PART I RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE

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CHAPTER I
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CUPOLA UPON SO-CALLED GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

The cupola, in its symbolic aspect, was the germ, whence sprang an architectural system the revolutionary action of which upon art can scarcely be over-estimated.[2]

[2] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Quantin, Paris, 1888.

So-called Gothic architecture was no spontaneous and miraculous manifestation. Like all human activities, its end is easy to determine; but it is difficult to fix even an approximate date for its beginning. The traces of its origin are lost in that period of architectural activity which preceded it, and prepared its way by a train of unbroken evolution.

The cupola of St. Front, which we may reasonably call the mother cupola of France, was not an imitation of that of St. Mark at Venice, for both were based upon the church built by Justinian at Constantinople, in honour of the Holy Apostles. But the form thus imported into Aquitaine received such modification and development, as to make it virtually an original achievement. One of the knottiest of architectural problems was solved in the process, and that admirable constructive principle was established which consists in concentrating the thrust of a vault upon four points of support strengthened by pendentives.

The construction of such a cupola as that of St. Front in dressed stone was an event of great moment in a district which still preserved the Gallo-Roman tradition in its integrity, and was commonly reputed the fatherland of our architecture. Its immediate consequences were shown before the close of the eleventh century by the erection of large abbey churches on the model of St. Front in various neighbouring provinces.

But while accepting the new principle, the architects of the period directed their energies to its perfectibility. Their efforts, and even their successes, in this direction are manifest so early as the first years of the twelfth century. The churches of AngoulÊme and of Fontevrault may be cited in proof. "We here recognise the main preoccupation of the Romanesque builders—namely, how best to reduce the immense masses of churches built with the primitive cupola by a more deliberate and judicious distribution of thrust and resistance. We further see how the adoption of these principles led to the emphasising of critical points by buttresses, which now began to project from the exterior walls."[3]

[3] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Quantin, Paris, 1888.

The new system spread rapidly, notably in Anjou and Maine, its growth being marked by an ever-increasing refinement and perfection. The architects of the rich abbeys of these provinces, the importance of which was aggrandised by their strong attachments to the all-powerful religious organisation of the period, gave a further development to the Aquitainian method. They transformed the pendentives of the cupolas into independent arches which performed exactly the same functions, thus logically working out an architectonic principle of amazing simplicity, the success of which was so rapid that, by the middle of the twelfth century, it was systematically applied to the construction of great churches at Angers, Laval, and Poitiers.

The works of the Angevin architects were of course known to their Northern brethren, who, in common with all the builders of the day, had long been seeking the final solution of the great problem of the vault. The architects of the Ile-de-France at once appropriated the Angevin system with that special professional ingenuity which characterised them, and applied it to the construction of innumerable churches, large and small, all of them built on the basilican plan—that is to say, with three, or even five aisles.

Thus the Aquitainian cupola of dressed stone exercised an absolutely direct influence upon Gothic architecture, since it gave birth to the intersecting arch, which is the main feature of so-called Gothic. This influence was first manifested in the general arrangement of single-aisled churches vaulted upon intersecting ribs, the earliest departure from the original cupola. It was then more grandiosely demonstrated in vast abbey or cathedral churches, built in accordance with the basilican tradition, and all vaulted on the new principle.

Angers and Laval are primitive examples of churches whose square compartments carry groined vaults, which thenceforth took the place of cupolas with pendentives.

The abbey church of Noyon shows the application of this principle, novel in the twelfth century, to the several-aisled churches of the Northern architects. The original vaults of Noyon[4] were planned in square. The intersecting arches united the principal piers diagonally, the strain being relieved by a subordinate or auxiliary arch which rested upon secondary piers, indicated on the exterior by buttresses less salient than those of the main piers, and on the interior by a column receiving the lateral archivolts which united the chief piers.

[4] The original disposition of the vaults built about 1160 is indicated by the spring of the arches above the capitals, and by the base plan of the principal piers. The present vaults on rectangular plan were built after the fire of 1238, in accordance with prevailing fashions.

This system of construction, the principle of which was logically developed at Noyon, for instance, no longer exists, save in its traditional state in the great churches of Laon, and in the cathedrals of Paris, Sens, and Bourges, to name but the principal, without regard to the innumerable churches built on these principles throughout Western Europe. In these great buildings the vaults were all square on plan down to the adoption in the first half of the thirteenth century of equal bays, vaulted on a rectangular plan, and marked inside and out by equal piers and projections, as at Amiens, Rheims, and many other churches of the period.

Hence we see how incontestable was the influence of the cupola upon so-called Gothic architecture. This truth is demonstrated by monuments yet in existence, lapidary documents above suspicion. It cannot be insisted upon too strongly, not merely for the satisfaction of archÆeologic accuracy, but more especially as yet another proof that the filiation between the art of the ancients and that of the so-called Romanesque architects is no less evident than that which links together the Romanesque and the so-called Gothic. Of this latter filiation we have a direct proof in the Aquitainian cupola, the parent of those of Angoumois, which in their turn gave birth to the Angevin intersecting arch, and so prepared the way for the flying buttress, which again was to mark a new departure.


CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE INTERSECTING VAULT

So early as the eleventh century churches were built with one or several aisles, and in this latter case the side aisles only had ribbed vaults, the nave being covered by a timber roof. The next step was to vault all three aisles, buttressing the barrel-vaulted nave by continuous half-barrel vaults or ribbed vaults over the aisles, and further strengthening it by projecting transverse arches, or arcs doubleaux, the whole being crowned by a roof which embraced the side aisles. These cumbrous and timidly constructed buildings were merely imitations of the Roman basilicas. To ensure their solidity they had perforce to be narrow; and the necessary abolition of top lighting made them gloomy. We find then that, before the appearance of the cupola, mediÆval architects were perfectly acquainted both with the barrel vault and the ribbed vault, the latter formed, on traditional principles, by the interpenetration of two demi-cylinders. They had even attempted to improve upon the construction by strengthening the line of penetration with a salient rib, giving an elliptic arch. But this rib was purely decorative, for in the Roman vault the stones at the line of intersection, whether ribbed or not, were in complete solidarity with the filling on either side in which they were buried.

It follows that we shall seek in vain in the Roman ribbed vault the germ of the intersecting arch, with its essentially active functions.

For the origin of the intersecting arch we must turn to the eleventh century. We shall find it in the dressed stone cupola of St. Front, and more especially in its pendentives.

Fig. 1 gives the plan of one of the cupolas of St. Front. It is composed of four massive transverse arches, the thrusts of which are received upon four piers united by pendentives (Figs. 2 and 3) passing from the re-entering angles at the spring of the arches to the base of the circular dome itself, each of the concentric courses bearing upon the keys of the arcs-doubleaux, and transmitting to them, and therefore to the piers by which they are supported, the weight of the cupola itself.

1. PLAN OF A CUPOLA OF THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. FRONT AT PÉRIGUEUX

2. PENDENTIVE (MARKED A) OF A CUPOLA OF THE ABBEY CHURCH OF ST. FRONT

Fig. 3 is a section through one of the pendentives of St. Front, following the line A B in Fig. 1. It shows that the first six courses are cut so as to make what is called a tas de chargÉ; the upper surfaces are horizontal, the faces curved to the radius of the dome itself. After the sixth course the voussoirs are cut normally to the curve of the arch. The vaulting of religious buildings having long been the crux of mediÆval architects, the construction of the St. Front cupolas must have been an event much noised abroad, for towards the close of the eleventh century a large number of churches with cupolas were built in imitation of the mother church at PÉrigueux.

3. SECTION OF A PENDENTIVE ON THE DIAGONAL A TO B IN PLAN, FIG. 1

The construction of the churches of AngoulÊme and Fontevrault in the first years of the twelfth century shows that the architects were attempting to cover spaces of ever-increasing span on the Aquitainian model, while at the same time they set themselves to lighten their vaults, and consequently to reduce their points of support.

Fig. 4 gives the plan of one of the cupolas of AngoulÊme or of Fontevrault, both being built on precisely similar plan, with the exception of the number of bays to the nave.

4. PLAN OF A CUPOLA OF ANGOULÊME OR FONTEVRAULT

Fig. 5 gives the section of a bay in one of these churches, and illustrates the considerable difference already existing between the mother cupola of St. Front and its offspring. The cupola on pendentives begins to show a certain attenuation, and we shall presently note a fresh step forward towards the solution of that problem so persistently grappled with by the mediÆval architect—how to reduce the weight of the vault.

5. SECTION OF A BAY OF THE CUPOLAS OF ANGOULÊME

The Church of St. Avit-SÉnieur furnishes a most instructive example.

The cupola of this building is strengthened by stiffening ribs. It becomes an annular vault, formed of almost horizontal keyed courses, sustained by transverse and diagonal ribs, which act the part of a permanent centering.

The Church of St. Pierre at Saumur marks a further step onwards in the construction of vaults derived from the cupola.[5]

[5] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer.

6. SECTION OF A BAY IN THE CHURCH OF ST. AVIT-SÉNIEUR

Finally, the architects of Maine and Anjou achieved the long-desired consummation. Under their treatment the pendentives resolved themselves into their actively useful elements, the visible signs of which were diagonal or intersecting arches, salient and independent, set in precisely the same manner as the pendentives of the cupola (Fig. 3), and performing identical functions (Fig. 8).

7. PLAN OF VAULT ON INTERSECTING ARCHES

The vault proper is no longer formed of concentric courses, as in the mother cupola. It consists thenceforward of voussoirs cut normally to the curve, and filling the triangles (A, B, C, D, Fig. 7) determined by the longitudinal, the diagonal or intersecting, and the transverse arches. These arches form a stone skeleton, no less solid though far less ponderous than the cupola pendentives, and sustain the vault by distributing its thrusts over four points of support.

The triangular fillings no longer imprison the ribs, or, more exactly speaking, the intersecting arches, nor do they any longer neutralise their active functions. These fillings, on the other hand, have, like the intersecting arch, gained a new independence. They now contribute to the elasticity of the divers organs of the vault, a most essential element in its solidity. The peculiar arrangement of the intersecting arches in the nave of Angers gives incontrovertible proof of the direct filiation of this building to the Aquitainian cupola. The voussoirs of the intersecting arches are about equal in horizontal section to those of the transverse arches, while their vertical section equals the thickness of the filling plus the internal salience which marks their function. They look in fact like slices cut from the pendentives of a cupola (A, Fig. 8). It must be remarked, too, that at Angers the stones of the filling do not yet rest upon the extrados of the ribs, in the fashion adopted some years later in the Ile-de-France and elsewhere (see B, Fig. 8), but embrace them (as at A).

8. SECTION OF AN INTERSECTING ARCH

The identity of function in the pendentive and in the Gothic intersecting arch, both constructed, as they are, of stones dressed normally to their curves, shows that they sprang from a common origin, which is as much as to say that the Aquitainian cupola begat the intersecting vault.


CHAPTER III
THE FIRST GROINED VAULTS

The first application of the system of intersecting vaults appears in the great churches of Angers and Laval.

It is probable that the new methods propagated by the religious architects of Aquitaine and neighbouring provinces had excited the emulation of the Northern builders, more especially those of the Ile-de-France. Evidences to this effect are to be found in certain subordinate portions of their buildings at this period, such as side aisles or apsidal chapels. Their timid arrangement seems, however, reminiscent of the Roman system of ribbed vaulting, with a slightly increased prominence of the ribs superadded, rather than of the revolution that had been effected in church vaulting generally.

9. PLAN OF A BAY IN THE NAVE OF ST. MAURICE AT ANGERS

10. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF THE NAVE OF ST. MAURICE AT ANGERS

But, if we except perhaps Laval, nowhere shall we find the new system of vaulting upon intersecting arches more mightily demonstrated than at Angers, the aisles of which measure 54 feet across. The grandeur of the architectural composition, no less than the admirable technical skill shown in the details, gives proof of the consummate mastery arrived at by the builders of these noble structures so early as the middle of the twelfth century. The plan of these churches resembles that of AngoulÊme and Fontevrault. It is in no way allied to the Northern buildings.

11. PLAN OF A BAY OF THE NAVE IN THE CHURCH OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT LAVAL

They are constructed with single aisles, like the cupola churches, with a series of bays, square on plan; but the arrangement of the vaults has been perfected by the logical use of intersecting arches in the place of pendentives, the architects of the day having realised by this time the progress we have explained and demonstrated in the preceding chapter.

These vast aisles, vaulted on intersecting arches, are of course allied to the cupolas; they recall their general outline, but the arrangement of the vaulting is different. The intersecting ribs are no longer merely decorative features; they have taken on all the active functions of the arc-doubleau and the formeret. Their union constitutes an elastic ossature, the weight being concentrated upon four points of support, which receive the impost of the arches, and compose a stone skeleton, each unit of which has been cut and dressed to fill the exact place it occupies in the whole.

12. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF TWO BAYS IN THE NAVE OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT LAVAL

If we compare the sections (Figs. 13 and 14) of the churches of AngoulÊme and Angers, we may clearly trace the filiation between these buildings, the one dating from the first years of the twelfth century, the other from some thirty or even forty years later. We shall also note the advance made by the Angevin architects in the construction of groined vaults in the
place of domes with pendentives, a development worked out by the more perfect and reasoned application of the same architectural principle.

13 AND 14. COMPARATIVE SECTIONS OF THE CHURCHES OF ANGOULÊME AND ANGERS

15. VIEW IN PERSPECTIVE OF THE NAVE VAULT OF ST. MAURICE AT ANGERS

The Church of Laval, built simultaneously with that of Angers, or only a few years later, shows a further advance, not merely in the matter of form, but in the increased science and ingenuity of combinations, and the methodical accuracy of the execution.

16. PLAN OF A SUMMER OF THE NAVE VAULT OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT LAVAL

17. PLAN OF ONE OF THE PIERS OF THE NAVE OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT LAVAL

The arches which compose the ossature of the vaults become independent in their functions, as at Angers, immediately upon leaving the abacus, an essential characteristic of the new system. The lateral points of support are composed of piers proper and of clustered columns, crowned by corbelled capitals, which, by prolonging them, mark the formerets, the diagonal, and the transverse arches as they fall upon the abaci. It is easy to see in this arrangement the origin of those clustered shafts so generally and even excessively used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the main object of which was to conceal as far as possible the points of support.

These details, and the section (Fig. 12) showing the mode of construction in the vaults, demonstrate sufficiently that at Laval, no less than at Angers, a direct filiation exists between the dome upon pendentives and the groined and ribbed vault.


