LATE MEDIÆVAL DESIGN
In Chapter IV we have seen how strongly the artistic effect of the
Gothic churches depends upon their structure. Everything in the
structure depends upon and leads up to the vaulting; everything in
decorative treatment depends upon the structure. That is true except in
so far as the universally felt need of ornament founded on the study of
nature and of abstract form modifies design. Thus the carving in
conventionalized leafage of a band, straight or seemingly bent around a
pier, and the choice of colors in a decorative window or a painted panel
of wall beneath a window, are indeed independent of the structure.
Moreover, the Gothic sculptors were as exceptionally energetic and
forcible as the Gothic builders, and worked with them in the production
of great schemes of associated sculpture which were in harmony with the
work of these very bold and skillful builders. Now, when, after the
final expulsion of the English king and his armies from France, the
suppression of the domestic feuds between hostile parties, and the
pacification of the country under Charles VII, there was a sudden
recrudescence of building and of decorative art, the half ruined
churches were repaired, those destroyed were replaced. Between 1455 and
1515 there was a revival of architectural art comparable to that of the
close of the twelfth century. There were not as many great churches
undertaken, because nearly every diocese had its cathedral, and because
the exclusively ecclesiastical point of view was no longer held by the
people of the towns or by the nobility: but this was made good by the
great increase in the number and splendor of civic and private
buildings.
There is, then, a new and very magnificent Gothic art beginning about
the time of the conquest of Bordeaux and Gascony, when the English
armies were finally driven out of France, and ending only with the
complete establishment of the classical revival under Francis I.
Contemporaneous with this, or nearly so, was the very splendid art of
Spain, that curious and fantastic earliest Renaissance marked for us by
such monuments as the Casa Lonja of Valencia, the portal of the
University at Salamanca and that of the church of St. Paul at
Valladolid: and in Belgium, the epoch of the great town halls, that of
Louvain being of about 1460: that of Audenarde at the close of the epoch
now under consideration. In Germany, too, there was the beginning of a
most attractive civic architecture: and in England, although the civil
war of the Yorkists and Lancastrians postponed anything like peaceful
growth in art until near the close of the fifteenth century, there was
established, beginning with the accession of Henry VII, in 1485, the
so-called Tudor architecture which was really a continuation and
development of the curious Perpendicular Gothic art with the added
feature of fan-vaulting--the most original and perhaps also the most
splendid artistic achievement of the British Isles. Now in all this
highly organized and florid art there was a general abandonment of the
constructional principle which had been the root of the earlier Gothic,
and there was no new constructional device or system invented to take
its place. The new art is an art of convenience and splendor, but it has
no especial root in the necessities of building. The new Gothic builders
were very skillful and learned, they knew rib-vaulting by heart, and
also they understood vaulting in the solid shell: they could do
anything,--but there was no special task to which they had set
themselves and therefore they played with their buildings. Nor was there
to be introduced, during the centuries that were to follow, any new
principle of building.
In Greek building, in Roman building, in Romanesque building, and
especially in its culmination in the Gothic system, we are to look to
the way in which the buildings have been carried out. Plan, that is to
say the arrangement of parts for utility or internal effect, has much
to do with our appreciation of a building: but the structure, the actual
putting together of materials, is of still greater importance. You do
not pretend to judge of a Greek temple without being able almost to
count the stones of which it is composed or without appreciating fully
the relative part which they play. In Gothic architecture, assuredly no
person would dream of finding any enjoyment in a church without having
first secured a good working knowledge of how it came to be what it
is--how the stone roof is kept in place in the wonderful way that we see
it and what part is played by pier and flying buttress. But this
interest in the life of the structure becomes faint as we consider the
buildings of the four centuries beginning with the year 1400. We have to
consider some splendid works of art produced between that year and the
outbreak of the French Revolution, but in none of them is there any
special call for studying the theory or practice of the builders. They
may build well or they may build carelessly: that is comparatively
indifferent under the new régime, for designs are made and carried out
for their own sake; nor is the master of construction any longer the
master of design.
The reader will understand that in such general statements as these in
matters of fine art there are always many drawbacks and qualifications.
The fifteenth century had still a deal of Gothic vigor, in all the north
of Europe. There were great builders after, as before, the pivotal year
1400. This discussion will even include the names of men especially
praised as being great constructors: the point is that their system of
construction had little to do with their design. Jacopo Sansovino and
Sir Christopher Wren were great builders, but their designs were not in
any special way the better for that. Their work is marked everywhere
with the modern characteristic of being designed abstractly, and as if
intended to be carved out of a single block, and afterwards put into
terms of mortar-masonry and cut stone, because that was the only way in
which the builders of the time could proceed.
