the Canal, the Dario Palace, Gothic style; the Venier Palace, which
reveals itself by one corner with its ornaments, its precious marbles
and its medalions, Lombard style; the Fine-Arts, classic façade by
the side of the ancient School of Charity and surmounted by a figure
of Venice riding on a lion; the Contarini Palace, of Scamozzi’s
architecture; the Rezzonico Palace, with three orders superimposed; the
triple Giustiniani Palace, in the taste of the Middle Ages, inhabited
by Signor Natale Schiavoni, a descendant of the celebrated painter
Schiavoni, who has a picture-gallery and a beautiful daughter, the
living reproduction of a picture painted by her ancestor; the Foscari
Palace, recognizable by its lower door, its two rows of little columns
supporting the ogives and the trefoils, where formerly lived those
sovereigns who visited Venice, and now abandoned; the Balbi Palace,
from the balcony of which the princes leaned to watch the regatta which
took place on the Grand Canal with so much pomp and brilliancy during
the heyday of the Republic; the Pisani Palace, in the German style
of the beginning of the Fifteenth Century; and the Tiepolo Palace,
quite smart and relatively modern, with its two elegant pyramids. To
the right, very near the European Hotel, there stands between two
large buildings a delicious little palace, composed of a window and a
balcony; but what a window and what a balcony! a lace-work of stone:
scrolls, guilloches, and open-work that one would not believe it
possible to execute except by a cutting-machine and a piece of paper.
I regretted that I did not have 25,000 francs about me to buy it, for
that is all they asked.
A little farther, still ascending, you find the Palace Corner della
Cà Grande, which dates from 1532, one of Sansovino’s best; Grassi,
to-day the Emperor’s inn, the marble stairway of which is garnished
with handsome orange trees in pots; Corner-Spinelli, whose marble base
is surrounded by a double fretwork of fine effect and which is to-day
the Post Office; and Farsetti, with its columned peristyle and its
long gallery with little columns occupying all the façade, where the
municipality is lodged. We could say, as Don Ruy-Gomez da Silva says
to Charles V. in _Hernani_, when he shows him the portraits of
his ancestors: “_J’en passe, et des meilleurs._” We ask, however,
attention for the Loredan Palace and the ancient dwelling of Enrico
Dandolo, the conqueror of Constantinople. Between these palaces there
are some worthy houses, whose chimneys in the form of turbans, towers,
and vases of flowers, break the great lines of architecture very
appropriately.
Ascending always, you meet on the left the Corner della Regina Palace,
so named on account of the Queen Conaro, whom Parisians know through
Halévy’s opera, _La Reine de Chypre_, in which Madame Stoltz
played such a fine _rôle_. I do not remember if the scenery of
MM. Séchan, Dieterle and Despléchin resembled it; it could have been
without sacrificing anything, because the architecture of Domenico
Rossi is of great elegance. The sumptuous palace of Queen Cornaro is
now a pawn shop, and the humble rags of misfortune and the jewels of
improvidence come to heap themselves here beneath the rich decorations
which should not fall into ruins: for to-day it does not suffice to be
beautiful, it is necessary to be useful.
The College of the Armenians, which is a short distance from here, is
an admirable building by Baldassare de Longhena, of a rich, solid and
imposing architecture. It is the ancient Pesaro Palace.
To the right there rises the Palazzo della Cà d’Oro, one of the most
charming of the Grand Canal. It belonged to Mademoiselle Taglioni, who
had it restored with the most intelligent care. It is all embroidered,
all denticulated, all cut out in a Grecian, Gothic and Barbarian style,
so fantastic, so light and so aërial that you would say it must have
been made for the nest of a sylph. Mademoiselle Taglioni took pity upon
these poor abandoned palaces. She rented several of them that attracted
her out of pure commiseration for their beauty; three or four were
pointed out to me upon which she had bestowed this charity of repairs.
Look at those blue and white stakes sprinkled with golden
_fleur-de-lis_; they will tell you that the ancient palace
Vendramini Calergi has become a quasi-royal habitation. It is the
dwelling of Her Highness the Duchesse de Berry, and certainly she is
better lodged than at the pavilion Marsan; for this palace, the most
beautiful one in Venice, is a masterpiece of architecture and its
carvings are of a marvellous delicacy. Nothing could be more beautiful
than the groups of children who are supporting shields upon the arches
of the windows. The interior is filled with precious marbles: you
admire above all two porphyry columns of such rare beauty that their
value would pay for the palace.
