the two examples from Verona (Woodcuts Nos. 525, 526); and where this mode of ornamentation is carried throughout the building, the effect is very pleasing. It is difficult, however, so to proportion the two materials as to produce exactly the effect aimed at, and seldom that the objection does not present itself of too much or too little stone being used. The want of shadow in brick architecture is most felt in the cornices, where sufficient projection cannot be obtained. The defect might be easily and legitimately got over by the employment of stone in the upper members of the cornice, but this expedient seems never to have been resorted to.
There are few of these brick buildings of the North of Italy which are not open to just criticism for defects of design or detail, but this may arise from the circumstance that they all belong to an age when the Italians were using a style which was not their own, and employing ornaments of which they understood neither the origin nor the application. The defects certainly do not appear to be at all inherent in the material, and, judging from the experience of the Italians, were we to make the attempt in a proper spirit, we might create with it a style far surpassing anything we now practise.
VENICE.
The most beautiful specimens of the civil and domestic architecture of Italy in the Gothic period are probably to be found in Venice, the richest and most peaceful of Italian cities during the Middle Ages. It is necessary to speak of the buildings of Venice, or more correctly, of the Venetian Province, by themselves, since its architecture is quite distinct both in origin and character from any other found in Northern Italy. It was not derived from the old Lombard Round Gothic, but from the richer and more graceful Byzantine. True to its parentage, it partook in after ages far more of the Southern Saracenic style than of the Northern Gothic; still it cannot be classed as either Byzantine or Saracenic, but only as Gothic treated with an Eastern feeling, and enriched with many details borrowed from Eastern styles.
The largest and most prominent civic example of Venetian Gothic is the Doge’s Palace (Woodcut No. 527), first built in the commencement of the 9th century, burnt down in 976 and 1106, rebuilt 1116, and restored and enlarged by Ziani, whose work was gradually pulled down between 1300 and 1424 to make way for the existing Palace (or at least the Gothic portion of it facing the sea and the Piazzetta). The earliest portion is the S.E. angle. The S.W. angle was built about 1340, down to the tenth column (ground storey); the remainder, including the Porta della Carta (about 1424), was erected by Bartolomeo Bon and his son, the architects of the Cà d’Oro. Though many people are inclined to consider its general effect unsatisfactory, an attempt has recently been made to exalt it above the Parthenon, and all that was great and beautiful in Greece, Egypt, or Gothic Europe. There are indeed few buildings of which it is so difficult to judge calmly, situated as it is, attached to the basilica of St. Mark, facing the beautiful library of Sansovino, and looking on the one hand into the piazza of St. Mark’s, and on the other across the water to the churches and palaces that cover the islands. It is, in fact, the centre of the most beautiful architectural group that adorns any city of Europe, or of the world—richer than almost any other building in historical associations, and in a locality hallowed, especially to an Englishman, by the poetry of Shakespeare. All this spreads a halo around and over the building, which may furnish ample excuse for those who blindly praise even its deformities. But the soberer judgment of the critic must not be led astray by such feelings, and while giving credit for the picturesque situation of this building and a certain grandeur in its design, he is compelled wholly to condemn its execution. The two arcades which constitute the base are, from their extent and the beauty of their details, as fine as anything of their class executed during the Middle Ages. There is also a just and pleasing proportion between the simple solidity of the lower, and the airy— perhaps slightly fantastic—lightness of the upper of these arcades. Had what appears to have been the original design been carried out, the building would rank high with the Alhambra and the palaces of Persia and India; but in an evil hour, in 1480, it was discovered that larger rooms were required than had been originally contemplated, and the upper wall, which was intended to stand on the back wall of the arcades, was brought forward level with the front overpowering the part below by its ill-proportioned mass.[317] This upper storey too is far from being beautiful in itself: the windows in it are not only far too few, but they are badly spaced, squat, and ungraceful; while the introduction of smaller windows and circles mars its pretensions to simplicity without relieving its plainness. Its principal ornaments are two great windows, one in the centre of each face, which appear to have assumed their present form after the fire in 1578. These are not graceful objects in themselves, and having nothing in common with the others, they look too like insertions to produce an entirely satisfactory effect. The pierced parapet, too, is poor and flimsy when seen against the sky. Had it crowned the upper arcade, and been backed by the third storey, it would have been as pleasing as it is now poor. Had the upper storey been set back, as was probably originally designed, or had it been placed on the ground and the arcades over it; had, in short, any arrangement of the parts been adopted but the one that exists, this might have been a far more beautiful building than it is. One thing in this palace is worth remarking before leaving it—that almost all the beauty ascribed to its upper storey arises from the polychromatic mode of decoration introduced by disposing pieces of different coloured marbles in diaper patterns. This is better done here than in Florence; inasmuch as the slabs are built in, not stuck on. The admiration which it excites is one more testimony to the fact that when a building is coloured, ninety-nine people in a hundred are willing to overlook all its faults, and to extol that as beautiful, which without the adjunct of colour they would have unanimously agreed in condemning.
A better specimen of the style, because erected as designed, and remaining nearly as erected, is the Cà d’Oro (Woodcut No. 528),[318] built in the first years of the 15th century, contemporary with the piazzetta part of the ducal palace. It has no trace of the high roofs or aspiring tendencies of the Northern buildings of the same age, no boldly-marked buttresses in strong vertical lines, but, on the contrary flat sky lines and horizontal divisions pervade the design, and every part is ornamented with a fanciful richness far more characteristic of the luxurious refinement of the East than of the manlier appreciation of the higher qualities of art which distinguished the contemporary erections on this side of the Alps.
The blank space between the battlements (which belong to the first building) and the string-course would seem to have been decorated with a series of twenty-six cusped arches, forming niches (shown in a mezzotint drawing dated 1800)[319] and surmounted by an upper string-course projecting in front of the battlements, thus crowning the building in a more satisfactory way than at present. The house was built for Signor Marino Contarini, Procurator of Venice, its original title being the Palace of Sta. Sophia.
The palaces known as the Foscari and Pisani are very similar in design to that of Cà d’Oro, though less rich and less happy in the distribution of the parts; but time has restored to them that colour which was an inherent part of the older design, and they are so beautiful and so interesting that it is hard to criticise even their too apparent defects as works of art. Most of the faults that strike us in the buildings of Venice arise from the defective knowledge which they betray of constructive principles. The Venetian architects had not been brought up in the hard school of practical experience, nor thoroughly grounded in construction, as the Northern architects were by the necessities of the large buildings which they erected. On the contrary, they merely adopted details because they were pretty, and used them so as to be picturesque in domestic edifices, where convenience was everything, and construction but a secondary consideration. For instance, the window here shown (Woodcut No. 529) cannot fail to give the building in which it occurs an appearance of weakness and insecurity quite inexcusable in spite of its external picturesqueness or its internal convenience.
The same remark applies to the screen (Woodcut No. 530) above the Ponte del Paradiso, which, though useless and unconstructive to the last degree, by its picturesque design and elegant details arrests all travellers. Indeed it is impossible to see it without admiring it, though, if imitated elsewhere, it could hardly be saved from being ridiculous.
Both these examples are surrounded by a curious dentil moulding which is found throughout St. Mark’s, and the origin of which must be sought for in St. Sophia at Constantinople, though it is better known as the Venetian dentil.
There are, besides these, many smaller palaces and houses of the Gothic age, all more or less beautiful, and all presenting some detail or some happy arrangement well worthy of study, and usually more refined and more beautiful than those of the rude but picturesque dwellings of the burghers of Bruges or Nuremberg.
The mixed Gothic style which we have been describing appears to have exerted a considerable effect on the subsequent palatial architecture of Venice, even after classical details had become generally fashionable. The arrangement of the façades remained nearly the same down to a very late period; and even when the so-called return to classical forms took place, many details of the previous style were here retained, which was not the case in any other part of Europe.
Domestic work of similar character to that of Venice is found in some of the Dalmatian towns, and in the Islands of Quarnero. At Ragusa, in Dalmatia, is a palace built in 1430, according to Mr. Jackson, from the designs of Master Onofrio Giordani de la Cava, a Neapolitan, but altered and rebuilt by Michelozzo in 1464, after the fire and explosion in 1462. The arcade of the ground storey had originally pointed arches, but in the rebuilding these were replaced by circular arches, some of the earlier capitals being utilised in the later structure. Drawings are given in Mr. Jackson’s work. The courtyards of this palace and of the Sponza in the same town are interesting examples of domestic work.
VIII. SICILY
CONTENTS.
Population of Sicily—The Saracens—Buildings at Palermo—Cathedral of Monreale Cefalu—The Pointed Arch.
THERE are few chapters of architectural history—at least among the shorter ones—more interesting, in various ways, than that which treats of the introduction of the pointed-arched style into Sicily, and its peculiar development there. The whole history is so easily understood, the style itself so distinct from any other, and at the same time so intrinsically beautiful, that it is of all the divisions of the subject the one best suited for a monograph, and so it seems to have been considered by many—Hittorff and Zanth,[320] the Duke of Serra di Falco,[321] and our own Gally Knight,[322] having chosen it for special illustration, so that in fact there are few European styles of which we have more complete information. Many of the points of its history are nevertheless still subjects of controversy, not from any inherent obscurity in the subject, but because it has been attempted to apply to it the rules and theories derived from the history of Northern art.
The map of Sicily tells its whole history; its position and form reveal nearly all that is required to be known of the races that inhabited it, and of their fate. Situated in the centre of the Mediterranean Sea, of a nearly regular triangular form, and presenting one side to Greece, another to Africa, and a third to Italy, the length of these coasts, and their relative distance from the opposite shores, are nearly correct indexes of the influence each has had on the civilisation of the island.
In a former chapter[323] it was shown how strong was the influence of Dorian Greece in Sicily. Almost all the ancient architectural remains belong to that people. The Carthaginians, who succeeded the Greeks, left but slight traces of humanising influence; and the rule of the Romans was that of conquerors, oppressive and destructive of the civilisation of the people. After the Christian era, a very similar succession of influences took place. First and most powerful was the Byzantine element, which forms the groundwork and main ingredient in all that follows. To this succeeded the Saracenic epoch: bright, brilliant, but evanescent. In the 11th century the Italian element resumed its sway under the banner of a few Norman adventurers, and in the guise of a Norman conquest sacerdotal Rome regained the inheritance of her imperial predecessor. In the Christian period, however, the elements were far from being so distinct as in those preceding it, for reasons easily understood. Every fresh race of masters found the island already occupied by a very numerous population of extremely various origin. The new-comers could do no more than add their own forms of art to those previously in use; the consequence being in every case a mixed style, containing elements derived from every portion of the inhabitants.
We have no means of knowing the exact form of the Byzantine churches of Sicily before the Arab invasion. All have either perished or are undescribed. The Saracenic remains, too, have all disappeared, the buildings generally supposed to be relics of their rule being now proved to have been erected by Mahometan workmen for their Christian masters. With the Norman sway a style arose which goes far to supply all these deficiencies, being Greek in essence, Roman in form, and Saracenic in decoration; and these elements mixed in exactly those proportions which we should expect. Nowhere do we find the square-domed plans of the Greek Church, nor any form suited to the Greek ritual. These have given place to the Roman basilica, and to an arrangement adapted to the rites of the Romish Church; but all the work was performed by Greek artists, and the Roman outline was filled up and decorated to suit the taste and conciliate the feelings of the worshippers, who were conquered Greeks or converted Moors. Their fancy, too—richer and happier than that of the ruder races of the West—was allowed full play. An Eastern exuberance in designing details and employing colours is here exhibited, cramped a little, it must be confessed, by the architectural forms and the ritual arrangements to which it is applied, but still a ruling and beautifying principle throughout.
