pointed out as the first in which it made its appearance: the transverse
arches of wide vaulting, also arches carrying towers, and others bearing
great weight on their crown, and all which are defective in abutment, or
demand the addition of buttresses (for remember that, though buttresses
were rendered sources of beauty, they originated in _necessity_, and the
aim was to keep their projection within bounds, rather than unduly to
increase it). The second, or geometrical class, includes, primarily, the
narrower arches of oblong vaulting; for, even had the transverse section
continued round, the pointed arch must soon have suggested itself for
the narrow arches of the sides; and though for a time the idea did not
occur, the necessity of it is only the more apparent in the want of
harmony, the undue stilting, and the loss of clerestory space which
arose from its neglect. Under the same head come all other cases of
irregularly formed vaulting in which the sides differ in width, and
arches of varied proportion are therefore needed. Of the same kind are
many other cases in which arches of different widths are in the same
range, and where--though the _statical_ view would demand that the
widest span should have the strongest arch--_geometrical_ agreement
suggests the contrary; as, for instance, in the choir of St. Germain des
Pres, at Paris, and many others, where the side arches are all round;
but those of the apse, being narrower, are pointed. These two pressing
necessities having once established the use of the pointed arch in a
large number of the most important positions, a natural feeling for
harmony would come in to suggest its use in many others. First we may
mention windows under the narrow compartments of groining--as in
clerestories, apsidal chapels, etc.,--where, as soon as the pointed arch
was used for the vaulting, the round-topped window would present a
certain degree of discord, as we see at St. Cross,[8] and at St.
Joseph’s Chapel[9] at Glastonbury. Then again, as windows became more
elongated, the round arch became ill-proportioned to the jambs; and
generally, as the architecture acquired a more aspiring tendency, the
pointed arch was found more congenial with its spirit; so that, little
by little, from being an exception, used from mere constructional
expediency, it became the prevailing feature of the style; the
semicircle being reserved for those positions only in which want of
space forbade the more elevated form. Still, however, it was never
abandoned, and in every period of Pointed architecture we find it
occasionally making its appearance, used from motives of convenience
alone, as the pointed arch had at first been by reason of its strength.
After this it will be seen of how little importance it is to inquire
_whence_ the form is derived; for it was introduced _not_ as a matter of
_taste_, but of _utility_--not as a change of style, but to meet the
practical requirements of that already in use. The pointed arch was, in
fact, as early (or thereabouts) in its invention as the round;--it is
foreshadowed in the works of the Egyptians, the Pelasgi, and the
Etrurians; it was used by the Romans, and, I believe, by the Byzantines
and other Oriental Christians, and by the Sassanian Persians, and was
from an early period the prevailing arch among the Saracens. It is
absurd, then, to suppose it unknown to the inhabitants of Western
Europe, who were in constant communication with the East; and the most
natural thing to expect was that, as soon as they wanted it, they would
make use of it; though there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition
that they were especially reminded of it, in consequence of the two
circumstances of the Crusades and Norman Conquest of Sicily. In the case
last named, indeed, the conquerors had at once adopted it, simply
because it was the prevailing arch of the country, and, as Mr. Gally
Knight remarks, “with no scientific object, and without any reference to
the vertical principle.”
The wonder which has been expressed at the introduction of the pointed
arch reminds me of a very homely tale, which I must apologise for
repeating before so grave an assembly. An unimaginative individual, on
visiting the Falls of Niagara, was greatly perplexed at the astonishment
expressed by his companions; and on one of them exclaiming to him--“Is
it not a most wonderful fall?”--replied, “Wonderful? no! I see nothing
wonderful in it. Why, what’s to hinder the water from falling?” Much the
same reply is applicable to the wondering inquiries after the source of
the pointed arch. When the builders of the twelfth century found they
wanted it; when they had seen its form in the first proposition of
Euclid; when they had actually used it hundreds of times in their
intersecting arcades; when they knew that it was constantly used in the
East, with which they were connected by trade, science, pilgrimage, and
war; and when they knew that their brethren had used it in Sicily, and
their fellow-countrymen in Provence; we may well ask, with our
unsentimental friend, “What was to hinder them from using it?”
Simple, however, and obvious as were the means, the result was
_magical_! It is not the _materials_ of art to which its expression is
due, but the sentiment--the heart--the soul of those who use it. This
particular form of arch had long been used without one hint at such
expression resulting from it. It had been highly conducive to beauty,
but little, if at all, to elevation of sentiment: when, however, it came
into use as an aid to the upward strivings of the architects of Northern
Christendom, as an element placed in the hands of men who had been
labouring for centuries, with all their energy, to render their
architecture expressive of the ennobling sentiments of religion--it
became, in their hands, a means of perfecting that solemnity of
expression which the Romanesque buildings possessed in so wonderful a
degree, and of adding the most exalted sublimity to its hitherto stern
and rigid grandeur; just as the simple action of gravity gives to the
Niagara Falls a sublime and overwhelming majesty; such as the same cause
acting under different conditions has no tendency to produce.