Although I have been a long time about it, I have not told all. I see
that I have not yet spoken of the Mocenigo palace, where the great
Byron lived; our gondolier however has grazed the marble stairway,
where with her hair flying in the wind, her foot in the water, in the
rain and tempest, the daughter of the people and mistress of Lord Byron
welcomed him upon his return with these tender words: “Great dog of the
Madonna, is it time to go to the Lido?”
The Barbarigo Palace also deserves mention. I have not seen the
twenty-two Titians that are contained within it and which are held
under seal by the Russian consul who has bought them for his master;
but it still possesses some very beautiful pictures, and the carved and
gilded cradle destined for the heir of this noble family,--a cradle
which might be converted into a tomb, for, like most of the ancient
families of Venice, the Barbarigo family is extinct: of the nine
hundred patrician families inscribed in the Golden Book, only about
fifty now remain.
The old caravansary of the Turks, so crowded at the time that Venice
held all the commerce of the Orient and the Indies, presents now two
rows of Arabian arcades, littered and obstructed by hovels that have
pushed themselves up there like unhealthy mushrooms.
[Illustration: SAINT OUEN, FRANCE.]
SAINT OUEN, ROUEN
L. DE FOURCAUD
The Fourteenth Century erected in France four churches of a peculiar
grandeur and magnificence: the Cathedral of Saint Quentin; the abbey of
Saint Bertin, Saint Omer; Saint Nazaire of Carcassonne and Saint Ouen
of Rouen. The first two have disappeared, but the two others have come
down to us almost intact, and both of them derive their disconcerting
basilicas from the end of the Thirteenth Century; Saint Urbain of
Troyes is a piece of stone jewelry.
We shall have less trouble in characterizing briefly the marvellous
building of Saint Ouen, than in describing Notre-Dame (Rouen). The
edifice is longer, less ample, clearer, and more of a unity as far
as the structure is concerned, and it is deprived of those brilliant
accessories which engross the attention. It is, by all odds, superior
in harmony and compactness of the execution and inferior in size.
The one attracts poets, the other is preferred by men of learning.
Everybody will appreciate the subtlety.
Now, first of all and very briefly, here is the history of this abbey.
Upon the ruins of an oratory constructed in this very place by the
indefatigable Saint Victrice about 535, Clotaire erected a large
church dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the last years of
the Seventh Century, Saint Ouen restored it and wished it to be his
sepulchre. According to the _Life_ of that great bishop attributed
to Fridegode, a monk of Canterbury, it was a building of noble
appearance, constructed of square stones in the _Gothic style_.
It is useless to discuss these words, quoted on account of their
curiosity, but which might well be accounted for by some alteration in
the text, and, in any case, have but little meaning for us. After the
appearance of the Northmen, the abbey experienced varied fortunes: it
was sacked and demolished in 841, repaired in 1046 by the Abbé Nicholas
of Normandy, son of Duke Richard III., and it was burned to the ground
several times. A fragment of Nicholas’s apsis at the end of the nave
is preserved under the name of _Chambre aux clercs_: a portion of
the hemicycle arched cul-de-four is ornamented very coarsely, but it is
strongly built.
But to resume: there was no glory for the monks of Saint Benoît here
until the beginning of the Fourteenth Century and the advent of the
Abbé Jean Roussel. This Jean Roussel, born in Quincampoix, near Rouen,
and known, nobody knows why, by the nick-name of Marc d’ Argent, was
a very original personage. Active, discreet, prudent, energetic,
and devoted to everything under his charge, he re-established the
monastic discipline and by the wisdom of his administration doubled the
revenues; and, as Suger did before him at Saint Denis, he resolved to
rebuild his abbey according to the latest developments in architecture.