Among all these elements, those who are familiar with architectural history will hardly look for anything indicative of purely Norman taste or feelings. A mere handful of military adventurers, they conquered as soldiers of Rome and for her aggrandisement, and held the fief for her advantage: they could have brought no arts even if their country had then possessed any. They were content that their newly-acquired subjects should erect for them palaces after the beautiful fashion of the country, and that Roman priests should direct the building of churches suited to their forms, but built as the Sicilians had been accustomed to build, and decorated as they could decorate them, better than their masters and conquerors.
All this, when properly understood, lends an interest to the history of this little branch of architecture, wholly independent of its artistic merit; but the art itself is so beautiful and so instructive, from its being one of the styles where polychromy was universally employed and is still preserved, that notwithstanding all that has been done, it still merits more attention.
It is extremely difficult, in a limited space, to give a clear account of the Sicilian pointed style, owing to the fusion of the three styles of which it is composed being far from complete or simultaneous over the whole island, and there being no one edifice in which all three are mixed in anything like equal proportions. Each division of the island, in fact, retains a predilection for that style which characterised the majority of its inhabitants. Thus Messina and the northern coast as far as Cefalu remained Italian in the main, and the churches there have only the smallest possible admixture of either Greek or Saracenic work. The old parts of the Nunziatella at Messina might be found at Pisa, while the cathedral there and at Cefalu would hardly be out of place in Apulia, except indeed that Cefalu displays a certain early predilection for pointed arches, and something of Greek feeling in the decoration of the choir.
In like manner in Syracuse and the southern angle of the island the Greek feeling prevails almost to the exclusion of the other two. In Palermo, on the other hand, and the western parts, the architecture is so strongly Saracenic that hardly any antiquary has yet been able to admit the possibility of such buildings as the Cuba and Ziza having been erected by the Norman kings. There is, however, little or no doubt that the latter was built by William I. (1154-1169), and the other about the same time, though by whom is not so clear. Both these buildings were erected after a century of Norman dominion in the island: still the Saracenic influence, so predominant in them, need not astonish us, when we consider the immeasurable superiority of the Saracens in art and civilisation, not only to their new rulers, but to all the other inhabitants. It was therefore only natural that they should be employed to provide for the Norman Counts such buildings as they alone had the heart to erect and adorn.
A still more remarkable instance of the prevalence of Saracenic ideas is represented in Woodcut No. 531, being the Church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti at Palermo. Here we find a building erected beyond all doubt as late as the year 1132, by King Roger, for the purposes of Christian worship, which would in no respect, except the form of its tower, be out of place as a mosque in the streets of Delhi or Cairo. In fact, were we guided by architectural considerations alone, this church would have more properly been described under the head of Saracenic than of Christian architecture.
There are three other churches of Palermo which exhibit the new mixed style in all its completeness. These are the Martorana (1113-1143), in which the Byzantine element prevails somewhat to the exclusion of the other two; the Capella Palatina in the Palace, built in 1132; and the more magnificent church of Monreale, near Palermo (Woodcut No. 532), begun in 1174, and certainly the finest and most beautiful of all the buildings erected by the Normans in this country. This church is 315 ft. in its extreme length; while the beautiful gem-like Capella of the royal palace is much smaller, being only 125 ft. long, and consequently inferior in grandeur, though in the relative proportions of its parts, and in all other essential points, very similar.
In arrangement and dimensions the cathedral of Monreale very much resembles that at Messina, showing the same general influence in both; but all the details of the Palermitan example betray that admixture of Greek and Saracenic feeling which is the peculiarity of Sicilian architecture. There is scarcely a single form or detail in the whole building which can strictly be called Gothic, or which points to any connection with Northern arts or races. The plan of this, as of all the Sicilian churches, is that of a Roman basilica, far more than of a Gothic church. In none of them was any vault ever either built or intended. The central is divided from the side-aisles by pillars of a single stone, generally borrowed from ancient temples, but (in this instance at least) with capitals of great beauty, suited to their position and to the load they have to support. The pier-arches are pointed, but not Gothic, having no successive planes of decoration, but being merely square masses of masonry of simple but stilted forms. The windows, too, though pointed, are undivided, and evidently never meant for painted glass. The roofs of the naves are generally of open framing, like those of the basilicas, and ornamented in Saracenic taste. The aisles, the intersection of the transepts and nave, and the first division of the sanctuary are generally richer, and consequently more truly Moorish. The apse again is Roman. Taken altogether, it is only the accident of the pointed arch having been borrowed from the Moors that has led to the idea of Gothic feeling existing in these edifices. It does exist at Messina and Cefalu, but in Palermo is almost wholly wanting.
It is evident that the architectural features in the buildings of which the cathedral of Monreale is the type, were subordinate, in the eyes of their builders, to the mosaic decorations which cover every part of the interior, and are, in fact, the glory and pride of the edifice, by which alone it is entitled to rank among the finest of Mediæval churches. All the principal personages of the Bible are represented in the stiff but grand style of Greek art, sometimes with Greek inscriptions, and accompanied by scenes illustrating the Old and New Testaments. They are separated by and intermixed with arabesques and ornaments in colour and gold, making up a decoration unrivalled in its class by anything—except, perhaps, St. Mark’s—the Middle Ages have produced. The church at Assisi is neither so rich nor so splendid. The Certosa is infamous in taste as compared with this Sicilian cathedral. No specimen of opaque painting of its class, on this side of the Alps, can compete with it in any way. Perhaps the painted glass of some of our cathedrals may have surpassed it, but that is gone. In this respect the mosaic has the advantage. It is to be regretted that we have no direct means of comparing the effect of these two modes of decoration. In both the internal architecture was subordinate to the colour—more so, perhaps, as a general rule, in the Sicilian examples than in the North. In fact, the architecture was merely a vehicle for the display of painting in its highest and most gorgeous forms.
Besides the mosaic pictures which adorn the upper part of the walls of these Palermitan churches, they possess another kind of decoration almost equally effective, the whole of the lower part of the walls being revêted with slabs of marble or porphyry disposed in the most beautiful patterns. The Martorana depends wholly for its effect on this species of decoration. In the Capella Palatina, and the church at Monreale, it occupies the lower part of the walls only, and serves as a base for the storied decorations above; but whether used separately or in combination, the result is perfect, and such as is hardly attained in any other churches in any part of Europe.
Externally the Gothic architects had immensely the advantage. They never allowed their coloured decorations to interfere with their architectural effects. On the contrary, they so used them as to make the windows externally as well as internally their most beautiful and attractive features.
The cathedral of Palermo, the principal entrance of which is shown in Woodcut No. 534, is a building of much later date, that which we now see being principally of the 14th century. Although possessing no dignity of outline or grace of form, it is more richly ornamented externally with intersecting arches and mosaic decorations than almost any other church of its class. It is richer perhaps and better than the cathedral of Florence, inasmuch as the decorations follow the construction, and are not—as there—a mere unmeaning panelling that might be applied anywhere. All this is more apparent in the apse (Woodcut No. 535) than on the lateral elevation. It converts what would be only a very plain exterior into a very rich and ornamental composition; not quite suited to Northern taste, but very effective in the sunny South. Still the effect of the whole is rather pretty than grand, and as an architectural display falls far short of the bolder masonic expression of the Northern Gothic churches.
After these, one of the most important churches of that age in the island is the cathedral of Cefalu, already alluded to. It was commenced by King Roger 1131. It is 230 ft. long by 90 ft. wide. The choir and transepts are vaulted and groined; the nave has a wooden roof; all the arches are pointed; and with its two western towers it displays more Gothic feeling than any other church in Sicily.
The cathedral at Messina, though closely resembling that at Monreale in plan, has been so altered and rebuilt as to retain very little of its original architecture. The other churches in the island are either small and insignificant, or, like that at Messina, have been so altered that their features are obliterated.
Besides the Saracenic castles or palaces above mentioned, there are no important civil buildings of Mediæval style in Sicily. There are two cloisters—one at Monreale and the other at Cefalu—both in the style universal in all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, and already described in speaking of those of Elne, Fontifroide, Arles, &c., as well as those of St. John Lateran at Rome. Their general arrangement consists of small but elegant pillars of Corinthian design, in pairs, supporting pointed arches of great beauty of form. In many respects this is a more beautiful mode of producing a cloistered arcade than the series of unglazed windows universally adopted in the North. The Southern method presupposes a wooden or at most a tunnel-vaulted roof, as at Arles, whereas all our best examples have intersecting vaults of great beauty, which indeed is the excuse for the windowed arrangement assumed by them. An intermediate course, like that adopted at Zurich (Woodcut No. 722), would perhaps best reconcile the difficulty; but this was only used during the period of transition from one style to the other. The effect, however, of the cloister at Monreale, with the fountain in one of its divisions, and a certain air of Eastern elegance and richness pervading the whole, is not surpassed by any of the examples on the Continent of its own size, though its dimensions do not allow it to compete with some of the larger examples of France, and especially of Spain.
As the employment of the pointed arch so early in Sicily has been much quoted in the controversy regarding the invention of that feature, it may be convenient to state here that the pointed arch was used in the South of France—at Vaison, for instance—at least as early as the 10th century, but only as a vaulting expedient. During the 11th it was currently used in the south, and as far north as Burgundy; and in the 12th it was boldly adopted in the north as a vaulting, constructive and decorative feature, giving rise to the invention of a totally new style of architectural art.
It is by no means impossible that the pointed arch was used by the Greek or Pelasgic colonists about Marseilles at a far earlier date, but this can only have been in arches or domes constructed horizontally. These may have suggested its use in radiating vaults, but can hardly be said to have influenced its adoption. Had it not been for the constructive advantages of pointed arches, the Roman circular form would certainly have retained its sway. It is possible, however, that the northern Franks would never have adopted it so completely as they did had they not become familiar with it either in Sicily or the East. When once they had so taken it up, they made it their own by employing it only as a modification of the round-arched forms previously introduced and perfected.
In Sicily the case is different; the pointed arch there never was either a vaulting or constructive expedient—it was simply a mode of eking out, by its own taller form and by stilting, the limited height of the Roman pillars, which they found and used so freely. It is the same description of arch as that used in the construction of the mosque El-Aksah at Jerusalem in the 8th century; at Cairo in rebuilding that of Amrou in the 9th or 10th and in El-Azhar and other mosques of that city. As such it was used currently in Sicily by the Saracens, and in Palermo and elsewhere became so essential a part of the architecture of the day that it was employed as a matter of course in the churches; but it was not introduced by the Normans, nor was it carried by them from Sicily into France, and, except so far as already stated, it had no influence on the arts of France. In fact there is no connection, either ethnographically or architecturally, between the Sicilian pointed arch and the French; and beyond the accident of the broken centre they have nothing in common.