I must apologise for having occupied so long a time on these merely
preliminary and, perhaps, not very interesting topics. I hope in my next
lecture to be able to give an outline of the transition as it showed
itself in the different countries, and also to point out and illustrate
the changes in the decorative and more purely artistic features of
architecture by which it was accompanied.
LECTURE III.
The Transition.
Gradual refinement of Romanesque--French architects the earliest to
systematise the pointed arch--The English before the Germans--The
Italians from the Germans--Fully acknowledged in France
1140--Suger’s work at St. Denis--Carving in French
churches--Corinthianesque outline of capitals--Distinctly Byzantine
capitals--A route by which Byzantine foliage may have reached
France--The importation indisputable--Its effects seen in Early
English capitals--West front of Chartres--Fluting on basement of
doorways--Cathedral of Noyon--St. Germain des Pres,
Paris--Cathedral of Sens, prototype of the Choir and Trinity Chapel
at Canterbury--Notre Dame, Paris--A new kind of foliage--The
capital “à crochet”--English transition--Incipient
specimens--Refined Norman--Pointed style, with reminiscences of
Romanesque--William of Sens--William the Englishman--Influence of
French work--Oakham Castle--Glastonbury Abbey--Cathedral of St.
David’s--Temple Church, London--Chichester Cathedral--Tynemouth
Abbey--Hexham Abbey--Unfoliated capitals--Round moulded
capitals--Characteristics of English and French transition--The
German transition--Practical lessons from studying these
changes--Principles to which the transition was pioneer.
In my last lecture it was my endeavour to illustrate the _mechanical_
and _structural_ portion of the process by which the Romanesque, or
round-arched Gothic, became changed into the _Pointed_ style--a change
which I showed to have resulted primarily from causes purely
constructional, and arising from the mere necessities of the case,
though subsequently carried on into parts, in which the change in the
form of arch, though not _statically_ necessary, was demanded from
reasons of _geometrical_ and æsthetic harmony. I further showed that the
change was not, by any means, that abrupt revolution which it is often
described as having been; that a large proportion of the distinctive
characteristics of Gothic architecture are common to its round-arched
and pointed-arched varieties; that these two forms of architecture are
hardly to be called two styles, but rather the grand divisions of one
style--the latter being the natural and logical result of the
progression ever going on in the former, during every moment of its
prevalence, and in every country where it prevailed.
The portion of the subject, however, on which I then treated, was only
the mechanical framework of the style--its mere ossature, to use M.
Viollet le Duc’s expression, or--as a celebrated palæontologist, who did
me the honour of being present, said--the “_backbone_” of the subject.
My object this evening is to overlay this skeleton with the muscles and
sinew, and with the external expressions of its inner life; to show that
those dry bones lived; or, in other words, to show the changes in the
decorative features of the architecture, and in the sculptural art which
accompanied it. I have further to trace out the transition as exhibited
in the structures of different countries--and especially of France,
England, and Germany;[10] and in a general manner to inquire both into
their peculiar characteristics and into the order of their chronological
precedence.
The tendency I have so often mentioned to refine and to elevate the
character of the Romanesque architecture is common to all the countries
where it prevailed. In all we find the severe simplicity of its earlier
productions gradually and steadily relaxing throughout the whole period
of its history; the rudeness of its early decorations disappearing in
favour of a more artistic treatment; its ponderous massiveness becoming
lightened; its low proportions changed for more lofty ones; and the
general asperity of its character becoming softened down; so that in its
later stages it seems often to possess nearly every feature of the
succeeding style, excepting the pointed arch and the elevation and
lightness which followed its introduction, though it also possessed
features which its successor speedily discarded. I especially refer to
those systems of ornamentation--most of them of Oriental origin--by
which the Romanesque buildings may usually, irrespective of their
arches, be distinguished from those of the succeeding periods.
The pointed arch having, as I have before shown, been first introduced
in the vaulting,[11] where its particular statical advantages were most
required, it naturally follows that the change would commence earliest
in those countries in which the builders set themselves most actively
about the solution of the problem--the steps of which I somewhat at
length traced out in my last lecture; I mean the conversion of the
basilica, with its timber roofs, into a completely vaulted structure;
and I think there can be no doubt that that country was France.