We do not know who was his master in this work; but certainly it must
have been some clever man who had carefully studied Amiens, Beauvais,
Troyes and Séez. Within a few years, the work was sufficiently advanced
for his conception to have become definitive. His successors had
nothing more to do than to follow out his ideas. Materials were not
stinted. The quarries of Chaumont, Vernon and Saint-Leu furnished their
magnificent calcareous stone, of fine grain mixed with silex. As the
Abbé was never at a loss for funds, it was popularly imagined that he
coined gold, and many a legend exists upon this subject. The truth
is, he knew how to economize with large sums, obtained from the King
important rights regarding the cutting of wood in the forest Verte and
created disinterested good-will around him. In the year 1318, the first
stone was laid, and in the year 1339, when he died, more than 79,936
livres (2,600,000 francs of our money) were paid to the stone-cutters.
The inscription placed on his tomb, destroyed in 1562 by the
Calvinists, described the state in which he left the church, the choir
and the eleven transept chapels comprising the large terminal chapel
were finished: the large pillars of the transept were only lacking the
tower, the two arms of the transept were approaching completion, and
doubtless also the nave was quite advanced.
The Hundred Years’ War retarded the work without actually interrupting
it. We find Charles VI. in 1380 allowing 3,000 livres to the Abbé
Arnaud du Breuil to hasten the work. The portal called _des
Marmousets_ at the south arm of the transept is now given over to
the sculptors. However the hour for rapid achievement has passed. It
is not until 1439 that the two roses of Master Alexandre de Berneval
and his legendary pupil unfold at the extremities of the transept.
Under Admiral d’ Estouteville, Archbishop of Rouen and Abbé of the
monastery, the entrance to the choir was closed by a precious Gothic
rood-screen; but the nave had yet to be finished, and the central
tower and the façade had yet to be done. The Abbé Bohier at the very
last of the Fifteenth Century, finished the building. The delicious
square tower, eighty-two metres high, set off with bays, with gables
and corner buttresses upon which are grafted the flying-buttresses
of the octagonal belfry with the open-worked crown, is of the same
date, the same style, and, perhaps, of the same hand as the _Tour de
Beurre_. We possess the plan of the façade, drawn at this time by
an unknown artist. It recalls the taste of the Normans for the porches
under bell-towers of which few examples are to be found outside of
their province after the Thirteenth Century. This master conceived
two large, square towers placed diagonally, of a most original effect
of perspective, and beneath which opened two lateral porches whose
sheltered arches broke the draughts and were very converging and very
convenient for the entrance and exits in and out of the church of the
several filing processions. We are astonished to think that such a
picturesque arrangement was never carried into effect. The execution
of the plan was never commenced. The two bell-towers had been carried
up to twenty metres and then abandoned. Their dimensions frightened
the architect Grégoire, who in 1840 was charged with enriching Marc
d’ Argent’s façade, and he pulled down the stumps to build those two
towers with their thin spires and that commonplace façade with its dry
lines that we now see.
A glance at the general plan of the building is necessary. Nothing
could be simpler than this general arrangement: a polygonal choir and
chapels between the buttresses; a lantern in the centre; some rather
narrow branches of the transept; a large nave moderately wide, but very
long with some quite narrow tributaries. The total length amounts to
138 metres; the width of the nave is restricted to twenty-six. What
does this matter if these proportions are well united? What astonishes
us beyond everything is the evident charming intention. There are no
walls beyond those that are necessary; it is all tracery with support.
The second impression is received from the forms; with the exception
of a few architectural details in the bay near the porch, the style
is perfectly homogeneous. There is no spirit of creation here; it is
that admirable spirit of refinement and adaptation of the Fourteenth
Century. As at Saint Urbain de Troyes, all the arches spring from
pillars and all the ribs return to them, where, to employ the synthetic
formula of Viollet-le-Duc, “the piers are nothing more than projections
in clusters of the different profiles of the arches.” What then is the
use of capitals under such conditions? They are more detrimental than
useful. Moreover, you find no trace of them except in the oldest parts
of the choir. The ribs of the arches instead of being strictly fastened
against the walls cross the mass to leap outside in bracing arches
and archivolts. Exactly as at Séez, the triforium drops very low and
ends, not in a massive ledge but in a gallery of lace-work, in order
to allow you to see from the nave across its spaces between the arches
the dazzling lucidity of the windows of the gallery. And everywhere is
manifested this threefold intention: elevation, ease and open-work.
