is that which I have just described, as exemplified in the church of
Nôtre Dame, at Chalons; the second, that of the thirteenth century, is
exhibited on a magnificent scale in the cathedral of Amiens. Here the
lower part of the tower is ornamented with niches and statues; the upper
part is comparatively plain, and very light. The windows are single,
much larger than in the preceding style, divided by mullions, and I
believe always rose-headed. There is only one story of aisles, which is
nearly, or quite, as high as the two were before. The piers behind the
choir, and every where else, except those of the chevet, are bundled,
and adorned with rich capitals, representing detached foliage, or
sometimes other objects: those of the chevet are sometimes, but not
always simple. This word chevet, I have adopted from Whittington,
without knowing whether he is correct in the use of it. It means, I
think, in common use, the head-board of a bed. The part indicated by it
in churches, as I understand it, is the circular or polygonal end of the
elevated building forming the great avenue of the church. It is called
also by the French the _rond point_. Our cathedrals rarely finish in
this manner, and I do not recollect any appropriate name for the part in
our language. Milner, I believe, calls it the apsis, but this is more
properly applied to the great semicircular niche of the ancient
Basilicas, in which the architecture of the nave was not resumed, as it
always is in Gothic churches. This _rond point_ or chevet, is, in this
style, always a portion of a polygon, and not of a circle, and the
chapels attached to it are also polygonal. The mouldings are much
deeper, and more strongly contrasted than in the former style. Thus, at
St. Remi, at Rheims, the bases are moulded nearly as in the first of the
following figures,
[Illustration: _Fig 1._]
[Illustration: _Fig 2._]
in the cathedral of the same city, as in the last: the first
exemplifying the taste of the first period; the second, that of which we
are now treating. You may find in the one all the parts which are
observable in the other, and in the same order. They are both
modifications of the ancient Attic base, but managed very differently in
the two examples, and so as to produce very different effects. A similar
system of diminished heights, increased projection, and deeper hollows,
is carried still further in the succeeding period, but the original
disposition is no longer so strictly observed. During the prevalence of
this style, the distinct leaves of the capital, imitated however
clumsily from the ancient Corinthian, began to give way to running
foliage. Besides the edifices already mentioned, the choir at Beauvais
exhibits a late example of this style, where some of its characteristics
are giving way to those of the third.
In the third style, the roses over the windows were generally succeeded
by variously disposed foliage; and even the great rose windows were
sometimes displaced for more intricate ornaments, or if the circular
form was retained, the winding divisions of its area assumed something
of a leafy form. In the former styles, the portals were almost
exclusively adorned with shafts, placed in reveals, _i. e._ in receding
angles made for them, thus,
[Illustration: Illustration of portals]
and with statues; or three-quarter columns and statues, were placed
against a sloping surface. In this, hollow mouldings are introduced,
with a beautiful running foliage, the middle of which is worked in
entire relief. The capitals of the piers and shafts are diminished both
in number and size; and the shafts themselves form part of the masonry
of the piers. This mode of construction is, however, occasionally found
in much earlier buildings. There are specimens of this style in Paris,
but no good one; and I have not met with any fine building altogether
belonging to it.
The fourth style is more arbitrary and fanciful than the others, and
less reducible to rule, so that it is difficult to say when it began or
ended. Perhaps we should not estimate its full establishment earlier
than the fifteenth century; but some buildings of the fourteenth exhibit
more or less of the following characteristics. The piers, instead of
being composed of a central mass and surrounding shafts, seem to be
sometimes bundles of mouldings, with deep hollows between them;
sometimes, as in the transept of the cathedral at Beauvais, they present
merely an undulating outline, the projecting parts of which have the
appearance of ribs, and branch out on the vaulting. The following
sketches may serve to explain the general progress of the plans of the
piers: in the first style they are sometimes massive cylinders;
sometimes as at _a_. In the second, they are often as at _b_, but
perhaps more frequently have only four attached shafts. The third varies
from this towards C, and is at times still more complicated: D and E
belong to the fourth style.