CHAPTER IV
BUILDINGS VAULTED UPON INTERSECTING ARCHES

The new system derived from the domes upon pendentives, so brilliantly applied in Anjou and Maine in the first half of the twelfth century, was thenceforth the normal method of the religious architect. The admirable simplicity of the new method and its adaptability to every class of building, from the great abbey church to the modest chapel, sufficiently accounts for its rapid dissemination throughout Western Europe, where religious bodies had founded innumerable abbeys, large and small, of varying rules and orders, but all welded together by one mighty organisation.

A long array of churches on the Angevin model rose, not only in the neighbouring provinces—as Ste. Radegonde at Poitiers, Notre Dame de la Coulture and the nave of St. Julien at Mans,—but farther afield towards the south. To name only the most important—the charming Church of Thor, dedicated to Ste. Marie du Lac, between Avignon and the fountain of Vaucluse; that of St. Sauveur at St. Macaire, near Bordeaux; the nave of St. AndrÉ at Bordeaux, begun in 1252 on the cupola plan, but modified and finally crowned with a groined and ribbed vault; St. Caprais at Agen, which shows the same modifications, and lastly, the immense brick nave of St. Étienne at Toulouse, which measures 64 feet—all demonstrate the progression of the new principles in the second half of the twelfth century.

18. PLAN OF THE NAVE, ST. MAURICE AT ANGERS

Towards the North the advance was no less general. Various buildings show to what excellent account contemporary architects had turned the system of vaults on intersecting arches, recognising its admirable adaptability to different climates, and to the most diverse materials. But it was reserved for Angers, the cradle of its birth, to give an added perfection to this ingenious system.

The Church of the Ste. TrinitÉ, on the right bank of the Maine, built by the sons or pupils of those architects who had planned St. Maurice for the hill on the opposite shore, marks a fresh advance in the construction of these vaults. Like St. Maurice, it has but a single aisle, which is divided into three bays, each as nearly as possible square on plan. The system of vaulting takes on a greater elegance by the insertion of a transverse arch, with its supporting shafts, in the centre of each bay. This divides the bay into two equal parts, and, cutting the diagonal ribs at their intersection, supports them at the critical point.

Fig. 19 gives the plan of these vaults, the system of which was eagerly seized upon by the Northern architects, and the great abbey church of Noyon
appears to have been the first-fruits of this new development of the Angevin idea.

19. PLAN OF THE CHURCH OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT ANGERS

20. LONGITUDINAL SECTION OF A BAY OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT ANGERS

The great abbey churches and immense cathedrals which were built from the second half of the twelfth to the middle of the thirteenth century attest the importance of the development carried out at Angers by the arrangement of their own vaults in square compartments. For we now find this system adopted in the construction of the churches or cathedrals of Noyon, Laon, Notre Dame at Paris, Sens, and Bourges, to name only acknowledged masterpieces of so-called Gothic.

21. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF A BAY OF LA STE. TRINITÉ AT ANGERS

The influence of the cupola, which we established in our first chapter, was both direct and consecutive. It was direct in churches built with one aisle and vaulted on intersecting arches, and consecutive in the so-called Romanesque churches, which were either completed or modified on the new lines by the substitution of vaults on intersecting arches of dressed stone for timber roofs. A large number of buildings in England, Normandy, Germany, Northern Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine Provinces, and those of Northern France bear testimony of the highest interest to the transformations consequent on the invention of the groined vault and its universal application.

Architects who had been trained in the great abbey schools, emboldened by the successes of their forerunners and their own individual experience, raised on every hand vast cathedrals, in which every known development of the system was essayed with unequalled daring. Going on from strength to strength, they eventually abandoned the antique traditions, and disregarding the statical conditions which ensured the solidity of the ancient buildings, they invented a system of construction which is, as it were, merely a skeleton in stone, a stone version of the timbered roof; its characteristic expression was
the permanent strut known as the flying buttress; its governing idea was equilibrium, for which it provided by architectural stratagems ingenious in the highest degree, but also extremely precarious. Its existence or stability depends for the most part on the quality of the materials and their degrees of resisting power, the essential organs, by which I mean those vital weight-carrying portions, the failure of which would involve the ruin of the whole, being outside the building, and therefore exposed to all those deteriorating influences from which the load they bear, that is to say, the vaults, are protected by walls and roof.

22. SECTION OF A SINGLE-AISLED CHURCH VAULTED ON INTERSECTING ARCHES WITH BUTTRESSES

23. SECTION OF A THREE-AISLED CHURCH VAULTED ON INTERSECTING ARCHES WITH FLYING BUTTRESSES

The great buildings constructed on these new principles consisted of a central nave with two, or even four side aisles. The huge structure depended for its light first upon low windows in the collateral portions, secondly, upon windows at a much higher level. Hence it became necessary to raise the vault of the central nave, and to give it an abutment in the form of detached semi-arches or flying buttresses. The crowns of these semi-arches impinged the piers at the planes of greatest pressure and received the collective thrust of all the ribs, formerets, transverse and diagonal arches. Their bases rested upon abutments, the strength of which was calculated according to the thrust they had to meet.


CHAPTER V
ORIGIN OF THE FLYING BUTTRESS

The primitive method of vaulting adopted in the central provinces of France in the construction of churches with three aisles rendered such buildings of necessity low and heavy. The main aisle being covered by a barrel vault, supported on either side by a continuous half-barrel vault, the sole means of lighting lay in the windows of the side aisles, so that the nave was always gloomy in the extreme. The Norman architects had avoided this difficulty, first in their native province, and afterwards in England, by vaulting the subordinate aisles only, and by raising the lateral walls of the nave high enough to allow a line of windows to be introduced between the lean-to roofs of the side aisles and the nave roof, the latter being an open timber construction instead of a vault.

The lateral gallery in the first story of Norman churches built on the basilican model is merely a development of the ancient tradition.[6] It bears the name of triforium because—or so we are told—each compartment of such an interior gallery between the main piers of the nave was originally divided into three by pillars supporting lintels or by small columns supporting an arcade.

[6] See L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Maison Quantin, Paris, 1888, chaps. i. iii. and iv.

Towards the close of the eleventh century Norman architects on both sides of the Channel were raising vast churches, the side aisles of which bore above their ribbed vaults galleries after the fashion of the primitive basilicas. These galleries in their turn were covered by open timber roofs like that of the nave. The bays were emphasised in the nave and in the side aisles by transverse arches, or arcs-doubleaux, which served as buttresses to those of the main vault. But after the adoption, towards the middle of the twelfth century, of the Angevin method of vaulting for religious buildings, the functions of the lateral walls and of the supporting arches became better defined, for these walls and arches had now to meet the thrusts of the transverse as well as that of the diagonal arches, which, meeting in bundles, as it were, at each pier, gathered their energies at well-marked points.

It was thus that the cross walls or arcs-doubleaux of the side aisles were gradually modified till they became detached semi-arches concealed beneath the outer roof of the side aisles.

We have traced this modification in the Abbaye aux Dames at Caen.[7]

[7] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 88, chap. xvii.

Fig. 24 shows us an English example. It may be followed out in a number of other churches in England, at Pavia in Italy, at Zurich in Switzerland, and at Basle on the Rhine, to name but a few of the churches in which the modification of the vaults was long posterior to the construction of the building itself.

24. DURHAM CATHEDRAL. TRANSVERSE SECTIONS

In France we shall find no example more deeply interesting than Noyon, which at the date of its construction (the last quarter of the twelfth century) formed, as it were, an epitome of the advance so far made by the architects of the Ile-de-France. In this curious building we find a fusion of the antique tradition developed by the Normans in their triforiums, and of the Angevin methods, as manifested in the groined vaults derived from domes: methods further perfected by the example of La Ste. TrinitÉ at Angers; in other words, by the adoption of intersecting arches planned on a square, the thrusts of all being received on the main piers, reinforced by an intermediate transverse arch. And we note the appearance of the detached semi-arch beneath the roofing of the inferior aisles merging at its springing into the lateral arc-doubleau, and so resisting the thrust of the intersecting arches and transverse arches of the nave.

25. ABBEY CHURCH AT NOYON. PLAN

26. TRANSVERSE SECTION OF NOYON CHURCH

It has been said that Noyon was suggested by Tournai, doubtless on account of their superficial affinities. But the likeness is merely in general aspect, the methods of construction being wholly different. At Tournai the apsidal transepts are vaulted upon transverse arches of great strength, and upon radiating semi-arches united where they meet by a ring of voussoirs set horizontally, and at their springing by vaults keyed into their mass, an ingenious arrangement which recalls the vaulting of the Salle des Capitaines over the porch of the monastery church at Moissac.

The combination of these arcs-doubleaux, which, in addition to the solidity of their independent structure, are strongly reinforced by the massive circular courses of the walls, is very peculiar, for it dispenses altogether both with auxiliary arches and with abutments. Tournai, therefore, cannot be held to have begotten Noyon, for here we have groined vaults, the intersecting arches of which demand the reinforcement of abutments either concealed or apparent to sustain the thrust of these vaults over the lateral arcs-doubleaux. The ingenious arrangement above cited had in no sense modified the methods of abutment followed by the architects of the twelfth century even after the adoption of the vault on intersecting arches. These, as will be remembered, consisted in buttressing the walls and piers of the nave by cross walls or by arches concealed beneath the roofing of the side aisles.

27. CHURCH OF TOURNAI, BELGIUM. EXTERIOR VIEW OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT TOWARDS THE SCHELDT

28. MONASTERY CHURCH AT MOISSAC. VAULT OF THE HALL KNOWN AS THE HALL OF THE CAPTAINS ABOVE THE PORCH

29. CHURCH OF TOURNAI, BELGIUM. INTERIOR OF THE NORTH TRANSEPT

We find at Soissons the first application of an architectural system, the special feature of which is the flying buttress.

The south transept of Soissons Cathedral was evidently suggested by Noyon. This is apparent in the adoption of the two-storied side aisle and in the semi-circular plan. But the method of vaulting common to both churches has a greater refinement at Soissons. Reduced to its simplest expression of strength by the attenuation of its skeleton, the vault still exercises its full thrust on those parts which rise above the upper gallery.

The architect of Soissons was not content, like his brother of Noyon, to support the vault laterally by interior arches collaborating with the arcs-doubleaux of the triforium, and reinforced by an abutment impinging on the wall of the central nave. To him the idea occurred of detached semi-arches in open air, springing from above the roof of the triforium and its buttresses and marking each bay. Thus was born the flying buttress, a feature frankly emphasising its special aim and function, namely, to meet the thrust of the main vault at its points of concentration.

30. SOISSONS CATHEDRAL. SOUTH TRANSEPT. SECTION OF FLYING BUTTRESS

31. PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF SOUTH TRANSEPT, SOISSONS CATHEDRAL[8]

[8] These flying buttresses, in themselves insufficient for the task laid upon them, and worn by the destructive action of the weather, were pushed entirely out of shape by the constant pressure from within, the thrust of the vault being aggravated by the circular plan of the building, while the vaults themselves became dislocated by reason of their insufficient abutments. It became necessary to reconstruct the buttresses in 1880, to avert the total collapse of the south transept.

The reconstruction of these flying buttresses, and of many others of the same period, furnishes us with a criticism ad hominem upon the system.

The flying buttress, in combination with the intersecting arch, gave birth to a new system of construction, a system on which were raised vast buildings which compel our admiration and demand our careful study, but should not invite our imitation. They are monuments to the ingenuity of the twelfth and thirteenth century architect, but no less are they beacons warning against the perils of a rationalism—more apparent than real—which their authors carried to its extreme limits, casting to the winds all traditional principles, and consequently all authority.

It would seem as though the architects of this period, emboldened by such achievements as the churches of Noyon, Soissons, Laon, Paris, Sens, and Bourges, and spurred by professional emulation, went on from one feat of daring to another, passing from the triumphs of Rheims, Amiens, and Mans to the supreme architectural folly of Beauvais, and creating monuments no less amazing in dimension than in the statical problems grappled with, if not always solved.


CHAPTER VI
CHURCHES AND CATHEDRALS OF THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

The study of mediÆval architecture is one of the most fascinating of pursuits, but it is one beset with difficulties. The obscurity in which the origin of our great monuments is buried is profound and often impenetrable.

A fertile cause of error is the confusion which in many cases has arisen between the dates of foundation and of consecration. Very often a church was built and afterwards considerably modified, rather than actually reconstructed, on the same consecrated site.

Lightning was the most frequent cause of the destruction, total or partial, of mediÆval churches. Striking the steeple, the tower, or the roof, it fired the timber superstructure of the nave. This in itself would not have been an irreparable disaster; but as the timbers gave way the calcined beams charred the piers, and so prepared the downfall of the whole building, which was then either restored or reconstructed in the fashion of the day. Hence, whether we base our deductions upon more or less trustworthy records or upon contemporary readings of existing data, the result is too often a confusion among vanished monuments, or a contradiction between the buildings as they now exist and the historic records which relate to them.

32. CATHEDRAL OF LAON. PLAN

33. CATHEDRAL OF LAON. INTERIOR OF THE NAVE

Nothing is easier for interested theorists than to post-or ante-date the structure of a building. They have nothing to fear from the testimony of writers, and, with very few exceptions, it is difficult to assign a precise date to the construction of great churches and cathedrals or to point with certainty to their architects. The obscurity of these great artists is perhaps to be accounted for by the fact that they were ecclesiastics. As such the honour of their achievements belonged not to the individual, but to the corporate body, the order of which they were members, and members moreover who had, in most cases, taken the vow of humility.

Modern science, architectural and archÆological, has failed to throw much positive light on this subject. It contents itself for the most part with ingenious hypotheses and learned deductions which leave us still in doubt as to precise dates. But we shall at least find some sort of foothold in a careful architectural survey of buildings themselves. This should be, of course, supplemented by study of historic records, and such a study will convince us that art in the Middle Ages, as in all epochs, obeyed the immutable laws of filiation and transformation. We shall follow the artist step by step, observing his research, his hesitation, his errors, and even his corrections.

These are trustworthy documents in which to study the origin of a building and to note its successive transformations, which latter were far more frequent than total reconstructions. For it was not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that great cathedral churches in any considerable numbers were conceived and continuously executed.[9]

[9] It is possible, if not easy, to trace the architectural development of the Middle Ages in a good many cathedrals and churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. We have, however, confined ourselves, for the purposes of our present synthesis, to the churches and cathedrals of the royal domain, and more especially of the Ile-de-France, not only because they served as models for the architects of their day, but because they illustrate in a remarkable degree the various transitions we desire to study.

34. CATHEDRAL OF LAON. MAIN FAÇADE

The great abbey churches founded towards the close of the twelfth century in the royal domain, but continued and finished in the early years of the thirteenth, still preserved a more ancient tradition.

