beautiful pages in architecture than that façade, exhibiting the three
deeply-dug porches with their pointed arches; the plinth, embroidered
and indented with twenty-eight royal niches; the immense central
rose-window, flanked by its two lateral windows, like the priest by
his deacon and sub-deacon; the high and frail gallery of open-worked
arches, supporting on its delicate columns a heavy platform; and,
lastly, the two dark and massive towers, with their slated pent-houses.
These harmonious parts of a magnificent whole, superimposed in five
gigantic stages, and presenting, with their innumerable details of
statuary, sculpture, and carving, an overwhelming yet not perplexing
mass, combine in producing a calm grandeur. It is a vast symphony in
stone, so to speak; the colossal work of man and of a nation, as united
and as complex as the Iliad and the _romanceros_ of which it is the
sister; a prodigious production to which all the forces of an epoch
contributed, and from every stone of which springs forth in a hundred
ways the workman’s fancy directed by the artist’s genius; in one word,
a kind of human creation, as strong and fecund as the divine creation
from which it seems to have stolen the two-fold character: variety and
eternity.
And what I say here of the façade, must be said of the entire
Cathedral; and what I say of the Cathedral of Paris, must be said of
all the Mediæval Christian churches. Everything in this art, which
proceeds from itself, is so logical and well-proportioned that to
measure the toe of the foot is to measure the giant.
Let us return to the façade of Notre-Dame, as it exists to-day when
we go reverently to admire the solemn and mighty Cathedral, which,
according to the old chroniclers, was terrifying: _quæ mole sua
terrorem incutit spectantibus_.
That façade now lacks three important things: first, the flight of
eleven steps, which raised it above the level of the ground; then, the
lower row of statues which occupied the niches of the three porches;
and the upper row[1] of the twenty-eight ancient kings of France which
ornamented the gallery of the first story, beginning with Childebert
and ending with Philip Augustus, holding in his hand “_la pomme
impériale_.”
Time in its slow and unchecked progress, raising the level of the
city’s soil, buried the steps; but whilst the pavement of Paris like
a rising tide has engulfed one by one the eleven steps which formerly
added to the majestic height of the edifice, Time has given to the
church more, perhaps, than it has stolen, for it is Time that has
spread that sombre hue of centuries on the façade which makes the old
age of buildings their period of beauty.
But who has thrown down those two rows of statues? Who has left the
niches empty? Who has cut that new and bastard arch in the beautiful
middle of the central porch? Who has dared to frame that tasteless
and heavy wooden door carved _à la Louis XV._ near Biscornette’s
arabesques? The men, the architects, the artists of our day.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE-DAME.]
And when we enter the edifice, who has overthrown that colossal Saint
Christopher, proverbial among statues as the _grand’ salle du Palais_
among halls, or the _flèche_ of Strasburg among steeples? And those
myriads of statues that peopled all the spaces between the columns of
the nave and choir, kneeling, standing, on horseback, men, women,
children, kings, bishops, warriors, in stone, wood, marble, gold,
silver, copper, and even wax,--who has brutally swept them away? It was
not Time!
And who has substituted for the old Gothic altar, splendidly overladen
with shrines and reliquaries, that heavy marble sarcophagus with
its angels’ heads and clouds, which seems to be a sample from the
Val-de-Grâce or the Invalides? Who has so stupidly imbedded that heavy
stone anachronism in Hercanduc’s Carlovingian pavement? Is it not Louis
XIV. fulfilling the vow of Louis XIII.?
And who has put cold white glass in the place of those richly-coloured
panes, which made the astonished gaze of our ancestors pause between
the rose of the great porch and the pointed arches of the apsis? What
would an under-chorister of the Sixteenth Century say if he could see
the beautiful yellow plaster with which our vandal archbishops have
daubed their Cathedral? He would remember that this was the colour with
which the executioner brushed the houses of traitors; he would remember
the Hôtel du Petit-Bourbon, all besmeared thus with yellow, on account
of the treason of the Constable, “yellow of such good quality,” says
Sauval, “and so well laid on that more than a century has scarcely
caused its colour to fade;” and, imagining that the holy place had
become infamous, he would flee from it.
