undoubtedly magnificent in its scale and general proportions; but its
detail throughout is miserably thin and meagre, and the church appears
to me to be utterly undeserving of the praise I have heard bestowed
on it by some English authorities. Of course, however, the degree of
admiration felt for such a building depends very much upon the standard
of perfection which each man sets up for himself. If he comes to Metz
strongly possessed with a sense of the noble character of German
Gothic, of course he will admire this extremely German edifice; if,
however, he have the slightest feeling for early French art, I imagine
that he will turn away with disappointment and sorrow from this church,
so vast, and yet, as compared with fine French churches, so tame, poor,
and weak.
The best of the other churches in Metz is that of S. Vincent, a work of
better style than the cathedral, and with a well-planned German east
end, showing undoubtedly marks of the same hand as (or at least of
imitation of) the famous Liebfraukirche at Trèves.
[Illustration: NAVE AND TRANSEPT, THE NEW CATHEDRAL, SALAMANCA]
From Metz I made my way by Sierck (whose small church has a groined
roof forty feet in clear width) to Saarburg; here the church is
noticeable for a tower oblong in plan, and roofed with _two_ thin
octagonal spires which unite together at the base; and from Saarburg I
went to Trèves.
Trèves well deserves a long notice. Its churches are full of interest,
the cathedral for students of early art, and the Liebfraukirche, as
being (I think) the most beautifully planned thirteenth century church
in Germany. The close juxtaposition of these two churches is singularly
effective in all points of view. Then there are the very fine Roman
remains, and finally a really enormous number of houses of the
thirteenth and fourteenth century, all in very fair preservation. From
Trèves, by the interesting abbey of Laach, I reached Cologne, and at
once made my way to the cathedral, anxious to see whether the opinions
which have grown on me more strongly the more often I have visited it
would remain unshaken now that so great progress has been made in the
new work. It is impossible to overrate the excellence of all the new
constructions; nor are they obviously open to any hostile criticism in
regard to their conformity with the general character of the old work;
but it is at the same time useless to conceal the fact, that the work
is of a poor kind, and that it certainly does not improve as one sees
more of it. The only comfort is that the interior will be much finer
than the exterior, and that it is worth while therefore, to put up with
some shortcomings in the latter in order to obtain what will, no doubt,
be the sumptuous effect of space, height, and (I hope) colour, which
the former promises to afford. It is much more difficult to spoil the
interior than the exterior; it must of necessity be simple and uniform,
and it admits of less attempt at enrichment with such crockets and
pinnacles as cover the exterior. The south transept front, which is
the most conspicuous portion of the new work finished, is, I think,
thoroughly unsatisfactory. The crocketed gable over the great window,
repeated again just above up the roof gable, is perhaps the most
unhappy repetition of a leading line that could have been hit upon. If
a gable was necessary over the window, it should have been different
in its pitch from the other; and then again, however much the old
architect indulged in reedy mouldings and endless groups of crockets,
it does seem to be a sad thing that a nineteenth century artist should
feel bound to emulate his enthusiasm for such worthless things. I grant
at once, that he has done no more than follow precedents. In the old
west front of the cathedral, there is scarcely a moulding three inches
in diameter, whilst the central doorway between the steeples is very
small, and made up of a repetition _usque ad nauseam_ of orders of
reedy mouldings and small flowers, and admits not for one instant of
comparison with any good examples of French doorways; and, it is indeed
very striking how, as one comes fresh from French churches, all this
work looks thin, petty, and wanting in expression.