Laon, which is derived from Noyon and from the south transept of Soissons, consists of a nave with transepts, and of two-storied side aisles vaulted upon intersecting arches, above which, as at Soissons, rise flying buttresses, which meet the thrust of the main vault.

This arrangement of the side aisles proves the continuity of the Norman formulÆ, just as the method of construction adopted in the main vault demonstrates the persistent influence of the dome.[10]

[10] See chap. i., "The Influence of the Cupola on Gothic Architecture."

The admirably constructed main vault is square on plan, each square containing two transverse compartments, after the Angevin method as derived from the Aquitainian dome. Here we find indications that, if the builders of the Church of Laon had fully assimilated this method, their minds were nevertheless not altogether at rest as to the functions of the flying buttress. This was, of course, essential to the piers which received the united thrust of both transverse and diagonal arches. But it was far from logical to reinforce the intermediate piers supporting nothing but the auxiliary transverse arches by abutments identical with those of the main piers.

The illogicality so striking at Laon is absent from Noyon. There, on the contrary, the architects—of the original construction—had emphasised the functions of the main piers by buttresses of greater projection and solidity than those accorded to the secondary piers.

35. CATHEDRAL OF LAON. THE EAST END

36. CATHEDRAL OF LAON. SECTION OF THE NAVE

Notre Dame de Paris was begun towards the close of the twelfth century, and finished, save for the chapels, in the first half of the thirteenth. As at Laon, the Norman tradition is observed in the arrangement of the upper galleries of the side aisles, while the influence of the dome is again to be traced in the sex-partite groining. The same illogical system of abutments obtains as at Laon.

This vast building, consisting of a nave and double side aisles of equal height sweeping round the semi-circular choir, seems to be one of the first five-aisled cathedrals; its grandiose arrangement, the boldness of its combinations, and the perfection of its detail mark the considerable progress made by the architects of the Ile-de-France.

37. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. PLAN

The method of construction here adopted has a peculiar significance. The upper internal galleries, vaulted on diagonal arches, and raised considerably above the level of the second side aisle, the boldness of the flying buttress, which at one span embraces the two side aisles and forms the abutments of the main vault—alike prove that the architects of Notre Dame de Paris had adopted the newly discovered systems even to excess, and were applying them with unparalleled skill and ingenuity.

38. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. SECTION OF THE NAVE

The Norman tradition which had obtained in the Ile-de-France passed away in the first years of the thirteenth century. At ChÂlons-sur-Marne the nave is flanked by two-storied side aisles. But the upper gallery, vaulted and greatly reduced in size, shows that the conventional arrangement was fast dying out.

The influence of the dome was longer lived, as is shown in the construction of vaults at this period. We may still trace it at Langres in the domed form of the vaults, which, in spite of their rectangular plan, seem to be a reduced copy of the Angevin naves.

39. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. FLYING BUTTRESSES AND SOUTH TOWER

The naves of Sens and of Bourges are also vaulted in square compartments. The thrust of the vaults is carried by the diagonal arches to each alternate pier, the intermediate one receiving only the auxiliary transverse arch already fully described. Yet here again the exterior flying buttresses are all of equal solidity in spite of the varying strain. This arrangement, prudent if illogical, shows once more with what distrust architects had adopted that system of exterior abutment, the characteristic of which is a detached arch exposed to all the vicissitudes of weather, and yet responsible for the stability of the whole edifice.

The Cathedral of Sens marks a new phase of development by its suppression of the upper gallery over the side aisles. These are now vaulted and covered by a lean-to roof; a flying buttress of single span receives the thrust of the main vault. The building is perfectly solid; its construction shows research, though it is as illogical as that of Laon or of Paris; for the exterior flying buttresses are all of equal strength, and so fail to proclaim their true functions, the interior thrusts varying considerably.

40. SENS CATHEDRAL. PLAN OF A BAY. VAULT IN SQUARE COMPARTMENTS OF TWO BAYS

41. SENS CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF A BAY OF THE NAVE

42. SENS CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR VIEW OF LATERAL BAYS

The arrangement at Bourges, which appears to have been mainly built, if not actually finished, in the first half of the thirteenth century, differs from that of Sens. The structure is one of five aisles, and in plan recalls Notre Dame de Paris, but the details are very dissimilar. The inner side aisles no longer support a gallery, nor are they of equal height with the outer aisles; they are raised so as to afford space for lighting (see Fig. 43). The main vault is sex-partite planned on squares; but the same illogicality exists here which we have already pointed out, and in connection with which we will risk appearing somewhat insistent, in the hope of directing special attention to it. It is more glaring here than elsewhere, the flying buttresses themselves being of exaggerated dimensions and of double span, embracing the two side aisles.

43. BOURGES CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE NAVE

Both at Bourges and Sens the space between the summit of the archivolts and the bases of the upper windows, known as the frieze, or, in modern parlance, the triforium, becomes a purely decorative feature. It consists of a narrow arcaded corridor, occupying in the interior of the building that portion of the wall space which in the exterior has been appropriated by the lean-to roof of the side aisles. At Sens there is merely a single gallery; at Bourges it becomes double, through the stepped arrangement of the side aisles (see Fig. 43), a variation in which we may trace an ingenious blending of the systems of Anjou and Poitiers with those of the Ile-de-France.


CHAPTER VII
THE CATHEDRALS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The Cathedral of Rheims, which was begun soon after the destruction of the original building by the fire of 1211, is a supreme expression of the fusion of the three systems—those of Aquitaine, of Anjou, and of the Ile-de-France. It may be taken as the most perfect manifestation of persistent efforts to establish a method of construction based on equilibrium—the equilibrium, that is to say, of a building vaulted on intersecting arches, the thrusts of which are received by exterior flying buttresses.

The temerity, and even the dangers of such a system, are sufficiently demonstrated in the wonderful works of the thirteenth-century architects themselves. For, notwithstanding the skill and beauty of their many admirable combinations, they were unable to reduce their methods to scientific formulÆ. The statical power of their structures remained an uncertain quantity, determined by the durability of the material and its exposure or non-exposure to the weather, the interior skeleton being formed of the same material as the exterior.

44. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. PLAN

The perils inherent in such a system are more apparent at Rheims than elsewhere, because of the colossal proportions of the building. The arrangement of the flying buttresses, however, is more logical than at Laon, Paris, Sens, and Bourges, by reason of the quadripartite arrangement of the main vault. The thrusts being equally distributed among the supporting piers, each flying buttress performs an identical office; their equal strength and solidity is therefore perfectly appropriate and logical. But though theoretically correct in its disposition of flying buttresses of equal strength to meet thrusts of equal strength, the method is vitiated by its inherent weakness as a system of abutment. The fragility of the flying buttress exposed it to two grave dangers, active and passive; active, taking into account the constant strain upon it as an abutment; passive, in regard to the gradual reduction of its solidity by exposure to weather. In support of this statement, it is only necessary to refer to the restorations which it has been found necessary to make within the last few years, to preserve the nave. The flying buttresses have been strengthened from below, a proceeding without which the collapse of the huge building would have been inevitable.

But we shall find much to call for unqualified admiration at Rheims in the grandiose conception of the work and in its powerful execution, in the magnificent arrangement of its eastern faÇade, and in the perfect harmony of the ornamentation, where sculpture, capitals, friezes, crockets, and floriations are so many types of mediÆval decorative art at its best.

The Cathedral of Amiens, which dates from about 1220, and is one of the largest as well as one of the most admired of Gothic masterpieces, is directly founded upon that of Rheims. The plan is on the same lines, with this exception, that at Amiens the choir is of greater importance relatively to the nave, and that the piers and points of support are weaker and much more lofty.

45. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE NAVE

46. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE CHOIR

The RÉmois architects, while exercised by the problems of equilibrium which their system involved, sought to minimise its dangers, which they recognised no less fully than their predecessors, by prudently avoiding all false bearings. It will be easily seen by a comparison of the two sections (Figs. 45 and 48) that the builders of Amiens were troubled by no such misgivings, or that they were at least more venturesome if not more accomplished. They did not hesitate to base the columns which received the crowns of the flying buttresses on a corbel arrangement which had no solid bearing, as may be seen by following the direction of the dotted line X in Fig. 48. The boldness, or rather the imprudence of such
an arrangement is patent, for the failure of anyone of the courses, or the decay of any part of the pier into which the corbels are keyed, would necessarily involve a rupture in the flying buttresses, on which the stability of the main vault depends. The disintegration of the whole building and its total ruin could be the only result. The perils of such combinations, or rather such tours de force of equilibrium, are exemplified at Beauvais. The architects who built the choir, about the year 1225, basing it on that of Amiens, determined to raise a monument which should surpass, both in plan and elevation, all the structures of their epoch. They increased the breadth of the choir and of its bays, raising, in the latter, intermediate piers on the crowns of the lower archivolts, thus dividing the upper bays, and at the same time strengthening the vault by auxiliary transverse arches. They exaggerated the height of the archivolts and of the large windows, and diminished their thickness, in order to give greater elegance and lightness, and the main vault rose to a height of more than 160 feet above the ground level. This tremendous elevation, the exaggeration of which in proportion to the width of the nave is striking, necessitated a complicated system of flying buttresses surpassing in boldness all that had gone before. The section in Fig. 51 will give some idea of what has been justly described as an architectural folly. It is astonishing that the structure should have stood as it has done, taking into account the false bearings of the intermediate piers, here again shown by the dotted line X (Fig. 51).

These rest for half of their thickness on off-sets from the piers, which, proving unequal to the strain, have been temporarily stayed, and must eventually be consolidated.

47. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. PLAN

48. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. SECTION THROUGH THE NAVE

The choir, however, was finished about 1270, and stood for several years. But dislocations then declared themselves. The forces so elaborately balanced lost their equilibrium, and on the 29th November 1284 the vault fell, dragging down with it the flying buttresses, and carrying havoc through the rest of the building. In the reconstruction which followed it was thought imperative to double the points of support in the arcades both of the main and side aisles, and to reinforce the flying buttresses by iron chains.

During the thirteenth century a number of cathedrals were raised all over Europe on the model of the great buildings of Northern France, and more especially of Amiens, which seems to have roused a great enthusiasm; these were, however, of far more modest dimensions. They had neither the exaggerated height nor the structural audacities of their exemplars. Few of these churches and cathedrals, the reconstruction of which on the new system generally began with the choir, which was
added to the primitive nave, were completed by those who initiated their erection. The most highly favoured in this respect were finished in the course of the fourteenth century; but in the greater number of cases the work dragged slowly on, and reached its end some two centuries after its inauguration. Reconstructive undertakings were constantly impeded by wars or social convulsions, which either hampered or entirely cut off the resources of bishops and architects, their promoters. Such interruptions were of great service to modern archÆological study, offering as they do distinct evidence of the various transformations which were successively accomplished from the so-called Romanesque period to the Gothic.

49. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. APSE

50. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. NORTH FRONT

51. BEAUVAIS CATHEDRAL. TRANSVERSE SECTION

52. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. ROSE WINDOW OF NORTH TRANSEPT

The majority of these great buildings, which show traces of the vicissitudes through which they passed, bear a strong likeness to each other, and vary only in detail, according to the skill of their constructors.

The peculiar interest of Chartres centres in its remarkable statuary; it has, however, other features which command attention, such as the rose window of the north, transept and the design of the flying buttresses. These consist of three arches, one above the other, the two lower ones being connected by colonnettes, radiating from a centre, so that the lower arch is related to the upper, as the nave of a wheel is to the felloes, the colonnettes forming the spokes.

At Mans the arrangement of the choir is so far more remarkable in that it is extremely unusual, or indeed, in its way unique. The flying buttresses are planned in the form of a Y (see A on the plan Fig. 53), thus affording space for windows in the exterior wall, to light the vast circular ambulatory, which at Mans is of unusual importance, and surrounds the choir with a double aisle. The flying buttresses which rise above the arcs-doubleaux, bi-furcated (B on the plan), are over-attenuated in section; their exaggerated height and proportionate slenderness threaten to make them spring, so that it has been found necessary to bind them together by ties and
iron chains. Such expedients are a sufficient criticism of the ingenious but precarious system adopted by the architects of Mans.

53. MANS CATHEDRAL. PLAN

54. MANS CATHEDRAL. FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE APSE

55. MANS CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE CHOIR

The influence of the Ile-de-France in Normandy is manifest in the arrangement of choirs and apsidal chapels in Norman cathedrals of the thirteenth century. The Cathedral of Coutances, a monument of the eleventh century, was rebuilt in the early
years of the thirteenth century under the impulse given by Northern France to the architecture of the period. It is in the choir that we clearly trace this influence, in the double columns of the apse, and the ingenious disposition of its collateral vaults. But the faÇade is purely Norman, not merely in general design, but in the details of the composition, facsimiles of which may be found in England.

56. COUTANCES CATHEDRAL. NORTH TOWER

The Cathedral of Dol in Brittany, one of the great churches of the thirteenth century, seems to have escaped the influences of the Northern innovation. Its general plan, its square apse lighted by large windows, the details of its architecture and ornamentation, all proclaim its affinity to the great churches which rose contemporaneously with it on either side of the Channel, in Normandy, and in England. It is very probable that it was built by the same architects or their immediate disciples, working on the more ancient methods of the Norman schools founded by Lanfranc at Canterbury towards the close of the eleventh century, on the model of those he had established in France at the famous Abbaye du Bec.


CHAPTER VIII
CATHEDRALS AND CHURCHES OF THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES

The Cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Beauvais excited extraordinary enthusiasm in their time, not only in the provinces of France, but among neighbouring nations, notably in England, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Spain, and Italy.

This enthusiasm was less fervid in the provinces farthest from the royal domain; but even in these outlying districts several remarkable buildings rose in the first half of the thirteenth century, constructed on the new lines.

In 1233 the Cathedral of Bazas was begun, and, unlike the majority of such undertakings, was carried through and finished in a comparatively short time.

57. RODEZ CATHEDRAL. WEST FRONT

58. BORDEAUX CATHEDRAL. CHOIR AND NORTH FRONT

59. LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL. WEST FRONT

The Cathedral of Bayonne, a contemporary building, shared the fate of Meaux, Troyes, and Auxerre. It was completed, with one tower only, in the sixteenth century. In 1248 the foundations of Clermont Cathedral were laid. The plan provided for six or seven towers, but the choir was the only portion finished in the thirteenth century. The transept and four towers, together with a portion of the nave, were completed in the following century, and the work was then abandoned until the reign of Napoleon III., who caused it to be again taken up. The Cathedral of Limoges was begun in 1273, under the direct inspiration of Notre Dame at Amiens. Down to our own times it has had to content itself with a choir, a transept, and the suggestions of a nave, the last of which has lately been completed. At Rodez a greater perseverance was shown, and the work went steadily on from 1277 until the Renascence, at which period, however, the two western towers were left unfinished, notwithstanding a contemporary description of their magnificence, which, in a truly Gascon vein, compares them to the Egyptian pyramids, among other world-renowned marvels.

