ROMAN, ROMANESQUE, AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE
In the wide range of its ancient and mediaeval architecture France
stands next to Italy. Its Roman buildings are almost as fine as
anything to be found in that country, its Gothic structures include
some of the world's masterpieces, while in examples of the Renaissance
only the country where the re-birth took place can rival her. England,
which competes closely in the Romanesque and Gothic periods, is out of
the running in the earlier epoch, and takes a very much lower position
in the works that succeeded the death of the pointed style. Italy, the
most formidable rival, is superior in its Roman remains, but inferior
in its Gothic work. In the Renaissance, Italy, its home, stands easily
first, and in works of the Byzantine period its possessions at Venice
and Ravenna leave the western nations far behind.
Prehistoric architecture is well represented in Brittany, where the
vast scale of the Carnac lines--the Avenues of Kermario--dwarfs the
British survivals on Salisbury Plain and Dartmoor. There are numerous
dolmens and tumuli, containing chambers roughly constructed out of
unhewn stones of the New Grange (Ireland) type, but there is nothing
comparable to Stonehenge.
When one comes to the Roman period the remains are so splendid that
many are satisfied with what they have seen in Provence, and do not
feel impelled to see Rome before they die. Nimes stands first among
the towns of Provence for the splendour of the Roman structures it has
preserved. Not only has it an amphitheatre which is more perfect than
any other in existence, but its temple, dedicated to Caius and Lucius
Caesar, adopted sons of the Emperor Augustus, between the first and
the fourteenth year of the Christian era, is also the best preserved
in the world. Having been used successively as a church, a municipal
hall, and a stable, it is now a museum of Roman objects, and seems
capable of standing for an unlimited time. Besides these most famous
structures there are two gateways, one of them bearing an inscription
stating that it was built in the year 16 B.C. To the north of the town
are Roman baths of wonderful completeness, and in their restored
condition of very considerable beauty. Over them on the hill-top rises
the Tour Magne, a Roman watch-tower which formed part of the defences
of the city. Stretching across the deep and rocky bed of the river
Gard, about 14 miles to the north, is the vast aqueduct which carried
the water-supply of Nimes across the obstruction caused by the river.
The three superimposed tiers of arches filling the wide space make one
of the most imposing of all the Roman works that have come down to the
present time.
[Illustration: THE ROMAN TRIUMPHAL ARCH AT ORANGE.]
Arles is a serious rival to Nimes. It has preserved its amphitheatre,
built about the first century A.D. and large enough to hold an
audience of 25,000 persons. The remains of its theatre, with two
marble columns of its proscenium, which were utilised as a gallows in
the Middle Ages, standing out among the fallen and dislodged stones,
has preserved just enough of its form to be exceedingly impressive. In
the disused church of St. Anne have been gathered a most remarkable
collection of Roman sarcophagi, altars, and many other objects of
richly sculptured stone, while in the Avenue des Alyscamps one may see
the cemetery of Roman Arles just outside the city walls, dating from
the reign of the Emperor Constantine. On the two sides of the avenue
there are many stone sarcophagi, the larger ones, of which there are
two or three dozen, having retained their lids. There are remains of
the forum and a tower of Constantine's palace, built early in the
fourth century.
Orange has a theatre which, now that the upper tiers of seats have
been restored, has very much its original appearance. The immense
stone wall, forming the back of the semicircular stage, is 118 feet in
height and 13 feet thick. Stone was close at hand, making its
construction easy, and the auditorium was hewn out of the limestone
hill against which the theatre was built. There appears to have been a
permanent roof of timber--a unique feature--for there are structural
indications leading to such a conclusion, as well as signs of fire,
which no doubt was the cause of its disappearance. In about A.D. 21 a
very fine triumphal arch was erected at Orange, then known as
_Arausio_, and this still stands complete, save for the detrition on
its surface caused by the weather and perhaps some rough handling in
the Dark Ages. Very judicious restoration has given one a convincing
idea of what is missing where the structure has not been overlaid with
new work. St. Remy has contrived to preserve a considerable portion of
its triumphal arch, and close to it a remarkably perfect mausoleum, 50
feet in height. It is adorned with much sculpture like the archway,
and both stand upon an exposed rocky plateau. There are, indeed, so
many survivals of this period which one would like to mention that
there would be no space to deal with any later age. Vienne, on the
extreme confines of Roman Provincia, has its temple, rebuilt in the
second century, converted into a Christian church in the fifth, and
made more famous during the Revolution by the celebrating within its
walls of the Festival of Reason. Remains of the city walls, of a
theatre, of the balustrade of a fine staircase, of a pantheon, an
amphitheatre, and a citadel are still to be seen. The Roman aqueduct,
which supplied the city, restored in 1822, is still to some extent in
use!
Perigueux is full of indications of its Roman buildings. The Tour de
Vesone is in part a Gallo-Roman temple, dedicated to Vesuna; the
remains of the amphitheatre include much of the outer wall, in which
are staircases, vomitoria, and the lower vaulting now partially
exposed. At Lillebonne, mentioned in another chapter, are the
carefully excavated remains of a theatre; at Carcassonne, at Narbonne,
at Lyons, in Paris, and in other cities and towns, Roman foundations
and many sculptured stones are full of significance, and of absorbing
interest to the historian, the architect, and the archaeologist.