Although, therefore, it can hardly again be used as evidence in the question of the invention of the pointed arch, the architecture of Sicily deserves a better monography than it has yet been made the subject of. It must, however, be written by some one intimately familiar with the Byzantine, Saracenic, and Romanesque styles. To any one so qualified, Sicily would afford the best field in Europe for tracing the influence of race and climate on architecture: for nowhere, owing in a great measure to its insular position, can the facts be more easily traced, or the results more easily observed.
In one other point of view also the style deserves attention, for from it alone can we fairly weigh the merit of the two systems of internal decoration employed during the Middle Ages. By comparing, for instance, the cathedral at Monreale, with such a building as the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, we may judge whether polychromy by opaque pictures in mosaic, or by translucent pictures on glass, is the more beautiful mode of decorating the interior of a building. The former have undoubtedly the advantage of durability, and interfere less with the architectural effect, but for beauty and brilliancy of effect I have little doubt that the general verdict would be that the latter have at least hitherto been the most successful mode. On the whole, however, it seems that a higher and purer class of art may be developed out of opaque painting than can ever be obtained from transparencies, and if this is so there can be little doubt as to which we ought now to seek to cultivate. The question has never yet been fairly discussed; and examples sufficiently approximating to one another, either in age or style, are so rare that its determination is not easy. For that very reason it is the more desirable that we should make the most of those we have, and try if from them we can settle one of the most important questions which architectural history has left to be determined with reference to our future progress in the art.
IX. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN PALESTINE
CONTENTS.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem—Churches at Abû Gosh and Lydda— Mosque at Hebron.
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CHRONOLOGY.
DATES. Jerusalem taken by the Crusaders A.D. 1099 Baudouin I. 1100 Baudouin II. 1118 Foulques, Count of Anjou 1131 Saladin retakes Jerusalem 1187 Third Crusade. Richard II. 1192 Frederick II. re-enters Jerusalem 1229 Re-taken by Sultan of Damascus 1239 Final overthrow of Christians 1244
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IT may at first sight appear strange that any form of architecture in Syria should be treated as a part of that of Italy, but the circumstances of the case are so exceptional that there can be little doubt of the correctness of so doing. Gothic architecture was not a natural growth in Palestine, but distinctly an importation of the Crusaders, transplanted by them to a soil where it took no root, and from which it died out when the fostering care of Western protection was removed. In this it is only too true a reflex of the movement to which it owed its origin. The Crusades furnish one of those instances in the history of the world where the conquerors of a nation have been so numerous as entirely to supplant, for a time, the native population and the indigenous institutions of the country. For nearly a century Jerusalem was subject to kings and barons of a foreign race. The feudal system was imported entire, with its orders of knighthood, its “Assises,” and all the concomitant institutions which had grown up with the feudal system in Western Europe. With them, as a matter of course, came the hierarchy of the Roman Church, and with it the one style of architecture which they then knew, or which was appropriate to their form of worship.
The one point which is not at first sight obvious is, why the Gothic style in Palestine should be so essentially Italian, with so little admixture of the styles prevalent on the northern side of the Alps. It may have been that then, as now, the Italians settled loosely in the land. We know that the trade of the Levant was at that time in the hands of Venice and other Italian cities, and it is clear that it was easier to send to Italy for artists and workmen, than to France and Germany, and much more likely that an Italian would undertake the erection of buildings in the East than a Northern architect, whose ideas of Palestine and its ways must have been extremely indistinct. Be this as it may, there is little in the Gothic architecture of Palestine either as regards arrangement or details—except the plan of the church of the Holy Sepulchre—which would excite attention as singular if found in the South of Italy or Sicily; and as little that would not seem out of place if found on our side of the Alps.
HOLY SEPULCHRE.
The principal buildings erected by the Crusaders in Palestine were, as might be expected, the extensive additions made to the church or rather to the group of churches near the Holy Sepulchre—the deliverance of which from the hands of the infidels was the object of that wonderful burst of national enthusiasm.[324]
The buildings on the site have been so repeatedly ruined and rebuilt, and so little remains now of their original features prior to the Crusaders’ work, that it is only necessary here to state the generally accepted belief that the rotunda (A) shown on the upper part of the plan (Woodcut No. 536) represents the position of the great apse erected by Constantine, round what he considered to be the sepulchre of Christ (marked B on plan). The great basilica which is described by Eusebius,[325] was erected on the east side of this. This and other buildings were destroyed by Chosroes the Persian in 614, and portions only (those round the Holy Sepulchre) were restored by Modestus in 629. In 1010, the mad Khalif Hakem destroyed Modestus’s work, and the rotunda, as shown in Woodcut, was built by the Emperor Constantine Monomachus thirty years later.
When the Crusaders reached Jerusalem, 1099 A.D., the sepulchre appears to have stood in a court open to the sky,[326] but “covered over lest rain should fall upon it,” surrounded with an aisle and with five chapels (C.D.E.F.G.) attached to it. These the Crusaders incorporated[327] with their additions and alterations, which amounted almost to a rebuilding of the church. The plan (Woodcut No. 536) indicates in black those portions found by the Crusaders; in half tone, those which were built by them, and in outline only the subsequent additions made before and after the great fire of 1808.[328] Though entirely at variance with the arrangement of the basilica and independent tomb-house as adopted by Constantine some seven centuries earlier, it would seem that the object of the Crusader was to preserve intact the Rotunda and the Holy Sepulchre. The principal entrance led into what was virtually the main transept, with the Rotunda on the west side and the choir and apse on the east. At a later period the space within the crossing was enclosed for the Greek Church, so that the Rotunda now appears to be the nave, and it is in that sense that the church has been so often copied. The plan was commonly employed in the North of Europe (Woodcuts Nos. 790 to 795), and bloomed into perfection at Cologne in the church of St. Gereon (Woodcut No. 741). It is also found at Little Maplestead (Woodcut No. 847), Zara (Woodcut No. 486), in the churches of the Temple in London, of St. Sepulchre at Cambridge, and elsewhere. In all these instances it consists of a circular nave leading to a rectangular choir terminated by an apse. Though primarily sepulchral in its origin, it is used in all these places without any reference to its original destination, and had become a recognised form of Christian church for the ordinary purposes of worship.
Though containing so many objects of interest, the church itself is not large, measuring 245 ft. long internally, exclusive of the crypt and chapel of the cross, which being at a much lower level must have formed a crypt under the nave and aisles of the basilica.
So far as can be judged from the information which remains to us, the style (before the fire of 1808, after which the Rotunda was entirely rebuilt) was tolerably homogeneous throughout. The transept, now converted into a choir, and the apse, which, though commenced in 1103, were not completed before 1169, show progress in style. All the constructive arches in this part of the building are pointed—but the decorative portions still retain the circular form.
Owing to its situation, and its being so much encumbered by other buildings, the only part of the exterior which makes any pretension to architectural magnificence is the Southern double portal, erected apparently between the years 1140 and 1160. This is a rich and elegant example of the style of ornamentation prevalent in Sicily and Southern Italy in the 12th century, but among its most elaborate decoration, are two rich cornices of classical date, built in unsymmetrically as string-courses, amongst details belonging to the time of the Crusades. From their style these cornices undoubtedly belong to the age of Constantine, and are probably fragments of some ancient buildings. At an earlier age such fragments would probably have been more extensively used up; but in the 12th century the architects had acquired confidence in themselves and their own style, and despised classical arrangements both in plan and in detail.
The sepulchre itself seems to have been rebuilt, about the year 1555,[329] or at least so thoroughly repaired that it is difficult to say what its exact original form may have been. Probably it did not differ materially from that shown in the woodcut, since that resembles the style of the 12th much more than that of the 16th century.
Although the church of the Holy Sepulchre was, naturally, by far the greatest work undertaken by the Crusaders, there are some six or seven other churches in Jerusalem,[330] or its immediate vicinity, which were erected during the 12th century. The most complete of these at the present day is that of St. Anne—now in course of thorough repair by the French Government.
It is a small church, 112 ft. long by 66 ft. wide internally, divided into three aisles, each terminating in an apse, and covered with intersecting vaults, showing strongly-marked transverse ribs of the usual Italian pattern. It has also a small dome on the intersection between the nave and transept. The windows are small and without tracery. It is, in fact, a counterpart of the usual Italian church of the age. The same remarks apply to Ste. Marie la Grande, Ste. Marie Latine, the Madeleine, and other churches which the Christians built in their quarter of the town during their occupation, to replace those of which the Moslems had deprived them.
One of the most perfect churches of this age, out of Jerusalem, is that at Abû Gosh—the ancient Kirjath-Jearim (Woodcuts Nos. 538, 539). Externally it is a rectangle, 86 ft. by 57 ft., with three apses which do not appear externally. Under the whole is an extensive crypt. Though small, it is so complete, and so elegant in all its details, that it would be difficult to find anywhere a more perfect example of the style. As it now stands it is very much simpler and plainer than any Northern example of the same age would be; but it originally depended on painting for its decoration, and traces of this may still be seen on its desecrated walls. It is now used as a cattle-shed. The church at Ramleh is one of the largest, and must originally have been one of the finest, of these Syrian churches. It is now used as a mosque, and the consequent alteration of its arrangement, with plaster and whitewash, have done much to destroy its architectural effect.
At Sebaste there is one as large as that at Ramleh—160 ft. by 80 ft.—and showing a more completely developed Gothic style than those at Jerusalem. At Lydda there is another very similar in detail to that last mentioned. Though now only a fragment, it is one of singular elegance, and shows a purity of detail and arrangement not usual in Northern churches of that age. De Vogüé is of opinion that both the last-named churches must have been completed before the year 1187. It is hard, however, to believe that an Italian Gothic style could have attained that degree of perfection so early, and if the date assigned is correct, it is evident that the pointed style was developed earlier in the East than in the West, a circumstance which, from our knowledge of what had happened in Armenia and elsewhere, is by no means improbable.
The date assigned to these churches is rendered more probable by the existence of a Gothic building, certainly as advanced as any of those mentioned, within the enclosure of the mosque at Hebron. If this was a work of the Crusaders it must have been built before 1187, since the Christians never had access to the place after their defeat at Tiberias. If not erected by them, we are forced to assume that the Moslems, after recovering possession of the sepulchres of the Patriarchs, employed some Christian renegades or slaves to erect a mosque on the spot, in their own style of architecture. This is, however, by no means improbable, since it is the only Christian church (if it be one) in Palestine which has no apse, though there would have been no difficulty in introducing three apses in the same manner as at Abû Gosh (Woodcut No. 538) had it been so desired. It should also be remarked that the three aisles point southward towards Mecca, and that, except in style, it has all the appearance of a mosque. Both Christian and Mahometan tradition are silent as to its erection, so that the determination of the question must depend on a more careful examination than has yet been possible. Whichever way it may be decided, it is a curious question. It is either a Christian building without the arrangement elsewhere universally indispensable, or it is a Moslem mosque in a Christian style of architecture. If the former, the complete development of the Italian pointed style of architecture in the East must be fixed at not less than half a century anterior to that in the West.
I. CONTENTS
Division of subject—Pointed arches—Provence—Churches at Avignon, Arles, Alet, Fontifroide, Maguelonne, Vienne—Circular churches—Towers— Cloisters.
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CHRONOLOGY.
