years after the decay of Attic architecture, and after the intervention
of several other styles, of which the “Norman” constitutes one of the
five great and only pure styles which the world has seen, is
nevertheless in closer artistic relationship with the Attic style than
the Norman is, and should be therefore treated earliest. The immense
effort which was made to develop a great style from the dome--the
natural outcome of the circular arch introduced by the Romans--never
came to anything but the production of here and there an edifice which,
like the Pantheon and St. Sophia, were miracles of technical skill,
until the idea was taken up by the fanciful Moresque architects. Again,
the Norman, though a great integral style, as will be shown, is not
based upon any relation to weight of material; which is at once the
great fact of building, and as such is made by the Egyptian, Greek, and
Gothic architects to express the material, intellectual, and spiritual
character of worship in ways that exhaust this primary source of
architectural symbolism.
Weight--simple and irresistible in the Egyptian, adequately supported in
the Greek--is, in the pointed Gothic, not abolished as in the Moresque,
but totally vanquished and borne above, as by a superior spiritual
power. Two happy accidents gave rise to this architectural development.
As the Egyptian architecture was an artistic transfiguration of the
necessities of an original cavern architecture, and as the Doric Temple
in a similar way transmuted to undreamt-of significance the forms of the
timber hut, so the Gothic architecture found in the Basilica--the main
forms of which were transmitted through the Norman cathedral--the
accidental key to what probably will for ever remain the supreme glory
of the art of temple-building. The Basilica itself contained nothing but
the discovery of the most convenient way of roofing-in and lighting a
great oblong hall. It consisted of nave and aisles; the walls of the
nave rising within and above those of the aisles, to form the
clerestory, which gave the centre of the edifice externally the
appearance of unsheathing itself from and soaring above the rest. The
means of emphasising and multiplying this effect indefinitely--as the
pyramidal effect was multiplied and emphasised in the Egyptian
Temple--were provided by another fortunate accident, the development of
the pointed arch from the mechanical necessities of cross-vaulting. No
sooner did a row of pointed arches make its appearance in the clerestory
windows than the power of Gothic expression, latent in the main body of
the building, became obvious. The tower, with its spire, was the first
and simplest sequence. It was to the clerestory what this was to the
main body of the building. In the course of a few years every detail of
construction and decoration became subordinated to the heavenward flight
which the main masses of the building had thus taken.
This fact is a threadbare commonplace of architectural criticism, and
one which is obvious to the eye of the dullest beholder of the interior
or exterior of every Gothic cathedral; but the number and subtlety of
the means by which the effect is gained is beyond all reckoning and
analysis; and the object of this paper is to point out only a few of
them which are not to be found in architectural manuals, and to show how
this all-prevailing stream of ardent aspiration was moderated and
governed so as to acquire the expression of peace as well as ardour, as
befitted the beauty of the Christian temple. Mr. Freeman comes nearer
than any other eminent architectural critic to a clear discernment of
Gothic character when he says: “Where there is no strife there is no
victory; the vertical line cannot be called predominant unless the
horizontal exist in a visible condition of subjection and inferiority.”
But the vertical line exists in Gothic architecture as much more than a
foil to vertical character; it checks and keeps it within bounds, and
exhibits it as an expression of the infinite bounded and peacefully
bounded by the finite--which is the true character of the life and
worship symbolised. Hence the square-headed tower is as fine, if not a
finer finish to the Gothic cathedral than the spire. Compare the tower
of York with the spire of Freyburg in Breisgau--the finest spire in the
world, rising as it does as a spire from the ground--and it will be
found that the cessation of the great, steady heavenward current in
York, gradually prepared for as it is by the treatment of the face of
the tower, and culminating in the compromise of open battlements, each
of which frames the pointed arch, creates a more solemn and
heart-expanding sense of infinite aspiration than the apparently greater
flight of endeavour in the famous spire, which soars indeed twice the
height of the tower, but, as it were, evaporates as it soars. The minds
of the Gothic architects seem to have been much divided as to which was
better: the checked and contained expression of the tower, in which an
undiminished force of ascension was suggested, or the exhausting flight
of the spire. The tower of Salisbury, for example, was not originally
intended to carry the spire, which was added long after the cathedral
was completed. They often obtained both features, giving a spire to only
one of the west-end towers. There is, perhaps, no more satisfactory
treatment of the west front than this, as may be seen in Strasburg
Cathedral. Like many other fine effects, this most probably arose from
accident--the accident of its not being convenient at the time to add
the second spire; but that the incompleteness was fully recognised as a
perfection is proved by the many instances of its having been, if not
devised, allowed to remain.