"In 1272 Toulouse and Narbonne entered the lists against Amiens, imitating its plan, and proposing to at least equal it in dimensions. Neither of these undertakings proved happy. Archbishop Maurice of Narbonne died the same year the works were begun; his successors took but a lukewarm interest in their progress. In 1320 the sea retreated, leaving the port on which the wealth of the inhabitants mainly depended high and dry. Fortunately the choir with its noble vault 130 feet high was already completed, but the transept walls were left to fall into ruins. At Toulouse Bishop Bertrand de l'Isle-Jourdain lived just long enough to carry the work above the triforium of the choir; it was then abandoned till the fifteenth century. His successors squandered the revenues of their vast diocese so shamelessly in pleasures and display that Popes Boniface VIII. and John XXII., scandalised at their disorders, dismembered their territory and subdivided it into four bishoprics, granting to the Bishop of Toulouse the title of archbishop by way of compensation. But this compensation was of small avail to future zealous prelates for the carrying out of Bertrand's projects, and the choir of Toulouse was never finished. It falls short of its predestined height of 130 feet by 90, and the transept was not even begun.

"The Cathedrals of Lyons, of St. Maurice at Vienne, and of St. Étienne at Toul have affinities more or less direct with the great architectural movement. At Bordeaux the building of a great cathedral was contemplated at the time of the English occupation; but the choir would never have been finished but for the liberality of King Edward I. and of Pope Clement V., who had formerly been archbishop of the town."[11]

[11] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France; Paris Hachette and Co., 1884.

The great cathedrals constructed in England in the thirteenth century bear witness to the expansion of French art on the lines already laid down in the preceding century by the teaching and achievements of the Norman monkish architects who had followed William the Conqueror to Great Britain.[12]

[12] This is a very summary way of dismissing the vexed question of French influence upon English architecture. The undeniable fact that wherever a French architect can be identified as the author of an English building—William of Sens at Canterbury, for instance—the work he did differs entirely in character from contemporary English work is enough to refute much of the claim made for France. The principles of Gothic architecture were the common property of the two countries, and by each were developed according to their lights.—Ed.

English builders assimilated the constructive principles of the architects of Anjou and of the Ile-de-France. In the numerous cathedrals they raised from the thirteenth to the close of the fifteenth century it is easy to trace the original characteristics of French art throughout all the transformations or adaptations by which its methods were modified in accordance with British usages and ideas.

This influence is very apparent in the Cathedrals of York, Ely, Wells, Salisbury, and Canterbury, the last of which was constructed from the plans of an architect or master-mason, known as William of Sens; in that of Lichfield, where the spires of the faÇade recall those of Coutances in Normandy, and above all, at Lincoln, one of the most beautiful of English cathedrals. Here we have perhaps the most strongly-marked instance of the steady and continuous filiation between the buildings of France and England during the so-called Gothic period. It is quite possible that they were the work of the same architects, as they certainly were carried out by pupils or disciples of the same master-builders.[13]

[13] It is difficult to believe that Mons. Corroyer is in earnest in comparing the spires of Lichfield to those of Coutances, or the central tower of Lincoln to that of the same French cathedral. Mons. Corroyer appears to be unacquainted with the line of filiation between English spires and towers, and so looks, as a matter of course, for a French mother to such as strike his fancy.—Ed.

Lincoln Cathedral, founded in the eleventh century, and finished in 1092, shared the fate of so many other timber-roofed buildings of the period. The greater part of it was destroyed by fire in 1124. It was rebuilt and enlarged by St. Hugh in accordance with the new ideas he had brought with him from France, a very natural consequence of his supervision, when we take into account that as mandatory of Pope Gregory VII. he had been Bishop of Grenoble. The church was again partly destroyed by an earthquake in 1185. It was then rebuilt, enlarged, and completed by Bishop GrossetÊte, an Englishman by birth, who had, however, been educated and brought up in France in the early part of the thirteenth century, and had carried over with him to his native land the essence of the grand and noble inspirations which marked that marvellous era.

60. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. PLAN

61. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. WEST FRONT

The lantern-tower at the intersection of the western transept, which had fallen in 1235, was either rebuilt or finished by Bishop GrossetÊte about 1240. In its general outline and in detail it recalls the great lantern-tower of Coutances in Normandy, which seems also to have served as model for that of St. Ouen at Rouen in the fourteenth century.

The vast and magnificent Cathedral of Lincoln is an admirable subject for comparative study. Its architecture combines most strikingly the characteristics of the two nations. It blends in one harmonious whole the massive solidity of English structure overlaid with detail, formed by lines vertical, rigid, dry, and hard as iron, and the mingled grace and strength of French architecture, which may fitly be compared with gold, in its union of the supple and the durable, of solidity and power of resistance equal to those of the less precious metal, with an adaptability to artistic ends far greater.

62. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. TRANSEPT

63. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL. APSE AND CHAPTER-HOUSE

In the faÇade and the west towers English characteristics predominate, but the choir and the apse are French in composition, and most probably in execution, as is also the presbytery, in which both the arrangement and the details of the bays recall those of the lateral faÇades of Bourges.[14] All three are veritable masterpieces, worthy of the most brilliant period of French mediÆval architecture.

[14] Here Mons. Corroyer directly traverses the opinion of Viollet-le-duc, who could see no ground whatever for ascribing a French origin to the choir of Lincoln. Indeed, the conception of that choir, and nearly all its details, are not only unlike, they are opposed to those of French contemporary examples. Here are the words of the great French architect: "After the most careful examination I cannot find, in any part of the Cathedral of Lincoln, neither in the general design, nor in any part of the system of architecture adopted, nor in the details of ornament, any trace of the French school of the twelfth century (the lay school, from 1170 to 1220), so plainly characteristic of the Cathedrals of Paris, Noyon, Senlis, Chartres, Sens, and even Rouen.... The construction is English, the profiles of the mouldings are English, the ornaments are English, the execution of the work belongs to the English school of workmen of the beginning of the thirteenth century."—Gentleman's Magazine for May 1861—Letter to "Sylvanus Urban." The date of Lincoln choir is known. It belongs to the last years of the twelfth century, and so anticipates such French work as can show analogies with it, Le Mans, for instance, where the work in question dates from 1210-1220.—Ed.

In Belgium French influence manifested itself so early as the first half of the thirteenth century in the building of the remarkable Church of Ste. Gudule at Brussels. Up to this period the methods of the Rhenish schools had obtained in the Low Countries, and the setting aside of these methods in favour of the new system of France is significant of the high repute of the latter throughout Western Europe. Further evidence to this effect is to be found in the great churches of Ghent, Tongres, Louvain, and Bruges among others, which were either built between 1235 and 1300, or at any rate begun during this period, to be completed in the fourteenth century and even later.

64. BRUSSELS CATHEDRAL (STE. GUDULE). WEST FRONT

Ste. Gudule at Brussels was begun about 1226; but only the choir and the transept were finished by 1275. The nave was built in the fourteenth century, together with the towers of the west front, which, however, were not finally completed till the following century, or perhaps the sixteenth. Several chapels, the windows of which are filled with magnificent painted glass, date from the same period as these towers.

French influence is no less patent at Cologne, which is undoubtedly the daughter of Amiens. The opinion of a German writer is of special interest on this point.

65. COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. SOUTH FRONT

"The famous Cathedral of Cologne, one of the masterpieces of the German School, is a direct emanation from French tradition. The choir is a replica of that of Amiens; it was dedicated in 1322, after which the work of nave and transepts was carried on continuously; the nave measures 43 feet in width, and 140 in height; the total length of the church is 503 feet. The two towers of the west front have been completed in our own times—from the original designs, it is said. The general effect, whether of interior or exterior, is certainly not equal to that of the finest French cathedrals, but the style is rich and pure, and touches perfection in the treatment of details."[15]

[15] W. LÜbke, Essai d'Histoire de l'Art.

In Scandinavian countries French art, which had already manifested itself at Ripen in Jutland during the so-called Romanesque period, gives us a fresh instance of its expansive power in an important Swedish building which dates from the end of the thirteenth century. The Cathedral of Upsala has this peculiarity, that it was designed and even begun by a French architect, one Estienne de Bonneuil,
who, on 30th August 1287, received the royal authority to betake himself to Upsala to construct the cathedral.[16]

[16] Charles Lucas, Les Architectes franÇais À l'Étranger (from the journal, L'Architecture).

In Spain the chief monuments of thirteenth-century Gothic architecture which betray the influence of France are the great five-aisled Church of Toledo, the cathedral at Badajoz, and the front of St. Mark's at Seville. French influence again is manifest in the cathedrals of LÉon, of Palencia, of Oviedo, of Pampeluna, of Valencia, and of Barcelona, founded at the end of the thirteenth century and continued in the fourteenth, as well as in the churches of Torquemado, Bilbao, Bellaguer, Monresa, and Guadalupe, all dating partly from the fourteenth century.

The Cathedral of Burgos, begun in the first half of the thirteenth century, shows a striking analogy with French buildings of about the same period in the plan and construction of its flying buttresses and windows as well as in the decorative sculpture of its portals. The lower stories of the west front seem to date from the fourteenth century, but the openwork spires which crown it were not finished until the fifteenth. In this curious building we find elements taken from France, mingled with decorative passages of pure Italian, and with others characteristically Spanish in their use of motives only to be explained by the vitality of the Saracenic traditions.

66. BURGOS CATHEDRAL. WEST FRONT

Innumerable churches were built in Italy during the so-called Gothic period, principally towards its
conclusion. Not to speak of the famous Cathedrals of Milan and Florence, nor of S. Anthony, nor of the Cathedral of Padua, the Cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto seem especially to lean away from antique and Lombard traditions towards those of France, a characteristic especially notable in the decorative details of their west fronts, which recall in many ways the work of French architects during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

67. CATHEDRAL OR DUOMO OF SIENA. WEST FRONT

68. CHURCH OF ST. FRANCIS AT ASSISI. APSE AND CLOISTERS

It is the opinion of some archÆologists that the true parent of the Cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto was the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, which is not far distant. Now St. Francis of Assisi is undeniably French in origin. This church, which was founded in 1228 to receive the remains of St. Francis who died in 1226, was possibly completed as to the lower structure in the thirteenth century; but it is improbable, to say the least, that this completion should have been the work of a German, for at this period Gothic architecture was still in embryo in Germany, while in France it had reached its most glorious development. The upper church seems to be later in date by a century; we may clearly trace its affinities with French art in the system of construction, which has all the characteristics peculiar to that which prevailed in the south of France at the close of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. Of this system the Church of Albi is the most finished type.[17] Assisi, in its single aisle, in its buttresses, both as to their interior projections and their exterior half-turreted forms, shows a complete analogy with the French Albigeois church.

[17] See chap. ix. "Albi," etc.


CHAPTER IX
CHURCHES OF THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES IN FRANCE AND IN THE EAST

"The thirteenth century was so prolific in religious architecture as to leave little scope to those which followed. But even had the growth of great religious monuments been less rapid at this period, the wars which convulsed France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would have paralysed such undertakings as the building of great cathedral churches. The religious buildings actually completed in the fourteenth century are rare; still rarer are those which date from the fifteenth. In those stormy days enterprise was confined to the completion of unfinished churches, and the modification, restoration, or enlargement of twelfth and thirteenth century buildings. It was not until the close of the fifteenth and opening of the sixteenth century, when France was beginning to recover its former power, that a fresh impulse was given to religious architecture; even then, however, the Gothic tradition persisted, though in a corrupt and bastard form. Many of the great cathedrals were finished, and a number of small churches, which had been destroyed during the wars, or had fallen into decay through long neglect, consequent on the poverty of the community, were either rebuilt or restored. The movement was, however, presently arrested by the Reformation, when war, fire, and pillage again destroyed or mutilated most of the newly completed religious buildings. The havoc wrought by this last upheaval was in its nature irrevocable, for when order once more reigned at the close of the sixteenth century, the Renascence had swept away the last traces of the national art; and though superficially the system of construction which prevailed in French churches of the thirteenth century still obtained, the genius which had presided at their construction was extinct and its memory despised."[18]

[18] Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonnÉ de l'Architecture franÇaise, etc., vol. i.

69. CHURCH OF ST. OUEN AT ROUEN. CENTRAL TOWER AND APSE, SOUTH FRONT

The Church of St. Ouen at Rouen, except for the west front and its towers, which are modern, is a typical example of the rare religious buildings constructed in the north of France during the fourteenth century. The arrangement of these churches varies, inasmuch as, while in general they follow the methods of construction adopted by the Northern architects of the thirteenth century, their special characteristic is a refinement or rather an attenuation of the piers, less by actual reduction of their section than by a diminution of their apparent bulk. This was effected by multiplying the clustered shafts, the slenderness of which was still further exaggerated by the prodigality of the mouldings, and the over-hollowness of their profiles. These profiles and mouldings rise from the base to the summit, and in the fourteenth century mark the spring of the arches by rings of sculpture, crowned with rudimentary abaci. These latter details were the last traces of a tradition which was to finally disappear in the fifteenth century. Thenceforward the lines of the intersecting arches of the vault, as of the longitudinal and transverse arches, run down without interruption to the base of the piers, where we find a complex faggot of mouldings crossing and recrossing, and showing little beyond the technical dexterity of the carver.

The main preoccupation of the architects of this period seems to have been the reduction of solid surfaces so as to give full play to the soaring effect of their airy shafts and vaults. The walls disappear, save below the windows, which now occupy the entire space of each bay. The triangular divisions of the vault are concealed by a serried network of supplementary ribs, for the most part useless save as decorations. But it must in justice be remembered that to this exaggeration of the window spaces we owe the growth of the beautiful art of painting on glass. This art, the admirable fitness of which for decorative purposes can hardly be over-estimated, had already manifested itself in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the interval from that period to the Renascence it produced its grandest masterpieces.[19]

[19] See chap. xii. "Decorative Painting on Walls and Glass."

