and universal decorations, which were distinguished in Chapter XXII., §
III., from the ornament which has special relation to particular parts.
This local ornament, which, it will be remembered, we arranged in § II.
of the same chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads,
to consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls and
shafts.
It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are
something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses,
and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the
hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor
or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all
in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its
beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more,
especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown
or cornice most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are
decorated richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is
well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive even more
decoration than other parts.
§ II. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its levelness
and evenness. We cannot do better than construct the several members of
the base, as developed in Fig. II., p. 55, each of a different colored
marble, so as to produce marked level bars of color all along the
foundation. This is exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall
bases; that of St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect
existing, for play of color; that of Giotto's campanile is on the whole
the most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions, _a_, _b_,
_c_, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they be not
too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (or _must_ have it
for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all sculpture on bases
must be in panels, or it will soon be worn away, and that a plain
panelling is often good without any other ornament. The member _b_,
which in St. Mark's is subordinate, and _c_, which is expanded into a
seat, are both of them decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished
panelling, in red and white or green and white marble; and the member
_e_ is in bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm
beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member has been of
no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the chapters on
construction; but it was expressed in the figure of the wall base, on
account of its great value when the foundation is of stone and the wall
of brick (coated or not). In such cases it is always better to add the
course _e_, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the
common masonry of the wall.
§ III. It is, however, with the member _d_, or Xb, that we are most
seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature of all bases,
and the true preparation for the wall or shaft, it is most necessary
that here, if anywhere, we should have full expression of levelness and
precision; and farther, that, if possible, the eye should not be
suffered to rest on the points of junction of the stones, which would
give an effect of instability. Both these objects are accomplished by
attracting the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the
member _d_ itself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely
prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the masonry, and
besides form a simple but beautifully connected group of bars of shadow,
which express, in their perfect parallelism, the absolute levelness of
the foundation.
§ IV. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an arrangement which
must be perfectly familiar to the reader, as occurring under nearly
every column of the too numerous classical buildings all over Europe.
But I may name the base of the Bank of England as furnishing a very
simple instance of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow,
both forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the shafts
as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the façade of the
British Museum are as good examples as the reader can study on a larger
scale.
[Illustration: Plate X.
PROFILES OF BASES.]
§ V. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented by the Greeks,
and it has never been materially improved, as far as its peculiar
purpose is concerned;[78] the classical attempts at its variation being
the ugliest: one, the using a single roll of larger size, as may be seen
in the Duke of York's column, which therefore looks as if it stood on a
large sausage (the Monument has the same base, but more concealed by
pedestal decoration): another, the using two rolls without the
intermediate cavetto,--a condition hardly less awkward, and which may be
studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the Athenæum
Club-house: and another, the introduction of what are called fillets
between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars of Hanover Chapel,
Regent Street, which look, in consequence, as if they were standing upon
a pile of pewter collection plates. But the only successful changes have
been mediæval; and their nature will be at once understood by a glance
at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be well first to
give the buildings in which they occur, in order.
1. Santa Fosca, Torcello. | 14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice.
2. North transept, St. Mark's, | 15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
Venice. | 16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade.
3. Nave, Torcello. | 17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
4. Nave, Torcello. | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice.
5. South transept, St. Mark's. | 19. St. Zeno, Verona.
6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice.
St. Mark's. | 21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
7. Another of the same group. | 22. Nave, Salisbury.
8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's, | 25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
Venice. | 26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. | 27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
12. Nave, Vienne, France. | 28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. |
§ VI. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian, being
bases to which I shall have need of future reference; but the
interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from Milan, Pavia, Vienne
(France), and Verona, show the exactly correspondent conditions of the
Romanesque base at the period, throughout the centre of Europe. The last
five examples show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects:
the Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness and
vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special reason, in
that place.
§ VII. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9, from the two
most important Lombardic churches of Italy, St. Ambrogio of Milan and
St. Michele of Pavia, mark the character of the barbaric base founded on
pure Roman models, sometimes approximating to such models very closely;
and the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded on
Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and, still more
characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently an original element,
a tendency to use the fillet and hollow instead of the roll, which is
eminently Gothic; which in the base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant
conditions, and is excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work
certainly not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the
last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly inclined
to consider these bases portions of the original church. And I have
therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group to which it has so
strong relationship, though, on the last supposition, five centuries
older than the earliest of the five terminal examples; and it is still
more remarkable because it reverses the usual treatment of the lower
roll, which is in general a tolerably accurate test of the age of a
base, in the degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5,
9, 10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically
opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which it advances
gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at last is actually seen
curling over with the long-backed rush of surf upon the shore. Yet the
Torcello base resembles these Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and
in depth of cavetto above.
§ VIII. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority of these
Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented by the ancients.
But they have all two great faults: They seem, in the first place, to
have been designed without sufficient reference to the necessity of
their being usually seen from above; their grace of profile cannot be
estimated when so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an
appearance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had
splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their cavetto is so
deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black fissure between the
members of the base; and in the Lyons and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it
is impossible to conquer the idea suggested by it, that the two stones
above and below have been intended to join close, but that some pebbles
have got in and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the
pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with a
thunder-clap.
§ IX. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure classic
base had hardly been materially improved; but the various conditions of
it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion to the variety of
proportion among their lines and the delicacy of their curvatures; that
is to say, the expression of characters like those of the abstract lines
in Plate VII.
The five best profiles in Plate X. are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10 is
peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection of
its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its lower; and this
and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types, the one of the steep, the
other of the expansive basic profiles. The characters of all, however,
are so dependent upon their place and expression, that it is unfair to
judge them thus separately; and the precision of curvature is a matter
of so small consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue
the subject farther.
[Illustration: Fig. LIX.]
§ X. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines of moulding in
the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base. But the reader will
remember that in our best shaft base, in Fig. XII. (p. 78), certain
props or spurs were applied to the slope of X b; but now that X b is
divided into these delicate mouldings, we cannot conveniently apply the
spur to its irregular profile; we must be content to set it against the
lower roll. Let the upper edge of this lower roll be the curved line
here, _a_, _d_, _e_, _b_, Fig. LIX., and _c_ the angle of the square
plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw in Chap.
VII., will be of some such form as the triangle _c e d_, Fig. LIX.