In the sculpture of foliage in the new works, the system seems to
be to take sprigs of two or three leaves and fasten them against a
circular bell, with no evidence of any kind of natural growth, and
no proper architectural function to perform. They seem to require a
piece of string or a strap round them to attach them to the bell. The
copying of the foliage is perfectly naturalesque, even to the marking
of the fibres on leaves which are to be elevated to a great height in
the building. I have heard all this sculpture so often referred to in
terms of the highest praise, that unpleasant as it is to criticize
work executed at the present day, I feel that I am bound to express
my dissent from those who so speak of it. The whole work is so famous
that all the world is interested in it. English tourists, year after
year, going in great numbers on their travels, admire thoughtlessly
everything that they see, and architects even seem to me to follow in
their wake, forgetting that our true function is not simply to admire
the work, because it is a vast and noble enterprise, but to weigh and
compare it with the most perfect work we can find, and to endeavour, if
the faults we see in it are great, to point them out by way of warning
for ourselves and others. Indiscriminate admiration of such a building
does enormous mischief, just as a wild enthusiasm for the fourteenth
century work which we see throughout Germany would be fatal to the eye
and taste of the enthusiast.
Undoubtedly the architect of Cologne has had an office of enormous
difficulty. The national enthusiasm, which has raised the funds
hitherto expended, must have needed very cautious treatment. It would
probably indeed be indispensable that the steeples, if ever completed,
should be built exactly on the old plan so curiously preserved and
discovered, but the elevation of the transepts, on which so very much
of the external effect of the whole church depended, was just one of
those points on which the architect might have ventured (one would have
thought) to step out of the old path a little, and--just as the old
architect when he wanted a perfect ground-plan went to Amiens for his
example--he might at this day have gone to Chartres or Amiens, Rouen
or Paris, and grafted something of their grace and grandeur on the
otherwise merely German conception of façade which he has given us.
That this might have been done without detriment to the old portions of
the building is I am sure unquestionable; and that if well done it must
have resulted in great gain and increased beauty is equally certain.
If (as we all, with insignificant exceptions, admit) it is well for us
to study early French art as well as English, surely some attention
to it must be even more necessary in Germany, whose national art was
inferior, in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, not only to that of
France, but almost as much to that of England.
SOME CHURCHES OF LE PUY EN VELAY AND AUVERGNE
(From the _Transactions_ of the R. I. B. A. 1889)
In the course of last autumn,[28] after having spent three weeks in
climbing Swiss mountains, I was able to devote a few days, on my way
home, to a district which, as far as I had been able to gather from
books, appeared to contain a mine of interest for the architect, not
less than for the geologist and the lover of natural scenery. From Lyon
I went by Monistrol to Le Puy, which was the grand object of my tour;
thence by Brioude into Auvergne, and through Issoire, Clermont-Ferrand
and Nevers, to Bourges and Paris. I was so much struck by what I saw,
that, though I am well aware that my visit was too hurried to be at
all exhaustive, I think I cannot do better than give you the results
of my journey, in the trust that what was full of interest, novelty,
and instruction for myself, may be of some use also to others who have
not been able to make this journey for themselves. The complete-Gothic
architecture of Velay and Auvergne is not, it is true, to be compared
to the best work in the north of France. I am not, however, going to
tell you about it, but about an earlier style, which, as I hope to
show, has special value as illustrating, among other things, the way
in which French Gothic was developed from Romanesque and Byzantine
buildings; and our attention will, therefore, be almost entirely
devoted to buildings which are either Romanesque or Romano-Byzantine
in their character, or belonging to the period of transition from
those styles to first-pointed. The complete-Gothic buildings are
comparatively few, and have no special value; and I shall, probably,
not have time now to refer to them even in the most cursory manner.