It must be borne in mind that the great constructive and reconstructive movement which had manifested itself throughout Western Europe, and notably in the north of France, by great buildings, the distinguishing characteristics of which are vaulted roofs and flying buttresses, had made little progress in Southern France. The few exceptions of importance are—Bazas, Bayonne, Auch, Toulouse, and Narbonne. The Southern architects, as we have already stated, adhered to the ancient tradition, whether influenced by impulses of reaction, resistance, or defiance. Their conservatism is comprehensible enough in view of the strong Gallo-Roman tendencies which governed architectural activity throughout the district. The builders of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did indeed accept the Angevin intersecting arch, an invention the admirable simplicity of which was its own recommendation. But this concession was without prejudice to their broad principles. In the general arrangement of their religious buildings they still adhered to Roman usage, and to such models as the Basilica of Constantine and the tepidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.[20]

[20] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, chaps. iii. and vii.

Towards the close of the thirteenth, and throughout the fourteenth century, a large number of churches were built in the South, consisting of a single wide and lofty aisle, vaulted on intersecting arches, the thrusts of which were received by buttresses of great bulk and prominence in the interior of the building, but very slightly indicated on the exterior. The spaces between the massive interior buttresses, on either side of the aisle, were occupied by a series of chapels, supporting disconnected tribunes or a continuous corridor. The two great churches of the Cordeliers and of the Jacobins at Toulouse were built in the brick of the country in the second half of the thirteenth century. These have two aisles, according to the Dominican usage of the period, but the exterior arrangement is the same as in the one-aisled churches. The Churches of St. Bertrand at Comminges, and those of LodÈve, Perpignan, Condom, Carcassonne, Gaillac, Montpezat, Moissac, etc., were built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on the single-aisled plan. That of Perpignan has
this peculiarity; its vaults, though supported on intersecting arches, are built in accordance with Roman methods, which further prevail both in the forms of the terra-cotta materials, and in the manner of their application. The reins of the vault, which measures some 53 feet across, are ornamented by terra-cotta jars embedded in an admirably prepared lime mortar of great durability. The actual roof lies without the support of any intervening structure of timber upon the extrados of the vault. This consists of voussoirs of Roman brick, retained by a layer of terra-cotta upon which the tiles, also of the antique Roman form, are laid. This arrangement protects the vault from any infiltration of water due to the rupture of the tiles, an absolutely necessary precaution, if the former was to retain its stability.

70. ALBI CATHEDRAL. PLAN

71. ALBI CATHEDRAL. SECTION OF THE NAVE

The Cathedral of Ste. CÉcile at Albi is a monumental type of the single-aisled system. It is one of the largest and most important of Southern buildings constructed on the traditional principles of the ancient Romans. The vast single aisle, some 60 feet wide, is built entirely of brick, with the exception of the window tracery, the choir screen, and the south porch. Here we may study constructive principles no less simple than sagacious, combining all the necessary conditions of stability. The points of support and abutments of the vault on intersecting arches are all enclosed by the outer wall; they are thus protected from the accidents of climate, and their durability is almost indefinitely assured.

72. ALBI CATHEDRAL. APSE

73. ALBI CATHEDRAL. DONJON TOWER AND SOUTH FRONT

The foundations of the cathedral, which was dedicated to St. Cecilia, were laid in 1282, on the ruins of the ancient Church of Ste. Croix. The main building was finished towards the close of the fourteenth century, and the whole as it now stands was completed in the last years of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth century, by the addition of the baldacchino of the southern porch, or principal entrance, of the stone rood loft, and choir screen, the stalls of carved wood, and the fresco decorations which adorn the whole building. This varied workmanship renders Albi one of the most instructive of studies in connection with French decorative art, the successive developments being marked by monumental examples of the highest order, inspired or created by divers influences. The architecture is of the Southern French type, as far as the main building is concerned; in essentials, the same type prevails in the magnificent porch known as the baldaquin, in the choir screen, and in the rood loft; but in these later additions the inspiration of Northern art at the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century is also perceptible. The statuary and sculptured ornaments of wood and stone are Flemish; the paintings indicate their Italian origin by their crudity of colour and vulgarity of motive.

The Cathedral of Albi has a special interest as being one of the most curious examples of Southern Gothic architecture in the fourteenth century. It has a further peculiarity, inasmuch as it was not only a church, as it still is, but a fortress. Such a combination is readily accounted for by a study of the epoch following on the fierce struggle which ended in the extermination of the Albigenses, and of the social and political events resulting therefrom.

The interior is purely ecclesiastical, of the most beautiful type of its time; the grandeur of its dimensions, its structural perfection, and the magnificence of its decoration, are unsurpassed in their way.

The exterior is that of a fortress. Its intention is proclaimed by the buttresses rising from the glacis of the base to form, as it were, flanking towers; by the arrangement of the bays, or rather curtains, crowned by an embattled machicolated parapet, which unite these towers, and by the grandiose military character of the architecture. The formidable aspect of the building is much enhanced by the western tower, in effect a donjon keep, completing the system of defence by its connection with the fortifications of the archbishop's palace, which in their turn are carried on to ramparts, crowning the escarpments which, to the north, rise from the Tarn.[21]

[21] See "Civil Architecture," Part IV. chap. ii.

A few fortified churches still exist—such, for example, as Les Stes. Maries (Bouches du Rhone), which dates from the thirteenth century. Albi was not a solitary instance of this usage. The Churches of BÉziers, Narbonne, and many others of the thirteenth and fourteenth century had been surrounded by defensive outworks rendered necessary by religious strife. The buildings thus transformed into strongholds served the further purpose of sheltering fugitive populations in times of panic.

One of the most interesting of such examples is the Church of Esnandes, not far from Rochelle, on the creek of Aiguillon, a building which dates from the twelfth century. It was fortified at the beginning of the fifteenth century to resist the incursions of the English.

74. CHURCH OF ESNANDES (CHARENTE INFÉRIEURE). A FORTIFIED CHURCH OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

As we have already remarked on the authority of a learned writer, the buildings of the fifteenth century are less numerous than those of the fourteenth. Those concerned in such undertakings were content to finish churches begun at an earlier period, or to attempt their reconstruction, frequently on plans which it was impossible to carry out, so that many buildings were left incomplete. We may instance a very famous monument, the Abbey of Mont St. Michel. The Romanesque choir fell into ruins in 1421, during the Hundred Years' War. In 1452 Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville undertook the reconstruction of the church on a scale so considerable that the choir only was completed during the
first years of the sixteenth century.[22] This part of the church shows the effect of the decadence of which there had been indications so early as the close of the thirteenth century. Certain of the arrangements are very ingenious, notably that of the triforium, which rests on the reins of the lower vault, and forms, as seen from outside, a series of small apses standing out from the main wall. But the mason's work is negligent, especially in the flying buttresses, which were so carefully treated by the architects of the thirteenth century. The lines are attenuated by a multiplicity of mouldings to an almost threadlike slenderness; the spring of the arches is undefined by capitals, and the complicated network of the fenestration adds to the wire-drawn effect, and further diminishes the proportions of the building. There is little to admire but the extreme manual dexterity of the carvers. The carving of the granite, the only stone used at Mont St. Michel[23] save for the arcadings of the cloister, is very remarkable, as is also the ornamental sculp
ture; this is executed with extreme skill, in spite of the excess of detail with which it is loaded.

[22] Description de l'Abbaye du Mont St. Michel et des ses Abords, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, 1877.

[23] See Part II., "Monastic Architecture."

75. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. FLYING BUTTRESSES OF THE CHOIR (LATE FIFTEENTH CENTURY). FROM A DRAWING BY THE AUTHOR

76. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. PLAN OF THE CHOIR ABOVE THE LOWER CHAPEL

77. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. DETAILS OF THE APSE (LATE FIFTEENTH CENTURY)

The decadence of Gothic architecture was manifest even at the close of the thirteenth century in such tours de force as the choir of St. Peter at Beauvais, and the Church of St. Urbain at Troyes. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries buildings or parts of buildings were constructed with remarkable skill, but the noble simplicity which was the strength of thirteenth-century architecture was no more. By the close of the fifteenth century a studied mannerism had taken its place. The western doorway of AlenÇon Cathedral is a typical example of this development, the defects of which were still further accentuated in the following century.

78. ALENÇON CATHEDRAL. WEST FRONT (FIFTEENTH CENTURY)

"The qualities of the architecture of the decadence must be sought not in the construction, but in the decoration of churches; here we may freely admire the happy detail and patient execution which mark the work of carvers and limners during the last two centuries of the Middle Ages."[24]

[24] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France; Paris, 1884.

Gothic architecture put forth its expansive force at the close of the twelfth and during the thirteenth century, not only throughout Western Europe, but even in Eastern countries, where monuments still survive of the highest interest to us as the work of monkish architects who came from France in the wake of the first Crusaders. The modifications and enlargements of famous buildings in the Holy Land towards the close of the twelfth century show evident traces of their influence, which is further
manifested in certain structures of Rhodes and Cyprus from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, in which Western and more especially French types have served as models.

79. FAÇADE OF THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. SOPHIA AT NICOSIA (ISLAND OF CYPRUS)

"It will hardly be disputed that the prolonged sojourn of the Crusaders in the Levant, the teachings of their architects, and the contemplation of their works, were considerable factors in the development of Arab art. There was a reaction of the West upon the East; sometimes indeed such a direct influence is perceptible as to astound and perplex the observer. To understand the part played by the Crusaders in the East, and to appreciate its Western and independent character, we must cast a rapid glance at the monuments constructed by them in Cyprus and Rhodes after their expulsion from Syria. We shall find the movement which originated in the twelfth century progressing throughout the following centuries on the same lines; in other words, drawing a continuous inspiration from France.[25]

[25] Melchior de VogÜÉ, Les Églises de la Terre Sainte.

"The island of Cyprus was conquered in 1191 by Richard Coeur de Lion; in the following year it was ceded to Guy de Lusignan, in whose family it remained until the close of the fifteenth century. Catherine Cornaro, the widow of the last of the Lusignans, gave it in 1489 to the Venetians, who retained possession of it till its conquest by the Turks in 1571. Throughout the thirteenth century Cyprus was a refuge for successive remnants of the Christian colonies of Syria. French predominance was at its height in the fourteenth century. The religious monuments of this period are very numerous and of great variety of structure. Art had emerged from the cloister, and had ceased to be the monopoly of monastic bodies. In Cyprus we no longer find that scholastic uniformity which characterises the Latin churches of the Holy Land. The new blood of secularism had entered into Romanesque architecture and led to a fresh development of the art in Cyprus as in France Architects applied the thirteenth-century methods, fully recognising their consequences. They sacrificed to local exigencies by the substitution of flat roofs for timber ones, but this modification in nowise affected the general arrangement of their buildings.

80. CATHEDRAL OF ST. NICHOLAS AT FAMAGUSTA (ISLAND OF CYPRUS). FAÇADE

81. CATHEDRAL OF ST. NICHOLAS AT FAMAGUSTA (ISLAND OF CYPRUS)

"The most considerable monument of the thirteenth century is the Cathedral of Nicosia, built between 1209 and 1228, and dedicated to St. Sophia (see Fig. 79). This large three-aisled church has all the characteristics of French cathedrals of the period."[26]

[26] Melchior de VogÜÉ, Les Églises de la Terre Sainte.

The Churches of St. Catherine and of the Armenians, the mosques of EmerghiÉ and of Arab Achmet also date from the close of the thirteenth century. Among the more numerous buildings of the fourteenth century the most noteworthy are the Cathedral of St. Nicholas at Famagusta (Figs. 80 and 81), with its three portals and two towers; the Church of St. Sophia at Famagusta (Fig. 82), the Premonstrant Monastery of LapaÏs, remarkable for the beauty and nobility of its abbatial buildings, which comprise a large three-aisled chapel, and several religious buildings at Paphos and at Limasol. At Rhodes there are a number of churches built in the fifteenth century after French models, which had no less a vogue for dwelling-houses than for religious and military architecture; in a word, architecture—civil, religious, or military—was French in all its manifestations. "The guns of the order still point from the embrasures of the towers, Soliman's stone cannon balls strew the neighbouring ground; sculptured on the house fronts are the blazons, and in many cases the French names, of their bygone owners. Involuntarily the mind travels back by the space of three centuries, reincorporating these forgotten worthies, and repeopling their dwelling-places. One half expects to see the emblazoned doors thrown open, to give egress to knightly owners, mustering for the last time under the banner of St. John."[27]

[27] Melchior de VogÜÉ, Les Églises de la Terre Sainte.

82. RUINS OF THE CHURCH OF ST. SOPHIA AT FAMAGUSTA (ISLAND OF CYPRUS)


CHAPTER X
TOWERS AND STEEPLES—CHOIRS—CHAPELS

The first steeples were round, on the model of the Greek and Byzantine cupolas, and modest in diameter, so that the bells they contained can only have been small ones. These bells were suspended from the summit of the tower, the portion of wall surrounding them being pierced by arcaded openings, and crowned by a long pyramidal roof.[28]

[28] EncyclopÉdie de l'Architecture et de la Construction, article "Clocher," by Ed. Corroyer.

Such towers were very frequently isolated from the body of the church. A large number of Italian churches, dating from all periods of the Middle Ages, have steeples at a considerable distance from the main building.

Force of habit determined the application of the round form to towers of the twelfth century; but it is evident that a square plan was preferred, even so early as the tenth century, and such a form was in course of time rendered necessary by the development of the founder's art, and the increase in the dimensions of bells at the beginning of the twelfth century. Besides the great bells which proclaimed the hour of prayer to a distant flock, small bells were in use to regulate the religious exercises of the clergy. They are called in the Latin texts signum, schilla, nola; in French sin, esquielle, eschelitte; from the beginning of the tenth century they were placed in the campaniles which crowned the domes.

The Italian word campanile has the force of the French terms tour, clocher, beffroi (or the English tower, steeple, belfry). But the denomination clocher has a general application to all pyramidal structures rising above the roof of a church.

The belfry was a tower, in most cases isolated, which contained the bell destined to sound the curfew and tocsin, and to call the burghers to civic assemblies.

Like the belfry, the Italian campanile is generally an isolated building, but it is usually placed in the near neighbourhood of a church. Among the most famous campanili are those of Florence—begun in the fourteenth century, on the plans of Giotto,—of Padua, of Ravenna, and the famous leaning tower of Pisa.

83. STEEPLE, VENDÔME (TWELFTH CENTURY)

In France the term campanile has a more general application, and is given to the little pierced arcaded turrets which, in many churches, crown the walls of the faÇade and shelter small bells.

84. GIOTTO'S TOWER AT FLORENCE

The most ancient belfries of the original provinces of France have great analogies with Byzantine monuments as to form, even when differing in detail. One of the most remarkable of these is the tower of St. Front at PÉrigueux, which seems to date from the first years of the eleventh century. It marked the sepulchre of the Saint, and apparently embraced two bays of the original three-aisled Latin church of the sixth century, evident traces of which have been discovered to the west of the great domed building of later times.