This, however, would not be the only condition on which the probable
precedence among the different nations, in taking the step which was
necessary to generating a perfect form of arcuated architecture, would
depend. It seems necessary that it should _not_ be a country already so
thoroughly provided with noble churches as to preclude the probability
of a great architectural movement, nor one which had already made so
determined an effort in perfecting its national style as to have become
too much enamoured of its successes to be in a position to strike out
boldly in a new line: indeed, it should be a people of so active a
spirit, and with so strong a tendency to progress and to change, as to
render it improbable that they should ever settle down in quiet
contentment with their own attainments. The question as to where the
great stride forward was to be expected would naturally lie between
France and Germany--the dominions of the two great successors of
Charlemagne in his _kingly_ and his _imperial_ capacities. Neither Italy
nor England were so likely: the former, from her too great proximity to
Classic monuments; while the latter--though her political power was
equal to that of France, her continental possessions most extensive, and
her architectural strivings most vigorous--had too newly risen from the
position of a conquered country to take the first place in such a
movement, and was also the less likely to do so from the fact of her
builders having for the most part avoided the vaulted construction (on a
large scale at least), from which the first advance was largely
suggested.
The matter lay, then, between France (I mean the actual centre of the
Frankish monarchy, of which Paris was the focus) and Germany. The
latter, however, had already made her great architectural movement, and
was (and not without cause) becoming selfsatisfied with her
achievements. She had generated a glorious style, and covered her land
with monuments of which she might well be proud; while the part of
France immediately under the royal power had not yet been able to erect
structures of a magnitude worthy of her position as the great
representative state of Western Europe. The immense influence gained
just at this time by the French monastic establishments, as well as
their schools of learning and science, and still more the increase of
the regal power under the wise government of Louis VI., and by the
annexation of the southern provinces through the marriage of his
successor, brought about the commencement of the great building period
in France, a little before the middle of the twelfth century, and the
active genius of the people decided the rest. The consequence was that,
though the refinement and perfecting of the Romanesque architecture went
on uniformly in all the countries I have named, and though its
transition into the Pointed style is as distinctly national in England
and Germany as in France, the precedence as to the _time_ at which the
grand advance was made must be unhesitatingly awarded, I will not say to
_France_ (for some parts of it were particularly tardy), but to that
district of France round Paris, the focus of the royal power--that
portion of it, in fact, which was immediately under regal government, as
distinguished from that of the great vassals of the Crown. We must
further in justice admit that, though each country had its own
transition, founded directly upon its own national and even local
variety of Romanesque, each was also in some degree tinged and
influenced by the early developments arrived at in the royal domain of
France.
I wish to be as specific as possible on this point, for the sake of
steering between two exaggerated views. The one view is this: Seeing the
transitional style of each country to be distinctly national--a logical
and consistent transition from their own local Romanesque--to conclude
from this that the result was absolutely independently arrived at,
though a considerable chronological interval may have intervened. The
other is the conclusion that, as the central French architects had been
the earliest in systematising the pointed-arched developments, all other
countries had simply followed in their wake, and done no more than
follow the fashions set at Paris. The truth lies between these
contradictory views. The communication ever going on throughout Europe
caused each country to know pretty perfectly what was going on in
others; their Romanesque in each was about on a par as to advancement,
and in each the want of the pointed arch must have been nearly equally
felt. Each, then, had its national and logical transition; but the
French having outstripped the others as to _time_, many of their minor
developments were adopted ready-made (if I may say so): so that though
each transition is clearly national, and distinct from that of other
countries, we nevertheless find, both in Germany and England, features
which have as clearly been borrowed from the French.
The English--though it would appear likely, from their adherence to open
timber roofs, that they would have felt the want of the pointed
arch less than the Germans, who more usually vaulted their
naves,--nevertheless outstripped their more phlegmatic kinsmen in its
adoption. This may have arisen from two causes--the constant use in
England of central towers, the frequent failures of which, when
supported by round arches, would have given them another reason to
desire one of greater strength; and also their intimate connection with
France and the vast domains in that country which came under the rule of
our kings.
It is true that (with the exception of Anjou and Maine) the provinces
held by Henry II. were those in which the Romanesque style held out the
longest; yet the fact that the two countries were at the time almost as
one--the English provinces of France being larger than, perhaps, either
England itself or the independent domain of the French king--their
ecclesiastical systems intimately united--the French language spoken by
all the higher orders in England, who held possessions perhaps of almost
equal extent in both countries--it is hardly probable that the state of
architecture should be greatly different in England and in France.
