really like summer and the views in all directions were most exquisite.
Even before I got up I saw through my window the beautiful outline of
the mountains of the Riviera all covered with snow, and just a line
of the blue Mediterranean above and beyond the crowd of vessels below
us in the port. We had rooms at Feder’s hotel--now Trombetta’s--and
our bedroom had an oratory in it with a very elaborately carved altar,
etc., which has been not very reverently turned now into a sleeping
room.
I spent most of my day at the new English church directing the workmen,
etc. Lunched with the Shelbells, but did not see Brown the consul, who
had gone off to a castle he had bought near Sestri. The church looks
fairly well, but it is difficult to make anything lofty enough to
compete with the enormous houses which it is the fashion to build now
in Genoa and with which it is surrounded.
Walked a little about the city: into the Via Nuova which is straight
for the greater part of its length (instead of curved as I fancied)--up
and down the goldsmith’s street which seems always to lead to
everything--into the cathedral and some of my other old friends among
the churches. Noticed particularly the sumptuous effect which the
painted palaces produce. The palace now used by the British consul is
covered outside with painting, a good deal of which remains in fair
condition whilst the two arcades round the courtyard are in a very
fairly perfect state. The doors to the houses in Genoa had commonly
an oblong panel of sculpture over them. These were cut in slate at or
near Savona. The Gothic houses here have arcades below, and corbel
tables under the second floor, and the windows divided into lights by
very delicate shafts. The best samples are the Doria houses close to S.
Matteo.
We left Genoa at 9.00 by steamer for Livorno. The boat was small and
full of passengers, but I slept well on the floor of the cabin till we
reached our port soon after 5 A.M.
_March 1._
Started by the 9.12 train for Empoli. Murray describes Empoli in such
terms as made us feel no regret at having to stop there those three
hours. Unfortunately his description turned out to be all wrong, and we
found but little to see or sketch. The best thing there is the steeple
of the collegiata. The front of this church is a work of about 1600 in
white marble and serpentine. And the Pallei building opposite to it is
entirely seventeenth century, but has some wall painting outside which
somewhat redeems its otherwise uninteresting walls.
Our train left Empoli at 2.25 and did not reach Orvieto till nearly
10. During the first part of the journey I was well employed making
sketches from the windows of the carriage of Certaldo, S. Gemignano,
etc. We caught some beautiful glimpses of Siena as we dashed by, and
then as we passed through the wretched country just to the south of it,
we gradually lost the daylight, and slept away the hours till Orvieto
was reached. Here the station by daylight looks just under the town,
but it took us forty minutes to drive up.
_March 2_, ORVIETO.
I was out before breakfast and spent a long, busy, and happy day here.
The town is perched on the top of a rock which is on most sides a
precipice at first and then a long slope carries the eye on to the
river and valleys at the bottom. Beyond on all sides are distant hills
to be seen, one of them very picturesque in outline. In summer it must
be a perfect view, but now the olives are the only trees in leaf, and
their colour is so sad that it does not do much for the landscape.
The old walls exist round much of the town. They are generally set back
a few feet from the edge of the rock so as to leave a passage outside,
which in its turn is defended by battlements built on the cliff. The
lay of the ground reminds one of Toledo, but the country is more open,
and the river is not a Tagus and does not produce much effect on the
landscape. The views which may be had from various points of the
rocks and walls are, however, superb, and I have seldom seen anything
more striking. On the other hand there is no building of sufficient
importance in the town to give the best effect to the views. The
cathedral, not having any tower, produces but little general effect,
and the only towers are some of the plain square family fortress towers
like these sketched at S. Gemignano.
[Illustration: MASTER MATTHEW’S PORCH AT SANTIAGO]
The cathedral more than fulfilled my expectations. The west front is in
its way very beautiful, delicate and refined--perhaps over-refined
everywhere, and beautiful in the symmetry of its arrangement. But it is
still not a great success. My great interest here is in the sculpture
of the piers between and at the sides of the doors. First of all,
I must say that they strike me as too small and delicate for their
place. This is their one fault. If they were to be there they ought to
be, as they are, small and in low relief so as not to interfere with
the flatness and look of strength in the walls. The sculpture in the
northern pier--the days of creation--is perhaps the most beautiful of
the four. Nothing can be much more refined in feeling or treatment.
The heads are a little exaggerated. The next pier which contains the
succession of the seed of Abraham seems to me to be altogether inferior
to the others. The third and fourth (from the north) are equal, or
nearly, to the first, though a little more crowded. In the last the
figure of our Lord surrounded by an aureole of angels, in the Last
Judgement, is beautifully designed. The foliage decorations of all this
work are very natural in their treatment and extraordinarily skilful.