And what windows to adorn these masses of filagree work! The most
varied, the finest and the richest of the period of Louis XII. at its
apogee. Patriarchs and martyrs, prophets and holy abbés, kings and
sibyls stand out on all sides in the hues of brilliant and soft jewels.
We have no longer the frank mosaic of former days giving life to the
light, and bestowing upon it a certain mystical impression; they are
not the simple large figures under sumptuous baldaquins brightened
with silver gilt; they are, most frequently, the glass pictures of the
Renaissance. We are astonished at the perfection of their treatment.
Several subjects are those that the Thirteenth Century took pleasure
in evoking; witness the legend of the pilgrim of Saint-Jacques, whose
son, unjustly hung, is kept on the gibbet by the saint himself and
recognized as innocent. Nothing seems to me, however, so memorable
here, as much on account of the subject as for the treatment, as the
series of sibyls--those pagans to which the Middle Ages had begun
to give a Christian fate and which the Sixteenth Century treated so
voluptuously. This is why they assume a new importance at Saint Ouen.
The artist took pleasure in painting them under the adornments of
elegant ladies, in landscapes bristling with buildings. Above all, I
cannot forget the charming sibyl of Samos, in her embroidered robe
covered with _orfèvrerie_ and jewels, two doves pecking at her
feet in the midst of a piece of country scenery, and treated so to
speak, in the manner of a portrait. This series of glass extending
from one end of the church to the other and almost from top to bottom,
forms an immense, translucent and radiant tapestry. It seems as if a
breath might annihilate it. But no, it remains hard, rigid and as if
incorporate with the very wall. Solid bars of iron, cutting the bays,
give it an indestructible armature. The evanescent dream of the period
has eternalized itself in a fairy-like vision.
What beautiful roses are cut out in the transept! On the central one,
God the Father appears on his throne of gold, above the adoring kings.
The other, with its more complicated outlines, shows us the Glory of
Paradise. You know the tradition attached to these two architectural
flowers with the resplendent lobes? Alexandre de Berneval having
designed the first, became jealous of one of his disciples who traced
the second, and in anger, killed him. To expiate the crime he had to
die by the hands of the hangman. Who invented this story? The master
lies yonder, in the second chapel down the nave to the right, by the
side of one of his pupils, or, perhaps with his son Colin. Can any one
believe that the monks would admit under any pretext beneath the holy
vaults the body of an assassin and honour him with a superb sepulchral
stone? Upon the stone the two architects live again in their long robes
lined with vair, and their large hats. The older, his compass in his
hand carving out a quarter-round, the younger one making a plan, the
feet of both resting on a lion, and above them a Gothic daïs. The older
is Berneval who died in 1440: the inscription tells us this. Of the
younger we know nothing, for the inscription concerning him was never
made.
There is no fine carving to note in the interior of the abbey. Many of
the pillars in the nave were ornamented with statues in the style of
the Fourteenth Century, but placed in niches that retreat a little.
Broken in 1794, when the building was used as a forge, they have never
been restored. The destruction of the rood-screen dates from 1791, at
the time of the departure of the monks and the erection of the parish
church. This rood-screen must assuredly have spoiled the perspective
of a building so frankly conceived for the effect in perspective.
But if one wants to delight in sculptured scenes, it is before the
_portail des Marmousets_ that he must betake himself. Beneath a
finely arched porch, is a door that is condemned to-day. The statue of
Saint Ouen, decapitated by the Reformers, and the pier covered with
little bas-reliefs, relates in detail the life and miracles of the holy
bishop. On the tympanum, three zones of perfect figures describe the
death of the Virgin, her funeral, her assumption and her entrance into
heaven between two angels who are playing the organ and the rebeck. A
curious popular invention has found its place in the funeral scene,
where an impious Jew trying to make an attempt upon the coffin has
to see the Archangel Michael cut off his hands and St. Peter give
them back to him, whilst converting him. This decoration is of an
exceptional vivacity and delicacy of carving.
From the public garden, we can take in the development of the apsis.
The elegance of design and the working-out are seen in all their
grandeur from here. From the pinacled buttresses spring the graceful
double flying-buttresses responding exactly to the spring of the
arches that are distributed and repeated with such wise judgment.