DATES. Charlemagne A.D. 768-813 Rollo, first Duke of Normandy 911 Hugh Capet 987 William II. of Normandy, or the Conqueror 1055-1086 Henry I. of France 1031 Philip I., or l’Amoureux 1060 Louis VI., or le Gros 1108 Louis VII., or le Jeune 1137 St. Bernard of Clairvaux 1091-1153 Philip II., or l’Auguste 1180 Louis VIII., or the Lion 1223 Louis IX., or the Saint 1226 Philip III., the Hardy 1270 Philip IV., or the Fair 1285 Philip VI. of Valois 1328 Battle of Crecy 1346 John II., the Good 1350 Charles V., the Wise 1364 Charles VI., the Beloved 1380 Charles VII., the Victorious 1422 Joan of Arc 1412-1431 Louis XI. 1461 Charles VIII. 1483 Louis XII. 1498 Francis I. 1515
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TO those who do not look beyond the present, France appears to be one of the most homogeneous of all the countries of Europe—inhabited by a people speaking one language, professing one religion, governed by the same laws, and actuated by the same feelings and aspirations; yet it certainly is not so in reality, and in the Middle Ages the distinctions between the various races and peoples were strongly marked and capable of easy definition. Wars, persecutions, and revolutions, have done much to obliterate these, and the long habit of living under a centralised despotism has produced a superficial uniformity which hides a great deal of actual diversity. The process of fusion commenced apparently about the reign of Louis the Saint (A.D. 1226), and has gone on steadily ever since. Before his time France was divided into six or eight great ethnographic provinces which might now be easily mapped out, though their boundaries frequently differed widely from the political division of the land.
No systematic attempt has yet been made to construct an ethnographic map of the country from the architectural remains, though it is easy to see how it might be done. What is wanted is that some competent archæologist should do for the ethnography of France what Sir W. Smith did at the end of the last century for the geology of England. Like that early pioneer of exact knowledge in his peculiar department, he must be content to wander from province to province, from village to village, visiting every church, and examining every architectural remain, comparing one with another, tracing their affinities, and finally classifying and mapping the whole. It is probable that the labour of one man would hardly suffice for this purpose. Monographs would be required to complete the task, but it is one of such singular interest that it is hoped it may soon be undertaken.
One of the great difficulties in attempting anything of the sort at present is the nomenclature. When the science is further advanced, such names as Silurian, Cambrian, &c., will no doubt be invented, but at present we must be content with the political name which seems most nearly to express the ethnographical distribution; though in scarcely a single instance will these be found strictly correct, all in consequence being open to adverse criticism. In France it frequently happened that two or more ethnographic provinces were united under one sceptre— eventually all were merged into one—and during the various changes that took place in the Middle Ages, it was only by accident that the political boundary exactly agreed for any great length of time with the ethnographical.
In Germany, on the contrary, a single race is and was cut up into numerous political divisions, so that it becomes, from the opposite cause alone, equally difficult to apply a nomenclature which shall correctly represent the facts of the case.
In such a work as this it would be manifestly absurd to attempt to adjust all this with anything like minute accuracy, but the principal features are so easily recognised that no great confusion can arise in the application of such names as are usually employed, and it is to be hoped that before long a better system of nomenclature will be invented and applied.
We may rest assured of one thing, at all events, which is that the architectural remains in France are as sufficient for the construction of an ethnographic map of that country as the rocks are for the compilation of a geological survey. If the one opens out to the student an immense expanse of scientific knowledge, the other is hardly of less interest, though in a less extended field. There are few studies more pleasing than that of tracing the history of man through his works, and none bring the former condition of humanity so vividly back to us as those records which have been built into the walls of their temples or their palaces by those who were thus unconsciously recording their feelings for the instruction of their posterity.
The first thing that strikes the student in examining architecturally the map of France is the recurrence of the same phenomenon as was remarked in that of Italy, a division into two nearly equal halves by a boundary line running east and west. In both countries, to the southward of this line the land was occupied by a Romanesque people who, though conquered, were never colonised by the Barbarians to such an extent as to alter their blood or consequently the ethnographic relations of the people. North of the line the Goths and Lombards in Italy, and the Franks in Gaul, settled in such numbers as to influence very considerably the status of the races, in some instances almost to the obliteration of their leading characteristics.
In France the boundary line follows the valley of the Loire near its northern edge till it passes behind Tours; it crosses that river between that city and Orleans, follows a somewhat devious course to Lyons, and up the valley of the Rhone to Geneva.
In the Middle Ages the two races were roughly designated as those speaking the Langue d’oc and the Langue d’œil—somewhat more correctly those to the south were called Romance,[333] those to the north Frankish; but the truth is, the distinction is too broad to be now clearly defined, and we must descend much more into detail before any satisfactory conclusion can be arrived at.
On the south of the line, one of the most beautiful as well as the best defined architectural provinces is that I have ventured to designate as Provence or Provençal. Its limits are very nearly coincident with those of Gallia Narbonensis, and “Narbonese” would consequently be a more correct designation, and would be adopted if treating of a classical style of art. It has, however, the defect of including Toulouse, which does not belong to the province, and consequently the name affects an accuracy it does not possess. It may, therefore, be better at present to adopt the vague name of the “Provence” par excellence, especially as Provençal is a word applied by French authors to literary matters much in the sense it is here used to define an architectural division. The whole of the south coast of France from the Alps to the Pyrenees belongs to this province, and it extends up the valley of the Rhone as far as Lyons, and is generally bounded by the hills on either side of that river.
Perhaps the best mode of defining the limits of the Aquitanian province would be to say that it includes all those towns whose names end with the Basque article ac, consequently indicating the presence at some former period of a people speaking that language or something very closely allied to it, or at all events differing from those of the rest of France. It is only on the eastward that the line seems difficult to define. There are some towns, such as Barjac, Quissac, Gignac, in the valley of the Rhone, in situations that would seem to belong to Provence, and until their churches are examined it is impossible to say to which they belong. On the south Aquitania is bounded by the Pyrenees, on the west by the sea, and on the North by a line running nearly straight from the mouth of the Garonne to Langeac, near to Le Puy-en-Velay.
The third is designated that of Anjou, or the Angiovine, from its most distinguished province. This includes the lower part of the Loire, and is bounded on the north-east by the Cher. Between it and the sea is a strip of land, including the Angoumois, Saintonge, and Vendée, which it is not easy to know where to place. It may belong, so far as we yet know, to either Aquitania or Anjou, or possibly may deserve a separate title altogether; but in the map it is annexed for the present to Poitou or the Angiovine province.
In Brittany the two styles meet, and are so mixed together that it is impossible to separate them. In that district there is neither pure Romance nor pure Frankish, but a style partaking of the peculiarities of each without belonging to either.
Besides these, there is the small and secluded district of Auvergne, having a style peculiarly its own, which, though certainly belonging to the southern province, is easily distinguished from any of the neighbouring styles, and is one of the most pleasing to be found of an early age in France.
Beyond this to the eastward lies the great Burgundian province, having a well-defined and well-marked style of its own, influenced by or influencing all those around it. Its most marked characteristic is what may be called a mechanical mixture of the classical and mediæval styles without any real fusion. Essentially and constructively the style is Gothic, but it retained the use of Corinthian pilasters and classical details till late in the Middle Ages: Burgundy was also in the Middle Ages the country of monasticism par excellence—a circumstance which had considerable influence on her forms of art.
Taking, then, a more general view of the southern province, it will be seen that if a line were drawn from Marseilles to Brest, it would pass nearly through the middle of it. At the south-eastern extremity of such a line we should find a style almost purely Romanesque, passing by slow and equal gradations into a Gothic form at its other terminal.
On turning to the Frankish province the case is somewhat different. Paris is here the centre, from which everything radiates: and though the Norman invasion, and other troubles of those times, with the rebuilding mania of the 13th century, have swept away nearly all traces of the early buildings, still it is easy to see how the Gothic style arose in the Isle of France, and how it spread from thence to all the neighbouring provinces.
In consequence, however, of the loss of its early buildings, and of its subsequent pre-eminence and supercession of the earlier styles, the description of its features naturally follows that of the subordinate provinces, and concludes the history of the mediæval styles in France.
Not to multiply divisions, we may include in the Northern province many varieties that will afterwards be marked as distinct in maps of French architecture, especially at the south-east, where the Nivernois and Bourbonnois, if not deserving of separate honours, at least consist of such a complete mixture of the Frankish and Burgundian with the Southern styles, that they cannot strictly be said to belong to any one in particular, though they partake of all. The Northern, however, is certainly the predominant element, and with that therefore they should be classed.
To the westward lies the architectural province of Normandy, one of the most vigorous offshoots of the Frankish style: and from the power of the Norman dukes in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the accidental circumstance of its prosperity in those centuries when the rest of France was prostrate from their ravages and torn by internal dissensions, the Romanesque style shows itself here with a vigour and completeness not found elsewhere. It is, however, evidently only the Frankish style based remotely on Roman tradition, but which the Barbarians used with a freedom and boldness which soon converted it into a purely national form. This soon ripened into the complete Gothic style of the 13th century, which was so admired that it soon spread over the whole face of Europe, and became the type of all Gothic architecture.
Alsace is not included in this enumeration, as it certainly belongs architecturally to Germany. Lorraine too is more German than French, and if included at all, must be so as an exceptional transitional province. French Flanders belonged, in the Middle Ages, to the Belgian provinces behind it, and may therefore also be disregarded at present: but even after rejecting all these, enough is still left to render it difficult to remember and follow all the changes in style introduced by these different races, and which marked not only the artistic but the political state of France during the Middle Ages, when the six territorial peers of France, the Counts of Toulouse, Aquitaine, Normandy, Burgundy, Champagne, and Flanders, represented the six principal provinces of the kingdom, under their suzerain, the Count or King of Paris. These very divisions might now be taken to represent the architectural distinctions, were it not that the pre-eminence of these great princes belongs to a later epoch than the architectural divisions which we have pointed out, and which we must now describe somewhat more at length.
POINTED ARCHES.
Before proceeding to describe these various styles in detail, it may add to the clearness of what follows if the mode in which the pointed arch was first introduced into Christian architecture is previously explained. It has already been shown that the pointed arch with radiating voussoirs was used by the Assyrians as early as the time of Sargon in the 8th century B.C., and by the Ethiopians as early as that of Tirhakah. The Etrurians and Pelasgi used the form probably twelve centuries before the Christian era, but constructed it with horizontal courses. To come nearer, however, to our own time, the Saracens certainly adopted it at Cairo in the first century of the Hegira,[334] and employed it generally if not universally, and never apparently used a round arch after the erection of the mosque of Ebn Tulûn, A.D. 879.
The Romanesque traditions, however, prevented the Christians from adopting it in Europe till forced to do it from constructive necessities; and the mode of its introduction into the early churches in Provence renders them singularly important in enabling us to arrive at a correct solution of this much mooted question.[335]
It is hardly worth while discussing whether the form was borrowed from the East, where it had been used so long before it was known—or at least before we are aware of its being known—in Europe. It may be that the Pelasgic Greeks left examples of it in Provence, or that persons trading to the Levant from Marseilles became familiar with its uses; or it may be, though very unlikely, that it was really re-invented for the purposes to which it was applied.