§ XI. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance whether
the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding be fine or not,
because we rarely stoop down to look at them. But this triangular spur
is nearly always seen from above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of
the most important features of the whole base; therefore it is a point
of immediate necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (_c d_,
_c e_) some curve of noble abstract character.
§ XII. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf at p.
224, that I had marked off the portion of it, _x y_, because I thought
it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the
reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his
own free will. If, therefore, he likes the above triangular spur, _c d
e_, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied
with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like
a tapestry bee, to cut off the little bit of line of salvia leaf _x y_,
and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward lines _c d c e_.
He may try it any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature
inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I think
he will determine at last on placing it as I have done at _c d_, _c e_,
Fig. LX. (If the reader will be at the pains to transfer the salvia leaf
line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately used in this
figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular line to represent the outer
swell of the roll against which the spur is set, and I put another such
spur to the opposite corner of the square, and we have the half base,
Fig. LX., which is a general type of the best Gothic bases in existence,
being very nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of
Venice. In those shafts the quadrant _a b_, or the upper edge of the
lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur _d
e_, is 10 inches; the line _d e_ being therefore to _a b_ as 10 to
25-3/8. In Fig. LX. it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and
the type somewhat more generally representative of the best, _i.e._
broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.
[Illustration: Fig. LX.]
§ XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing magical in
salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened merely to fall
conveniently on the page, and might as well have been taken from
anything else; it is simply its character of gradated curvature which
fits it for our use. On Plate XI., opposite, I have given plans of the
spurs and quadrants of twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these
latter (13), from Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given
merely to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines, and
lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases look the prettiest
in this plate, because this variation of the outline is nearly all the
ornament they have, being cut very rudely; but the Italian bases above
them are merely prepared by their simple outlines for far richer
decoration at the next step, as we shall see presently. The Northern
bases are to be noted also for another grand error: the projection of
the roll beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in
various degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the base
whose profile is No. 26 in Plate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15
is 28.
[Illustration: Plate XI.
PLANS OF BASES.]
§ XIV. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7 and 10, being
Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark's; 3, Ca' Falier; 4, lower
colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark's; 6, from the Church of St. John
and Paul; 7, from the tomb near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above
(p. 142); 8 and 9, Fon daco de' Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino
della Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace, Venice,
upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases whose profiles are
respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 in Plate X. The flat surfaces of
the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square
occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of
each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of
Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly,
that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as
here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison,
reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts of
very different size, 9 being some six or seven inches in diameter,
and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of the roll varies
accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the base is smallest, and in
6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a larger scale than the plan, or
its character could not have been exhibited.
[Illustration: Plate XII.
DECORATION OF BASES.]
§ XV. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that the
narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from the upper
colonnade of St. Mark's, is the only instance I ever saw of the double
spur, as transitive between the square and octagon plinth; the truncated
form, 1, is also rare and very ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the
general conditions of the Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan
in Byzantine work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while
7, on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the
profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally refined in
their profile and plan.
§ XVI. The character of the profile is indeed much altered by the
accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the importance of the
broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on
glancing at the examples 1 to 6 in Plate XII. The three upper examples
are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine
types, 1 to 3 of Plate XI. Their plans would be nearly the same; but
instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws,
as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia,
appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the
transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France.
The 4th type, Plate XII., almost like the extremity of a man's foot, is
a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St.
Mark's; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming
the perfect Italian Gothic types,--5, from tomb of Can Signorio della
Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 of Plate XI., in
perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate XI., are
conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in
exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than
Venice, in which the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising
out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by
sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work; a kind
of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress, the _centre_ of
the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter's, Oxford,
which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of
the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della
Carta.
§ XVII. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its
decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate
XII., three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is
a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI.,
representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea
of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat
contour of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the upper
colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases of the sea
façade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse section.
Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the later shafts of the same
colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No. 12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on
one of these shafts only, and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to
be earlier than the other, which is the characteristic base of the rest
of the series, and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned
character of fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its
rolling.
§ XVIII. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand, and necessary
for future reference; not as in anywise representative of the variety of
the Italian treatment of the general contour, far less of the endless
caprices of the North. The most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole,
is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur
profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed by
a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half
close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front
is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake:
"quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management
to confine such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse himself as he
will by endless inventions of them, from types which he may gather among
the weeds at the nearest roadside. The value of the vegetable form is
especially here, as above noted, Chap. XX., § XXXII., its capability of
unity with the mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines;
none but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a beautiful
instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen; a lizard pausing
and curling himself round a little in the angle; one expects him the
next instant to lash round the shaft and vanish: and we may with
advantage compare this base with those of Renaissance Scuola di San
Rocca[79] at Venice, in which the architect, imitating the mediæval
bases, which he did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches
higher, in the same position.
§ XIX. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles which
are given in Northern architecture to the projections of the lower
members of the base, _b_ and _c_ in Fig. II., nor of the methods in
which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings in Plate X., are
decorated, especially in Roman architecture, with superadded chain work
or chasing of various patterns. Of the first I have not spoken, because
I shall have no occasion to allude to them in the following essay; nor
of the second, because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and
decorated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc de
l'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements of
decorative appliances; and they ought always to be reserved for jambs,
cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with them in the base, you have
no power of refining your decorations as you ascend, and, which is still
worse, you put your most delicate work on the jutting portions of the
foundation,--the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,--the look of being
able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so delicate that no
one can be expected to treat even its base with unkindness,[80] then at
least the expression of quiet, prefatory simplicity. The angle spur may
receive such decoration as we have seen, because it is one of the most
important features in the whole building; and the eye is always so
attracted to it that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether
blank; the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their length: and
even with all this added fitness, the ornament of the basic spur is
best, in the long run, when it is boldest and simplest. The base above
described, § XVIII., as the most beautiful I ever saw, was not for that
reason the best I ever saw: beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of
a Baptistery sheeted with jasper and alabaster, it would have been
utterly wrong, nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated
along a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the richest
with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general service; and the
basic spurs of the building which I have named as the best Gothic
monument in the world (p. 141), have no ornament upon them whatever. The
adaptation, therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level
and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects
ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy
and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently takes place.
§ XX. I have also passed over, without present notice, the fantastic
bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain many Lombardic shafts.