The Normans, however, and the Aquitainians had both a strong affection
for their own Romanesque styles, which had in each country more strongly
marked characteristics than that of the royal domain of France; and this
predilection seems to have kept back their strivings for a short time,
and to have produced a similar effect in England--which, nevertheless,
was the next country to royal France--and the parts immediately around
it, to make the change towards the Pointed style, leaving Germany to
come on at the close of the century, when we had already matured our
Early Pointed or Early English style, and Italy to adopt it still
later, and through the medium of the Germans, as a return for the
Lombardic Romanesque which three centuries earlier she had imparted to
Germany; “As if,” to use the eloquent words of Mr. Petit, “that mighty
river, that bore the tide of Roman civilisation into the heart of
Europe, had infused into the nations through which it flowed a
veneration for Roman memorials; with a wish to preserve and perpetuate
them, by establishing, according to the principles of their
construction, a kindred and lasting style of their own:” but, as I may
add, on finding at length those principles to be imperfect, desired to
send back to the source of this early civilisation those more advanced
developments and increased beauties which these nations had generated
from them.
Having thus roughly indicated the national order in which the transition
showed itself, I will proceed to describe its characteristics and its
productions in these different countries, beginning with France.
I have before mentioned that in the south of France there is reason to
believe that the pointed arch was used for barrel vaults from an early
date; and in the celebrated domical churches of Perigord and Angoumois
it is used below the pendentives of the domes, as well as in the section
of the domes themselves: this, if the usually adopted opinion be
correct, would bring it into the centre of France early in the eleventh
century. It is certainly found in the royal domain from the commencement
of the next century, but it is from about 1140 that we must date its
systematic introduction as a fully acknowledged architectural element.
I will not pretend to say what is the earliest work in which it is thus
admitted, nor attempt to investigate the commonly received opinion which
attributes the launching of the new style (if such it should be called)
to Suger, the celebrated Abbot of St. Denis. As, however, the
architectural progress at this period was clearly most active within the
influence of the court of Paris, and as Suger was not only one of the
wisest and greatest men in the kingdom, but was a great minister of
state, it is not unnatural that his personal influence upon art should
be powerful. In the year 1140 he had rebuilt the nave of his church, and
also the west front, as it existed previously to the wretched
restorations which have rendered nearly worthless the most valuable
landmark in the history of the transition. So far as we can now judge of
it, it presents a very early transitional character, the round and
pointed arch being almost indiscriminately used. Of the three portals,
the central one has a round arch; the others are very slightly pointed.
Their character is gorgeously rich, the shafts being either elaborately
carved with surface ornamentation, or having full-length figures
attached to them, and the arches replete with sculpture, agreeing,
indeed, precisely in character with those of the west front of Chartres
and some others. The parts which are original are beautifully executed,
and the capitals are of that perfectly Byzantine variety of the
Corinthianesque type which I shall shortly have to describe more in
detail. In the interior, the arches of the vaulting, and those carrying
the towers, are all pointed, but contain some strictly Romanesque
features. On the whole, the work has a decidedly Romanesque appearance,
but, nevertheless, has the pointed arch so freely used in it as to show
that it was anything but the first essay.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--St. Denis. Interior of one of the Apsidal
Chapels.]
In the same year (1140) Suger laid the foundations of the eastern end of
the church, which, as it is said, “with stupendous celerity” he had so
far completed by the year 1144, as to permit of its consecration; the
king, with his capricious queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a multitude
of the great men of the country, being present at the ceremony.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--St. Denis. External Sketch of one of the
Apsidal Chapels.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--St. Denis. Part of Capital from one of the
Apsidal Chapels.]
Of the church of Suger the two ends with portions of the transepts are
all that now remain; the whole of the intermediate portion, forming
little less than the entire church, were rebuilt from the ground in the
succeeding century, including even the pillars of the apse; so that we
are not able to ascertain the design of an internal bay of his church.
What remains of the eastern part embraces the pillars round the
ambulatory of the apse, with all the apsidal chapels, including also
their crypts. Of one of these chapels I exhibit an internal (Fig. 15)
and external (Fig. 16) sketch. From these it will be seen that though
the crypt--from want of height as much as from any other cause--has
round arches, the upper chapels are purely pointed, and are very elegant
in their design. The pillars are cylindrical, with Corinthianesque
capitals (Fig. 17), the windows and vaulting pointed, and the whole,
though obviously early, has very little of a Romanesque air, much less
so than our own transitional specimens of a much later date, and, what
is more remarkable, less than many French churches of twenty years
later. The chapels, however, in the crypt are much more Romanesque, all
their arches being round, and their vaulting without ribs, though the
details agree with those of the chapels above.
The principal remnant beyond what I have here mentioned is the doorway
of the north transept. This is pointed, and generally has a more
advanced air than those in the west façade, though on examination the
details differ but little. There are full-length figures attached to the
shafts, and angels carved in the arch mouldings, as those of the western
portals and as those at Chartres; and such parts of the foliage as have
not been renewed are most beautifully carved in the same Byzantine
style. Of the same character also are a number of capitals from the
monastic buildings preserved in a neighbouring shed.[12]