In whatever way it was introduced, it at least seems certain that all the churches of Provence, from the age of Charlemagne to that of St. Louis, were vaulted, and have their vaults constructed on the principle of the pointed arch. It has nevertheless long been a received dogma with the antiquaries of France, as well as with those of England, that the pointed arch was first introduced in the 12th century—the first example being assumed to be the work of Abbot Suger at St. Denis (1144-52), the result of which is that all who have written on the subject of Provençal architecture have felt themselves forced to ascribe the age of the churches in question, or at least of their roofs, a date subsequent to this period.
The use to which the Provençal architects applied the pointed arch will be evident from the annexed diagram, the left-hand portion of which is a section of the roof of one of the churches at Vaison. The object evidently was to lay the roof or roofing-tiles directly on the vault, as the Romans had done on their domes, and also, so far as we know, on those of their thermæ. Had they used a circular vault for this purpose, it is evident, from the right-hand side of the diagram, that to obtain a straight-lined roof externally, and the necessary watershed, it would have been requisite to load the centre of the vault to a most dangerous extent, as at A; whereas with the pointed arch it only required the small amount of filling up shown at B, and even that might have been avoided by a little contrivance if thought necessary. By adopting the pointed form the weights are so distributed as to ensure stability and to render the vault self-supporting. It has already been observed that the Gothic architects everywhere treated their vaults as mere false ceilings, covering them with a roof of wood—an expedient highly objectionable in itself, and the cause of the destruction, by fire or from neglect, of almost all the churches we now find in ruins all over Europe; whereas, had they adhered either to the Roman or Romance style of roofing, the constant upholding hand of man would not have been required to protect their buildings from decay.
The one obstacle in the way of the general adoption of this mode of roofing was the difficulty of applying it to intersecting vaults. The Romans, it is true, had conquered the difficulty; so had the Byzantine architects, as we have already seen, displaying the ends of the vaults as ornaments; and even at St. Mark’s, Venice, this system is adopted, and with the additional advantage of the pointed arch might have been carried further. Still it must be confessed that it was not easy—that it required more skill in construction and a better class of masonry than was then available to do this efficiently and well. The consequence is, that all the Romance pointed vaults are simple tunnel-vaults without intersections, and that the Gothic architects, when they adopted the form, slurred over the difficulty by hiding the upper sides of their vaults beneath a temporary wooden roof, which protected them from the injuries of the weather. This certainly was one of the greatest mistakes they made: had they carefully profiled and ornamented the exterior of the stone roofs in the same manner as they ornamented the inside, their buildings would have been not only much more beautiful, but much more permanent, and the style would have been saved from the principal falsity that now deforms it. Even as it is, if we wished intelligently to adapt the Gothic to our purposes, instead of merely copying it, this is one of the points to which we ought first to turn our attention.
Another circumstance which may be alluded to here, when speaking on this subject, which led to the adoption of the pointed arch at an early age in the southern provinces of France, was the use of domes as a roofing expedient. These, it is true, are not found in Provence, but they are common in Aquitaine and Anjou—some of them certainly of the 11th century; and there can be little doubt but that these are not the earliest, though their predecessors have perished or have not yet been brought to light.
There is no one who has studied the subject who is not aware how excellent, as a constructive expedient, the pointed arch is as applied to intersecting vaults, but it is not so generally understood why it was equally necessary in the construction of domes. So long as these rested on drums rising from the ground the circular form sufficed; but when it became necessary to rest them on pendentives in the angles of square or octagonal buildings, the case was widely different. The early Byzantine architects—in Sta. Sophia, for instance—did fit pendentives to circular arches, but it was with extreme difficulty, and required very great skill both in setting out and in execution. But the superiority of the pointed form was perceived at an early date; and the Saracens, who were trammelled by no traditions, adopted it at once as a doming expedient and adhered to it as exclusively as the Gothic architects did in the construction of their vaults—and for the same reason—simply because it was the best mode of construction.
It is easy to explain why this should be so. In the diagram on the preceding page, fig. 1 represents the pendentives of a dome resting on circular arches. At A they become evanescent, and for some distance from the centre are so weak that it is only by concealed construction that they can be made to do their work. When the pointed arch is introduced, as in fig. 2, not only is great freedom obtained in spacing, but the whole becomes constructively correct; when, as in fig. 3, an octagonal arrangement is adopted, the whole becomes still more simple and easy, and very little adjustment is required to fit a dome to an octagon: and if the angles are again cut off, so as to form a polygon of 16 sides, all the exigencies of construction are satisfied.
At St. Front, Périgueux, at Moissac, and at Loches, we find the pointed arch, introduced evidently for this purpose, and forming a class of roofs more like those of mosques in Cairo than any other buildings in Europe. It is true they now look bare and formal—their decorations having been originally painted on stucco, which has pealed off; but still the variety of form and perspective they afford internally, and the character and truthfulness they give to the roof as seen from without, are such advantages that we cannot but regret that these two expedients of stone external roofs and domes were not adopted in Gothic. Had the great architects of that style in the 13th century carried out these with their characteristic zeal and earnestness, they might have left us a style in every respect infinitely more perfect and more beautiful than the one they invented, and which we are copying so servilely, instead of trying, with our knowledge and means of construction, to repair the errors and omissions of our forefathers, and out of the inheritance they have left us to work out something more beautiful and more worthy of our greater refinement and more advanced civilisation.
The practice of the Greeks in respect to their roofs was a curious contrast to that of the mediæval architects. Their architecture, as before remarked, being essentially external, while that of the Middle Ages was internal, they placed the stone of their roofs on the outside, and took the utmost pains to arrange the covering ornamentally; but they supported all this on a framework of wood, which in every instance has perished. It is difficult to say which was the greater mistake of the two. Both were wrong without doubt. The happy medium seems to be that which the Romance architects aimed at—a complete homogeneous roof, made of the most durable materials and ornamented, both externally and internally; and there can be little doubt but that this is the only legitimate and really artistic mode of effecting this purpose, and the one to which attention should now be turned.[336]
This early mode of employing the pointed arch is so little understood generally that, before leaving this branch of the subject, it may be well to quote one other example with a perfectly authentic date.
The Church of St. Nazaire at Carcassonne was dedicated by Pope Urban II. in 1096. It was not then quite complete, but there seems no doubt but that the nave, as we now find it, was finished by the year 1100. As will be seen from the annexed section, the side aisles and all the openings are constructed with round arches; but the difficulty of vaulting the nave forced on the architects the introduction of the pointed arch. It is here constructed solid with flat ribs over each pillar, and without any attempt to pierce it for the introduction of light; and as the west end is blocked up—fortified in fact—the result is gloomy enough.
This example is also interesting when looked at from another point of view. If we turn back to Woodcuts Nos. 187 and 188, and compare them with this section, we shall be able to gauge exactly the changes which were introduced and the progress that was made, during the 1000 years that elapsed between the erection of these two buildings. In the plan of the temple of Diana at Nîmes, we have the same three-aisled arrangement as at Carcassonne. Their dimensions are not very dissimilar; the nave at Nîmes is 27 ft. wide, the aisles 7½ ft. in the clear. At Carcassonne this becomes 25 ft. and 10 ft. respectively. The aisles are in the early example separated from the nave by screen walls, adorned with pillars which are mere ornaments. In the later examples the pillars have become the main support of the roof, the wall being omitted between them.
The roof of the nave in both instances is adorned with flat ribs, one over each pillar; but at Nîmes the rib is rather wider than the space between. At Carcassonne the rib occupies only one-fourth of the width of the bay. One of their most striking differences is, that Nîmes displays all that megalithic grandeur for which the works of the Romans were so remarkable; while at Carcassonne the masonry is little better than rubble. It need hardly be added that the temple displays an elegance of detail which charms the most fastidious taste, while the decoration of the church is rude and fantastic, though no doubt picturesque and appropriate. The last remark must not, however, be understood as a reproach to Gothic art, for the choir of this very church, and the two outer arches shown in the Woodcut No. 546, were rebuilt in the year 1331, with an elegance of detail which, in a constructive sense, would shame the best classical examples. The nave is a tentative example of a rude age, when men were inventing, or trying to invent, a new style, and before they quite knew how to set about it. The builders of Carcassonne had this temple at Nîmes standing, probably much more complete than it is now, within 120 miles of them, and they were attempting to copy it as best they could. It is probable, however, they had also other models besides this one, and certain that this was not the first attempt to reproduce them. The differences are considerable; but the similarities are so great that we ought rather to be astonished that ten centuries of experience and effort had not shown more progress than we find.
PROVENCE.
There are few chapters in the history of mediæval architecture which it would be more desirable to have fully and carefully written than that of the style of Provence from the retirement of the Romans to the accession of the Franks. This country, from various causes, retained more of its former civilisation through the dark ages than any other, at least on this side of the Alps. Such a history, however, is to be desired more in an archæological than in an architectural point of view; for the Provençal churches, compared with the true Gothic, though numerous and elegant, are small, and most of them have undergone such alterations as to prevent us from judging correctly of their original effect.
Among the Provençal churches, one of the most remarkable is Notre Dame de Doms, the cathedral at Avignon (Woodcut No. 547). Like all the others, its dimensions are small, as compared with those in the northern province, as it is only 200 ft. in length, and the nave about 20 ft. in width. The side aisles have been so altered and rebuilt, that it is difficult to say what their plan and dimensions originally may have been.
The most remarkable feature and the least altered is the porch, which is so purely Romanesque that it might almost be said to be copied from such examples as the arches on the bridge of Chamas (Woodcut No. 221). It presents, however, all that attenuation of the horizontal features which is so characteristic of the Lower Empire, and cannot rank higher than the Carlovingian era; though it is not quite so easy to determine how much more modern it may be. The same ornaments are found in the interior, and being integral parts of the ornamentation of the pointed roof, have led to various theories to account for this copying of classical details after the period at which it was assumed that the pointed arch had been introduced. It has been sufficiently explained above, how early this was the case as a vaulting expedient in this quarter; and that difficulty being removed, we may safely ascribe the whole of the essential parts of this church to a period not long, if at all, subsequent to the age of Charlemagne.
Next perhaps in importance to this, is the church of St. Trophime at Arles, the nave of which, with its pointed vault, probably belongs to the same age, though its porch (Woodcut No. 548), instead of being the earliest part as in the last instance, is here the most modern, having been erected in the 11th century, when the church to which it is attached acquired additional celebrity by the translation of the body of St. Trophime to a final resting-place within its walls. As it is, it forms a curious and interesting pendent to the one last quoted, showing how in the course of two centuries the style had passed from debased Roman to a purely native form, still retaining a strong tradition of its origin, but so used and so ornamented that, were we not able to trace back the steps one by one by which the porch at Avignon led to that of Arles, we might almost be inclined to doubt the succession.
The porches at Aix, Cuxa, Coustonges, Prades, Valcabre, Tarascon, and elsewhere in this province, form a series of singular interest, and of great beauty of detail mixed with all the rich exuberance of our own Norman doorways, and follow one another by such easy gradations that the relative age of each may easily be determined.
The culminating example is that at St. Gilles, near the mouths of the Rhone, which is by far the most elaborate church of its class, but so classical in many of its details, that it probably is somewhat earlier than this one at Arles, which it resembles in many respects, though far exceeding it in magnificence. It consists of three such porches placed side by side, and connected together by colonnades—if they may be so called—and sculpture of the richest class, forming altogether a frontal decoration unsurpassed except in the northern churches of the 13th century. Such porches, however, as those of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, surpass even these in elaborate richness and in dimensions, though it may be questioned if they are really more beautiful in design.