[Illustration: Illustration of the plans of piers]
I have thought at times that the last mode (E) was adopted from economy.
It is posterior in date to the other, and perhaps might be considered as
forming a distinct style, but it is not accompanied with such a marked
difference in the other parts as to enable me to separate it. The
cathedral of St. Wulfram, at Abbeville, offers excellent examples of
both sorts of piers. The portal and the five first arches of the nave in
that church are the commencements of a most magnificent edifice, with
the earlier characters of this fourth style. The remainder is an
economical continuation of much inferior architecture, probably of about
the year 1500. In the first the piers are formed somewhat in the manner
above represented at D, in the other they are as at E; in both, the
parts divide, and find their bases at different altitudes; and this
peculiarity, and the want of capitals, I consider as the two most
distinguishing marks of this style; for the idea of columns being thus
lost, the capitals are almost always omitted. This style is also
distinguished by more fanciful tracery, by mouldings interlacing with
each other, and by the crenated ornament lying before the other
ornaments, instead of forming the inner edge of the opening, thus:
[Illustration: Illustration of mouldings]
the mouldings _a a_ being continued close behind the ornament, and
entirely detached from it. There is a crenated ornament in the great
doorway at Amiens. It is on the first of a succession of ribs forming
the vault of the portal; but though the inner ribs may be seen behind
it, it does not lie over, or rather _on_ the mouldings, as in the fourth
style, but stands as the termination of a separate part, or division, of
the architecture. This crenated ornament is also sometimes placed
obliquely. Compound arches of this form
[Illustration: Illustration of compound arch]
are frequently repeated in the divisions of the windows; and curved
gables,
[Illustration: Illustration of curved gables]
instead of straight ones, in the ornaments of the buttresses and
pinnacles. In this style the architects seem to have had an aversion to
flat surfaces, as well as to right angles among their mouldings. They
were fond of dividing the thickness, and increasing the apparent
intricacy, by giving to each half a different ramification; making for
instance two sets of mullions and tracery in one opening, one before the
other, and totally without correspondence.[8] They divided the mouldings
into separate parts, and placed those of their bases at different
heights, one set of vertical mouldings passing between the bases of
other vertical mouldings, and the bases of these again, are interrupted
by the high plinths of the former bases, as if each penetrated the solid
stone, and reappeared again where that did not cover it; many of these
fancies are evidently taken from basket work.
[Illustration: Illustration of column base]
The remaining fragment of the church of St. John the Baptist at
Soissons, belongs to this style, and the new tower and spire at Chartres
form a most beautiful specimen. The shrine work that surrounds the choir
at Chartres is also an exquisite miniature example, which I shall
mention more particularly hereafter. At about two leagues from Chalons,
at a small village called L’Épine, is a little church of the fourteenth
century. One tower only has been completed, and crowned with an elegant
spire; but had the front been finished, it would offer perhaps the most
beautiful specimen of Gothic external composition in the world. The arch
of the doorway is large; even more so than the usual proportion in
French churches, and its ornaments reach to the top of the rose window
over it. The spire is short, with little flying buttresses at its base.
It rises from an octagonal turret placed on the tower. Many of the parts
themselves may be thought clumsy, but they are beautifully disposed, and
every little defect vanishes in the perfection of the whole. Inside also
it is an elegant building, if you except the white wash and yellow wash
with which it is at present variegated. The front, including the two
first arches of the nave, appears to be somewhat posterior to the rest
of the church.