The play of relief in leaves, whose extreme projection from the face
of the marble is often not more than an eighth of an inch, is of the
most delicate, subtle and artistic description. Contrast the skill with
which it is treated with the workmanship in the south door, and the
difference of power will be seen.
The interior is very large and simple--the architectural detail
generally very poor. Columns (large cylinders with exaggerated
capitals of queer semi-classic detail) carrying alternated arches,
show the characteristic faults of the Pisan school of architects. The
clerestory has long, simple, traceried windows, and the best detail
is in the east window, which has good geometrical tracery, is of
very long proportion, and is filled with stained glass of beautiful
design--subjects in square panels. The effect of its colour is perfect.
All round it are paintings by Agnolino of Orvieto, not very fresh now,
but giving a colour of the most tender kind to the interior, to which
the simple black and white striped construction of the columns and
walls leads the eye up gradually and well. In the east window the glass
is divided into small panels. There are four lights but in spite of the
irregularity caused by this even number the grounds of the subjects are
all countercharged, alternately ruby and blue....
_What Street said, and what he thought, of Siena and Orvieto, is
nearly unique. At Viterbo and Toscanella, he could only see and
feel the first what others have since made familiar. Corneto is
less known._
_March 4._
Looking back to Viterbo I saw it lighted up with beautiful effect by a
sudden burst of sunshine. Its towered walls were in deep shade whilst
a cloud of light, wind-started from the town behind, caught the bright
sunshine and seemed to set the steeples of the town in a sort of halo.
Behind rose the high mountain and to the left of this, in the far
distance, a line of snow-capped mountains which added immensely to the
beauty of the view. This open country is very charming--clouds casting
their shadows here and there and a horizon always lovely in the pure
colour of the mountains or hills which fringe it. All the way we had
Montefiascone in full view.
Corneto stands on a steep hill above the marshy flat which borders
the Mediterranean. Its old walls and towers standing generally on a
rocky base give it a very imposing appearance, but its interest seems
to be mainly Etruscan. The inn at which we stopped made amends for
any lack in the churches by its extremely good character. It is of
late fourteenth century work, but the internal courtyard with its open
arcades on two sides is most beautiful. The front towards the street
shows in some of its detail and especially in the construction of
the masonry in its upper portion, the influence of the Renaissance.
The building formed originally three sides of a quadrangle with a
passage-way corbelled out on the wall which forms the fourth side.
The lower storeys have fine open arcades, and the third a series of
delicate shafts with very effective capitals oblong in plan, carrying
a white marble lintel under the wall plate. The whole scheme is one of
extreme beauty and has much of the effect of being earlier in date than
it really is....
_With a few notes on Rome, and the exquisite drawing of a living
acanthus leaf at Paestum, the book dies away into a sort of
Journal, that records talks with the Bishop of Gibraltar and
Père Hyacinth_,--“I found him very pleasant and intelligent.”
NOTES ON FRENCH CHURCHES
III
SOME FRENCH CHURCHES CHIEFLY IN THE ROYAL DOMAIN
(From a notebook of 1855)
_June 13._
Somer has lost much of its original interest by the destruction
wantonly in 1830 of nearly the whole of the abbey of S. Bertin. It
is wicked, but I did not lament this so much as I should have done,
had the church been of rather earlier date. From what now remains it
appears to have been entirely in one style, and that an early phase of
flamboyant--much more like some of our English late middle-pointed than
flamboyant, and really very effective in its mouldings and sculpture,
the two great tests of all architecture. The west front and the north
wall of the nave are all that now remains of the once magnificent
church, and the latter has lost all its window tracery and is in a sad
state of decay.
The west doorway of the tower (which is central at the west
end) is fine, and has cut in the lintel stone of its door an
inscription:--“_Castissimum Divi Bertini templum caste memento
ingredi._” The tympanum had a painted subject and much of the rest of
the stone work still retains traces of decorative colour. The west
window of the south aisle is an unhappy example of the worst kind of
flamboyant, the tower is covered all over with vertical lines of
panelling but is nevertheless, from its great size, imposing, and
indeed gives S. Omer all the character it has when seen from the
railway. A sentinel keeping watch warned me off as I was measuring the
aisle: I suppose having lost so much they were nervously alive to the
chance of architects’ hacking off what remains!
A long winding street leads from S. Bertin at one end of it to the
cathedral of Notre Dame at the other. This is a church well worthy of
a visit for several peculiarities and not less for its generally fine
effect, especially in the interior.
The original fabric--of which the choir with its aisle and two apsidal
chapels thrown out from the aisle, and the south transept and one and
a half bays of the north, are all now remaining--is of the earliest
pointed, with occasional round arches to windows, etc. The character
is very simple and mainly remarkable for the great beauty of the
profusion of sculptured capitals to all the shafts. The section of
the piers is singular and gives great lightness of effect; they are
in fact thin slices of wall, and not piers formed in the usual way,
and as the weight of them is not a crushing weight, I look upon them
as excessively scientific in their arrangement. The triforium is very
lofty as compared with the rest of the design, and consists of a very
simple arcade of pointed arches, supported only by long and slender
shafts set near together.