And if we ascend the Cathedral without stopping to notice the thousand
barbarities of all kinds, what has been done with that charming little
bell-tower, which stood over the point of intersection of the transept,
and which, neither less frail nor less bold than its neighbour, the
steeple of the Sainte-Chapelle (also destroyed), shot up into the sky,
sharp, harmonious, and open-worked, higher than the other towers? It
was amputated by an architect of good taste (1787), who thought it
sufficient to cover the wound with that large plaster of lead, which
looks like the lid of a pot.
This is the way the wonderful art of the Middle Ages has been
treated in all countries, particularly in France. In this ruin we
may distinguish three separate agencies, which have affected it in
different degrees; first, Time which has insensibly chipped it, here
and there, and discoloured its entire surface; next, revolutions, both
political and religious, which, being blind and furious by nature,
rushed wildly upon it, stripped it of its rich garb of sculptures and
carvings, shattered its tracery, broke its garlands of arabesques and
its figurines, and threw down its statues, sometimes on account of
their mitres, sometimes on account of their crowns; and, finally, the
fashions, which, ever since the anarchistic and splendid innovations
of the Renaissance, have been constantly growing more grotesque
and foolish, and have succeeded in bringing about the decadence
of architecture. The fashions have indeed done more harm than the
revolutions. They have cut it to the quick; they have attacked the
framework of art; they have cut, hacked, and mutilated the form of the
building as well as its symbol; its logic as well as its beauty. And
then they have restored, a presumption of which time and revolutions
were, at least, guiltless. In the name of _good taste_ they have
insolently covered the wounds of Gothic architecture with their
paltry gew-gaws of a day, their marble ribbons, their metal pompons,
a veritable leprosy of oval ornaments, volutes, spirals, draperies,
garlands, fringes, flames of stone, clouds of bronze, over-fat Cupids,
and bloated cherubim, which begin to eat into the face of art in
Catherine de’ Medici’s oratory, and kill it, writhing and grinning in
the boudoir of the Dubarry, two centuries later.
Therefore, in summing up the points to which I have called attention,
three kinds of ravages disfigure Gothic architecture to-day: wrinkles
and warts on the epidermis,--these are the work of Time; wounds,
bruises and fractures,--these are the work of revolutions from Luther
to Mirabeau; mutilations, amputations, dislocations of members,
_restorations_,--these are the Greek and Roman work of professors,
according to Vitruvius and Vignole. That magnificent art which the
Vandals produced, academies have murdered. To the ravages of centuries
and revolutions, which devastated at least with impartiality and
grandeur, were added those of a host of school architects, patented and
sworn, who debased everything with the choice and discernment of bad
taste; and who substituted the _chicorées_ of Louis XV. for the Gothic
lace-work, for the greater glory of the Parthenon. It is the ass’s kick
to the dying lion. It is the old oak crowning itself with leaves for
the reward of being bitten, gnawed, and devoured by caterpillars.
How far this is from the period when Robert Cenalis, comparing
Notre-Dame de Paris with the famous Temple of Diana at Ephesus,
so highly extolled by the ancient heathen, which has immortalized
Erostratus, found the Gaulois cathedral “_plus excellente en longueur,
largeur, hauteur, et structure_.”
Notre-Dame de Paris is not, however, what may be called a finished,
defined, classified monument. It is not a Roman church, neither is it
a Gothic church. This edifice is not a type. Notre-Dame has not, like
the Abbey of Tournus, the solemn and massive squareness, the round and
large vault, the glacial nudity, and the majestic simplicity of those
buildings which have the circular arch for their generative principle.
It is not, like the Cathedral of Bourges, the magnificent product of
light, multiform, tufted, bristling, efflorescent Gothic. It is out of
the question to class it in that ancient family of gloomy, mysterious,
low churches, which seem crushed by the circular arch; almost Egyptian
in their ceiling; quite hieroglyphic, sacerdotal, and symbolic, charged
in their ornaments with more lozenges and zigzags than flowers, more
flowers than animals, more animals than human figures; the work of
the bishop more than the architect, the first transformation of the
art, fully impressed with theocratic and military discipline, which
takes its root in the Bas-Empire, and ends with William the Conqueror.