Following the age of Roman domination came those strangely fascinating
centuries of disruption and destruction in which the outward
influences of Rome slowly gave way before the westward march of the
lower but healthier civilisation of the tribes of central and eastern
Europe. When these new peoples had settled down among the older
occupants of the country, they began to build permanent structures for
themselves, and although there may have been some craftsmanship among
them, they were unable to do more than make indifferent attempts to
copy the architecture of the Roman era. The dark shadow that the
irruptions caused to fall upon the face of Europe leaves the world in
ignorance as to the fate of the architects, and stone masons who
reared the noble works of Rome's supremacy in western Europe. It would
appear that in the two or three centuries of uncertainty, if not of
perpetual warfare and social chaos, no one had time or opportunity to
do more than erect hurried fortifications of the crude type one sees
in the Visigothic portions of town walls, such as those of
Carcassonne. No architect could flourish under such conditions, and
unless he migrated to the seat of the Eastern Empire opportunities for
applying his knowledge were no doubt impossible to find. And at
Constantinople a new development of architecture was taking place, in
which the exterior was disregarded to a very considerable extent while
internal decoration became extravagant, Byzantine art being
dissatisfied unless every portion of walls and roof was richly
ornamented and brilliant in colour. The profession of the architect
being useless, the dependent handicraftsmen would inevitably die out,
and thus from the sixth century, which is about the earliest date of
any Romanesque building in France, one sees the crude efforts of the
ill-trained sculptors to copy the ornament of the buildings that lay
around them ruined or gutted. In many of the capitals that were
carved in these early centuries of Christian times, the volutes are
half-hearted attempts to reproduce the Ionic order, with a tendency to
stray into Corinthian foliation. From such very early buildings as the
church of St. Pierre at Vienne, onwards to St. Trophime at Arles, the
crypts of Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand and of St. Denis,
Paris, until one reaches the great churches of the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, such as the cathedral of Angouleme and the church
of Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers, one can see the steady
development of a curious mixture of bastard Roman with the Byzantine
style, upon which was growing a new individuality which burst into
flower with the introduction of the pointed arch. In France this
abandonment of the Roman semicircular arch came very gradually.
Belonging to the transition stage are many fine buildings, in which
group are the fine church at Poitiers just mentioned and the cathedral
at Le Puy-en-Velay. The sculpture of this period reveals the very
strong Byzantine influence prevailing, and if no other evidence
existed this alone would demonstrate the debt western Europe owes to
the rearguard of its civilisation.
[Illustration: FRENCH DESTROYERS.]
The architecture of Normandy had its own peculiarities during the
Romanesque period, but while these differences have entitled it to a
separate name and classification, it is Romanesque influenced by the
Northmen, and all through England the strong Byzantine influence was
felt until the great expansion of new ideas began to outgrow the forms
and ornament of the preceding centuries.
Two of the finest Norman Romanesque buildings are the great abbey
churches built at Caen by William the Conqueror and his queen Matilda.
The Abbaye aux Hommes, William's work, is not quite as it was when
consecrated, but it is almost entirely a work of the Norman period.
That there was a simplicity in the style at this period almost
amounting to plainness is shown in the west front of William's church;
while the Abbaye aux Dames, built about a quarter of a century later,
shows a very great advance in the distribution and application of
ornament both within and without. Another abbey church, that of St.
Georges de Boscherville, built in the eleventh century by Raoul de
Tancarville, is a more perfect and complete work of that period than
any other in Normandy. With the exception of the upper portions of
the western turrets and the broach spire, the whole church stands
to-day as it was originally erected. In these large and not always
very beautiful buildings, it is their association with a romantic
period and the evidences they show of architectural evolution that
provides the chief satisfaction to the informed visitor and the
student.
A considerable portion of the abbey buildings that engirdle the summit
of the rocky islet of Mont St. Michel belong to the Norman period,
although much of the work is Gothic.
At St. Denis, outside Paris, one sees the beginnings of French Gothic.
Clearly the builders regarded the new style as empirical, for there
was obvious hesitation to plunge too far into a field of such
considerable possibilities when the west front was designed. A little
later than St. Denis is the cathedral of Noyon, another extremely
interesting example of this period. Almost simultaneously came
Chartres, but a disastrous fire in 1194 left little besides the towers
and the west front. The rebuilding, however, which proceeded almost at
once, was to a considerable extent completed by 1210, and this later
work shows the Gothic style grown to all the splendour which has
perpetually satisfied and enthralled the minds of succeeding
generations.
At this time building was proceeding all over Europe with wonderful
vigour. The new style gripped the imaginations of all the western
nations, and wherever sufficient funds were obtainable the monkish
architects were enthusiastically producing designs which were steadily
carried out in stone. In Paris Notre Dame was building all through the
closing years of the twelfth century and the opening of the next; at
Rouen, the cathedral having been burnt in 1200, half a century of
building followed; the glories of Rheims and Amiens were materialising
during the same period, and almost coeval is the vast cathedral of
Beauvais, which was planned to eclipse that of Amiens in every
respect. The ambitious intent of the designers of Beauvais was never
consummated, and in the unfinished pile standing to-day one sees the
failure to build a Titan among cathedrals.
All through the period known in England as Early English there is much
similarity in design, as well as in ornament, on both sides of the
Channel, but signs of divergence begin to appear with the development
of decorative skill during the English Decorated Period, and when the
French architect had reached his highest achievement in the subtly
beautiful lines of the Flamboyant style, the English craftsmen, after
a few brief moments in the same direction, turned about and produced
their unique development in the style known as Perpendicular. Here and
there in France there are suggestions of the restraint of the last
phase of English Gothic, but they are almost as rare as the Flamboyant
style in England. At Evreux and at Gisors one sees remarkable examples
of the work of the Renaissance in the reconstruction of the west ends
of these Gothic churches. The contrast of styles is, however, too
marked to allow even the hand of Time to remove the challenge which
the two styles fling at one another.