The groining is good, and in the chapels a small shaft rises from the
capitals for some feet and carries the wall rib: this gets over a
difficulty in mitring the mouldings. The Lady-chapel appears to have
been remodelled at a later day but upon the foundation of one coeval
with the choir. A very grand effect is produced by the great size of
the transepts--which have aisles on both sides--and by the placing of
a chapel in the re-entering angles between them and the choir-aisle.
In this way an internal effect of lightness and space, of very fine
character, is obtained.
One of the most remarkable features about this cathedral is, however,
the extent to which, in later days, the old design was persisted in:
_e.g._ the remarkable triforium is carried round the entire church,
varied a little in its details and quite different in its sculpture,
but still evidently a copy and from its great size giving an air of
great unity to the whole design. In the clerestory windows generally
there is a good deal of poor flamboyant tracery with a little glass
of the same date, but in the choir the original windows all happily
remain. These are, in the apse, rather wide lancets, and in the rest
of the clerestory simple triplets. In the aisle there were windows of
two lights with a simple quatrefoil above. Many of the windows have the
dog-tooth ornament round the external labels. The choir still retains
on the outside a very fine and original corbel table.
In a chapel south of the choir are extensive remains of some most
singular work for pavements--they are squares of stone slightly sunk
in regular patterns and then filled in with some very hard black or
red substance. The same work is carried up against the walls of this
chapel, and in other parts of the cathedral are several small fragments
of similar pavements. The stone is of a yellow colour and the system
seems to admit of being turned to most useful account.
Of the exterior, the south transept door is about the most remarkable
feature. It is very simple, almost plain, but nevertheless its great
size and the deep shadow cast by its outer arch combine to make it
a very magnificent work. The sculpture of the capitals is very good
and the delicate arcade, containing figures on either side below the
base of the columns, is thoroughly French in its beauty of detail and
exquisite finish. Unhappily it has decayed much. There is a stoup
inside against the pier dividing the doors; this is not used now. The
western tower is like that of S. Bertin, engaged, and has but little to
recommend it to notice.
In the interior there is a very fine high tomb of a bishop--I think
S. Omer--early in the thirteenth century, about of the same date as
the south transept door. The altar now stands on the east side of the
crossing; either side of it, a range of music-stools affords fitting
accommodation for the clergy, whilst behind, stalls are arranged in
the choir around the apse, encircling an organ which stands about
where the altar ought to stand. In front of this organ is a group of
music stands etc., for the accommodation of the orchestra. The choir
is enclosed with high stone screens toward the aisles--old but quite
unornamental....
At S. Leu we had a very _maigre_ meal at a small _café biliard_ close
to the station and left at 7.45 for Senlis. The road was rather pretty
and took us in sight of Chantilly, a prettily situated town on the Oise
with a château which belonged to the Duc d’Aumale. In little more than
an hour we rumbled through the old narrow street of Senlis and took up
our quarters at the _Grand Cerf_. Before dark we saw the church of S.
Pierre, desecrated and used as a cavalry stable. A soldier who spoke
some English insisted on our seeing the thirty “Hawks,” as he called
them, who occupied the church. This we agreed to in order to see the
building, which has, however, little to remark on save its elaborate
west front and flamboyant architecture. Near this church is the
cathedral and near this a desecrated church, but I must reserve them
until to-morrow.
_June 16._
My first visit in the morning was of course to the cathedral, of which
the west front with its magnificent south-west tower and spire is the
most delightful portion. The rest of the church, though retaining many
of its old features and arrangements intact, has been overlaid on the
exterior with flamboyant work to an unpleasant extent. The two transept
fronts are very elaborate and entirely in this late style. At the east
end some of the chapels which surround the apse are of Romanesque
date, semicircular in their plan outside and roofed with lean-to roofs
of stone. The west front was intended to have two similar towers and
spires: the towers are both built but only one spire. The detail of
the lower portion is very simple, that of the upper part of tower and
spire very elaborate and covered with ornament of varied description.
The whole surface of spire and turrets is covered with patterns which
contribute very much to the general richness of effect. The most
remarkable features are however the open pinnacles at the point where
the tower becomes octangular, and the delicate spire-lights which are
set on every side of the spire and rise nearly half its height. The
spire-lights are remarkable in their arrangement at the top; instead
of going back horizontally at the ridge they slope down rapidly to
the spire so as to produce a very piquant effect. The detail of all
the sculpture and mouldings is most carefully executed throughout,
and though the scale of the steeple is not large it produces a very
great effect of height. The crockets and finials on the spire are very
vigorously carved.