The pillars they support have independent bases of the ordinary kind;
and the animal form beneath is less to be considered as a true base
(though often exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the
south-west angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of
sculpture, otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and
deriving its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment of a
wild superstition, and the representation of supernatural powers, their
appeal to the imagination sets at utter defiance all judgment based on
ordinary canons of law; and the magnificence of their treatment atones,
in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should
not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the
Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear
being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed
permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but
the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent
will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by
law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in
the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse
for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other
cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to
have sprung from an irrational religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and
value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of
the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested
by the writer of the Essay on the Æsthetics of Gothic Architecture
in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base
_recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent
weight, it would bulge out."
[79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum
written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had
better delay referring to it, until we have completed our
examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals.
[80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases."
[81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in
Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct
as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation,
visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.
§ I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects
than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared
naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be
given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye.
It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of
various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to
the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps conclude, from what
was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that there is one kind of decoration
which will, indeed, naturally follow on its construction. For it is
perfectly natural that the different kinds of stone used in its
successive courses should be of different colors; and there are many
associations and analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction
of horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in the
first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of the wall, like
the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a farther symbol of the
alternation of light and darkness, which was above noted as the source
of the charm of many inferior mouldings: again, they are valuable as an
expression of horizontal space to the imagination, space of which the
conception is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably the
great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again
they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks,
and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative
reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition
of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a
single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial
effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being
made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the
bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the executioner.
[Illustration: Plate XIII.
WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.]
§ II. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive in their
simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal colors; nor do I know
any buildings more noble than those of the Pisan Romanesque, in which
they are habitually employed; and certainly none so graceful, so
attractive, so enduringly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this
pure and graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, "a practice more
destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:" and
modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament of
which the reader has had one specimen above, Fig. III., p. 61, and with
which half the large buildings in London are disfigured, or else
traversed by mere straight lines, as, for instance, the back of the
Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of
accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would
have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of
white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have
free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old
and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on
the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left,
modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.
§ III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the
division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when
they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a
natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which,
probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot
construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars.
But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and
labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is
_weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away
from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged,
straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of
colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in
proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly
agreeable when marked by variations of hue.
§ IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally
true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere
horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or
masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be
employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold.
When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into
chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study
in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of
Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps
for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch,
Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the
iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the
inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the
variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.
§ V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects
to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication.
There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of
something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French
eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like
a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants
for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as
worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring
it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought
it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of
refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the
worm cast or coprolite.
§ VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least
to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication,
make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by
sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of
stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own
mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not
think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock,
glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen
bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate
sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red
mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities;
spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy
coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she
wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs
to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and
iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance.
§ VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to
institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere
inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief.
The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of
producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the
building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude
bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate
panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted
of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and
massive substance, and of broad surface, and that architecture instantly
declined when linear design was substituted for massive, and the sense
of weight of wall was lost in a wilderness of upright or undulating
rods. Of the richest and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid
work, as practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I
have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX. and XXI.
[Illustration: Fig. LXI.]
§ VIII. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall veil,
peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted for surface
decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these spaces are found the
most majestic instances of its treatment, even to late periods. One of
these is the spandril space, or the filling between any two arches,
commonly of the shape _a_, Fig. LXI.; the half of which, or the flank
filling of any arch, is called a spandril. In Chapter XVII., on Filling
of Apertures, the reader will find another of these spaces noted, called
the tympanum, and commonly of the form _b_, Fig. LXI.: and finally, in
Chapter XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between an
arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to the form _c_,
Fig. LXI.
§ IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject
for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most
essential points respecting them.
(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of
the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by
piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of
the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the
spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps,"
Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square
spandrils, with its circles foliated.
[Illustration: Plate XIV.
SPANDRIL DECORATION
THE DUCAL PALACE.]
Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it is merely
suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall surface, as in the
plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils of the Ducal Palace at
Venice. It was evidently intended that all the spandrils of this
building should be decorated in this manner, but only two of them seem
to have been completed.[82]
§ X. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly reduced to four
heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the Chapter-house of Salisbury,
and very superbly along the west front of Bourges, the best Gothic
spandrils I know. 2. Radiated foliage, more or less referred to the
centre, or to the bottom of the spandril for its origin; single figures
with expanded wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and
4, ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as in
Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster
Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril fillings composed
of colossal human figures reclining on the sides of the arch, in
precarious lassitude; but these cannot come under the head of wall veil
decoration.
§ XI. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic architecture, this
is for the most part a detached slab of stone, having no constructional
relation to the rest of the building. The plan of its sculpture is
therefore quite arbitrary; and, as it is generally in a conspicuous
position, near the eye, and above the entrance, it is almost always
charged with a series of rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and
consecutive in subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very
nearly the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter is
itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in the same
manner.
§ XII. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it which have been
noted respecting the spandril, with one more of some importance. The
chief difficulty in treating a gable lies in the excessive sharpness of
its upper point. It may, indeed, on its outside apex, receive a finial;
but the meeting of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is
necessarily both harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed.
The most beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this
difficulty was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual,
downwards, at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the
offensive lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being
completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the Northern and
Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville and the tombs of Verona.
§ XIII. I believe there is little else to be noted of general laws of
ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to consider its
concentration in the shaft.
Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion to its
work,--its exact expression of necessary strength. If this has been
truly attained, it will hardly need, in some cases hardly bear, more
decoration than is given to it by its own rounding and taper curvatures;
for, if we cut ornaments in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we
leave them in relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from
its base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from
necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature, and
of high decorative value.
§ XIV. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations are
admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are wrong upon
those of middle size. For, when the shaft is enormous, incisions or
sculpture on its sides (unless colossal also), do not materially
interfere with the sweep of its curve, nor diminish the efficiency of
its sustaining mass. And if it be diminutive, its sustaining function is
comparatively of so small importance, the injurious results of failure
so much less, and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament or
outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle size, and
impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts drawn in Plate XIII., of
the "Seven Lamps," though given as examples of extravagance, are yet
pleasing in the general effect of the arcade they support; being each
some six or seven feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as
well as unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.