Let us consider the fan-vaulting of England. Its earliest appearance is
in the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral, built after 1375. Plate XXXIII
shows the eastern ambulatory of these cloisters. At the first glance
this vault seems to be built with ribs like that of Amiens or that of
Reims, as shown in the plates of Chapter IV; but the network of
projecting ribs in the Gloucester vault is a simulacrum only. The vault
is a solid stone shell, homogeneous, and built of large pieces. Plate
XXXIV shows the vault of the choir-aisle of Peterborough cathedral seen
as looked at from below. The joints of the stones can be made out: they
have no relation to the system of mouldings and panels. In England,
however, where the Gothic vaulting system had never been as important a
factor in art as it was on the Continent, this new and unique system of
vaulting was introduced as soon as the Wars of the Roses were over. The
three great monuments
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT GLOUCESTER, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND, VIEW
IN CLOISTER.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.]
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT PETERBORO’, NORTHANTS, ENGLAND, FAN VAULTING
OF CHOIR AISLE.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.]
of this “fan-vaulting” are St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, the
Chapel of Henry VII, attached to Westminster Abbey in London, and chief
and noblest of all, Kings College Chapel at Cambridge. This last may
well be thought the finest interior in England; and the other examples
mentioned are inferior in charm: and yet, since the Cambridge Chapel has
been shown in photography very often, it has seemed better to consider
here less-known examples. The vault is a perfectly safe building,
especially on a small scale, but it is not rib-vaulting. When, however,
the great vault of Henry the Seventh’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey was
undertaken, about 1515, a different system had to be followed. The span
or clear width of the nave is not very great and yet the task of
supporting the astonishing stone roof, seen in Plate XXXV, was one
worthy of the shrewdest and most daring builder of the time. The stone
ribs which spring directly from the uprights with but the slightest
pretense at vaulting shafts in little round mouldings with slightly
marked capitals, are really the arches which carry the whole stone
structure of the roof. The great pendants into which these ribs
disappear, and which themselves form the basis of the fan-vaulting
system, are of course without constructional value. The roof is to be
taken as an elaborate piece of geometrical carving, ingeniously arranged
in the semblance of a constructional work; its real construction (sound
enough, intelligent enough, or the roof would not stand) masked by the
extraordinary composition in radiating lines, as if the cloister of
Gloucester Cathedral had lent its roof to be raised high into the air,
and completed on the side towards the windows by the continuing of each
circular cone in that direction. Plate XXXVI gives the admirable drawing
made by Robert Willis of the construction of this vault and it is easy
to see that while the mechanical skill shown in the work is great and
peculiar, there is nothing whatever left of the system of Gothic
vaulting, nor any dependence placed
[Illustration: WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON, CHAPEL OF HENRY VII.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.]
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION OF ROOF, CHAPEL OF HENRY VII.
(From Drawing by Robert Willis.)]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.]
upon the numerous radiating ribs which seem to be the very framework of
the structure. They are decorative mouldings worked upon the surface of
a solid stone vault, built in a single shell which extends from one to
another of the great transverse arches which span the nave.
This design marks the culmination in England of that florid Gothic in
which early principles have a subordinate part, while newly required
elaboration and tricks of deceptive brilliancy of workmanship come to
the front and absorb the interest of the beholder. No one can remain
indifferent to the fantastic and yet enduring charm of such a roof. The
roof of Kings College Chapel has already been mentioned as of
extraordinary beauty and as forming with the vertical members which
support it and the windows between them a Gothic interior as splendid as
anything out of France: but its beauty is of a style which had already
lost its reason for being, and its appearance of constructional dignity
is in a way deceptive. The admiration we bring to such a monument is
then very different from that which we give to the interiors of the
great Gothic churches shown in the plates of Chapter IV, or to the many
other beautiful naves and choirs of the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries in England, France, Spain, and Germany. At Ely and Salisbury,
Bourges and Laon, Burgos and Gerona, Cologne and Vienna, the student
enters a great church, whose vault was completed at any time between
1200 and 1400, with perfect certainty that the structure is as sincere
and obvious as it is impressive; nor does any doubt enter his mind as to
the utility of the members of the structure around him. It is only with
the beginning of the florid Gothic that this wholesome frame of mind can
no longer be retained.
Let us consider the church of Brou, standing close to the town of
Bourg-en-Bresse, in southern Burgundy. It was not begun until about
1510: that is to say, its construction is contemporaneous with the
earlier years of Henry VIII in England,
[Illustration: CHURCH OF BROU, AT BOURG-EN-BRESSE (AIN) FRANCE.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.]