The construction of the spire is very ingenious and allows of
passage-ways in the wall to the base of the spire-lights. At this point
it is constructed in two thicknesses, one of which slopes and forms the
outer line of the spire; the other is perpendicular from the inside
face until it meets the external sloping portion and dies into it; the
two are occasionally bonded together with large blocks of stone, and a
passage-way is formed between them. The view from the steeple is fine.
Close to the cathedral on the south is the desecrated church of
S. Frambourg, a simple parallelogram in plan and finished with an
apse, rather broad and low in its proportions, but nevertheless very
effective. The groining is all sexpartite. The original windows remain
only in the apse, and there is but little to be said of the building
farther than that its west front is remarkable for the outer line of
moulding of a prodigious rose window, (now blocked up), and for a west
doorway which though mutilated has much beauty. There seems to have
been a tower at the north-west of the nave. This church is now used as
a store by a builder....
We left the city of Senlis with some difficulty. _Imprimis_ we had an
extortionate charge for a bad kind of accommodation at the _Hôtel du
Grand Cerf_, and next had great difficulty in getting places in the
omnibus to Pont S. Maxence. But all is well that ends well, and we
succeeded, happily, in getting away. The view of the cathedral as the
town is left behind becomes very fine, but it is soon lost as the road
plunges into the woods through which for the best part of the way it
runs. One village, Fleurines, was passed, with a poor late church; some
large stone granaries are passed and then the long street of Pont S.
Maxence. The Oise is crossed at its end and a few hundred yards bring
us to the station; from hence we booked to Noyon, passing on the way
Compiègne, which has an old town hall and two churches, one of which,
as seen from the distance, seems likely to repay examination. Noyon was
reached at four o’clock and we walked off to the cathedral which towers
up most conspicuously above the town.
The general character of the church is, internally, much the same as
that of S. Leu, etc., but it is very much loftier and has a singular
arrangement into four stages in height. There are in the nave:--1. the
arcades, 2. the triforium, very large, with windows and groined, 3. a
small arcade more like an ordinary triforium, and 4. a clerestory. In
the transepts there is no groined triforium and the two upper stages,
being of similar height and both of them glazed, give the impression of
a double clerestory. I do not at all like this quadruple arrangement of
the interior. The columns of the nave are alternately of clustered and
single shafts. The groining is divided into compartments of two bays
by reason of the transverse ribs from the clustered piers being much
larger than any of the others. Both the transepts terminate with apses
and there are many very noble points in the internal effect. Here as at
S. Leu the aisles are very narrow compared to the width of the nave,
and the spaces between the columns of the arcades are also very small
indeed. Of the exterior, the west end is perhaps the more striking
part. It has two immense and very simple towers with a grand triple
porch in front of its three great doorways. This porch was constructed
weakly and has been boldly buttressed up. North of the north-west tower
is a long building connected with the church, of exquisite beauty, and
other old buildings enclose a considerable space on the north side of
the cathedral. These buildings are remarkable, _inter alia_, for the
bold foliage which is introduced beneath the parapets in a fashion very
popular in this part of France.
There is a small porch of fine early pointed character on the east side
of the north transept and above it a very fine rose window. The ground
at the east end is planted out in a garden and the whole effect of the
choir with the restored steep roofs above the apsidal chapels is very
noble. There is what appears to be a distinct church (now desecrated)
attached to the east side of the south transept. It is of simple early
pointed and has in each bay two lancets and a round window above. It
has several bays of length, and an apse, and is parallel with the
choir. Careful works of restoration are going on here. I saw no trace
of any other old building, saving a portion of very late domestic work.
We left Noyon at 8.40 and reached S. Quentin at 10 P.M. ...
_June 17._
I turned out early and got a sketch of the great church before
breakfast. Its height is very imposing but in its general character
it disappointed my rather high expectations. It appears to me to be a
kind of late imitation of early work. For instance the triforium and
clerestory have almost geometrical tracery differing only in slight
points from the best kind of geometrical work. The proportions too are
good and the groining very simple. Many of the shafts in the choir are
single columns, but the carving of their capitals is very inferior
to that I have seen elsewhere. The choir has, too, a triforium which
seems to be much earlier than that of the nave, probably early in the
thirteenth century. One of the best features is the management of the
chapels and aisles round the apse. There are two transepts; the eastern
one does not show however in the ground plan. The tower was central at
the west end, but has been all modernized and does not now rise above
the immense pointed roof of the nave, so that in the distance the
church wants distinctness of character and outline, badly. The flying
buttresses are very elaborate and are steadied by arches thrown across
from pinnacle to pinnacle, so as to keep them from falling laterally;
notwithstanding these precautions the church has fallen out so much in
some parts as to look very unsafe.