There is another church of the Carlovingian era at Orange, and one at Nîmes, probably belonging to the 9th or 10th century; both however very much injured by alterations and repairs. In the now deserted city of Vaison there are two churches, so classical in their style, that we are not surprised at M. Laborde,[337] and the French antiquaries in general, classing them as remains of the classical period. In any other country on this side of the Alps such an inference would be inevitable; but here another code of criticism must be applied to them. The oldest, the chapel of St. Quinide, belongs probably to the 9th or 10th century. It is small but remarkably elegant and classical in the style of its architecture. The apse is the most singular as well as the most ancient part of the church, and is formed in a manner of which no other example is found anywhere else, so far as I know. Externally it is two sides of a square, internally a semicircle; at each angle of the exterior and in each face is a pilaster, fairly imitated from the Corinthian order, and supporting an entablature that might very well mislead a Northern antiquary into the error of supposing it was a Pagan temple.
The cathedral, though larger, is more Gothic both in plan and detail, though not without some classical features, and is entirely free from the bold rudeness of style we are so accustomed to associate with the architecture of the 11th century, to which it belongs. Its system of vaulting has already been explained (Woodcut No. 544), but neither of these buildings has yet met with the attention they so richly merit from those who are desirous of tracing the progress of art from the decline of the pure Roman to the rise of the true Gothic styles.
Taking it altogether, perhaps the most elegant specimen of the style is the ruined—now, I fear, nearly destroyed—church of Alet, which, though belonging to the 11th century, was singularly classical in its details, and wonderfully elegant in every part of its design. Of this the apse, as having undergone no subsequent transformation, was by far the most interesting, though not the most beautiful, portion. Externally the upper part was adorned with dwarf Corinthian pilasters, surmounted by a cornice that would not discredit the buildings of Diocletian at Spalato; the lower part was ornamented by forms of more mediæval character, but of scarcely less elegance. In the interior the triumphal arch, as it would be called in a Roman basilica, is adorned by two Corinthian pillars, designed with the bold freedom of the age, though retaining the classical forms in a most unexpected degree.
The rest of the church is as elegant as these parts, though far less classical, the necessities of vaulting and construction requiring a different mode of treatment, and a departure from conventional forms, which the architect does not seem to have considered himself at liberty to employ in the apse.
Another singularly elegant specimen of this style is the church of St. Paul-Trois-Châteaux, near Avignon (Woodcuts Nos. 551, 552). Its details are so elegant and so classical that it might almost be mistaken for a building of the Lower Empire anterior to Justinian’s time. Its plan, however, and the details of its construction, prove that it belongs to a much more modern date; Viollet le Duc would even bring it down as low as the 12th century. It hardly seems possible that it should be so modern as this; but the truth is, the whole history of the Romance style in this province has still to be written.[338] It has not yet been examined with the care it deserves by any competent authority, and till it is we must be content with the knowledge that, in the neighbourhood of the Bouches du Rhône, there exists a group of churches which, drawing their inspiration from the classical remains with which the country is studded, exhibit an elegance of design as exquisite as it is in strange contrast with the rude vigour—almost vulgarity—which characterised the works of the Normans in the opposite corner of the land at the same period.
Passing from the round-arched to the pointed modifications of this style, the church at Fontifroide, near Narbonne, shows it in its completeness, perhaps better than any other example. There, not only the roof is pointed, but all the constructive openings have assumed the same forms. The windows and doorways, it is true, still retain their circular heads, and did retain them as long as the native style flourished—the pointed-headed opening being only introduced by the Franks when they occupied this country in the time of Simon de Montfort.
The section across the nave (Woodcut 553) shows the form of the central vault, which the longitudinal section shows to be a plain tunnel-vault unbroken by any intersection throughout the whole length of the nave. The side aisles are roofed with half vaults, forming abutments to the central arches—the advantage of this construction being, as before explained, that the tiles or paving-stones of the roof rest directly on the vault without the intervention of any carpentry. Internally also the building displays much elegant simplicity and constructive propriety. Its chief defect is the darkness of the vault from the absence of a clerestory, which though tolerable in the bright sunshine of the South, could not be borne in the more gloomy North. It was to correct this, as we shall afterwards perceive, that in the North the roof of the aisles was first raised to the height of that of the central nave, light being admitted through a gallery. Next the upper roof the aisles was cut away, with the exception of mere strips or ribs left as flying buttresses. Lastly, the central vault was cut up by intersections, so as to obtain space for windows to the very height of the ridge. It was this last expedient that necessitated the adoption of the pointed-headed window. It might never have been introduced but for the invention of painted glass, but this requiring larger openings, compelled the architects to bring these windows close up to the lines of the constructive vaulting, and so follow its forms. In the South, however, painted glass never was, at least in the age of which we are now speaking, a favourite mode of decoration, and the windows remained so small as never to approach or interfere in any way with the lines of the vault, and they therefore retained their national and more beautiful circular-headed termination. The modes of introducing light are, however, undoubtedly the most defective part of the arrangements of the Provençal churches, and have given rise to its being called a “cavern-like Gothic”[339] from the gloom of their interiors as compared with the glass walls of their Northern rivals. Still it by no means follows that this was an inherent characteristic of the style, which could not have been remedied by further experience; but it is probable that no ingenuity would ever have enabled this style to display these enormous surfaces of painted glass, the introduction of which was, if not the only, at least the principal motive of all those changes which took place in the Frankish provinces.
It would be tedious to attempt to describe the numerous churches of the 11th and 12th centuries which are found in every considerable town in this province: some of them, however, such as Elne, St. Guillem du Désert, St. Martin de Landres, Vignogoul, Valmagne, Lodève,[340] &c., deserve particular attention, as exemplifying this style, not only in its earlier forms, but after it had passed into a pointed style, though differing very considerably from that of the North. Among these there is no church more interesting than the old fortalice-like church of Maguelonne, which, from its exposed situation, open to the attacks of Saracenic corsairs as well as Christian robbers, looks more like a baronial castle than a peaceful church. One of its doorways shows a curious admixture of classical, Saracenic, and Gothic taste, which could only be found here; and as it bears a date (1178), it marks an epoch in the style to which it belongs.
Had it been completed, the church of St. Gilles would perhaps have been the most splendid of the province. Its portal has already been spoken of, and is certainly without a rival; and the lower church, which belongs to the 11th century, is worthy of its magnificence. It was, however, either never finished, or was subsequently ruined along with the upper church, which was commenced in the year 1116 by Raymond IV., Count of St. Gilles. This too was probably never completed, or, if it was, it was ruined in the wars with the Huguenots. Even in its present state, and though wanting the richness of the earlier examples, it perhaps surpasses them all in the excellence of its masonry, and the architectural propriety of all its parts.
Besides these, there is an important church at Valence of the 11th century, which seems to be an almost expiring effort of the “cavern-like” style. In other respects it resembles the Northern styles so much as almost to remove it from the Provençal class. This is even more true of the cathedral at Vienne, which is nevertheless the largest and finest of the churches of Provence, but which approaches, both in style and locality, very closely to the Burgundian churches.
Its plan is extremely simple, having no transept and no aisle trending round the apse, as is the case with most of the Northern churches. It consists of three aisles, the central one 35 ft. wide between the piers, the others 14 ft. The buttresses are internal, as was usual in the South, forming chapels, and making up the whole width externally to 113 ft. by a length over all of 300, so that it covers somewhere about 30,000 sq. ft. This is only half the dimensions of some of the great Northern cathedrals, but the absence of transepts, and its generally judicious proportions, make this church look much larger than it really is.
The west front and the three western bays are of the 16th century; the next seven are of an early style of pointed architecture, with semi-Roman pilasters, which will be described in speaking of Burgundian architecture, and which belong probably to the 11th or beginning of the 12th century. The apse is ascribed to the year 952, but there are no drawings on which sufficient dependence can be placed to determine the date.
Besides this, there is another church, St. André le Bas at Vienne, belonging to the 11th century, whose tower is one of the most pleasing instances of this kind of composition in the province, and though evidently a lineal descendant of the Roman and Italian campaniles, displays an amount of design seldom met with beyond the Alps.
CIRCULAR CHURCHES.
The round shape seems never to have been a favourite for sacred buildings in Provence, and consequently was never worked into the apses of the churches nor became an important adjunct to them. One of the few examples found is a small baptistery attached to the cathedral at Aix, either very ancient or built with ancient materials, and now painfully modernised. At Riez there is a circular detached baptistery, usually, like the churches at Vaison, called a pagan temple, but evidently of Christian origin, though the pillars in the interior seem undoubtedly to have been borrowed from some more ancient and classical edifice. But the finest of its class is the church at Rieux, probably of the 11th century. Internally the vault is supported by 4 piers and 3 pillars, producing an irregularity far from pleasing, and without any apparent motive.
At Planes is another church the plan of which deserves to be quoted, if not for its merit, at least for its singularity: it is a triangle with an apse attached to each side, and supporting a circular part terminating in a plain roof. As a constructive puzzle it is curious, but it is doubtful how far any legitimate use could be made of such a caprice.
There is, so far as I know, only one triapsal church, that of St. Croix at Mont Majour near Arles. Built as a sepulchral chapel, it is a singularly gloomy but appropriate erection; but it is too tall and too bare to rank high as a building even for such a purpose.
TOWERS.
Provence is far from being rich in towers, which never seem there to have been favourite forms of architectural display. That of St. André le Bas at Vienne has already been alluded to, but this at Puissalicon (Woodcut No. 557) near Béziers is even more typical of the style, and standing as it now does in solitary grandeur among the ruins of the church once attached to it, has a dignity seldom possessed by such monuments. In style it resembles the towers of Italy more than any found farther north, but it is not without peculiarities that point to a different mode of elaborating this peculiar feature from anything found elsewhere. As a design its principal defect seems to be a want of lightness in the upper storey. The single circular opening there is a mistake in a building gradually growing lighter towards its summit.
These towers were very seldom, if ever, attached symmetrically to the churches. When height was made an object, it was more frequently attained by carrying up the dome at the intersection of the choir with the nave. At Arles this is done by a heavy square tower, gradually diminishing, but still massive to the top; but in most instances the square becomes an octagon, and this again passes into a circle, which terminates the composition. One of the best specimens of this class of domes, if they may be so called, is the church of Cruas (Woodcut No. 558), where these parts are pleasingly subordinated, and form, with the apses on which they rest, a very beautiful composition. The defect is the tiled roofs or offsets at the junction of the various storeys, which give an appearance of weakness, as if the upper parts could slide, like the joints of a telescope, one into the other. This could easily be avoided, and probably was so in the original design. If this were done, we have here the principle of a more pleasing crowning member at an intersection than was afterwards used in pointed architecture, and capable of being applied to domes of any extent.
CLOISTERS.
Nearly all, and certainly all the more important churches of which we have been speaking, were collegiate, and in such establishments the cloister forms as important a part as the church itself, and frequently the more beautiful object of the two. In our own cold wet climate the cloisters lose much of their appropriateness; still, they always were used, and always with a pleasing effect; but in the warm sunny South their charm is increased tenfold. The artists seem to have felt this, and to have devoted a large share of their attention to these objects— creating, in fact, a new style of architecture for this special purpose.