§ XV. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft decoration, we
must ascertain the proportions representative of the mean bulk of
shafts: they might easily be calculated from a sufficient number of
examples, but it may perhaps be assumed, for our present general
purpose, that the mean standard would be of some twenty feet in height,
by eight or nine in circumference: then this will be the size on which
decoration is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more and
more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above, or fall
farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts will both be
found to look blank unless they receive some chasing or imagery; blank,
whether they support a chair or table on the one side, or sustain a
village on the ridge of an Egyptian architrave on the other.
§ XVI. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there are no
examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader can study in Mr.
Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I imagine, as if he were beneath
their shadow, one of their chief merits, as examples of method, being
the perfect decision and visibility of their designs at the necessary
distance: contrast with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the
Trajan pillar, much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and
yet themselves untraceable, if not invisible.
§ XVII. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which has ever been
accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which, indeed, gave the effect
of a succession of unequal lines of shade, but lost much of the repose
of the cylindrical gradation. The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean
multiplication and deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a
sharp ridge between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft
altogether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact, wrong in
principle; they are an elaborate weakening[83] of the shaft, exactly
opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form, which is the result of a
group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when
special service is given to each member.
[Illustration: Fig. LXII.]
§ XVIII. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be
wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft
be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that
barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply
cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity.
Thus, in Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the
lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a
shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of
some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all
the shafts been like it, the façade would have been entirely spoiled;
the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft
of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft
ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in
Plate XII. of the "Seven Lamps"). The same rule would condemn the
Caryatid; which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both
for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek
schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft
ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as
in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in
London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces
about them, as at the entrance of Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or
tying drapery round them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed
(Chap. 20, § VII.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there
is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the most
beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender pillars,
encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of the Baptistery and
Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the Pisan and Lucchese churches; but
the varieties of sculpture and inlaying, with which the small
Romanesque shafts, whether Italian or Northern, are adorned when they
occupy important positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable.
Mr. Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so
employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on early
mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration of the shaft with
the adoption of the spiral contour. This latter is often all the
decoration which is needed, and none can be more beautiful; it has been
spoken against, like many other good and lovely things, because it has
been too often used in extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting
of the pillars in Raffaelle's "Beautiful gate." But that extravagant
condition was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders kept
their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example from St. Zeno,
in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn from the base of the shaft
to its head, and nearly always observing what I hold to be an imperative
law, that no twisted shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two
distinct members, twined with each other. I suppose they followed their
own right feeling in doing this, and had never studied natural shafts;
but the type they _might_ have followed was caught by one of the few
great painters who were not affected by the evil influence of the
fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in the frescoes of the Ricardi
Palace, among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone
shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. LXII.
Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of
most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped
shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find
models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous,
as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the
earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the
shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is
fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with
grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with
flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Vide end of Appendix 20.
[83] Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, p. 251.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.
§ I. There are no features to which the attention of architects has been
more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these crowning members of
the wall and shaft; and it would be vain to endeavor, within any
moderate limits, to give the reader any idea of the various kinds of
admirable decoration which have been invented for them. But, in
proportion to the effort and straining of the fancy, have been the
extravagances into which it has occasionally fallen; and while it is
utterly impossible severally to enumerate the instances either of its
success or its error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one
and the causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances,
the natural channels by which invention is here to be directed or
confined, and afterwards remarking the places where, in real practice,
it has broken bounds.
§ II. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting the
cornice and capital, established above in the Chapters on Construction.
Of these I must, however, recapitulate thus much:--
1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to the _slope_
of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great orders; in one of
which the ornament is convex, and in the other concave. (Ch. VI., § V.)
2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting the
cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular shaft with the
square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented in Fig. XXII.,
p. 119.
3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or simple
capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus. (Ch. IX., §
XXIV.)
We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe the treatment
of the two great orders of the cornice; then their gathering into the
five of the capital; then the addition of the secondary cornice to the
capital when formed.
§ III. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
distinguished in Fig. V., p. 69.; and it was mentioned in the same place
that a third family arose from their combination. We must deal with the
two great opposed groups first.
They were distinguished in Fig. V. by circular curves drawn on opposite
sides of the same line. But we now know that in these smaller features
the circle is usually the least interesting curve that we can use; and
that it will be well, since the capital and cornice are both active in
their expression, to use some of the more abstract natural lines. We
will go back, therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking
the same piece of it we had before, _x y_, Plate VII., we will apply it
to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice, then
without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures, _a_, _b_, _c_,
_d_, Plate XV., the dotted line is at the same slope, and represents an
average profile of the root of cornices (_a_, Fig. V., p. 69); the curve
of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case, first with its
roundest curvature up, then with its roundest curvature down; and we
have thus the two varieties, _a_ and _b_, of the concave family, and _c_
and _d_, of the convex family.
[Illustration: Plate XV.
CORNICE PROFILES.]
§ IV. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices in the
world; represent them, I mean, as central types: for in any of the
profiles an infinite number of slopes may be given to the dotted line of
the root (which in these four figures is always at the same angle); and
on each of these innumerable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may
be fitted, from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore,
and every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if the
reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation of the
number of possible and beautiful cornices which may be based upon these
four types or roots, and among which the architect has leave to
choose according to the circumstances of his building and the method of
its composition, let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write
ciphers after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.
§ V. None of the types are, however, found in perfection of curvature,
except in the best work. Very often cornices are worked with circular
segments (with a noble, massive effect, for instance, in St. Michele of
Lucca), or with rude approximation to finer curvature, especially _a_,
Plate XV., which occurs often so small as to render it useless to take
much pains upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition
represented by 1 of the series 1-6, in Plate XV., on many of the
Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more developed form
it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital in the later Venetian
Gothic, and in much of the best Northern Gothic. It also represents the
Corinthian capital, in which the curvature is taken from the bell to be
added in some excess to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of
all simple profiles of cornice and capital.
§ VI. _b_ is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this evident
reason, that while _a_ is the natural condition of a line rooted and
strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent weight, or nodding over
in freedom, _b_ is yielding at the base and rigid at the summit. It has,
however, some exquisite uses, especially in combination, as the reader
may see by glancing in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in
Plate XV.
§ VII. _c_ is the leading convex or Doric type, as _a_ is the leading
concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek Doric is exactly
what the relation of _a_ is to the Corinthian; that is to say, the
curvature must be taken from the straighter limb of the curve and added
to the bolder bend, giving it a sudden turn inwards (as in the
Corinthian a nod outwards), as the reader may see in the capital of the
Parthenon in the British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is
_all but_ a right line.[84] But these Doric and Corinthian lines are
mere varieties of the great families which are represented by the
central lines _a_ and _c_, including not only the Doric capital, but all
the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve of _c_,
which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.