The tower of St. Front is composed of three square stories, diminishing on plan as they rise, and crowned by a conical dome, resting upon a circular colonnade, the columns of which vary in height and diameter, and owe their origin to Roman examples in the neighbourhood.[29]

[29] L' Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 1887.

The influence of this remarkable building was very considerable. It served as a model to architects of the neighbouring provinces. The type was improved upon in the tower of the Abbey Church of BrantÔme by the avoidance of the false bearings which mar the structure of St. Front, while at St. LÉonard, near Limoges, a very original feature was superadded in the octagonal form of the crown or roof. The Auvergnat architects further perfected the construction by introducing internal piers for the support of the recessed walls of the upper stories, as at Puy.[30]

[30] Ibid. 1888.

It is worthy of note that, in spite of the importance given to these buildings, the space allotted to the bells themselves was comparatively limited, which seems to indicate that the towers were destined for other purposes than the reception of bells. In the eleventh century the tower bore the same relation to the cathedral or abbey as did the donjon to the feudal castle. It was, in fact, the symbol of power. As abbots and bishops enjoyed the same rights as the nobles, it will be readily understood that the costliness of such emblems would be governed solely by the resources of their authors. The number of towers built at about the same period in connection with cathedrals and abbeys, and the importance of such as were attached even to simple parish
churches may be explained if we consider them mainly as denoting the status of an enfranchised commune. The rivalries in connection with neighbouring towers undoubtedly had their origin in conditions such as these.

85. BAYEUX CATHEDRAL. TOWERS OF THE WEST FRONT

86. SENLIS CATHEDRAL. SOUTH TOWER OF WEST FRONT

Towards the close of the eleventh century and throughout the twelfth many towers were built at an angle with the door, or in front of it, so as to form a porch, as at St. BenoÎt-sur-Loire and Poissy; or above it, as in the Churches of Ainay and of Moissac.

Later on immense towers with spires were built at each angle of the western faÇade, the gable of the nave rising between them.

At the Abbey Church of JumiÉges a large projecting porch filled the central bay of the ground story between the bases of the towers, but more frequently the towers were in one plane with the chief porch, and were themselves pierced with lateral porches, the three doors, with their richly sculptured voussoirs, forming one vast decorative whole.

The architects of the so-called Romanesque period built their towers at the intersection of the transepts; but avoiding the constructive audacities of the tower of St. Front, which was one of the most generally accepted models of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they ensured the solidity of their central tower by placing the more or less conical cupola which crowned the structure upon a square base, carefully loaded and abutted at each angle.

At the close of the twelfth century the architects of the Ile-de-France adopted a square form for the body of the tower, and in imitation of Oriental and Rhenish builders, reserved the octagonal plan for the spire, ensuring the solidity of the angles by a variety of ingenious combinations.

The great central towers of the Norman churches built in England and Normandy from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century were not always merely belfries, as at Salisbury or Langrune, for instance; in many cases they were lanterns, their functions being to light the centre of the church and to form a magnificent decorative feature at the intersection of transepts, nave, and choir in cruciform structures, such as St. Georges, Bocherville, Coutances, etc. Of all the French provinces Normandy clung most persistently to the lantern tower, and that of St. Ouen at Rouen is one of the most interesting examples.

87. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. STEEPLE

88. CHURCH OF LANGRUNE (CALVADOS). STEEPLE

In other provinces, notably Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, and the Ile-de-France, lantern towers were superseded by timber flÈches cased in lead, which rose at the intersection of the roofs of nave and transepts.

Among the most remarkable towers of the twelfth century in the Northern provinces we may mention those of Tracy-le-Val (Oise), of the Abbey Church of the Ste. TrinitÉ at VendÔme, and of Bayeux; those of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes at Caen; the old tower of the Cathedral of Chartres, and that of St. EusÈbe at Auxerre.

In the thirteenth century the height and decorative richness of these structures had increased to an extraordinary degree. The tower of Senlis (Fig. 86) is a most elegant example of the first years of a century which witnessed the birth of so many marvels of architecture.

In Burgundy several remarkable towers were built by the monks of Cluny, who were free from the asceticism introduced by St. Bernard among their brethren of Citeaux. The most notable of their structures are perhaps the towers of the Church of St. PÈre, near VÉzelay, built about 1240.

In the South various original developments in Gothic architecture were logically brought about by a judicious use of the materials of the country, such as brick. Most interesting examples of such development are to be found in the tower of the Jacobin Church at Toulouse, which dates from the close of the thirteenth century, and the donjon tower of Albi, the characteristics of which we have already discussed.

89. CHURCH OF THE JACOBINS AT TOULOUSE. TOWER

Examples of isolated towers are hardly to be found of later date than the thirteenth century. Bordeaux perhaps offers an exception. But the general usage after this period was to include the towers in the composition of the faÇade; their actual functions as belfries became apparent only above the level of the vaults. A beautiful example of this treatment may be studied in the noble composition of Notre Dame de Paris.

Its contemporary, the Cathedral of Laon, has four towers, terminating in octagonal belfries, the angles of which are flanked by two-storied openwork pinnacles; on the second of these stories are placed colossal bulls, the effect of which is very striking.

The towers of Rheims, which date from the second half of the thirteenth century, are of secondary importance in the splendid faÇade; but they are marked by a feature which was a novelty at the time. The interior of the belfry is built with a cage to allow free play to the bells, and space for the timbers by which they are supported, while the exterior forms an octagonal tower flanked by important pinnacles.

Rheims may be said to mark in Gothic architecture the boundary which separated its period of perfection from that of exaggeration and mannerism. The mania for lightness and the desire to dazzle and astound soon seduced its artists into a dangerous path which led inevitably to decadence. Such effects first manifested themselves more especially in the provinces of the German frontier, and the spire of Strasburg, built in the fourteenth century, is a famous example of these mistaken tendencies.

Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries towers adhered to the plan and general arrangement adopted by the later architects of the thirteenth century, diverging chiefly in the marvellous profusion of detail and of sculpture, and in the excessive lightness of design. The points of support were attenuated, and the mass of ornament seemed designed to conceal them as far as possible. In France the misfortunes of the times tended largely to perpetuate these dangerous foibles; for a number of churches which were founded at the close of the thirteenth century remained unfinished till the fifteenth and sixteenth, when Gothic art was in full decadence.

90. CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE AT CAEN. TOWER

But we must not pass over unmentioned certain buildings famous for boldness of construction and magnificence of decoration, if not for purity of style. The following are perhaps the most important:—In France the tower of St. Pierre at Caen, which shows strong traces of that analogy, or family likeness, so to speak, uniting Norman edifices; and the tower of St. Michel at Bordeaux, the spire of which was destroyed by a hurricane in 1768, and has lately been restored to its primitive height of 365 feet; in Austria the tower of St. Stephen, one of the most important of such buildings in that country, finished in 1433; the tower of the Cathedral of Freiburg-im-Breisgau (grand-duchy of Baden), one of the most beautiful and important examples. It was mainly constructed towards the close of the fourteenth century, but the openwork spire was added about the middle of the following century.

91. CHURCH OF ST. MICHEL AT BORDEAUX. TOWER

The Cathedral of Antwerp in Belgium was begun in the middle of the fourteenth century; the nave and the four side aisles were not completed till a century later. The faÇade is said to have been begun in 1406 by a Boulognese master-mason, one Pierre Amel; but of the two belfry towers only that on the north was completed in 1518. Its principal merit lies in its boldness of construction and its unusual height of 410 feet, rather than in purity of style or beauty of detail, the latter being a conglomerate made up from every period of Gothic.

92. CATHEDRAL OF FREIBURG-IM-BREISGAU (GRAND-DUCHY OF BADEN). TOWER

Choirs.—In Christian churches the choir[31] proper was an institution long before the chapels.[32]

[31] L' Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 1888.

[32] EncyclopÉdie de l'Architecture et de la Construction, article "Choeur-Chapelle," by Ed. Corroyer.

93. ANTWERP CATHEDRAL

At the extremity of the basilica, in the centre of the chalcidium or transept which gave to the basilican plan the form of a T or Tau—a figure venerated by the Christians as symbolising the Cross—were placed the altar, the
sanctuary, and the precincts occupied by the deacons and sub-deacons. The altar stood in the midst, between the hemicycle or apse and the nave arch. The hemicycle or apse which formed the Pagan tribunal was by the Christians reserved for ordained priests, hence its name, presbyterium. A semi-circular bench (consistorium), interrupted in the middle by a seat higher than the rest, on either side of which sat the inferior clergy, surrounded the apse, the raised seat (suggestus) being the throne of the bishop or his representative.

This portion of the basilica underwent a later modification; from the presbyterium it became the martyrium, or shrine in which was placed the body of the patron saint of the basilica or the relic to which the devotion of the faithful was specially addressed. This usage had been established even before the year 500 in the first basilica of St. Martin at Tours.

The primitive apse was lighted only from the nave or transept. After its transformation into the martyrium it was not only pierced with windows, but, according to some authors, was provided with openings along its base, or even arcaded, so as to give access to a low gallery running round it. If this be so, the characteristic arrangement of mediÆval churches dates from the fifth century.

In later times when it became customary to place the altar at the back, against the wall of the apse, seats for the bishops, priests, and choristers—the choir—were arranged between the altar and the nave. In monastic churches, built after the Latin tradition, the choir was generally in the crossing, or where there were no transepts, in the nave itself. It was separated from the congregation by a low enclosure of stone or marble. There are a few examples of churches with two choirs, one at the east, the other at the west.

In the first churches of the Romanesque epoch the choir was confined to the space between the piers of the crossing; it soon, however, made considerable advances. In monastic churches the choir or sanctuary was cut off from the surrounding spaces by barriers of stone or wood, and towards the nave was closed by a jubÉ, or rood screen and loft, the upper part of which was accessible to the monks for the reading of the epistle and gospel. Bishops, on the other hand, being free from the necessity of closing the choirs of their cathedrals, made a point of providing their flocks with wide spaces, in which ceremonies could be afforded a liberal development.

At the end of the twelfth century and beginning of the thirteenth these ideas governed the construction of important churches. Changes continued to be made, however, and from the reign of St. Louis we find the choirs of great cathedrals arranged on the exclusive principles of the monastic churches. The arcades surrounding them were filled with high stone walls, against the inner sides of which the stalls of the clergy, with their lofty and richly carved wooden canopies, were securely fixed.

Among the more famous choirs we may quote those of Notre Dame de Paris, of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Auch, of Lincoln, of Canterbury, of Spires, of Worms, of Burgos, etc. In order to satisfy the laymen whose view of the ceremonies performed in the choir was intercepted by these enclosures, the sanctuary was surrounded by chapels contrived in the wall of the apse, and in the side aisles of the nave.

Chapels.—From the end of the tenth century, according to M. de Caumont, we shall sometimes find aisles running entirely round the choir or sanctuary and communicating with it by an arcade. Even at this early period there must have been chapels in such aisles. In the twelfth century the disposition to elongate the choirs of important churches became general, and brought with it certain modifications of the plan. The Church of Vignori, which dates from the tenth century, has an apse divided into three chapels, recalling in its arrangement that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.

The Church of St. Servan, built in the eleventh century, has five chapels round the choir, and the Auvergnat churches—Notre Dame du Port at Clermont, and St. Paul at Issoire among others,—which date from the beginning of the twelfth century, also show in this respect some interesting peculiarities. The importance given to the apse by these rings of chapels can scarcely be too much insisted on.

On plan these apsidal chapels are, for the most part, round-ended. They are pierced with one or more round-headed windows, and have segmental vaults. On the outside they are often ornamented by mouldings, modillions, and even by variations in the colour of their stones. Chapels between the buttresses of the nave are rare in several aisled churches of the Romanesque period, but in many such buildings they were added at a later time.

The great revolution which took place in the art of building towards the end of the twelfth century had, for one of its results, the multiplication of chapels in the numerous great churches dating from that epoch. The principle of that revolution being to replace the inert masses which had previously resisted the various thrusts by comparatively slender points of support upon which those thrusts could be collected, stability being secured by a scientific calculation of forces, it led, as a natural consequence, to a considerable augmentation of disposable surfaces in the interior. These surfaces, mere curtains between the points of support, were ornamented with vast networks of stone, embracing panels of painted glass, on which the principal events of the Old and New Testaments, and the scenes so vividly outlined in the traditions of the time, were traced with admirable art. Room was found for chapels of considerable size, not only in the walls, or rather between the piers of the apse, but also in those of the side aisles, the bounding walls of which were carried out to the external faces of the buttresses receiving the thrust of the main vault, which buttresses now formed the lateral walls of a continuous line of chapels.

The veneration paid to the relics of saints increased greatly after the year 1000, in consequence of the pilgrimages to the Holy Land which preceded the Crusades. Each religious community established a patron, and demanded a special oratory dedicated to him, and it was a point of honour to make such a shrine excel that of the neighbouring, and, in most cases, rival corporation. The demand for these shrines increased to such an extent at the close of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century that, though chapels were constructed in all the available spaces of the vast cathedrals, they were found insufficient, and sanctuaries, which in earlier times had been the special property of particular bodies, were shared by several confraternities.

The Lady Chapel, or chapel dedicated to the Virgin, was generally in the apse, and in the thirteenth century, especially at its close, had been so considerably developed as to give great importance to the portion of the apse allotted to it. Very curious examples of this development are to be studied in the Cathedrals of Bourges, Amiens, Meaux, and Rouen, among others.

In many cathedrals and churches of the Middle Ages lateral chapels or annexes were built to serve some subsidiary purpose; such were chapter-houses, muniment rooms, treasuries, or even mortuaries, as the presbytery of Lincoln, the circular chapel at Canterbury, known as Becket's Crown, containing the tomb of Thomas À Becket, and Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster.

A most interesting example of this species of structure dating from the end of the twelfth century is to be seen at Soissons Cathedral; a two-storied vaulted building is connected by openings with the upper galleries of the round-ended south transept, and contains a funeral chapel, with a vaulted chamber above for a treasury.

In many countries small ancient buildings are to be found, known as baptisteries or chapels; these latter are doubtless the little rural churches which were built in great numbers in the first centuries of the Christian era, and are designated capella in texts of the time of Charlemagne, or perhaps oratories, such as it was customary to attach to the charnel-houses of towns or great religious establishments.[33]

[33] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, 1888.