It is also out of the question to place our Cathedral in that other
family of churches, tall, aërial, rich in windows and sculpture, sharp
in form, bold of mien; _communales_ and _bourgeois_, like political
symbols; free, capricious, unbridled, like works of art; the second
transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immutable, and
sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins with
the return from the Crusades and ends with Louis XI. Notre-Dame de
Paris is not pure Roman, like the former, nor is it pure Arabian, like
the latter.
It is an edifice of the transition. The Saxon architect had set up the
first pillars of the nave when the Crusaders introduced the pointed
arch, which enthroned itself like a conqueror upon those broad Roman
capitals designed to support circular arches. On the pointed arch,
thenceforth mistress of all styles, the rest of the church was built.
Inexperienced and timid at the beginning, it soon broadens and expands,
but does not yet dare to shoot up into steeples and pinnacles, as it
has since done in so many marvellous cathedrals. You might say that it
feels the influence of its neighbours, the heavy Roman pillars.
Moreover, these edifices of the transition from the Roman to the
Gothic are not less valuable for study than pure types. They express
a _nuance_ of the art which would be lost but for them. This is the
engrafting of the pointed upon the circular arch.
Notre-Dame de Paris is a particularly curious specimen of this
variety. Every face and every stone of the venerable structure is
a page not only of the history of the country, but also of art and
science. Therefore to glance here only at the principal details,
while the little Porte Rouge attains almost to the limits of the
Gothic delicacy of the Fifteenth Century, the pillars of the nave, on
account of their bulk and heaviness, carry you back to the date of the
Carlovingian Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés, you would believe that
there were six centuries between that doorway and those pillars. It
is not only the hermetics who find in the symbols of the large porch
a satisfactory compendium of their science, of which the church of
Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie was so complete an hieroglyphic. Thus
the Roman Abbey, the philosophical church, the Gothic art, the Saxon
art, the heavy, round pillar, which reminds you of Gregory VII., the
hermetic symbols by which Nicholas Flamel heralded Luther, papal unity
and schism, Saint-Germain des Prés and Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie;
all are melted, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central
and generatrix church is a sort of chimæra among the old churches
of Paris; it has the head of one, the limbs of another, the body of
another,--something from each of them.
I repeat, these hybrid structures are not the least interesting ones
to the artist, the antiquary, and the historian. They show how far
architecture is a primitive art, inasmuch as they demonstrate (what
is also demonstrated by the Cyclopean remains, the pyramids of Egypt,
and the gigantic Hindu pagodas), that the grandest productions of
architecture are social more than individual works; the offspring,
rather, of nations in travail than the inspiration of men of genius;
the deposit left by a people; the accumulation of ages; the residuum
of the successive evaporations of human society; in short, a species
of formation. Every wave of time superimposes its alluvion, every
generation deposits its stratum upon the building, every individual
lays his stone. Thus build the beavers; thus, the bees; and thus, men.
The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a beehive.
Great buildings, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Often
the fashions in art change while they are being constructed, _pendent
opera interrupta_; they are continued quietly according to the new art.
This new art takes the edifice where it finds it, assimilates with
it, develops it according to its own fancy, and completes it, if it
is possible. The result is accomplished without disturbance, without
effort, without reaction, following a natural and quiet law. It is a
graft which occurs unexpectedly, a sap which circulates, a vegetation
which returns. Certes, there is material for very large books and
often a universal history of mankind, in those successive solderings
of various styles at various heights upon the structure. The man, the
artist, and the individual efface themselves in these vast anonymous
masses; human intelligence is concentrated and summed up in them. Time
is the architect; the nation is the mason.
_Notre Dame de Paris_ (Paris, 1831).
THE KREMLIN.
THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.
The Kremlin, always regarded as the Acropolis, the Holy Place, the
Palladium, and the very heart of Russia, was formerly surrounded by
a palisade of strong oaken stakes--similar to the defence which the
Athenian citadel had at the time of the first invasion of the Persians.