Above the chapels with their pyramidal roofs runs a balustrade of
quatrefoils inscribed in a curved quadrangle reproduced at the base
of the top. These charming galleries whose stone rivals ironwork, in
its extraordinary precision of the cutting, define the essential lines
of the plan through the bristling lines of the secondary forms. They
represent calm and order surrounded by agitation.
But from whatever point of view you survey Saint Ouen, you will
recognize the most exemplary refinement of construction. It is not
merely the frame which should be taken as a model with its square and
chamfred wood, its suspended binding-pieces, its Saint Andrew’s cross,
and its double sabliere plates gathered at the base of the chevrons. In
the eyes of architects, the Abbey of the wise Abbé Marc d’ Argent will
always be regarded as one of the _chefs d’œuvre_ of the art of
building in France.
CARISBROOKE CASTLE
SIR JAMES D. MACKENZIE
The Isle of Wight, like Kent, was peopled by Jutes, who, coming
in under the wing of the actual conquerors, Cerdic and Cynric,
exterminated the existing Romano-British inhabitants at the bloody
battle of Wihtgaresbyrg (Saxon Chron.), a name which, omitting the
primary syllable, became “Carisbrooke.” The later castle, whose site
is actually that of the battlefield of 530, was conferred by the
conquerors on their relative Wihtgar. But whereas the Jutes of Kent
were the first, those of the Isle of Wight were the last among the
English to embrace Christianity, and in the Seventh Century the fine
proselytizing zeal of the West Saxons led them to invade and annihilate
with their murderous knives the heathen islanders, whose land they
annexed to the Wessex diocese.
[Illustration: CARISBROOKE CASTLE, ENGLAND.]
The island was already found to give the shortest passage between
England and Normandy, and for this reason was used in Saxon times,
as also by William the Conqueror on some of his journeys to and from
Normandy. It was here that he arrested his half-brother, Bishop Odo,
as he was on his way to Rome, and here he tarried on quitting England
for his last journey to France. William granted the Isle of Wight to
William Fitz Osborne, Earl of Hereford, who, it is believed, reared the
castle of Carisbrooke, in which Odo was arrested, as he likewise
founded the priory adjoining. He had accompanied his leader from
Normandy, and was one of his army marshals. Besides having the lordship
of this isle, he was made constable of the newly built castles of York
and Winchester, and justiciary for the King in the North. On the great
mound of the Saxon burh at Wihtgaresbyrg he built a Norman keep, but
as he was killed in France four years after coming to the isle, it is
probable that the work he began was completed by his son, Roger de
Bretteville, who was imprisoned for life by William for levying war
against him, all his estates being forfeited to the Crown.
Henry I. next gave the lordship of the isle, with the castle and
honour of Carisbrooke, to Richard de Redvers, whose son succeeding
him (temp. Stephen) was made Earl of Devon; large additions were made
by this family to the castle, which was held by the Redvers until
that race ended in an heiress, Isabella de Fortibus, so called from
her marriage with an Earl of Albemarle of that name. This lady lived
here (1262–1293) and built a large part of the castle, which, at her
death, she bequeathed to King Edward I. Afterwards, in the Fourteenth
Century, the castle was held by Piers Gaveston, William Montague, the
chivalrous Earl of Salisbury, and by Edward, Earl of Rutland, son of
Edmund of Langley, fifth son of Edward III. who inherited his father’s
title of Duke of York, and fell at Agincourt, when, after his widow,
Philippa’s death, the castle and island fell to Humphrey, the Good Duke
of Gloucester, in the reign of Henry VI. After him the lordship was
enjoyed by several royal and other personages, and lastly by Anthony,
Earl Rivers, and his brother, Sir Edward Woodville, who, together with
a large force he had raised in the island, fell at the battle of St.
Anbyn, in a foolish expedition against the King of France. Since that
time Carisbrooke has always been held by the Crown. In Elizabeth’s
reign, when preparations were made on the south coast to repel the
Spanish Armada, very elaborate outworks were planned and executed at
this castle, entirely surrounding it with fortifications of the then
new type, escarp and ditch and ravelin and redan, which exist at the
present time: but they were never wanted, and only served usefully as a
promenade for the royal victim, King Charles, in his imprisonment.