There are three ways of treating the spire. It may commence at the
earth, as that of Freyburg does, without the intervention of a tower; or
it may rise from a tower the head of which is considerably larger than
the base of the spire; or the base of the spire may coincide with the
top of the tower, in which case it is called a “broach spire.” The
second is the finest and by far the most frequent arrangement, as it
combines the effects of spire and tower without confusing them; a part
of the force of the tower being contained and checked, and a part being
allowed to take its self-exhausting flight. It is to be observed,
however, that even when the spire is most prominent--as in Lichfield,
where there are three of them--it is, when compared with the whole
building, only as it were an accidental escape and waste of the vast
current of vertical force expressed by the entire mass of the building.
Perhaps the most expressive treatment of the tower is in the innumerable
examples in which only a very small proportion of its vertical force is
permitted to escape in four or more pinnacles, one of which is often
larger than the others. Spires and pinnacles are in most cases covered
with lines of “crockets”: figures in which ascending power is usually
expressed by the upward growth of a leaf; which is emphasised by some
check, made apparent to the eye by a strong bulge, like that of a
current flowing over a stone. Wherever the idea of weight or side-thrust
would occur naturally to the eye--as in buttresses, lower angles of
gables, etc.--there is an especial outburst of flaming finial or
pinnacle, or other mode of contradicting and reversing the idea, which
the Greek architect would have been contented with accepting and
beautifying.
Let us now enter the church, which is, within as well as without, a
great geyser of ascending life; which may indeed lose itself in the
dimness of the vaulted roof, as the spire loses itself in air, but never
shows weariness of its flight or a memory of the earth from which it
started. As in Egyptian and Greek architecture, so in the Gothic, we
must look to the column for the strongest expression of the
characterising idea. The Egyptian column suffered and seemed
half-crushed under the weight it bore; the Greek rose to its burthen
with the glad assurance of being fully adequate to its task. The Gothic
is conscious of no task at all; but flies, without the least diminution
of its substance, and without swelling either under sufferance or
gathering of strength by entasis at any particular point, to the
commencement of the arch; where it divides itself, sending up the
streams of its clustered shafts, some into the lines of the arch and
others to the top of the clerestory wall; then dividing again to follow
the lines of the vaulting, there to meet like fingers joined in prayer,
but still having no thought of the weight of the roof they really help
to carry.
Mr. Ruskin complains of Gothic capitals--as he might also have done of
Gothic bases--that they are unnecessary and ridiculous because they have
no bearing power. If they had, they would cease to be Gothic, and the
whole character of the wonderful art would be ruined. Capitals are
sometimes entirely omitted, as in the shafted piers of Cologne; but when
this is the case the point at which the arch springs becomes doubtful to
the eye, and there is something exhausting in the wholly uninterrupted
flight of the vertical lines. The capitals, like the horizontal
_astragal_ which often binds at intervals the clustered column, have no
other purpose but to correct these effects of unrelieved continuity; and
the mouldings of capitals, when they exist, not only have no and express
no “bearing-power,” but they very carefully express the contrary by
various devices of undercutting, etc. It is the same with the base, when
it is not altogether dispensed with. The most common form of Gothic base
is a curious caricature of the Attic base, the form of which had been
transmitted unimpaired to the Gothic architect through the Romanesque
and Norman. It was perched upon and _overhung_ a stilted plinth, which
was itself a reversal of the expression of elementary support in the
original flat plinth; and the curves of this base were so diminished in
one part and exaggerated in another that all reference to supporting
power seemed to be derisively abolished. The “ogee” is a moulding which
strongly expresses carrying power. A favourite Gothic base was two
_reversed_ ogees, the lower projecting far over the edge of the plinth,
which, in classic architecture, always afforded a wide-spreading field
for the base. And so on.