With us the arcades of a cloister are generally, if not always, a range of unglazed windows, presenting the same features as those of the church, which, though beautiful when filled with glass, are somewhat out of place without that indispensable adjunct. In the South the cloister is never a window, or anything in the least approaching to it in design, but a range of small and elegant pillars, sometimes single, sometimes coupled, generally alternately so, and supporting arches of light and elegant design, all the features being of a character suited to the place where they are used, and to that only.
The cloister at Arles has long occupied the attention of travellers and artists, and perhaps no building, or part of one, in this style has been so often drawn or so much admired. Two sides of it are of the same age and in the same style as the porch (Woodcut No. 548), and equally beautiful. The other two are somewhat later, the columns supporting pointed instead of round arches. At Aix there is another similar to that at Arles, and fragments of such colonnades are found in many places. That of Fontifroide (Woodcut No. 559) is one of the most complete and perfect, and some of its capitals are treated with a freedom and boldness, and at the same time with an elegance, not often rivalled anywhere. They even excel—for the purpose at least—the German capitals of the same age. Those at Elne are more curious than those of any other cloister in France, so far as I know—some of them showing so distinct an imitation of Egyptian work as instantly to strike any one at all familiar with that style. Yet they are treated with a lightness and freedom so wholly mediæval as to show that it is possible to copy the spirit without a servile adherence to the form. Here, as in all the examples, every capital is different—the artists revelling in freedom from restraint, and sparing neither time nor pains. We find in these examples a delicacy of handling and refinement of feeling far more characteristic of the South than of the ruder North, and must admit that their architects have in these cloisters produced objects with which nothing of the kind we have in England can compete.
II. AQUITANIA
CONTENTS.
Churches at Périgueux, Souillac, Angoulême, Alby, Toulouse, Conques, Tours.—Tombs.
THE moment you pass the hills forming the watershed between the rivers flowing to the Mediterranean and those which debouch into the Bay of Biscay, you become aware of having left the style we have just been describing to enter upon a new architectural province. This province possesses two distinct and separate styles, very unlike one another both in character and detail. The first of these is a round arched tunnel-vaulted Gothic style, more remarkable for the grandeur of its conceptions than for the success with which those conceptions are carried out, or for beauty of detail. The second is a pointed-arched, dome-roofed style peculiar to the province.
The existence of this peculiar form of art in this part of France, where it is alone found, is quite sufficient to establish the pre-existence in this province of a race differing from that inhabiting the rest of the country, though it is not at present easy to determine their origin. From the prevalence of Basque terminations to the names of the principal towns in the district, and from the fragments of that people still existing on its southern frontier, it would appear most likely that they were the influencing race. If so, their love of domes would be almost sufficient to establish their claim to a Turanian origin, for though domes are found, no doubt, farther north, it is in a modified form. These phenomena are, however, sufficient to induce us to include for the present in the province of Aquitaine the doubtful districts of the Angoumois and Vendée, though it is possible that these provinces may eventually turn out to belong more properly to Anjou.
In describing them, it may be convenient to take the domical style first, as its history—with one or two exceptional examples in the neighbouring provinces—begins and ends here. It will, no doubt, be found beyond the Pyrenees so soon as it is looked for; but in a country whose architecture has been so imperfectly investigated as has been the case in Spain, fifty different styles might exist without our being cognizant of the fact.
The principal and best preserved example of the domical style of Aquitaine is the church of St. Front, Périgueux. As will be seen from the woodcut No. 562, its plan is that of a Greek cross, 182 ft. each way internally, exclusive of the apse, which is comparatively modern, and of the ante-church and porch, shaded darker, extending 150 ft. farther west, which are the remains of an older church, now very much mutilated, and to which the domical church was added in the 12th century.
Both in plan and dimensions, it will be observed that this church bears an extraordinary and striking resemblance to that of St. Mark’s, Venice, illustrated in Book II. The latter church, however, has the angles so filled up as to reduce it to the more usual Greek form of a square, while its front and lateral porches are additions of a magnificence to which the church of St. Front can lay no claim. The five cupolas are of nearly the same size, and are similarly placed, in both churches; and the general similarity of arrangement points certainly to an identity of origin. Both too would seem to be of about the same age, and there is now some reason to doubt the data on which M. Félix de Verneilh[341] arrived at the conclusion that the church we now see was erected in the very beginning of the 11th century. There is, however, one striking difference—that all the constructive arches in St. Front are pointed, while those of St. Mark’s are round. The form too of the cupolas differs; and in St. Front the piers that support the domes, having been found too weak, have been cased to strengthen them, which gives them an awkward appearance, from which St. Mark’s is free. The difference that would strike a traveller most is, that St. Mark’s retains its frescoes and decorations, while St. Front, like almost all the churches of its age, presents nothing now but naked bare walls, though there cannot be a doubt that it was originally painted. This indeed was the legitimate and appropriate mode of decoration of all the churches of this age, till it was in a great measure superseded by the invention of painted glass.
The cupolas are at the present day covered with a wooden roof; but their original appearance is represented with tolerable correctness in the woodcut No. 563, which, though not so graceful as Eastern domes usually are, are still a far more picturesque and permanent finishing for a roof than the wooden structures of the more Northern races. Its present internal appearance, from the causes above mentioned, is singularly bare and gloomy, and no doubt utterly unworthy of its pristine splendour.
The tower stands at the intersection between the old and new churches, and its lower part at least is so classical in its details, that it more probably belongs to the older Latin church than to the domical one. Its upper part seems to have been added, and its foundation strengthened, at the time the eastern part was built.
St. Front is perhaps the only existing specimen of a perfect Greek cross church with cupolas. That of Souillac is a good example of a modification of a form nearly similar, except that the cupola forming the eastern branch is here transferred to the western, making it thus a Latin instead of a Greek cross, which is certainly an improvement, as the principal space and magnificence is thus concentrated about the high altar, which is, or should be, the culminating point of effect. An opinion may be formed of its internal appearance, and indeed of all the churches of this style, from the view (Woodcut No. 564), which in reality gives it much more the appearance of the interior of a mosque in Cairo than of a Christian church of the Middle Ages. The building is not large, being only 205 ft. in length internally, including the porch, and 110 across the transepts. Its age is not accurately known, but it is usually placed by antiquaries in the 12th century on account of its pointed arches.
The cathedral at Angoulême (Woodcut No. 565) is another and still more extended example of this class, having three domes in the nave; the façade belonging probably to the 11th, the rest to the 12th century. The form of these domes, with the arrangement of the side walls, will be understood from the woodcut No. 566. The method adopted in this church may be considered as typical of all this class; and, except in the mode of lighting the upper part, is by no means inferior in architectural effect to the intersecting vaults of after ages. The transepts here are shortened internally so as only to give room for two small lateral chapels; but externally they are made very imposing by the addition of two towers, one at the end of each. This was another means of solving a difficulty that everywhere met the mediæval architects, of giving the greatest dignity to the most holy place. The proper and obvious mode of doing this was of course to raise a tower or dome at the intersection of the nave and transepts, but the difficulties of construction involved in this mode of procedure were such that they seldom were enabled to carry it out. This can only be said, indeed, to have been fairly accomplished in England. At Angoulême, as will be observed in the plan, there is no passage round the altar, nor is the choir separated from the body of the church. In Italy, and indeed in Germany, this does not seem to have been considered of importance; but in France, as we shall presently see, it was regarded as the most indispensable part of the arrangement of the church, and to meet this exigency the Southern architects were afterwards obliged to invent a method of isolating the choir, by carrying a lofty stone railing or screen round it, wholly independent of any of the constructive parts of the church. This, there is little doubt, was a mistake, and in every respect a less beautiful arrangement than that adopted in the North; still, it seems to have been the only means of meeting the difficulty in the absence of aisles, and in some instances the richness with which the screen was ornamented, and the unbroken succession of bassi-relievi and sculptural ornaments, make us forget that it is only a piece of church furniture, and not an integral part of the design of the building.
One of the earliest examples of this arrangement which has been preserved is in the church at Moissac, remarkable for its strange mythical sculpture and rude pointed architecture, both belonging to the 11th century, and as unlike anything to be found in any other part of France as can well be conceived.
At a later age we find in the cathedral at Alby the same system carried to its acmé, and still adhered to in all essential parts in spite of the influence and predominance of the pure Gothic styles, which had then so generally superseded it. The foundation of the church was laid only in the year 1282, and it was not so far completed as to admit of its dedication till 1476. Its choir and fresco decorations were added by the celebrated Louis d’Amboise, who completed the whole in 1512. As will be seen from the plan (Woodcut No. 568), the church is one immense unbroken vaulted hall, 55 ft. in width by 262 in length; or adding the chapels, the internal width is 82 ft., and the total length upwards of 300 ft.
As will be observed, the whole of the buttresses are internal, as is very generally the case in the South; and where painted glass is not used, and fresco painting is the principal mode of decoration, such a system has many advantages. The outer walls are scarcely ever seen, and by this arrangement great internal extent and appearance of gigantic strength is imparted, while the whole space covered by the building is available for internal use. But where painted glass is the principal mode of decoration, as was the case to the north of the Loire, such a system was evidently inadmissible. Then the walls were internally kept as flat as possible, so as to allow the windows to be seen in every direction, and all the mechanical expedients were placed on the outside. Admirably as the Northern architects managed all this, I cannot help thinking, if we leave the painted glass out of the question, that the Southern architects had hit on the more artistic arrangement of the two; and where, as at Alby, the lower parts of the recesses between the internal buttresses were occupied by deep windowless chapels, and the upper lights were almost wholly concealed, the result was an extraordinary appearance of repose and mysterious gloom. This character, added to its simplicity and the vastness of its vaults, render Alby one of the most impressive churches in France, and a most instructive study to the philosophical inquirer into the principles of effect, as being a Gothic church built on principles not only dissimilar from, but almost diametrically opposed to, those which we have been usually accustomed to consider as indispensable, and as inherent requisites of the style.
The church of the Cordeliers at Toulouse is another remarkable example of this class, and exhibiting its peculiarities in even a clearer light than that at Alby. Externally its dimensions in plan are 273 ft. by 87. Those of King’s College Chapel at Cambridge, which is the building we possess most resembling it in plan, are 310 ft. by 84. But the nave of that chapel is only 41 ft. 6 in. clear between the piers, while in the church of the Cordeliers it is 53 ft., and except the thickness of the outer wall—about 4 ft.—the whole of the floor-space of the plan is utilised in the interior. In so far as internal effect is concerned this is no doubt judicious; but, as may be seen from the view (Woodcut No. 571), the absence of any delineation of the line of buttresses externally produces a flatness and want of accentuation in the lower part that is highly objectionable. As will be observed from the section, the whole of the width of the buttresses is included in the interior on the one side. On the other it is excluded above the roof of the aisle, but a gallery (Woodcuts Nos. 570 and 571) joins the buttress at the top, giving the effect of a cornice and a gallery above. The church is of brick, and all the peculiarities of the style are here found exaggerated; but there are few churches on the Continent which contain so many valuable suggestions for a Protestant place of worship, and no features that could not easily be improved by judicious handling. It was built in a country where Protestant feeling existed before the Reformation, and where consequently architects studied more how they could accommodate congregations than provide show-places for priests.