Dmitri-Donskoi substituted for this palisade crenellated walls, which,
having become old and dilapidated, were rebuilt by Ivan III. Ivan’s
wall remains to-day, but in many places there are restorations and
repairs. Thick layers of plaster endeavour to hide the scars of time
and the black traces of the great fire of 1812 which was only able
to lick this wall with its tongues of flame. The Kremlin somewhat
resembles the Alhambra. Like the Moorish fortress, it stands on the
top of a hill which it encloses with its wall flanked by towers: it
contains royal dwellings, churches, and squares, and among the ancient
buildings a modern Palace whose intrusion we regret as we do the
Palace of Charles V. amid the delicate Saracenic architecture which
it seems to crush with its weight. The tower of Ivan Veliki is not
without resemblance to the tower of the Vela; and from the Kremlin, as
from the Alhambra, a beautiful view is to be enjoyed, a panorama of
enchantment which the fascinated eye will ever retain.
It is strange that when seen from a distance the Kremlin is perhaps
even more Oriental than the Alhambra itself whose massive reddish
towers give no hint of the splendour within. Above the sloping and
crenellated walls of the Kremlin and among the towers with their
ornamented roofs, myriads of cupolas and globular bell-towers gleaming
with metallic light seem to be rising and falling like bubbles of
glittering gold in the strong blaze of light. The white wall seems
to be a silver basket holding a bouquet of golden flowers, and we
fancy that we are gazing upon one of those magical cities which
the imagination of the Arabian story-tellers alone can build--an
architectural crystallization of the _Thousand and One Nights_! And
when Winter has sprinkled these strange dream-buildings with its
powdered diamonds, we fancy ourselves transported into another planet,
for nothing like this has ever met our gaze.
We entered the Kremlin by the Spasskoi Gate which opens upon the
Krasnaïa. No entrance could be more romantic. It is cut through an
enormous square tower, placed before a kind of porch. The tower has
three diminishing stories and is crowned with a spire resting upon open
arches. The double-headed eagle, holding the globe in its claws, stands
upon the sharp point of the spire, which, like the story it surmounts,
is octagonal, ribbed, and gilded. Each face of the second story bears
an enormous dial, so that the hour may be seen from every point of
the compass. Add for effect some patches of snow laid on the jutting
masonry like bold dashes of pigment, and you will have a faint idea
of the aspect presented by this queenly tower, as it springs upward in
three jets above the denticulated wall which it breaks....
Issuing from the gate, we find ourselves in the large court of the
Kremlin, in the midst of the most bewildering conglomeration of
palaces, churches, and monasteries of which the imagination can dream.
It conforms to no known style of architecture. It is not Greek, it is
not Byzantine, it is not Gothic, it is not Saracen, it is not Chinese:
it is Russian; it is Muscovite. Never did architecture more free,
more original, more indifferent to rules, in a word, more romantic,
materialize with such fantastic caprice. Sometimes it seems to resemble
the freaks of frostwork. However, its leading characteristics are the
cupolas and the golden-bulbed bell-towers, which seem to follow no law
and are conspicuous at the first glance.
Below the large square where the principal buildings of the Kremlin are
grouped and which forms the plateau of the hill, a circular road winds
about the irregularities of the ground and is bordered by ramparts
flanked with towers of infinite variety: some are round, some square,
some slender as minarets, some massive as bastions, and some with
machicolated turrets, while others have retreating stories, vaulted
roofs, sharply-cut sides, open-worked galleries, tiny cupolas, spires,
scales, tracery, and all conceivable endings. The battlements, cut
deeply through the wall and notched at the top like an arrow, are
alternately plain and pierced with little barbicans. We will ignore
the strategic value of this defence, but from a poetic standpoint it
satisfies the imagination and gives the idea of a formidable citadel.
[Illustration: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.]
Between the rampart and the platform bordered by a balustrade gardens
extend, now powdered with snow, and a picturesque little church lifts
its globular bell-towers. Beyond, as far as the eye can reach, lies
the immense and wonderful panorama of Moscow to which the crest of
the saw-toothed wall forms an admirable foreground and frame for the
distant perspective which no art could improve....