It would take a bulky volume to trace the wonderful integrity with which
the three modes of envisaging the idea of weight are carried out in the
three great architectures; but enough has been said to give the clue by
which a fairly cultivated and perceptive student may follow up the
subject for himself.
V
Before proceeding to consider the Norman and Moresque styles, a word
should be said about that portion of Gothic decoration which does not
directly help the main effect of aspiration--namely, cusped and foliated
tracery, diaper-work, the foliage of spandrels, etc. etc. Kugler says:
“This filling-in appears as a peculiar sort of architecture of
independent signification.” He does not, however, give the
interpretation which he sees to be required. Yet there is an
interpretation which only needs to be put in words to be obvious to
every eye which has made itself familiar with these objects. In exact
proportion to the recognised perfection of these details, as it was
attained in the middle or “decorated” period of pointed architecture,
they become expressions of an idea almost identical with that which has
been traced in the mode by which contented suspension or delay of the
infinitely aspiring character in the main lines of the building is
conveyed. As the inexhaustible torrent of upward life is checked
peacefully, but with no denial of infinite _potential_ aspiration, in
the square-headed tower, so the same reconciliation of life with law
without the least detriment to either--that reconciliation which is the
consummation of Christianity--is expressed even more completely in the
more essentially decorative details of pointed architecture. It is in
the treatment of foliage that this character can be most easily traced,
and this can be done best by comparing it with other modes of treatment.
By the Greek architect this and other natural objects, when wanted for
ornament, were what is called “conventionalised”; honeysuckles, roses,
and waves of the sea were represented by certain formal figures which
suited the lines of the architecture, and were not too much like nature
to attract attention from those all-important lines to themselves. In
the Italian Gothic, again, such natural objects are represented as
nearly as possible like nature, but with such slight modifications and
arrangements as were necessary to give them the consciousness of art.
This is the sort of imitation which Mr. Ruskin recommends, and into
which the northern Gothic fell in the decay of the art. But in
fourteenth-century Gothic--that is to say, in the Gothic which was as
much superior to that of the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries as the
art of Athens was superior to that of Pæstum or Rome--nature was neither
imitated nor conventionalised. The special aim of the fourteenth-century
ornamentation is to show a vigorous life playing with perfect freedom in
severely geometrical forms--with freedom so perfect that it is difficult
to say whether the life shapes the law or the law the life. This highly
and essentially symbolic character is the most marked expression of
Gothic tracery. In its decay it took the form of licence and weakness in
the French “flamboyant,” and of hardness and rigidity in the English
“perpendicular”; the life prevailing--to its own destruction--in the
one, the lifeless law preponderating in the other. Gothic foliage,
again, always _feels_ the law; though, so far from suffering thereby, it
is, in its place, far more beautiful than nature. The leafage not only
follows geometrical outlines, but swells under its limitation into rich
protuberances. The yearning for and potentiality of infinite ascension,
peacefully accepting its temporal limitations, and the freedom of life
perfected by law, are the artistic motives of every detail as well as of
the main masses of pure Gothic.
The Romano-Byzantine style attained in its final development, the
“Norman,” to the unity of idea which is the criterion of a true style.