I will begin with Le Puy, the ancient capital of Velay. The city is
crowded up the side of a volcanic rock, one end of which is crowned
by the picturesque mass of its Eastern-looking cathedral. It consists
of a network of narrow streets not passable by carriages, and reminds
one forcibly of some such city as Genoa. Above the rock on which the
cathedral is perched rises another, called the _Corneille_, on which
are some old fortifications, and which has just been crowned by a
monstrous image of the Blessed Virgin, made of the metal of guns
taken at Sebastopol, to whose charge I may fairly lay much of the
imperfection of my account of the buildings beneath her feet; for
I had the ill-luck to arrive at Le Puy only three days before the
inauguration of this statue, and I found the whole city so entirely
occupied with the preparations for the fête, that it was with the
greatest difficulty that I examined the cathedral at all, and into
some portions of it I was quite unable to penetrate; whilst the
only condition on which I could obtain rooms at an inn was that I
should not stop for more than two days, and should make room for some
bishop, prince, or cardinal (of whom there were a legion on the
road), before the great fête-day. I had to work very hard, therefore,
to do as much as I did, and I make no doubt that a more leisurely
and uninterrupted examination would have enabled me to discover and
do much more. Separated from the great volcanic rock I have already
mentioned by one or two furlongs only, is the smaller, but even more
striking rock, called the _Aiguille de S. Michel_, and crowned with a
little chapel dedicated to that Archangel. It rises, in the most abrupt
and precipitous manner, to a height of about 265 feet. The distant
background includes a series of truncated conical hills, evidently
ancient volcanoes, and from almost every point of view a landscape of
the most picturesque and extensive description is seen. Rarely have I
enjoyed a more charming ride than that which, for the last twenty miles
into Le Puy on the road from S. Étienne, made me generally acquainted
with the remarkable physical formation of this mountain district;
beautiful throughout, it was at its best just when, some twelve or
fifteen miles before I reached the city, I first saw the “angelic”
church, as it is styled, standing up boldly on its rock, the centre of
an almost matchless landscape.
The story of its claim to this style of “angelic” is this. Bishop
Evodius, at the end of the sixth century, on being made first bishop
of Le Puy, wished to construct a church; the Virgin, who had before
shown to S. George the place where she wished one to be built,
appeared to a sick woman on the Mount surrounded by a crowd of angels,
and desired her to tell Evodius to proceed at once with his work.
After much prayer he went to Rome, and the Pope sent back with him
an architect and senator named Scutarius, under whose auspices the
church was soon built, and whose tombstone is still to be seen near
the transept door. Evodius and Scutarius then started for Rome again,
but on the way met two old men, who gave them two boxes of relics,
and desired them to return to Le Puy, saying that as soon as they
arrived with the relics before the church the doors would open, the
bells would ring of themselves, the whole interior would be bright
with torches and candles, and they should hear divine melodies, and
smell the sweet perfume of the heavenly oil which had served for the
consecration of the church by the angels. Everything happened just as
had been foretold, and Evodius felt it unnecessary again to consecrate
his church, which from that time to the present day has been called
the “angelic” church. No doubt you all know how curious a parallel to
this legend the history of our own Abbey of S. Peter at Westminster
affords.[29] But in searching for information about the churches of
Auvergne, I came upon a continuation of the Le Puy legend, to which the
Westminster story affords no such parallel. This second legend tells
how, when the seraphic basilica of Le Puy had been thus dedicated,
S. Anne descended from heaven to visit the palace of her daughter.
Not content with this human work, she seized the hammer of the
master-mason, and, taking wing, descended on the summit of a hill, and,
turning towards Auvergne, which to her mind offered no church worthy
of the Queen of Heaven, she threw the hammer, saying as she threw it,
“On the place where the hammer falls a church shall rise.” The hammer
fell on the right bank of the Allier, and immediately there rose from
the soil like a flower the church of Les Chases, which was dedicated
forthwith to S. Mary.[30]
Let us now leave legends, and direct our attention to the ground-plan
of the cathedral. Its architects have ingeniously contrived to cover
the whole of the summit of the rock on which it stands. It consists
of a nave with aisles, transepts, a choir, and choir-aisles, and a
steeple at the east end of the north choir-aisle. To the south of the
cathedral is the modern bishop’s palace, whilst to the north are the
cloisters, two grand halls, some ruins, and to the north-east a chapel
dedicated to S. John and other buildings. There are entrances in the
east walls of each of the transepts, but these were rather intended, I
suppose, for the exit than for the entrance of the people, and the mode
in which they were admitted forms one of the most striking features
of the whole scheme. I said that the church was built on a rock, and
its western face, forming one of the principal streets of the city,
is so steep as to consist alternately of steps and inclines, until,
at a short distance in advance of the west front, it is changed to an
almost interminable flight of steps. The grand west entrance is an open
porch, like an enormous crypt, beneath the three western bays of the
nave and its aisles, whose walls and piers it reproduces in its plan.