§ VIII. _d_ is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § XX.) was
invented to replace the antique: it is the representative of the great
Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice and capital, and, next
to the profile _a_, the most important of the four, being the best
profile for the convex capital, as _a_ is for the concave; _a_ being the
best expression of an elastic line inserted vertically in the shaft, and
_d_ of an elastic line inserted horizontally and rising to meet vertical
pressure.
If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of trees, he
will find them commonly dividing into these two families, _a_ and _d_:
they rise out of the trunk and nod from it as _a_, or they spring with
sudden curvature out from it, and rise into sympathy with it, as at _d_;
but they only accidentally display tendencies to the lines _b_ or _c_.
Boughs which fall as they spring from the tree also describe the curve
_d_ in the plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their
junction with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending out
into rounder curvature.
§ IX. These then being the two primal groups, we have next to note the
combined group, formed by the concave and convex lines joined in various
proportions of curvature, so as to form together the reversed or ogee
curve, represented in one of its most beautiful states by the glacier
line _a_, on Plate VII. I would rather have taken this line than any
other to have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
Matterhorn side, _e f_, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep the
slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms; and applying
this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions to that line, I
have the types of the four cornices or capitals of the third family,
_e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, on Plate XV.
These are, however, general types only thus far, that their line is
composed of one short and one long curve, and that they represent the
four conditions of treatment of every such line; namely, the longest
curve concave in _e_ and _f_, and convex in _g_ and _h_; and the point
of contrary flexure set high in _e_ and _g_, and low in _f_ and _h_. The
relative depth of the arcs, or nature of their curvature, cannot be
taken into consideration without a complexity of system which my space
does not admit.
Of the four types thus constituted, _e_ and _f_ are of great importance;
the other two are rarely used, having an appearance of weakness in
consequence of the shortest curve being concave: the profiles _e_ and
_f_, when used for cornices, have usually a fuller sweep and somewhat
greater equality between the branches of the curve; but those here given
are better representatives of the structure applicable to capitals and
cornices indifferently.
§ X. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles _e_ or _f_,
another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to the upper or
lower members of the cornice or capital. I do not consider this addition
as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective
part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and
the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below:
still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of
ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We shall
obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the Matterhorn
side, of which before we took only a fragment. The entire line _e_ to
_g_ on Plate VII., is evidently composed of three curves of unequal
lengths, which if we call the shortest 1, the intermediate one 2, and
the longest 3, are there arranged in the order 1, 3, 2, counting
upwards. But evidently we might also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3,
and 2, 1, 3, giving us three distinct lines, altogether independent of
position, which being applied to one general dotted slope will each give
four cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important are
those which have the shortest curve convex: they are given in light
relief from _k_ to _p_, Plate XV., and, by turning the page upside down,
the other six will be seen in dark relief, only the little upright bits
of shadow at the bottom are not to be considered as parts of them, being
only admitted in order to give the complete profile of the more
important cornices in light.
§ XI. In these types, as in _e_ and _f_, the only general condition is,
that their line shall be composed of three curves of different lengths
and different arrangements (the depth of arcs and radius of curvatures
being unconsidered). They are arranged in three couples, each couple
being two positions of the same entire line; so that numbering the
component curves in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will
read--
_k_ 1, 2, 3,
_l_ 3, 2, 1,
_m_ 1, 3, 2,
_n_ 2, 3, 1,
_o_ 2, 1, 3,
_p_ 3, 1, 2.
_m_ and _n_, which are the _Matterhorn line_, are the most beautiful and
important of all the twelve; _k_ and _l_ the next; _o_ and _p_ are used
only for certain conditions of flower carving on the surface. The
reverses (dark) of _k_ and _l_ are also of considerable service; the
other four hardly ever used in good work.
§ XII. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component series, we
should have forty-eight more cornices: but there is no use in pursuing
the system further, as such arrangements are very rare and easily
resolved into the simpler types with certain arbitrary additions fitted
to their special place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the
main curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the type
_e_, the longest curve, _i.e._, the lowest, having deepest curvature,
and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its extremities, the
convex limb by a concave, the concave by a convex.
§ XIII. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines into
which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their best examples
unite two such profiles in a mode which we cannot understand till we
consider the further ornament with which the profiles are charged. And
in doing this we must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the
nature of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting them.
[Illustration: Plate XVI.
CORNICE DECORATION.]
§ XIV. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a few of the most
characteristic mediæval examples of the treatment of the simplest
cornice profiles: the uppermost, _a_, is the pure root of cornices from
St. Mark's. The second, _d_, is the Christian Doric cornice, here
lettered _d_ in order to avoid confusion, its profile being _d_ of Plate
XV. in bold development, and here seen on the left-hand side, truly
drawn, though filled up with the ornament to show the mode in which the
angle is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, _b_, is _b_ of
Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office was in
the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see sculptured
ornament at the required distance. (The other two simple profiles, _a_
and _c_ of Plate XV., would be decorated in the same manner, but require
no example here, for the profile _a_ is of so frequent occurrence that
it will have a page to itself alone in the next volume; and c may be
seen over nearly every shop in London, being that of the common Greek
egg cornice.) The fourth, _e_ in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice,
passing from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: _f_ is a fully developed
Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and _g_ the
perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan Romanesque
traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest Northern element, the
Lombardic vitality restrained by classical models. I consider it a
perfect cornice, and of the highest order.
§ XV. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there are two main
points to be noted; the first, that they all, except _b_, are distinctly
rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and spring to the top. This
arrangement is constant in all the best cornices and capitals; and it is
essential to the expression of the supporting power of both. It is
exactly opposed to the system of _running_ cornices and _banded_[85]
capitals, in which the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is
twined round them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital,
and the foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen from a
mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which are proper to
archivolts, jambs, &c., to the features which have definite functions of
support. A tendril may nobly follow the outline of an arch, but must not
creep along a cornice, nor swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential
to the expression of these features that their ornament should have an
elastic and upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is
that of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement of its
farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and ascendant
strength like that of foliage.