The arch up to this time had been treated partly as a thing of beauty in
itself and partly as the constructive theme; in the Norman it took its
place, expressionally, as subordinate to the wall, the mass of which it
carries and distributes between the piers. The wall itself is the
artistic theme of Norman architecture, and all decorative and some
constructional features are devoted to making a boast of its _mass_ and
_thickness_. _Weight_--the theme in the three highly contrasted modes of
the Egyptian, Greek, and Pointed architectures--plays no part in the
Norman expression. The arch, being recognised by the eye for what it is,
an infinitely powerful supporter, can express no proportion to finite
superincumbent weight; and it is treated as a mere head to the gap in
the wall between nave and aisle. The expressional intention of the
Norman architects in this matter is curiously and decisively proved by
the fact that their favourite arch-mouldings were the _billet_ and
_chevron_--_i.e._ lines of notches and angles which completely broke up
all idea of arch-character as referable to supporting power or to weight
distributed on to the piers, and transferred the interest of the eye to
the material substance of the wall out of which these figures were cut.
The piers between these arches were huge masses of wall, either
quadrangular or turned into great cylinders, without _entasis_ or any
other sign of having to bear anything; and such decoration as they had
was devised so as to deny emphatically any reference to superimposed
burthen. The figure of the weight-carrying shaft set in the angles of
these piers was their principal decoration; but they were Lilliputian
mockeries of the Attic shaft, or were twisted singly or doubly, and in
various other ways ridiculed, as it were, the idea that shaft-_power_
was demanded in the huge masses of masonry to which they were attached.
The only thing that these little shafts--whether in notch of pier or in
recess of porch, blind arcade, or window--ever carried or appeared to
carry was a single line of the often innumerable mouldings, the purpose
of which was simply to display the immense thickness of the wall, which
was the true and only theme of this style. This system of emphasising
the wall by negativing the shaft-power was occasionally carried into the
almost grotesque excess of representing the shaft as broken in the
middle! The favourite treatment of the Norman wall was to boast of its
thickness exactly as the Doric shaft boasted of its supporting
power--that is, by throwing away some portion of it. The face of the
wall was recessed in panels, which were often filled with blind arcades.
Modern builders often recess walls in this way in order to save
material, leaving the wall thickest where it has most work to do; but
the Norman and Lombard architects had no such economy in view. The
windows and other apertures in the wall showed, by their shafted and
moulded chamfers, the reality of thickness so great that the panelling
and blank arcading was seen to _be_ no sacrifice, though it was a
delicate and effective suggestion of one. This arcaded panelling is not
only on one plane of the wall-surface. The recessed plane is again
recessed in the same way, and yet again, arcade within arcade; and
finally, in the higher portions of the wall, open galleries are worked
in its thickness. In apertures the constructive rule which requires that
the bevel or chamfer should slant inwards, to give the better light, is
sacrificed to the opportunity of showing the mass of the wall; and the
chamfer is external, and is so treated in its decoration as to increase
in every possible way the appearance of thickness. The treatment of the
doorway, which is the point from which the expressional idea may be best
enforced upon every beholder, is very peculiar. When there is no
advanced porch, a deep arch is practised through a great part of the
wall, and the thickness is emphasised by an elaborate perspective of
shafts and mouldings. Within this deeply recessed arch the actual
doorway is often worked as a horizontal-headed aperture in a plane face
of wall without chamfer; the remaining thickness of the wall, not shown
by the recessed arch, being thus left to be measured by the imagination,
which has already been excited by the display of thickness within
thickness of decorated archway. The Norman architects, in order still
further to increase this effect, had sometimes recourse to a device that
can scarcely be justified by strict architectural principles, which
should never falsify construction in order to heighten expression. A
face of wall was advanced in front of the main wall of the building, in
order to obtain a much greater depth of masonry for showing off the
multitudinously moulded entrance-arch. This projection did not form a
real advanced porch, having its proper ecclesiastical purposes, but was
nothing but a boast and display of mass in the masonry which really had
no existence, the advanced face of wall concealing the fact that there
was only mass enough behind it to allow of this misleading display. It
may be said that the Gothic spire is constructed simply for display. It
is quite true; but it is avowedly so constructed, and there was no
concealment about it.