If we compare these examples with the buildings in our own country, we
shall find the first nearly to correspond with the earliest specimens of
what has been called the early English. The eastern parts of the
cathedral at Canterbury form the best example I can cite to you;
Salisbury Cathedral, and the transept at York, both agree with it in
some particulars, while in others they approach to the second French
style. Of this, after making some allowance for national differences,
Westminster Abbey will furnish you a pretty good idea, or the eastern
end of the cathedral at Lincoln. The nave at York would also belong to
this style, excepting the vaulting and the west window. Of the third
style good examples are rather deficient in England as well as in
France; and perhaps it might be considered only as a variety of the
second, yet it has a distinct and peculiar character. In our own
buildings it is marked by a more complicated arrangement of the ribs on
the vaulting; and in general it may be observed, that the English
architects paid more attention to the enrichment of this part than the
French. After this the two nations held a different course, and I can
produce you no parallel to my fourth French style; nor have I met in
France with any building like the choir at York, King’s College Chapel
at Cambridge, or that of Henry the Seventh at Westminster.
I hope this general view of the subject will enable you to comprehend
more easily my accounts of particular buildings, but in order to explain
myself more fully, I shall request your attention to a very curious
building of early date, which has been the subject of much controversy
in France.
The church of St. Germain des Prés claims to be the oldest in Paris.[9]
The first edifice was begun by Childebert in 557, and finished in 558, a
degree of expedition which does not announce much magnificence; yet we
are told that it was in the shape of a cross, and that the fabric was
sustained by large marble columns, the ceiling was gilt, the walls
painted on a gold ground, the pavement composed of rich mosaic, and the
roof externally covered with gold. This description is by Gislemer, a
monk of the abbey, who lived at the end of the ninth century, after the
church had been twice burnt by the Normans; and perhaps it rather gives
us the author’s opinion of what a church ought to be, than what this
once was. The building however does not appear to have been totally
destroyed, since Morard, who became abbot in 990, perceiving that the
repairs since its ruin by the Normans, had been hastily and slightly
executed, determined to pull it down entirely and rebuild it; and he is
said to have had the satisfaction of completing it, nearly as it exists
at present, before his death, which happened in 1014. We learn from the
inscription which was formerly legible on his tomb, that he added to the
church a tower, containing a bell (_signum_): this addition may seem to
throw some doubt on the extent of the works executed by him. A
dedication took place in 1163, but we cannot suppose the building stood
complete and useless for all that period. The old cloister was taken
down in 1227, and another begun and finished in the _course of the same
year_ by Eudes, the abbot. A new refectory was commenced in 1236, and in
1244 the great chapel of the Virgin was undertaken. These were executed
from the designs of Pierre de Montereau, and are cited as proofs of his
exquisite taste and skill. The Chapter House, and a beautiful chamber
which adjoined it, were constructed about the same time, and the
dormitory over them in 1273; but all these parts have been destroyed
during the revolution. A new cloister was erected in 1555, but in 1579
the church is described as being much out of repair, and though some
restorations and alterations were made in 1592, yet in 1644 it was in a
most dilapidated and dangerous condition. The nave was covered with the
fragments of the ceiling, and in parts with the tiles of the roof; the
pavement was so sunk, that it was necessary to descend to it by steps;
and the vaulting of the transept threatened to fall in. The whole of
these deficiencies were repaired in the course of two years, the
vaulting of the transept was renewed, and the nave for the first time
vaulted with stone. The pillars were ornamented with composite capitals,
some of the windows enlarged, a new doorway opened to the south, and an
alteration made in the disposition of the choir, which seems to have
been the only part of the fabric which had been kept in sufficient
repair. As it now stands the church is not a very large one. The inside
is low and gloomy;[10] in the nave and part of the choir, the piers
consist of four half columns attached to a square pillar, the vaulting
of the nave is slightly pointed, but the known recent date of this part
renders its form of little consequence, nor is that of the choir of much
more historical value. The piers of the chevet are cylindrical. All the
arching is round, except that of the chevet, where the French and
Whittington say it was pointed from necessity; but this is not very
evident: the openings are smaller, but this is not the only way of
carrying the arches to the same height. This may be done in the first
place by making a Gothic arch formed from two centres, with a larger
radius than the semicircular arches, (a pointed arch with the same
radius would not rise so high) or with an arch from two centres, and the
same radius on a base somewhat more elevated, or lastly, by a
semicircular arch on a much more elevated base. The following diagram
will explain this better than words.