The Kremlin contains within its walls many churches, or cathedrals, as
the Russians call them. Exactly like the Acropolis, it gathers around
it on its narrow plateau a large number of temples. We will visit them
one by one, but we will first pause at the tower of Ivan Veliki, an
enormous octagon belfry with three retreating stories, upon the last of
which there rises from a zone of ornamentation a round turret finished
with a swelling dome, fire-gilt with ducat-gold, and surmounted by a
Greek cross resting upon the conquered crescent. Upon each side of each
story little arches are cut so that the brazen body of a bell may be
seen.
In this place there are thirty-three bells, among which is said to be
the famous alarm-bell of Novgorod, whose reverberations once called the
people to the tumultuous deliberations in the public square. One of
these bells weighs not less than a hundred and ninety-three tons, and
is such a monster of metal that beside it the great bell of Notre-Dame
of which Quasimodo was so proud, would be nothing more than the tiny
hand-bell used at Mass....
Let us enter one of the most ancient and characteristic cathedrals
of the Kremlin, the first one built of stone, the Cathedral of the
Assumption (_Ouspenskosabor_). It is not the original edifice founded
by Ivan Kalita. That crumbled away after a century and a half of
existence and was rebuilt by Ivan III. Notwithstanding its Byzantine
style and archaic appearance, the present Cathedral dates only from the
Fifteenth Century. One is astonished to learn that it is the work of
Fioraventi, an architect of Bologna, whom the Russians called Aristotle
because of his astounding knowledge. One would imagine it the work of
some Greek architect from Constantinople whose head was filled with
memories of Santa Sofia and models of Greco-Oriental architecture. The
Assumption is almost square and its great walls soar with a surprising
pride and strength. Four enormous pillars, large as towers and massive
as the columns of the Palace of Karnak, support the central cupola,
which rests on a flat roof in the Asiatic style, flanked by four
similar cupolas. This simple arrangement produces a magnificent effect
and these massive pillars contribute, without any heaviness, a fine
balance and extraordinary stability to the Cathedral.
The interior of the church is covered with Byzantine paintings on a
gold background. The pillars themselves are embellished with figures
arranged in zones as in the Egyptian temples and palaces. Nothing
could be more strange than this decoration where thousands of figures
surround you like a mute assemblage, ascending and descending the
entire length of the walls, walking in files in Christian panathenæa,
standing alone in poses of hieratic rigidity, bending over to the
pendentives, and draping the temple with a human tapestry swarming
with motionless beings. A strange light, carefully disposed,
contributes greatly to the disquieting and mysterious effect. In these
ruddy and fawn-coloured shadows the tall savage saints of the Greek
calendar assume a formidable semblance of life; they look at you with
fixed eyes and seem to threaten you with their hands outstretched
for benediction.... The interior of St. Mark’s at Venice, with its
suggestion of a gilded cavern, gives the idea of the Assumption; only
the interior of the Muscovite church rises with one sweep towards the
sky, while the vault of St. Mark’s is strangely weighed down like a
crypt. The _iconostase_, a lofty wall of silver-gilt with five rows
of figures, is like the façade of a golden palace, dazzling the eye
with fabled magnificence. In the filigree framework of gold appear in
tones of bistre the dark heads and hands of the Madonnas and saints.
The rays of their aureoles are set with precious stones, which, as the
light falls upon them, scintillate and blaze with celestial glory; the
images, objects of peculiar veneration, are adorned with breastplates
of precious stones, necklaces, and bracelets, starred with diamonds,
sapphires, rubies, emeralds, amethysts, pearls, and turquoises; the
madness of religious extravagance can go no further.
It is in the Cathedral of the Assumption that the coronation of the
Czar takes place. The platform for this occasion is erected between the
four pillars which support the cupola and faces the _iconostase_.
The tombs of the Metropolitans of Moscow are placed in rows along
the sides of the walls. They are oblong: as they loom up in the
shadows, they make us think of trunks packed for the great voyage of
eternity....