There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we shall see
a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of the rule itself, we
may see constant licenses taken by the great designers, and momentary
violations of it, like those above spoken of, respecting other
ornamental laws--violations which are for our refreshment, and for
increase of delight in the general observance; and this is one of the
peculiar beauties of the cornice _g_, which, rooting itself in strong
central clusters, suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as
the drooping outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the
very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any of its
expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above the languid
leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and stronger than the rest
of the plant as the falling leaves are weaker. Cover this with your
finger, and the cornice falls to pieces, like a bouquet which has been
untied.
§ XVI. There are some instances in which, though the real arrangement is
that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up and down, the positions
of the leaves give nearly as much elasticity and organisation to the
cornice, as if they had been rightly rooted; and others, like _b_, where
the reversed portion of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the
general expression of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice
will, nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and
though we may often be called upon to admire designs of these kinds,
which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced, the reader will
find that they are both of rare occurrence, and significative of
declining style; while the greater mass of the banded capitals are heavy
and valueless, mere aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round
the extremity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of
melted ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the metal,
and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its extremity. We have
many capitals of this kind in England: some of the worst and heaviest in
the choir of York. The later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the
same kind of effect, but owing to another cause: for their structure is
quite pure, and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of their
organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices which are
actually composed by running tendrils, throwing off leaves into oval
interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm
in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive
of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice
of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the "Seven
Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice
is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that
which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of
the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of
those proper to the foundation.
§ XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the
designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom
of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in
connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_,
_d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference
in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical
mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are,
in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow
mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the
kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle
ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or
Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work,
but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover
large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his
dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness
still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to
spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not
endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an
edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's
own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of
it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see
something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_),
will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will
inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but
the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in
handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.
§ XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices,
besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek
honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg
and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but
utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at
least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows,
nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are
all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of
nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those
Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the
tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far
as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest
possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the
true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression
from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance
from the eye, and in almost any light.
§ XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and
naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his
works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look
back to what I said in Chap. 1. § XX. of this dealing of hers, and
invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (§ VIII.)
respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the
evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
how the whole is beginning to come together.
§ XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and
_d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is
also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the
transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already
singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of
leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the
well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old
incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the
proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on
the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface
of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making.
§ XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of
Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits
the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines
are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions
have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed
completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised
into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower
between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most cornices of the
time.)
But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while the
naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the classical
formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately numbered, and
sternly set in their places; they are leaves in office, and dare not
stir nor wave. They have the shapes of leaves, but not the functions,
"having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof." What is
the meaning of this?
§ XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter, and
you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian
Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the
Formalism of the Papacy,--the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its
principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means
Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already
preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the
Renaissance.[86]
§ XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (_g_). That is Protestantism,--a
slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling
leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through,
and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap
in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening
straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the
leaves lie in the dust.
Now, observe. The cornice _f_ represents Heathenism and Papistry,
animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the
life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are
Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the
Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's
dress,--Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice _g_ has the
Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of
Classicalism mingled with it--the good of classicalism; as much method
and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The
continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the
simplicity of the great profile,--all these are the healthy classical
elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered
liberty.
§ XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The
leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are
of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves
in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end.
Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a
classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work;
and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would
have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in
one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or
bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism
and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative
purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has
been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working
of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law
in its members warring against the law of its mind.
§ XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both
of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question
proposed in § XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile
which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to §
XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in
the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other
in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek
Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine,
and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediæval
ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the
first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIII.]
§ XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but
in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its
junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig.
LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a
bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a
projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other
by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From
these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we
shall pursue in succession.
§ XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The
chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and
2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the
profile of cornice used is _a_ of Plate XV., or a refined condition of
_b_ of Fig. V., p. 69, above. Now, keeping the same refined profile,
substitute the condition of it, _f_ of Fig. V. (and there accounted
for), above the roll here, and you have 3, Plate XV. This superadded
abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you
know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest
chamfer on it (_a_ or _b_, Fig. LIII., page 287, above), but on the
visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XV. (the top stone being
made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is
the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by
tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with
this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the
top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a
series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:--but
how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three
centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so
stays.
In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in
order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about
intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one
hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which
are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5
and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in
cornices to the latest times.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIV.]
§ XXVIII. Second group (c, Fig. LXIII.). If the lower angle, which was
quickly felt to be hard, be rounded off, we have the form _a_, Fig.
LXIV. The front of the curved line is then decorated, as we have seen;
and the termination of the decorated surface marked by an incision, as
in an ordinary chamfer, as at _b_ here. This I believe to have been the
simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are
farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over
them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in _a_ and _d_ of Plate XVI.,
the decoration is _incised_ from the outside profile, without any
suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour. But in the
leaf cornices which follow, the decoration is represented as _overlaid_
on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour of its
own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice, but beneath
which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen or suggested, which
terminates all the incisions of the chisel. This under profile will
often be found to be some condition of the type _a_ or _b_, Fig. LXIV.;
and the leaf profile to be another ogee with its fullest curve up
instead of down, lapping over the cornice edge above, so that the entire
profile might be considered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like
packed herrings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XV. exemplify
this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed in the
same manner, but of which I had not marked the innermost profile, and
which I have given here only to complete the series which, from 7 to 12
inclusive, exemplifies the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from
its boldest projection in the cornice to its most modest service in the
capital. This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from the tomb
of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's, 8 from a canopy over a
door of about the same period, 9 from the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese
Venier (1411), 10 from that of Pietro Cornaro (1361),[88] and 11 from
that of Andrea Morosini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and
Paola, all these being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital
of the Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.
§ XXIX. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the three examples,
10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8, or 9. This
difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired that the
reader should theoretically consider the capital as a concentration of
the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the cornice is, on
the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of
the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its separate
character and importance require examination apart) is nothing more than
an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves on the
Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been
derived, like _e_ in Plate XVI., in which the acanthus outline has
become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the
centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their
forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself.
Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile
is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital;
while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either
actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the
Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan
water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly
the same.
§ XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile
which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note
what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital
itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the
other.
Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented
the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_
of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate
XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so
many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied
simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_.
Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and
slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect
described in Chapter IX. § XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate
XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or
out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well
be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present
permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will
easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples
that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put
before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his
Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched
upon, in the disposition of the abacus.
§ XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the
rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of
Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it,
but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two
of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus
oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of
the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching
of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very
remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus.