Mr. Ruskin, by the way, strangely affirms that “the direct symbolisation
of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men”; inferring thence that
there was no intention of aspiration in the Pointed architecture which
he cares so little for. But surely the reverse is the case; and such
symbolisation, in one way or other, constitutes a great part of the life
of all men. The Gothic spire, which was the most costly as well as the
most useless feature of the Gothic cathedral, is a final answer to such
doctrine, which strikes indeed at the life of all artistic work. If it
did not “symbolise a sentiment,” what was done by it?
The round arch, which was the accident of the Norman architecture, being
treated therein as a mere cavernous gap in masses of, in themselves,
all-sufficient masonry, was, as it has been already said, adopted by the
Byzantine architects as the principal theme of their art; but this arch
could be made nothing of, as the main source of expression, until it
developed the dome; and the dome, as it proved, could not be made much
of, until the Moresque builders took it in hand. It had the fatal
defect, when on a large scale, of lateral thrust, which could only be
met by a construction which had the double defect of positive and
negative falsehood. The domes of St. Sophia and St. Vitale, which the
eye naturally presumes to be of one mass or substance with the
substructure, are really formed, for lightness, of Rhodian bricks,
pumice-stone, and coils of empty jars; and yet the lateral thrust is so
great that it has to be opposed by a vast buttress-system, which is
carefully concealed, because it would contradict, if exposed, the
inevitable effect of extreme lightness in the dome. The Renaissance
architects found themselves equally at a loss, as we know, in dealing
with this feature. Both in St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s there is not one
but two entirely separate domes. And when all is done the Byzantine and
Renaissance domes are nothing to the eye but hollow shells, with no
special artistic expression.
The Moresque architects hit upon the astonishing fancy of giving the
dome _substance_, and thereby reconciling it with the constructive
masses which supported and abutted upon it, and at the same time
annihilating the idea of weight. This last idea already lurked in the
Byzantine domes of St. Sophia, which seem to be carried wholly by
“pendentives,” and not at all by the piers to which these are attached.
But it only lurked therein; for the eye necessarily inferred the immense
lateral weight which piers and walls received. Now the honeycombed domes
of the Moresque architecture are multiplied masses of pendentive forms
hanging actually in air, and making it impossible for the eye to
entertain any idea of lateral thrust in the whole or any part; and every
detail of column, wall, and arch corroborates this fanciful negation of
weight so perfectly that, for unity of effect, the Attic architecture
remains the only rival of the Moresque, though there is this infinite
difference between them: that, whereas the first appeals to the
imagination and symbolises the Greek ideal of mental and moral
equilibrium in forms of true construction, the latter only excites the
fancy by a fairy tale. The whole carrying and resisting power of the
arch is flung away by conferring upon it outlines which have no such
power (the real carrying arch being hidden in the wall far outside the
visible arch): the arches in colonnades, etc., seldom rest on, but
simply abut against, the columns, which usually carry broad
perpendicular beams, these being crossed above the arch-head by similar
horizontal beams; so that there is only a small rectangular space of
wall over each arch, and the idea of the weight of this being carried by
the arch is contradicted by a network of bars carrying the lines of the
wall into the upright beams. When a single arch is set in a wall, it is
similarly framed in fretwork, the lines of which carry the eye off the
arch without being pronounced enough to convey the idea that the force
of the wall is thus conducted laterally to some support outside the
arch.
It is impossible, in the space which can here be given to the matter, to
notice one in a score of the details which combine to produce the effect
with which every one is familiar. The purpose of these papers will have
been answered if the vivifying thought of each of the five architectures
which alone are integral styles, and not mixtures of styles, has been
stated clearly, and such hints of the means by which such thought is
conveyed have been given as will enable those who care to go further
into the subject to do the rest of the analysis by themselves.
XXV
THOUGHTS ON KNOWLEDGE, OPINION, AND INEQUALITY