[Illustration: Illustration of arches]
To judge by the eye, the arches of St. Germain des Prés lie nearly in
the middle between the second and third, _i. e._ between _b_ and _c_.
The base is considerably elevated by a perpendicular line continued
above the capital, and the radius of the curve is smaller than that of
the semicircle of the arches in the square part. As the architects have
in some degree availed themselves of this elevated base, it is evident
that they might, by doing it a little more, have preserved the
semicircular form, and they must have been conscious that they had it in
their power to do so. There is no gallery along the nave, but we find
one round the choir, with square-headed openings. It has been much
disputed whether this was, or was not the original form. M. Du Fourny
contends, that as the first ceiling was of wood, and probably flat, it
was highly natural that they should make these openings square-headed;
but I think he is wrong. On the two towers at the entrance of the choir,
we see openings, the lower parts of which are exactly similar to those
abovementioned, and they are divided in the same manner by a little
pillar; but these are arched above. It is probable that the arches have
been removed in order to make room for the windows of the clerestory
above, which in fact come down to them, but of which the lower part is
filled up. All the windows are round-headed, (except those of the little
chapels) without tracery or division of any sort, ornamented with a
billetted moulding externally, and entirely plain within. Those of the
chapels are pointed, but with the same ornament, and equally without
tracery. There are some Saxon (or Norman) arcades below these windows;
but there can be no doubt that these chapels in their present form
(exclusively of the vaulting) are somewhat posterior to the church. The
vaulting of the aisles is circular, and remarkably arched on the ridge,
so as to present nearly a succession of portions of domes. The capitals,
as usual in the Norman architecture, are very various, some resemble
baskets, others are formed of a collection of figures of animals: some
bear a resemblance to the Corinthian, but the masses are smaller in
proportion to the size of the capital, and the relief less strongly
marked. In this I think the artist judged rightly, and that the
looseness of the Corinthian foliage would have been inconsistent with
the massiveness of such a pillar. Here are also some decidedly composite
capitals under the vaulting, but these were probably introduced in the
repairs of 1644. Whittington says, that the proportions of the columns
of the choir approach nearly to those of the Corinthian order. The
shafts of the latter have full eight diameters in height: those of the
former about four and a half.
The western tower is entirely incrusted in a wall of modern masonry
except at the top, where we may observe a story of what we call Saxon
architecture, with circular headed windows divided by little columns. In
the other two towers, which flank the clerestory of the choir, the
arches are also semicircular; but the openings are separated by piers,
not by columns, and the workmanship of both, though somewhat differing,
is more rude than that of the western tower. Judging by the little
portion still exhibited, I should conclude this the latest of the three.
Yet, as the masonry of these two ruder towers forms an essential part of
the edifice, and the aisles are continued through their lower story,
without exhibiting any difference of style in that part, we can hardly
suppose them prior to the rest, more especially as the arches of the
recesses, corresponding with the gallery of the choir, are surmounted
with pointed arches. I cannot attribute this form to any alteration,
because these arches do not correspond in style with any other
restoration of the building. I must therefore be content to attribute
the body of the church to Morard, excluding the vaulting, and to doubt
about all the rest.
The western portal of this church exhibits the pointed arch. It is at
present ornamented with shafts set in reveals, but some of them are
restorations, and occupy the place either of statues, or of columns with
statues attached to them: above is a series of ten small figures, whose
faces have been broken by the Iconoclasts of the eighteenth century. The
lower figures have been adduced as proofs of the antiquity of the tower,
because they are supposed (two of them at least) to represent the family
of Childebert, but the conclusion certainly does not follow from the
premises, and I have no doubt that this portal, ancient as it is, was
posterior to the body of the church. To make a theory for the chronology
of this edifice from the dates we find in books, compared with the
evidence of the architecture, we may suppose the bulk of the western
tower to have been built in the eighth century, but nothing of this work
remains exposed to view: the body of the church, northern tower, and
lower part of the southern tower by Morard, between 990 and 1014: the
upper part of the southern tower very shortly after. The upper part of
the western tower followed. The western portal was certainly posterior
to 1028: the reasons for fixing on this date are derived from the
cathedral at Chartres. Bulliart does not give any representation of the
arch of this doorway, and Whittington’s whole theory seems to indicate
that he supposed it semicircular. I shall resume this subject in my
observations on Chartres.