The use of private chapels dates from the earliest days of Christianity; great personages who had embraced the new faith followed the example of the Romans who constructed private basilicas in their palaces. The custom was perpetuated, and the splendid Palatine Chapel of Aix is one of the most magnificent of its results. In later times kings and great nobles built themselves sanctuaries within their castles. In the time of Charles V. the Louvre owned an important chapel; the feudal castles of Coucy and Pierrefonds, among others, contained large chapels, the arrangement of which is very curious. ArchÆologists cite as of special beauty among seignorial chapels the ancient oratory of the Dukes of Bourbon at Moulins, the Chapels of Chenonceaux, Chambord, and Chaumont, and the Chapel of Jacques Coeur's hÔtel at Bourges. Many episcopal palaces have very remarkable chapels, such as that of the archbishop's palace at Rheims.

Refuges, hospitals, madhouses, and prisons also had chapels more or less important.

The term Sainte Chapelle[34] was applied in the Middle Ages to buildings raised over spots sanctified by the martyrdom of a saint, or destined to enshrine relics of peculiar holiness. The most famous was the royal oratory, built by Pierre de Montereau between 1242 and 1248 on the south side of the royal palace, now the Palais de Justice, Paris, to receive the Crown of Thorns, the pieces of the true Cross, and other relics brought by the royal founder, St. Louis, from the Holy Land.

[34] The plans and elevations of these chapels are so well known, and have been so frequently published, that we abstain from reproducing them in the present work.

The distinguishing feature of the Ste. Chapelle of Paris is its division into two stories—the upper chapel, which communicated with the royal apartments, and the lower chapel on the ground floor, which may have been open to the public. Its construction is remarkable no less for the happy boldness with which the whole of the spaces between the buttresses were utilised for the introduction of immense painted windows, than for the perfection of execution and the beauty of the sculptures, and this in spite of the rapidity with which the work was carried out. An annexe, which has now disappeared, adjoined the apse on the north, and consisted of three stories serving as sacristies and muniment rooms. The spire, a wooden structure cased in lead, dating from the time of Charles VII., was destroyed by fire in 1630; it was shortly restored, only to be again demolished at the close of the eighteenth century, and was finally replaced by the architect Lassus, who restored the building.

The Ste. Chapelle of St. Germain-en-Laye must have been built some years before that of the royal palace of Paris. It is remarkable for certain peculiarities of structure which show a greater architectural skill; the piers which sustain the vault have a greater interior projection; the formerets are disengaged from the wall, and the square windows occupy the whole space between the buttresses, and rise to close beneath the cornice. This most original and learned arrangement gives the building a very graceful aspect, and brings out its elegant proportions.

The Ste. Chapelle of Vincennes, begun by Charles VI., was not completed until the reign of Henry II. In construction it is akin to that of Paris. The two-storied annexes which formed the sacristies and treasury were finished towards the close of the fifteenth century.

After the example of kings and princes the great abbeys began to raise important oratories independent of their conventual churches. The Abbey of St. Martin des Champs at Paris founded two large chapels about the middle of the thirteenth century,—one dedicated to the Virgin, and the other to St. Michael.

Pierre de Montereau was commissioned to build, in addition to the Ste. Chapelle of the palace, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, within the precincts of the Abbey of St. Germain des PrÉs; the plan of the vaults differs here from that of the Ste. Chapelle of the palace. According to a drawing by Alexander Lenoir, made before the destruction of this chapel of the Virgin, the pointed arches comprised two bays, in imitation of the vaults on intersecting arches in Notre Dame of Paris, the origin of which we discussed in chapter vi.

The Abbey of ChÂalis, near Senlis, founded by Louis the Fat in 1136, which was one of the most important abbeys of the Cistercian order in the thirteenth century, possessed an abbey church of five aisles, over 330 feet long. Towards the middle of the thirteenth century it nevertheless founded a Ste. Chapelle, known as the Chapelle de l'AbbÉ. The building has undergone various vicissitudes, and the ribbed vaults which date from the reign of St. Louis were once decorated with frescoes, attributed to Primaticcio. The building still exists, however, almost in its entirety. It illustrates the considerable influence exercised by the Ste. Chapelle of Paris from its very foundation on the great nobles, more especially the heads of rich abbeys eager to parade their immense power and wealth.


CHAPTER XI
SCULPTURE

In the Middle Ages all the arts were auxiliary to architecture. The architect traced the details of his conception in the workshop, and superintended the construction; he directed stone-carvers, masons, sculptors, illuminators, painters, and glass-stainers, and laid his imprimatur on every branch of the work of which he was the creator.

Thus the connection between the allied arts was very close. The history of sculpture is that of architecture, for the diverse influences which marked their origin and modifications were common to both. Each reached its apogee in the brilliant manifestations of the thirteenth century, and each followed the same path to decadence less than two centuries later.

Statuary and ornamental sculpture were inseparable, being executed by the same artists in pursuance of the same idea: the study of nature.

In obedience to the law of increasing development they abandoned the hieratic forms imposed by religious tradition, but only to give a new expression to these very traditions, which were still preserved and venerated.

Roman inspiration, and even direct imitation of Roman sculpture, is clearly traceable in the first half of the thirteenth century. Rheims, which may be accepted as the masterpiece, the last word, so to speak, of Gothic architecture, illustrates this influence in certain magnificent examples of the western porch.

94. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT. CENTRAL PORCH

95. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT

96. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF WEST FRONT

The architects of the thirteenth century were pre-eminently the children of their generation. Ignoring their Latin descent they followed in the paths of the innovators so far as monumental structure was concerned; but they in their turn inaugurated a new departure by abandoning the Byzantine convention in statuary and sculptured ornament which

had prevailed throughout the preceding century, in favour of the more ancient Roman tradition. In this one respect they made a salutary return upon those antique principles which they afterwards definitively abandoned.

97. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR OF PRINCIPAL DOOR. STATUE AND ORNAMENT

98. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL. INTERIOR OF PRINCIPAL DOOR. STATUE AND ORNAMENT

The influence of Roman art upon French mediÆval sculpture is unquestionable. Its course may be traced through the relations existing between North and South long before the Crusades, principally by means of the great religious communities, and even more manifestly in the countless monuments raised in Gaul on Roman models, or in those constructed by Gallo-Romans for several centuries. Many of these survived the incursions of the barbarians.

The origin of ornamental sculpture is no less venerable. Superficially, it would seem to have drawn its inspiration mainly from the Romanesque epoch; but according to modern savants[35] its source must be looked for in much remoter periods. Oriental art, imported into Scandinavia, and there barbarised, was introduced into Ireland in the early centuries of our era. The Irish monks, whose power was very great, and who seem to have been the principal agents in the Renascence of the days of Charlemagne, created, or at any rate greatly influenced Carlovingian art by their manuscripts and miniatures. From Carlovingian art that of the so-called Romanesque period was born, and this was in its turn the parent of the ornamental sculpture of the thirteenth century. In the admirably decorative character of this art we recognise the influence of an ancient tradition handed on from generation to generation, to be finally rejuvenated, invigorated, and transformed as to detail by a close study of nature, precisely as had happened in the allied development of statuary.

[35] M. A. de Montaiglon, Professor at the École des Chartes.

The architects of the Ile-de-France, like those of Rheims, assimilated the principles of the new art with the supple skill which characterised them, such assimilation bearing rich fruit at Notre Dame de Paris in the sculptured figures of the west porch, and no less in their accessory ornaments.

99. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. PRINCIPAL DOOR. RUNNING LEAF PATTERN

100. NOTRE DAME DE PARIS. RUNNING LEAF PATTERN ON ARCHIVOLTS OF NORTH DOOR

A most instructive comparative study is furnished by the north and south porches of Chartres Cathedral. Here we find, in one building, examples of sculptures inspired by the hieratic tradition of Byzantium, and of those which had been transformed and naturalised by a return to antique ideals.

101. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF THE NORTH PORCH

At Amiens again certain of the sculptures were influenced by the new principles. But in the greater part there is a prodigality of motive and looseness of execution which indicate decline no less surely than the mistaken ingenuity of the structural details.

102. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL. STATUES OF THE SOUTH PORCH

MediÆval sculpture followed the fortunes of architecture, both in its rise and fall. In its first beginnings it was characterised by a purity of style not unworthy of Rome in her most glorious days, but rapidly losing touch with the antique ideal, it lost measure and proportion in its development. The wise laws of simplicity, essential to
all greatness in art, were set aside in favour of an unruly exuberance which ran riot in details, and was the immediate cause of a decline perceptible even in the fourteenth century, and absolute in the fifteenth. "Sculpture was at its zenith. We are astounded by the activity and fertility of thirteenth-century artists, who peopled faÇades and embrasures with figures from seven to ten feet in height, and animated every tympanum with countless statuettes. The faÇade of Notre Dame, by no means one of the richest, has sixty-eight colossal statues, for the most part of the highest excellence; at Chartres and at Amiens there are over a hundred to each porch. The famous figure of Christ at Amiens is a masterpiece; bas-reliefs work out the details of the main subject, and enrich the story with innumerable pictures of amazing vigour and originality."

103. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CENTRAL PORCH OF WEST FRONT

104. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. STATUES IN THE SOUTH PORCH

105. AMIENS CATHEDRAL. CHOIR STALLS. CARVED ORNAMENT


The favourite themes of the thirteenth century had something in common with those of the Romanesque epoch, though there is a sensible difference of treatment and considerable progress in composition, which exhibited more of taste and learning and less of eccentricity. But the satiric power and delight in caricature of our forefathers still demanded an outlet. These found expression in many a caustic gibe at clergy, princes, and rich burghers, and took substance in many a quaint gargoyle. A luxuriant system of ornamentation, adapted from the vegetable kingdom, was auxiliary to statuary. The main subject was enframed by it, or relieved against it; while often the composition itself was enriched by its introduction to complete the decorative effect. Or such a system of decoration was the only sculpturesque motive employed; it was then used with the utmost elaboration, and developed at the expense of statuary. Such was the case in Burgundy and Normandy, in which provinces the latter art was of slow growth. The Byzantine character of the scrolls, carved bands, and fantastic foliage of Romanesque art disappeared; ornament took on a new independence, and began to seek its types among native plant forms.

The carved leafage (Fig. 106) of the cloister arcades in the Abbey of Mont St. Michel strikingly illustrate this departure. The very plants which inspired the thirteenth-century sculptors still flourish at the foot of the ancient abbey walls.

106. ABBEY OF MONT ST. MICHEL. CLOISTERS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CARVED ORNAMENT OF INTERIOR SPANDRILS

107. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 23? IN.) THIRTEENTH CENTURY. ATELIERS DE LA CHAISE DIEU, AUVERGNE

108. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9? IN.) THIRTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS

Thus the flora of our own fields was applied in lithic form to the elements of our church architecture. But the breadth proper to architectural sculpture was still preserved by means of ingenious combinations.

It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that the imitation of natural forms became servile, tedious, and over-minute, and that the beauty of the whole was sacrificed to exaggerated faithfulness of detail.[36]

[36] Anthyme St. Paul, Histoire Monumentale de la France; Paris, Hachette and Co., 1884.

108A. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9½ IN.) FIFTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS

It should be noted that the decadence which manifested itself in monumental sculpture was far less rapid in the more intimate art which may be distinguished as imagery. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries all sculptors were image-makers; but towards the close of the latter, and during the fifteenth, the term was specially applied to carvers of images in wood, ivory, etc. Art still flourished in their ateliers in all its beauty, notably that of the goldsmiths, who carved images in high or low relief in precious metals, and who, thanks to the severely paternal regulations of the maÎtrise, were enabled to bring French decorative art to the highest degree of perfection. The beautiful carved wooden stalls of Amiens, Auch, and Albi, to name
but the most famous, testify to the vigorous talent of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century image-carvers.

109. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 10 IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS

110. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 6? IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS

110A. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 2¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF THE ILE-DE-FRANCE

111. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 4¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS

Flemish ateliers, which were kept up by the severe rules of the guilds, exercised a salutary influence upon the Burgundian craftsmen. This is more especially true of the great workshops of Antwerp and of Brussels, and perhaps also of those of Southern Germany. Burgundian influences reacted in their turn upon the artists of the Ile-de-France, notably in Paris (that brilliant centre of all artistic activities in the fourteenth century), and stirred them to emulation. The union of these various elements brought about the revival of the fine tradition of the thirteenth century, and towards
the close of the fifteenth century paved the way for a French Renascence, which heralded that more famous movement of the sixteenth, the credit of which is usually given to the Italians, who, however, such was the infatuation of the times, contributed rather to the debasement than to the regeneration of French national art.

111A. IVORY PLAQUE (HEIGHT 611/16 IN.) COVER OF AN EVANGELIUM. FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF THE ILE-DE-FRANCE (SOISSONS)

112. HEAD IN SILVER GILT REPOUSSÉ. HALF-LIFE SIZE. THIRTEENTH CENTURY. ATELIERS OF THE GOLDSMITH'S GUILD OF PARIS

113. GROUP CARVED IN WOOD (HEIGHT 10¼ IN.) FIFTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF ANTWERP

The remarkable sculptures that owe their origin to the ateliers of Antwerp are distinguished by one of the quarterings of the civic arms, a severed hand burnt in with a red-hot iron. Those of Brussels are branded in like fashion. The images of wood, ivory, and vermeil, that we figure as illustrating the art of the image-carvers from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, show that the old tradition was still cherished in this community. Their artists were so far swayed by iconographic convention that a certain hieratic sentiment is perceptible in their works; but this is never allowed to outweigh fitness of action and expression, and their masterpieces are so instinct with taste and delicacy, composed with so much skill and executed with such freedom, that they are the admiration of modern artists.[37]

[37] The statuettes, diptychs, etc., in wood, ivory, and vermeil, or silver-gilt, figured from No. 107 to No. 115, belong to the author.

114. WOODEN STATUETTE, PAINTED AND GILDED (HEIGHT 1911/16 IN.) FIFTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF BRUSSELS

115. WOODEN STATUETTE, PAINTED AND GILDED (HEIGHT 1911/16 IN.) SIXTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF MUNICH

These essentially French qualities they owe, primarily, of course, to the genius of their creators, but in a scarcely inferior degree to the fostering care of the maÎtrises, institutions which only require a certain modification by the progressive leaven of today, to become models for the imitation of all whose function it is to develop national art.


CHAPTER XII
PAINTING

The origin of painting dates from remote antiquity, and the art had already passed through many developments before it was applied by Gothic architects to the decoration of their buildings.

"In the thirteenth century the architectonic painting of the Middle Ages reached its apogee in France. The painted windows, the vignettes of manuscripts, and the mural decorations of this period all denote a learned and finished art, and are marked by a singular harmony of tones, and a corresponding harmony with architectural forms. It is beyond question that this art was developed in the cloister, and was a direct product of GrÆco-Byzantine teachings."[38]

[38] Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonnÉ, vol. vii.