The steps[31] formerly rose in a straight line, until they came up in
the very centre of the church, in the fifth bay of the nave, and in
front of the roof-loft, and of the miracle-working image of the Blessed
Virgin, which, brought from the East and given to the church by S.
Louis, was, until its destruction in A.D. 1789, the greatest attraction
for pilgrims in France.[32] This singular entrance, and the mode of
exit by the eastern doors of the transepts, gave rise to an old saying,
“In Notre Dame du Puy one entered by the navel and went out by the
ears.” Unfortunately, however, the central entrance has been diverted,
and after ascending a hundred and two steps, and arriving at the Golden
Gate, as it was called, the passage branches right and left--on the
left ascending into the cloister, and on the right winding round the
south side of the church, until the hundred and thirty-fifth step lands
the weary pilgrim in the south aisle, near the transept.[33] This,
then, is the general scheme of this most singular church. Let me now
go on to describe it in detail, beginning with the oldest portion.
This comprises the choir, the transepts, and crossing, and the two
easternmost bays of the nave. The choir is completely modernized, and
I am unable to say whether any portion of the internal arrangement is
old. It presents the peculiarity of a square exterior and a circular
interior. This is a not uncommon arrangement in the earliest Italian
examples of the apse, and is seen at St. Mark’s, Venice, and elsewhere.
The arches opening into the choir-aisles are old, and I believe that we
may venture to say that the original plan must have been very nearly
the same as that of the church of S. Martin d’Ainay, at Lyon, in which
the choir-aisles are shorter than the choir, and all are terminated
with apses.[34] I shall have other occasion to point out that at a
later date the architects of Ainay and of Le Puy must have been the
same. The date of the foundation of Ainay is some time in the ninth
century, and it was carried on until the end of the eleventh; but the
apse and capitals of the columns of the crossing--for the columns
themselves are Roman--cannot, I think, be later than about A.D. 940
to A.D. 1000, which latter would, I think, be the date generally
accepted for this portion of the work at Le Puy. To proceed with my
notice. The crossing is surmounted by a quasi-dome, carried up as an
octagonal lantern, much of which has been modernised in restorations,
whilst much is quite new; though the universality of the raised central
lantern in the churches of the district makes it probable that it is,
to some extent, a proper restoration.[35] The transepts are covered
with barrel-vaults, strengthened by transverse ribs of a square section
below them; the small apses in their end walls have semi-domes, and
the tribunes which cross them are groined with quadripartite vaults
without ribs. The whole of the nave is covered in the same way as the
crossing, each bay being divided from the next by bold transverse
arches, and having a quasi-dome, supported by arches across the angles
of each compartment, and all of them, in truth, being not domes, but
eight-sided pointed vaults, springing from the octagonal bases thus
contrived. There are no pendentives, properly so called, and the
construction is, I should say, that of men who desired to erect domes,
but had no knowledge whatever of the way in which they were constructed
in the East; or--to take a more favorable and, perhaps, juster view--of
men who, desiring to give a small building the greatest possible effect
of space, to roof it with stone (not knowing anything yet about flying
buttresses), and to light it from a clerestory, actually solved all
these points in a successful way. Where this kind of roof was first
attempted I am quite unable to say. Certainly the central lantern at
Ainay is so identical in character with some of those at Le Puy, that
the same workmen must have executed both; but there seems to be no
other example in the same district as Ainay, whereas at Le Puy, and
in Velay and Auvergne, everything is more or less roofed on the same
principle. The second portion of the cathedral at Le Puy consists of
the third and fourth bays of the nave, and the third portion of the
fifth and sixth bays.[36]
The latest portion is of early pointed character, and not later in
date than _circa_ A.D. 1180 to 1200, and it was at the same time that
this was erected that the greater part of the enormous substructure
forming the porch was also completed. The aisles throughout the church
are vaulted with quadripartite vaults, the three western bays alone
having ribs. In the two western bays there are engaged shafts both in
the porch and above it in the nave, but the rest of the piers are of
the simplest plan, large and generally cruciform in their section,
save at the crossing, where the arches are carried on coupled detached
shafts. There is much elaborate sculpture introduced in the capitals of
the pilasters and columns of the nave, but it is nowhere of any very
high merit, and is so inferior in delicacy and beauty to the sculpture
of the same age to be seen on the banks of the Rhone, that I should
attribute it to a native school of sculptors acquainted, probably,
with none but inferior Roman sculpture, from which they endeavoured
to develope a style for themselves. A clerestory of wide and rude
round-headed windows, one in each compartment, lights the series of
domes in a very effective manner.