Besides those which are built wholly according to this plan, there are a great number of churches in this province which show the influence of its design in more respects than one, though, having been rebuilt in a subsequent age, many of the original features are necessarily lost. The cathedral at Bordeaux is a remarkable example of this, its western portion being a vast nave without aisles, 60 ft. wide internally, and nearly 200 ft. in length. Its foundations show that, like that at Angoulême, it was originally roofed by three great domes; but being rebuilt in the 13th century, it is now covered by an intersecting vault of that age, with two storeys of windows, and an immense array of flying buttresses to support its thrust, all which might have been dispensed with had the architects retained the original, simpler, and more beautiful form of roof. The cathedral of Toulouse shows the same peculiarity of a wide aisleless nave, leading to a choir of the usual construction adopted in this country in the 13th and 14th centuries; and many other examples might be quoted where the influence of the earlier style peers through the Northern Gothic which succeeded and nearly obliterated it.
CHEVET CHURCHES.
The Gothic churches of this province are neither so numerous nor so remarkable as those of the domical class we have just been describing; still, there are several examples, far too important to be passed over, and which will serve besides in enabling us to introduce the new form of church building which became prevalent in France to the exclusion of all others, and which characterised the French style in contradistinction to that of other countries.
The typical example of the style in this province is the great church of St. Saturnin, or St. Sernin, at Toulouse, dedicated in the year 1096. The church is 375 ft. in length and 217 in width across the transept externally. It is five-aisled, the nave being 95 ft. in the interior, though the central aisle is only 25 ft. wide and is further contracted at the intersection by masses of masonry subsequently added to support the central tower. It has five apsidal and four transeptal chapels, and may therefore be considered as possessing a complete chevet; but the church at Conques (Woodcut No. 574), in the same style and of almost similar date, illustrates even more perfectly the arrangement of which we are now speaking.
The nave of St. Sernin, as will be observed (Woodcut No. 573), has double side-aisles, above the inner one of which runs a grand gallery. The roof of this gallery—in section the quadrant of a circle—forms an abutment to the roof of the nave, which is a bold tunnel-vault ornamented by transverse ribs only. So far the constructive arrangements are the same as in the transitional church of Fontifroide. Passing from the nave to the choir, both at Toulouse and at Conques, we come upon a more extended and complicated arrangement than we have hitherto met with. It will be recollected that the early Romanesque apse was a simple large niche, or semi-dome; so we found out in the Lombard style, and shall find it in the German style when it comes to be described, and generally even in the neighbouring Provençal style, and always—when unaltered—in the domical style last described. In the present instance it will be seen that a semicircular range of columns is substituted for the wall of the apse, an aisle bent round them, and beyond the aisle there are always three, five, or even seven chapels opening into it, which give it a complexity very different from the simple apse of the Roman basilicas and the other styles we have been describing, and at the same time a perspective and a play of light and shade which are unrivalled in any similar invention of the Middle Ages. The apse, properly speaking, is a solid semi-cylinder, surmounted by a semi-dome, but always solid below, though generally broken by windows above. The chevet, on the contrary, is an apse, always enclosed by an open screen of columns on the ground-floor, and opening into an aisle, which again always opens into three or more apsidal chapels. This arrangement is so peculiarly French, that it may properly be characterised by the above French word, a name once commonly applied to it, though latterly it has given way to the more classical, but certainly less suitable, term of apse. Its origin too is worth inquiring into, and seems to be capable of easy explanation.
The uses which the various nations of Christendom made of the circular form of building left them by the Romans have been more than once adverted to in this work. The Italians used it almost always standing alone as a tomb-house or as a baptistery; the Germans converted it into a western apse, while sometimes, as at Bonn and elsewhere, they timidly added a porch or nave to it; but the far more frequent practice with the Germans, and also in England, was to build first the circular church for its own sake, as in Italy: then the clergy for their own accommodation added a choir, that they might pray apart from the people.
The French took a different course from all these. They built circular churches like other nations, apparently in early times at least, which were intended to stand alone; but in no instance do they appear to have applied them as naves, nor to have added choirs to them. On the contrary, the clergy always retained the circular building as the sacred depository of the tomb or relic, the Holy of Holies, and added a straight-lined nave for the people. Of this class was evidently the church which Perpetuus built in the fifth century over the grave at St. Martin at Tours. There the shrine was surrounded by seventy-nine pillars arranged in a circular form: the nave was lined by forty-one—twenty on each side, with one in the centre of the west end as in Germany. When the church required rebuilding in the 11th century (1014?), the architect was evidently hampered by finding himself obliged to follow the outline of the old basilica of Perpetuus, and having to labour on the same foundation so as not to disturb either the shrine of the saint or any other place which had become sacred in this, which was the most celebrated and revered of the churches of Gaul. All this is made clear in the plan of the new church (Woodcut No. 575). The arrangement of the circular part and the nave exactly accord with the description of the old church, only that the latter has been considerably enlarged according to the fashion of the day. But the juxtaposition of the two shows how nearly the chevet arrangement was completed at that time.
Another church, that of Charroux, on the Loire, looks as though it had been built in direct imitation of the church of Perpetuus. The round church here retains its pre-eminence over the nave, as was the case in the older examples, and thus forms an intermediate link between the old church of St. Martin, which we know only by description, and the more modern one, of which a plan is given (Woodcut No. 575).
St. Bénigne, Dijon, is another transitional example which may serve to render this arrangement still more clear. It was erected in the first year of the 11th century, and was pulled down only at the Revolution; but before that catastrophe it had been carefully measured and described in Dom Plancher’s ‘History of Burgundy.’ As seen by him, the foundations only of the nave were of the original structure, for in the year 1271 one of its towers fell, and so damaged it that the whole of that part of the church was then rebuilt in the perfect pointed style of the day. Without entering too much into detail, it will suffice to state that the part shaded lightly in the woodcut (No. 577) is taken literally from Dom Plancher’s plan, regarding which there can be no doubt, and the contemporary descriptions are so full that very little uncertainty can exist regarding the dimensions and general disposition of the nave.
The bodies of the confessors SS. Urban and Gregory were, it appears, originally buried in the church of St. John the Baptist, which seems to have been the name most properly applied to this circular building; they were afterwards transferred to the crypt below the high altar, in the rectangular part of the church. Above the lower storey, which retained its name as a baptistery and burial-place, was the upper church, which was dedicated to the Virgin Mary; above that was the church of the Holy Trinity; and on the top of the round towers, on one side the altar of St. Michael, on the other probably that of Gabriel.
The little church of Neuvy St. Sepulchre, near Bourges, which was erected between the years 1042 and 1046, presents precisely the same arrangements as the church of Charroux, though on a smaller scale, there being only one range of ten pillars in the centre. The ancient nave having been destroyed, was replaced by a more extended one in the 12th century, but the old arrangement can easily be traced.
In all these old churches—and they seem to have been very common in France before the 12th century—the circular part was the most important, but they have most of them been rebuilt; and where this has been the case, even when the outline of the circular form was retained, the lines of the nave were made tangents of the circle, and thus became parts of one design. All these arrangements were perfect before the church of Conques (Woodcut No. 574) was erected. There the architect, not being hampered by any previous building, was allowed free scope for his design. The plan so produced was never lost sight of by the French, but was developed into a vast variety of beautiful forms, which we shall shortly have to examine.
When once this transformation of the round church into the chevet termination of a basilica was effected, the French adhered to it with singular constancy. I am not aware of their ever having built a circular church afterwards which was intended to stand alone; and there are very few instances of basilicas of any importance without this form of apse. Some, it is true, have been rebuilt on old foundations, with square eastern ends, but this is rare and exceptional, the chevet being the true and typical termination.
The church at Conques and that of Toulouse both show it fully and beautifully developed, though externally the chapels hardly fit pleasingly into the general design, and look more as though their addition were an afterthought. This, however, was soon afterwards remedied, and the transformation made complete.
The solidity with which these churches were built, and the general narrowness of their proportions as compared with the domical churches of the same time and district, enabled the architects occasionally to attempt some splendid erection on the intersection of the nave and transepts, which is the spot where height should always be aimed at. The dome at Cruas, in the Provençal district, has already been described (Woodcut No. 558). The church at Conques has one as important, though dissimilar; but the finest is that of St. Sernin at Toulouse (Woodcut No. 578), which rivals the design of our spires at Salisbury, Norwich, and elsewhere, but its height being only 230 ft. from the ground, it cannot be compared with them in that respect. The 3 lower storeys only are of the age of the church; the 2 upper were added long afterwards, but were adapted with remarkably good taste. Though differing in design and detail, their general form and outline is such as to accord most happily with the older structure on which they are placed; there is nevertheless a sameness of design in placing so many similar storeys one over the other, merely diminishing in size, which is not altogether pleasing. The general effect, however, is good, and for a central object it is, if not the finest, certainly one of the very best which France possesses.
As in all French styles, the western façades of the Southern churches are the parts on which the architects lavished their ornaments with the most unsparing hand. Generally they are flat, and most of them now terminate squarely, with a flat line of cornice of slight projection. Beneath this there is generally a range of arches filled with sculpture or intended to be so—the central one, and that only, being used as a window. Beneath this is the great portal, on which more ornament is bestowed than on any other feature of the building. Some of these gateways in this province, as in Provence, are wondrous examples of patient labour, as well as models of beauty. They possess more than the richness of our own contemporary Norman portals, with a degree of refinement and delicacy which our forefathers did not attain till a much later age. Some of these church-portals in Aquitaine are comparatively simple, but even they make up for the want of sculpture by the propriety of their design and the elegance of their composition.
The church at Aillas presents a fair specimen, on a small scale, of the class of design which is peculiar to the façades of Aquitania, though it is doubtful if the original termination of the gable has not been lost and replaced by the one shown in the drawing. The façade of Angoulême is designed on the same plan, though it is much richer. Those of Civray, Parthenay, and of many others, show the same characteristics. They appear to have been designed, not to express the form and construction of the interior, but, like an Egyptian propylon, as a vehicle for a most extensive series of sculptures exhibiting the whole Bible history. Sometimes, however, the design is more strictly architectural, as in the façade of the church at Loupiac, where sculpture is made wholly subordinate, and the architectural members are so grouped as to form a pleasing and effective design, not unlike some instances found farther north and in our own country.
The varieties of these, however, are so endless that it would be in vain to attempt either to particularise or to describe them. Many of these arrangements are unusual, though almost always pleasing, as in the church at Espalion (Woodcut No. 581), where the belfry is erected as a single wall over the chancel-arch, and groups well with the apsidal termination, though, as in almost every instance in this country, the western façade is wanting in sufficient feature and character to balance it.
Generally speaking, the cloisters and other ecclesiastical adjuncts are so similar to those of Provence, as given in the last chapter, that a separate description of them is not needed here. They are all of the columnar style, supporting small arches on elegant capitals of the most varied and elaborate designs, evincing that delicate feeling so prevalent in the south, which prevented any approach to that barbarism so common farther north whenever the architects attempted anything beyond the common range of decoration.
The same feeling pervades the tombs, monuments, and domestic architecture of this part of France, making them all far more worthy of study in every minute detail than has yet been attempted. The woodcut (No. 582) represents one small example of a tomb built into a wall behind the church of St. Pierre at Toulouse. It is one of those graceful little bits of architecture which meet one at every turn in the pleasant South, where the people have an innate feeling for art which displays itself in the smallest as well as in the most important works.