From the archÆological point of view, however, it is important to bear in mind the considerable influence exercised upon continental art by the manuscripts and miniatures of Irish monks, so early as the reign of Charlemagne.

116. PAINTINGS IN CAHORS CATHEDRAL. HORIZONTAL PROJECTION OF THE CUPOLA WITH FORESHORTENED FIGURES AND THEIR ARCHITECTURAL FRAMEWORK

Towards the close of the twelfth century sculpture and painting alike entered on a new phase, resulting from that process of architectural evolution we have been considering. The hieratic tradition was set aside for the direct teaching and inspiration of nature. But as the mastery of the painter increased, the mural spaces available for the application of his new methods diminished rapidly, till, by the thirteenth century, the only wall surfaces left to him were those beneath the windows, and some few triangular spaces in the vault, where the interlacing network of arches became gradually closer and closer. Finding themselves thus practically excluded from the new Gothic buildings, the painters of the day turned their attention with entire success to the decoration of ancient monuments by the new naturalistic methods. The domes of great abbey churches such as St. Front (PÉrigueux) offered immense bare surfaces, the concave forms of which they utilised with extraordinary skill, adorning them with compositions in which figure and ornament are so adroitly combined, that they seem to be of normal proportions, in spite of their really colossal size (Fig. 117).

117. PAINTING IN CAHORS CATHEDRAL. FRAGMENT OF ONE OF THE EIGHT SECTORS OF THE CUPOLA. THE PROPHET EZEKIEL

Thanks to a discovery of mural paintings made in the Cathedral of Cahors in 1890, of the greatest archÆological importance, we are able to verify these statements.

During the progress of certain works undertaken for the preservation of the two domes, some paintings of great interest were laid bare on the removal of several coats of whitewash from the western cupola. Traces of similar decoration were found on the eastern cupola and its pendentives, but these it was found impossible to preserve, the action of the air causing them to peel at once from the surfaces. But the western composition is intact, and though the brilliance of the colour has no doubt suffered from time, we can still appreciate the learning, vigour, and firmness of hand perceptible in the design, which is outlined in black.

This western cupola, which is ovoid, and some fifty-three feet in diameter, like that of the east, is
divided by its pictorial scheme into eight sectors, separated by wide bands of boldly-designed fruits and flowers. Fig. 116 gives an exact idea of the general arrangement. Eight colossal figures of prophets, varying in height from fifteen to sixteen feet approximately, form the chief motives of the decoration. David, the prophet king, and the four great prophets: Daniel to the left of David; then in order, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel on the right, towards the choir of the church, and the three minor prophets—Jonah, Esdras, and Habakkuk—are painted in modulated tones, the dark outline forming a setting, on a background varying from tawny to deep red. The figures are enframed in a firmly-drawn architectural setting. This architecture is painted in gray against the masonry, the courses of which are indicated by double lines of brown upon the pale ochre of the general surface. Each prophet holds a phylactery or banderole inscribed with his name in beautiful thirteenth-century characters.

The floriated bands which divide the sectors terminate above in a circular frieze surrounding the crown of the cupola. The latter represents a starry sky, the centre painted with the apotheosis of St. Stephen, the patron of the cathedral. The frieze is painted with scenes from the trial and stoning of the Saint; the life-size figures are full of expression and grouped with great variety. In these paintings there are evident leanings towards the naturalistic evolution; and though the figures of the prophets are still hieratic in certain respects, the poses, heads, and details all point to evident research in the matter of physiognomy. This research is carried very far in the figures of the circular frieze, where the hands have evidently been carefully studied from nature.

118. PAINTINGS IN CAHORS CATHEDRAL. FRAGMENT OF THE CENTRAL FRIEZE OF THE CUPOLA

Technically speaking, these paintings are not frescoes. "The medium employed seems to have been egg, the white and yolk mixed, and the method very analogous to that of water-colour painting.... The red tones were laid over a bed of deep orange, the effect being one of extraordinary vigour and brilliance, taking into account the means at command. The use of a prepared ground was systematic, and was resorted to whenever intensity of the tones or colour effects was desired. Evident efforts in the direction of modelling are noticeable, though these have been neutralised to a great extent by a lack of concentration in the lights, and if it were not for the thick outline in which each figure is set, there would be much in common between the methods of these paintings and those renderings of diffused light affected by our modern plein-airistes. The general tone is that of the simpler paintings of the thirteenth century, that is to say, of those in which no gold was used. The effect is warm and brilliant, the dominant hue orange, heightened by reds of various tints."[39]

[39] From the technical notes of M. GaÏda.

According to the archÆological records derived from various works of the historians of Le Quercy, these paintings in the west cupola of Cahors were carried out under the direction of the Bishops Raymond de Cornil, 1280-93, Sicard de Montaigu, 1294-1300, Raymond Panchelli,[40] 1300-1312, or Hugo Geraldi, 1312-16, the friend of Pope Clement V. and of Philip IV. of France, who was burnt alive at Avignon, or perhaps even of Guillaume de Labroa, 1316-24, whose residence was at Avignon, and who governed the diocese of Cahors through a procurator. From this period onwards there was no further question of decorative works, the successors of these bishops being fully occupied in maintaining the struggle against the English invaders.

[40] Raymond Panchelli, or Raymond II., who in 1303 began to build the Bridge of ValentrÉ at Cahors.

It seems reasonable therefore to infer that the Cahors paintings date either from the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth. In any case, these decorations are of very great artistic merit, and of the highest interest as an unique example of French decorative art at the finest period of the thirteenth century, when Gothic architecture had reached its apogee, and was producing masterpieces which served as models for contemporary artists, and even more notably, for those of the early fourteenth century.

That vigilant guardian of our beautiful cathedrals and historic monuments, the Administration des Cultes, has taken measures which do it infinite honour in this matter. No attempt has been made to restore the paintings, but all necessary steps have been taken to ensure their preservation as they stand, so as to leave intact the archÆological value of these convincing witnesses to the genius of our French mediÆval painters.

The mural spaces available for fresco decoration having been gradually suppressed, and decorative painting limited to the illumination of certain subordinate members of the structure, the mediÆval artists began to apply themselves to the decoration of the great screens of glass which, with their sculptured framework of stone, now filled the entire spaces between the piers. In this new art, or rather this incarnation of the spirit of decoration under a new form, we find a fresh illustration of that supple assimilative genius which already distinguished the French artist.

119, 120. PAINTED WINDOWS OF THE EARLY TWELFTH CENTURY. FROM ST. RÉMI AT RHEIMS[41]

[41] Drawings lent by M. Ed. Didron, painter upon glass.

"It is in the nature of the material used, that painted windows should greatly affect the character of the building they decorate. If their treatment is injudicious, the intended architectural effect may be
greatly modified; if, on the other hand, they are intelligently applied, they tend to bring out the beauty of structural surroundings.... As is the case with all architectonic painting, stained glass demands simplicity in composition, sobriety in execution, and an avoidance of naturalistic imitation. It should aim neither at illusion nor perspective. Its scheme of colour should be frank, energetic, comprising few tints, yet producing a harmony at once sumptuous and soothing, which should compel attention, but seeks not to engross it to the detriment of the setting. Like a mural mosaic, an Eastern carpet, or the enamelled goldsmith's work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a truly decorative window has no affinities with a picture, a scene or landscape gazed at from an open window, where the interest concentrates itself upon a particular point, and where the illumination is not equally diffused throughout. The fundamental law of decorative painting rests on a convention the aim of which is the satisfaction of the eye, which finds its pleasure to a far greater degree in the logical decoration of some structural or useful object than in its realisation of natural phenomena. Between painted windows and pictures a great gulf is fixed; and the modern school, the heir of the Italian Renascence, seeking to bridge it over, has seduced decorative art from the safe paths of sound judgment."[42]

[42] Le Vitrail À l'Exposition de 1889, by Ed. Didron; Paris, 1890.

121. PAINTED WINDOW OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. CHURCH OF BONLIEU (CREUSE)

122. PAINTED WINDOW OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

The true functions of stained glass were never more admirably understood than in the twelfth century. The artists of that day had a perfect comprehension of those colour-harmonies, the subdued splendour of which best accorded with the simple and vigorous forms of Romanesque architecture. Upon his glass of various tints the painter first outlined his figure or ornament in black. This outline he supported with a flat half-tint which supplied a rough modelling and allowed the forms expressed to make their fullest effect from a distance. When, in the thirteenth century, the extreme austerity of religious buildings began to relax, the splendour of the painted windows increased proportionately; but the coloration, though it increased in glow and vigour, still preserved its complete harmony with its surroundings. An additional richness is perceptible in work of the fourteenth century, at which period red glass began to be used with a certain prodigality. The system of execution remains unchanged so far; but the black outline is considerably attenuated, and the half-tone which emphasises it loses much of its importance. The figures, in place of the hieratic repose of an earlier period, affect a certain grace and animation which herald a tendency towards realistic imitation. These germs of naturalism soon bore fruit. At the close of the fourteenth century the discovery of how to obtain yellow from salts of silver, and the facility with which it could be used to warm the grayer tones of glass by the help of the muffle, caused a revolution in the art of glass-painting, and prepared the way for polychromatic enamelling. This discovery, eminently useful when discreetly applied, was to lead to regrettable exaggerations.

123. PAINTED WINDOW OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

124. PAINTED WINDOW OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. CHURCH OF ST. GERMER, TROYES

In the fifteenth century the figures of saints were usually drawn upon glass so tinted as to be of a soft white tone; the hair, beards, head-dresses, jewels, trimmings, and embroideries were painted in yellow. The figures stood out in bold relief against a background of blue or red, and were divided by a damasked drapery of green or purple. Vast architectural motives were introduced enframing the figures and filling up the immense window spaces of the latest period of mediÆval art. The transformation was radical. It is of interest to note that the final development of the Gothic style ought logically to have brought about a recrudescence of vigour in the
coloration of stained glass; but the exact reverse was the case; and a marked modification took place in the glowing effects won by a diversity of strong tints. The sort of camaÏeu which was the result obliged the painter to insist more strongly on the modelling of the figures, and to give less importance to the black outline, which was eventually suppressed altogether.

125. PAINTED WINDOWS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. CHURCH OF ST. URBAIN AT TROYES

In the sixteenth century painted glass became to a certain extent translucent pictures, in which architectural fitness was no longer respected. Composition lost its simplicity. A subject spread from panel to panel, regardless of the intervening tracery. Nevertheless, we forget the defects of this luxuriant development, and cease to wonder at its popularity, in view of that broad and vigorous execution and beauty of colour which give it a special decorative value of its own.

126. PAINTED GLASS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. HEAD OF ST. PETER. CATHEDRAL OF CHÂLONS-SUR-MARNE

Enamelling is so closely allied to glass-painting as to claim a word for itself. Here, again, the decorative art of the Middle Ages was characteristically displayed, and though the process is more specially applicable to the ornamentation of goldsmith's work than to the decoration of large surfaces, it is one of the most brilliant and exquisite of the auxiliary arts.

127. PAINTED WINDOW OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. ÉVREUX CATHEDRAL

The earliest enamels are champlevÉ and cloisonnÉ. By the champlevÉ process a hollow, the edges of which outlined the figures or ornaments, was cut in the field or ground of metal for the reception of the fusible enamel; for cloisonnÉ, cloisons, or slender walls of metal were fixed upon the field to separate flesh from draperies, and one tint generally from another. The background, the cloisons, and the flesh were gilt and burnished; details were defined by engraved lines, so that the draperies only were enamelled.

128. ENAMEL OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. PLAQUE COVER OF A MS. HEIGHT 4¾ IN., WIDTH 29/16 IN.

Fig. 128 reproduces an enamel of the close of the eleventh century, in which these various characteristics may be studied. The inscriptions on either side of the cross are formed by letters vertically superposed, which read downwards.

From the beginning of the thirteenth century enamels were executed by the process known as taille d'Épargne. By this method the ground was cut out, as described above, for the reception of the various ingredients which, after undergoing the process of firing, formed the enamel; the draperies, hands, and feet of the figures which were ÉpargnÉs (spared or left) were modelled and chased in very low relief; but the central figure, such as the Christ, and the heads of the subordinate personages or attendant angels, were always in high relief, vigorously modelled, and chased.

Fig. 129, a plaque forming the cover of an evangelium, is a characteristic example of this class of enamel. It dates from the early thirteenth century, and is a production of the ateliers founded at Limoges by the monks of Solignac.

129. ENAMEL OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. PLAQUE COVER OF AN EVANGELIUM. HEIGHT 72/16 IN., WIDTH 611/16 IN.

The reliquary figured No. 130 is also a work of the Limousin enamellers. The methods employed are identical, but the carving of the figures is less delicate, indeed almost rudimentary, the modelling being replaced by hasty strokes of the graver. The lower panel of this reliquary represents the martyrdom of Thomas À Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the upper part his apotheosis. It is crowned by a ridge roof of two sides.

130. ENAMEL OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. RELIQUARY SHRINE OF ST. THOMAS À BECKET

As is well known, Thomas À Becket was canonised two years after his tragic death, which had aroused general reprobation throughout Christendom. The universal feeling expressed itself at Limoges by the manufacture of a great number of reliquaries destined to receive relics of the sainted martyr.

In the details of the draperies and hands of those portions of Fig. 129 which are carved in low relief, we may trace the germs of those low-relief enamels known as translucent, or to be more exact, transparent enamels. This process originated in Italy, and was commonly employed in France, and
even in Germany throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, more especially the latter. These enamels could only be executed on gold and silver. The method consisted in modelling the design in very low relief on the face of the plate, which was then covered with a transparent enamel of few colours. The process was a slow and difficult one; the pieces were consequently very costly, and the demand for them proportionately restricted.

131. ENAMEL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. OUR LADY OF SORROWS

The enamellers of the sixteenth century, especially those who flourished at its beginning, were evidently inspired by these low-relief enamels to seek the same brilliant opalescence of effect by more scientific and less costly methods. But the simplification of the process degenerated into vulgarisation, and its original qualities gradually faded out. Fig. 131, representing Our Lady of Sorrows, and signed I. C. (Jehan Courteys or Courtois), gives some idea of the design, at least, of the painted enamels executed by the Limousin artists of the early sixteenth century.

Gothic architecture, more especially in its religious manifestations from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, made its prolific influence felt, not only by the structural qualities of its vast and numerous buildings, but by those various arts created, perfected, or at least developed, for their decoration. We have traced a bare outline of its activities, regretting that space fails us to make an exhaustive study of their various manifestations. The priceless fragments which illustrate these offshoots of an art essentially French are now the chief ornaments not only of French, but of all European museums. They take rank as factors of the first importance in art education, pointing the way to fresh masterpieces of French genius.



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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