The arches across the nave are very bold, and, in the wall above them,
an opening is pierced under each of the cupolas. As is generally the
case, however, in churches covered in this way, very little is seen
of the real vault in any general view of the church, these transverse
arches only, with the quasi-pendentives above them being seen. The
pendentives are true semi-domes, constructed in alternate courses
of dark and light stone, and the difference between their plan and
the square angle in which they are placed is skilfully concealed by
detached shafts, with capitals placed under the pendentives.
I think you will agree with me that considering its early date (no
part probably later than _circa_ A.D. 1150 or 1180), it would be
difficult to find a grander or more nervous scheme, or one which, with
such small dimensions, conveys nevertheless so great an impression
of size and importance. The choir-aisles were altered at various
times. That on the south has been rebuilt in second-pointed of poor
character, and is now a mere passage-way to the modern sacristy, and
that on the north was probably interfered with not very long after
its first construction, when the great steeple which now abuts upon
it was commenced. M. Mérimée,[37] in his very interesting description
of the church, suggests that the base of the tower was originally a
baptistery, but I see no reason whatever for this suggestion and it is
impossible to doubt, when we carefully examine the whole design, that
though the steeple was long in building, the main feature in its design
was from the first just what we now see it to be. Moreover, the chapel
of S. Jean close by is said to have been the baptistery for the whole
city until within the last sixty years. The design of the steeple is
very bizarre and unusual. It consists of a long series of no less than
nine stages on the exterior, and it diminishes rapidly in diameter, and
is, perhaps, on the whole, more curious than pleasing in its outlines.
If you look at the ground-plan you will see that its construction is
most remarkable. The internal diameter of the tower at the base is
twenty-four feet six inches, but this is reduced to only twelve feet
by four detached piers, one foot ten and one-half inches square. These
piers are carried up from the base to the very summit, detached in the
three lower stages, and forming part of the thickness of the wall in
the portion above. The highest stage of the steeple, twelve feet in
internal and sixteen feet in external diameter, is therefore, as nearly
as possible, carried up on these four piers, and the rapid decrease
in the external dimensions, from thirty-six feet to sixteen feet, was
only rendered possible by this very ingenious mode of construction.
So far as I know there is only one other example of the same scheme,
viz. in the steeple of the cathedral of S. Étienne at Limoges. Here,
however, the base is the only portion remaining of the original work,
and the columns are cylindrical in place of being square, but it is
evident that the intention was the same as at Le Puy. The steeple at
Limoges is probably the first in point of date. M. Viollet-le-Duc
dates it at about A.D. 1050, but the Abbé Arbellot, in a learned paper
on the cathedral, in the _Bulletin_ of the _Société Archéologique et
Historique du Limousin_, maintains that it was certainly built before
A.D. 1012, when the Bishop Arnaud de Périgeux, after assisting at
the consecration of Bishop Gerald at Poitiers, accompanied him to
Limoges, and put the cords of the bells into his hands. The lower part
of the steeple at Le Puy may, I think, safely be referred to the end
of the eleventh century, and its completion to the end of the twelfth,
whilst the planning appears to me to be thoroughly characteristic of
a Byzantine artist, the construction of the piers in the lowest stage
being almost identical with that of the main piers under the domes of
S. Mark’s, Venice, and S. Front, Périgueux.