§ XXXII. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple but
perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example
fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size
and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of
smaller area (compare Chap. VIII., § XIII.), and all the expansion
necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out
of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate XV.,
used for the capital itself, with _c_ of Fig. LXIII. used for the
abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a
first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the
capital profile is the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V., with the added
roll. This capital is somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly
straight, some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it
is all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
of order _d_, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as in
Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister of the duomo
of Verona.
[Illustration: Plate XVII.
CAPITALS CONCAVE GROUP.]
[Illustration: Fig. LXV.]
§ XXXIII. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents an exquisitely
finished example of the same type, from St. Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2,
in Plate II., the plan of the shafts was given, but I inadvertently
reversed their position: in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate
II. must be held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation of 4
of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed. This method of
reduction is that of order _d_ in Fig. XXII., but the peculiarity of
treatment of their truncation is highly interesting. Fig. LXV.
represents the plans of the capitals at the base, the shaded parts being
the bells: the open line, the roll with its connecting band. The bell of
the one, it will be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the
angle truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as
uprightly; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the farther
incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave
truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen
execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven
into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a
chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written
his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE
SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.
§ XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of this
kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the
idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing
leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four
leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves
which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the
most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented;
represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta
columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in
the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century,
while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old
Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall
enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be
noted here.
§ XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two, and
only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the
Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex
contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V.,
p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively
concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple
contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation
to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph
introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the
chiselling of which the characters described above, § XXVIII., which
are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the
families of the capital.
§ XXXVI. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must clearly have
relief of some kind, and must present projecting surfaces separated by
incisions. But it is a very material question whether the contour,
hitherto broadly considered as that of the entire bell, shall be that of
the _outside_ of the projecting and relieved ornaments, or of the
_bottoms of the incisions_ which divide them; whether, that is to say,
we shall first cut out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then
cut farther into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms
in relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell, we
shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards work into
the relieved ornament.
§ XXXVII. Now, look back to Fig. V., p. 65. Clearly, if to ornament the
already hollowed profile, _b_, we cut deep incisions into it, we shall
so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly lose all its supporting
power. Clearly, also, if to ornament the already bulging profile _c_ we
were to leave projecting pieces of stone outside of it, we should nearly
destroy all its relation to the original sloping line X, and produce an
unseemly and ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile.
It is evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can afford
to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of destroying
its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition of the
sculpture, and the two great families of capitals are therefore
distinguished, not merely by their concave and convex contours, but by
the ornamentation being left outside the bell of the one, and cut into
the bell of the other; so that, in either case, the ornamental portions
will fall _between the dotted lines_ at _e_, Fig. V., and the pointed
oval, or vesica piscis, which is traced by them, may be called the Limit
of ornamentation.
§ XXXVIII. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of the
ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction in its
position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in the Doric
profile, _c_ of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be composed of the
surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation must be close and
united enough to form, or at least suggest, a continuous surface; it
must, therefore, be rich in quantity and close in aggregation; otherwise
it will destroy the massy character of the profile it adorns, and
approximate it to its opposite, the concave. On the other hand, the
ornament left projecting from the concave, must be sparing enough, and
dispersed enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath
it; otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate it
to its opposite, the convex.
§ XXXIX. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the sculptor of
the concave profile must leave masses of rough stone prepared for his
outer ornament, and cannot finish them at once, but must complete the
cutting of the smooth bell beneath first, and then return to the
projecting masses (for if he were to finish these latter first, they
would assuredly, if delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since,
I say, he must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite symmetrical
order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving beforehand all that
he has to do, will probably render him not only more orderly in its
arrangement, but more skilful and accurate in its execution, than if he
could finish all as he worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the
convex profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he makes in
it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at liberty to roam over
the surface in perfect freedom, with light incisions or with deep;
finishing here, suggesting there, or perhaps in places leaving the
surface altogether smooth. It is ten to one, therefore, but that, if he
yield to the temptation, he becomes irregular in design, and rude in
handling; and we shall assuredly find the two families of capitals
distinguished, the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and
exquisitely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused, and
rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while we shall
often have to admire the disciplined precision of the one, and as often
to regret the irregular rudeness of the other, we shall not fail to find
balancing qualities in both. The severity of the disciplinarian capital
represses the power of the imagination; it gradually degenerates into
Formalism; and the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand
of accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established forms,
and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license of the
other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the imagination:
the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling,
wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as
well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with
interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its
thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster.
[Illustration: Plate XVIII.
CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.]
§ XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast
aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with
their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real
orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that
these two great and real orders are representative of the two great
influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of
Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of
degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.
§ XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most
elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a
larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the
two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower
capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two
in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII.
are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both
have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time
when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left
square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the
convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting;
the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly
relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different
lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their
present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the
cornice running round the whole façade. The zigzagged capital is highly
curious, and in its place very effective and beautiful, although one of
the exceptions which it was above noticed that we should sometimes find
to the law stated in § XV. above.
[Illustration: Fig. LXVI.]
§ XLII. The lower capital, which is also of the true convex school,
exhibits one of the conditions of the spurred type, _e_ of Fig. XXII.,
respecting which one or two points must be noticed.
If we were to take up the plan of the simple spur, represented at _e_ in
Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia leaf, as we did the
spur of the base, we should have for the head of our capital a plan like
Fig. LXVI., which is actually that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco
de' Turchi at Venice; with this only difference, that the intermediate
curves between the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are
not so, here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are therefore
given to the intermediate curves which fit them for this ornament; the
inside shaded space being the head of the shaft, and the outer, the
abacus. The reader has in Fig. LXVI. a characteristic type of the plans
of the spurred capitals, generally preferred by the sculptors of the
convex school, but treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being
cut into animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type _c_ of Fig. XXII.
is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope, approximating in
general effect to many conditions of the real spurred type, _e_, but
totally differing from them in principle.
[Illustration: Fig. LXVII.]
[Illustration: Fig. LXVIII.]
§ XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is far more
complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case from the original
Corinthian. Its plan may be generally represented by Fig. LXVII. The
spur itself is carved into a curling tendril or concave leaf, which
supports the projecting angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides
fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other
ornament in their centres. The mediæval architects often put another
square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig.
LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented,
are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as
assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and
meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus.
§ XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St. Mark's, and
singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with
the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's, in Plate XI. In other
respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with
subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred
capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. LXVIII.: the
inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the
bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship's bow,
with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with
arborescent ornament.