I have kept you so long vacillating about St. Germain, that you are
tired of it, and so am I. After all, one derives but little satisfactory
evidence from a building so rude, and so frequently altered, but it has
been strongly pressed into the history of French architecture, and I
could not pass it over; and now, after this terrible digression, I will
return to the church at Nôtre Dame, at Chalons, an edifice in many
respects similar, but of a much more finished construction, exhibiting
more of its original form, and to judge from a comparison of the
internal evidence, of a date very little later. It is an excellent
specimen of what I have called the first style of French Gothic, but it
is not entirely free from alterations. This church is said to have had
formerly eight towers, and as many spires. I cannot make out the places
of more than four; two at the end of the nave, and two at the entrance
of the choir, immediately beyond the transept. Such an arrangement seems
not to have been unfrequent; but here, both in this building, and in the
cathedral, these towers flank the aisles of the choir: at St. Germain’s
at Paris they abut upon the clerestory, and the aisles pass through
them. On one of the towers in front, there is a wooden spire, the
general form of which is an acute octangular pyramid, with a small
square pyramid on the spaces left at each angle of the tower. This is
the arrangement of the pinnacles over the buttresses of the cathedral of
Rheims, but it has nothing to do with the Saxon towers of this building.
The style of these towers much resembles the summit of the western tower
of St. Germain, but is more ornamental, the semicircular headed windows
being divided by groups of little columns, and the parts subdivided by a
detached column. The projections are remarkably bold. There is no
pointed arch in any of these towers inside or out, except in the upper
story of two of them, and here they are without doubt of a later date;
and the architecture of the church, which is mostly pointed, is not so
united to the towers as to bring in the parts with perfect regularity.
There are two stories of aisles to the nave as well as to the choir, and
in some points of view the effect of this is so pleasing, that I feel
quite reluctant to condemn it. The upper story cuts in places some
ancient mouldings. In this vaulting _a_ is the lowest point of the
ridge, _b_ is somewhat higher, and _c_ still higher.
[Illustration: Illustration of vaulting]
The piers of the chevet are circular, with capitals in some degree
resembling those of the Corinthian order, and the slender detached
columns behind the choir have, still more nearly, Corinthian capitals
and proportions. They present something peculiarly graceful and pleasing
in their appearance. As they certainly do not appear calculated to
sustain the thrust of an arch, it is difficult to shew a reasonable
ground for the admiration one cannot help feeling. The union of circular
chapels with the circular end of the choir and its aisles, each part
having its ornaments exceedingly well disposed, is also a beautiful
circumstance in the external view; but it is rather conceived than seen
in this instance, as the outside is much encumbered by small houses, and
there are some enormous plain buttresses, on the date of which I will
not pretend to decide: if they are posterior to the church, the original
ceiling must have been of wood. The pavement is almost entirely composed
of old monuments engraved in stone, exactly in the manner of the brass
plates in England. Many of them represent the architecture of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: one or two, from their extreme
simplicity, may be taken from the architecture of the twelfth. There are
none in which the arch is not pointed, and the trefoil ornament is
always exhibited. Amongst, I dare say, two hundred monuments of this
sort, I observed only one figure in mail, and that I could not find
again on searching for it; and a fragment of one in plate armour: the
earliest date is 1201, but the figures are not perfectly clear. There
are also tombs of a blue stone, inlaid with white. I longed for Mr. L.;
here were materials for an excellent lecture on the progress and changes
of dress among our forefathers. I do not know that there is any thing
amongst them which might not be found in England, but at the same time I
know no place in England where there is such a collection of costumes.