§ XLV. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the
treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader's
mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the
differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal
object to develope throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in
London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by a simple,
yet somewhat curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of
London, as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and the
north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of newly-built
houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage is the exact form of
the typical capital of the convex school; the Corinthian capital,
within, is a finished and highly decorated example of the concave. The
space between the cage and capital is the limit of ornamentation.
§ XLVI. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration is
inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles, 13 and 14, on Plate
XV. If they will glance along the line of sections from 1 to 6, they
will see that the profile 13 is their final development, with a
superadded cornice for its abacus. It is taken from a capital in a very
important ruin of a palace, near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to
be described; the projection, outside of its principal curve, is the
profile of its _superadded_ leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one
of the simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group.
§ XLVII. The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main shaft of the
northern portico of St. Mark's, the most finished example I ever met
with of the convex family, to which, in spite of the central inward bend
of its profile, it is marked as distinctly belonging, by the bold convex
curve at its root, springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian
Doric cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile,
which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its stem. Farther, in
the profile 13, the innermost line is that of the bell; but in the
profile 14, the outermost line is that of the bell, and the inner line
is the limit of the incisions of the chisel, in undercutting a
reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding a flower like a lily; most
ingeniously, and, I hope, justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico
to have been intended for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of
Solomon, which Hiram made, with "nets of checker work, and wreaths of
chain work for the chapiters that were on the top of the pillars ... and
the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in
the porch." (1 Kings, vii. 17, 19.)
§ XLVIII. On this exquisite capital there is imposed an abacus of the
profile with which we began our investigation long ago, the profile _a_
of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by the cornice already given, _a_, of
Plate XVI.: and therefore we have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the
summary of the results of our investigation, from its beginning to its
close: the type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its
emergence from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the
superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement of the bell
of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits of chiselling. I
cannot express the exquisite refinements of the curves on the small
scale of Plate XV.; I will give them more accurately in a larger
engraving; but the scale on which they are here given will not prevent
the reader from perceiving, and let him note it thoughtfully, that the
outer curve of the noble capital is the one which was our first example
of associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the whole of
our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line than the three which
I at first chose, the simplest of those which Nature set by chance
before me; and that this lily, of the delicate Venetian marble, has but
been wrought, by the highest human art, into the same line which the
clouds disclose, when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of
the Matterhorn.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that
capital is therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented
by the dotted line.
[85] The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different
sense; which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to
the Impost, and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for
the general reader, who need not trouble himself about the matter.)
[86] The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the
one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes,
as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap.
XXV., § XVII.) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no
contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the
change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate XII., to be one
from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice _f_ to the cornice
_g_, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it,
both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time.
But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same,
distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of
both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of
indignation.
[87] The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to
its profile, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower
member of the shaft head; and that therefore the small Greek egg
cornices are utterly incapable of becoming capitals till they have
totally changed their form and depth. The Renaissance architects,
who never obtained hold of a right principle but they made it worse
than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the idea of turning the
cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the necessity of the
accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster heads formed of
small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads of shafts,
the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and arrow
moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
London.
[88] I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute
accuracy to within a year or two, is here of no importance.
[89] Chap. I. § XIX., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. § V.
[90] Chap. I., § XIX.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.
[Illustration: Plate XIX.
ARCHIVOLT DECORATION.
AT VERONA.]
§ I. If the windows and doors of some of our best northern Gothic
buildings were built up, and the ornament of their archivolts concealed,
there would often remain little but masses of dead wall and unsightly
buttress; the whole vitality of the building consisting in the graceful
proportions or rich mouldings of its apertures. It is not so in the
south, where, frequently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the
variegated wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally dependent
upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration. These, though in
their richness of minor variety they defy all exemplification, may be
very broadly generalized.
Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration, nor can be;
it has no organism to direct its ornament, and therefore may receive any
kind and degree of ornament, according to its position. In a Greek
temple, it has meagre horizontal lines; in a Romanesque church, it
becomes a row of upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become
anything else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natural
organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly
definable.
§ II. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we considered the
arch to be cut straight through the wall; so that, if half built, it
would have the appearance at _a_, Fig. LXIX. But in the chapter on Form
of Apertures, we found that the side of the arch, or jamb of the
aperture, might often require to be bevelled, so as to give the section
_b_, Fig. LXIX. It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of
voussoirs were used, one over another, it would be easier to leave
those beneath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
junction with those outside. Whether influenced by this facility, or by
decorative instinct, the early northern builders often substitute for
the bevel the third condition, _c_, of Fig. LXIX.; so that, of the three
forms in that figure, _a_ belongs principally to the south, _c_ to the
north, and _b_ indifferently to both.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIX.]
§ III. If the arch in the northern building be very deep, its depth will
probably be attained by a succession of steps, like that in _c_; and the
richest results of northern archivolt decoration are entirely based on
the aggregation of the ornament of these several steps; while those of
the south are only the complete finish and perfection of the ornament of
one. In this ornament of the single arch, the points for general note
are very few.
§ IV. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
architrave,[91] and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but such an
architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the latter become
semicircular, but their importance and value remain exactly the same;
their continuity is preserved across all the voussoirs, and the joints
and functions of the latter are studiously concealed. As the builders
get accustomed to the arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed
of its structure: the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently,
and fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an
entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the circular
and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave lines get
worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs; being permitted to
stay at all only on condition of their dressing themselves in mediæval
costume, as in the plate opposite.
§ V. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture of the
architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse parties on
these terms: That the architrave shall entirely dismiss its inner three
meagre lines, and leave the space of them to the voussoirs, to display
themselves after their manner; but that, in return for this concession,
the architrave shall have leave to expand the small cornice which
usually terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of the
British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put brackets under
it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark with a bold shadow the
terminal line of the voussoirs. This condition is seen in the arch from
St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above.
§ VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined, and
victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its
classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone;
while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced
to disappear altogether. But the voussoirs then concede, on the other
hand, so much of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of
foliage or animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the
arch. In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running
through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining sometimes
to the one, sometimes to the other, and various kinds of truce or
reconciliation being effected between them: sometimes merely formal,
sometimes honest and affectionate, but with no regular succession in
time. The greatest victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice,
and receive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited by its
own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early apse of Murano.