[Illustration: CHURCH OF SAINT WULFRAN, ABBEVILLE (NORD). FRANCE. DETAIL
OF WEST FRONT.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVIII.]
and the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain; and, in architectural
history, it is contemporaneous with so much of the building of the
present St. Peter’s in Rome as fixed the architectural style of that
great church. Plate XXXVII is a view of the church of Brou, looking
westward to the great front whose large windows fill the nave with
dazzling daylight and make that west wall itself invisible. The Gothic
structure here is complete--as logical and exact as in the palmy days of
the thirteenth century; but the decorative treatment is different
indeed! On the right is the tomb of the Duchess Margaret of Austria, who
completed the church and set up her own and her husband’s tomb with
those of earlier princes of the line. This tomb is a structure wholly in
keeping with the church, as it was really the cause of its being. There
is nothing more interesting in such work than the completely realized
naturalistic character of the statuary. Nowhere has the art of the
sculptor been left so free as in these flamboyant Gothic buildings--so
free to develop itself while still it remains in strict accordance with
the requirements of the architectural design. The splendid church of S.
Wulfran at Abbeville, in the far north of France, helps us to see still
more plainly, this extraordinary development of architectural sculpture
because the scale is larger and the artistic power manifested
immeasurably more fit to cope with great undertakings. Plate XXXVIII
giving part of the west portals of that surprising church will show how
completely the sculptor’s art has changed since the portals of Reims and
of Chartres were undertaken. As for the architectural treatment it is
still like that of the church of Brou, Gothic with modifications. The
hold which the Gothic system of vaulting, and of building to support the
vaults, had over the French builders is visible in this return to
earlier principles as soon as the dissensions of the country allowed.
The famous Town Halls of the Netherlands have preserved for us the most
perfect, because the most unmingled, traces
[Illustration: TOWNHALL OF AUDENARDE, BELGIUM.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIX.]
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL AT ALBI (TARN), FRANCE, OUTER GATE LEADING TO
SOUTH PORCH.]
[Illustration: PLATE XL.]
of flamboyant Gothic in civic buildings. The latest of all and the
smallest one of importance is that at Audenarde in Belgium, built
between 1525-30. It is represented in Plate XXXIX, lending itself well
to pictorial reproduction on a small scale because it depends but little
on the sculptured details. A single Madonna with the Child, above the
loggia from which the town authorities would speak to the people in the
days of municipal independence, is the only representative sculpture of
importance in all this front, below the cornice. The fantastic Gothic
tracery with conventional carving covers the blank wall spaces with a
continuous veil of slight and not unpleasant roughening; and the wall
spaces are so small that this formal kind of ornament is not
disagreeable. Small statues should have been placed in the niches; but
the building does not seem to suffer much from their absence. We can
judge of it as being what it is, a most simple and practical City Hall,
built with pointed arches, with a steep roof adorned by tower, dormer
window and pinnacle, and the whole structure covered by this thin veil
of moulded, cusped and traceried ornament, chiefly because the church
architecture of previous years had led up to that kind of design by
natural evolution, and because the spirit of the time knew of but one
architectural treatment. Therefore, without vaulting, with five stories
of rooms replacing the great hall of the church, with windows made to
open and shut for the convenience of the inhabitants of small rooms, the
building is yet closely in agreement with the church building of the
time, and is to be judged as a part of the great and long supreme style
out of which it has grown.
In the famous south porch of the cathedral at Albi, this florid Gothic
has reached its culmination. Plate XL shows the outer porch; that which,
when the cathedral was really a fortress of some importance, guarded the
first approach to the long flight of stairs, the outer perron. Nothing
is more attractive among the minor charms
[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ALBI (TARN), FRANCE, SOUTH PORCH.]
[Illustration: PLATE XLI.]
[Illustration: LOGGIA DEI LANZI, FLORENCE, TUSCANY.]
[Illustration: PLATE XLII.]
of spirited old architecture than these mixtures of florid and even
fantastical design with the grave solemnity of fortress towers and the
harsh line of battlements intended for the service of war. Passing
through this gateway which is pierced in a fortress-wall merely and
leads directly to no covered apartment of any sort, the visitor mounts
some twenty-five stone steps and reaches the porch shown in Plate XLI,
but he does not enter it by the larger archway; that is the south
archway to which there is meant to be access on the level of its own
sill. On the right and partly hidden by the huge buttress-pier is the
narrower eastern doorway, to which access by the steps is had, from the
outer porch, Plate XL. The great inner porch (Plate XLI) dates from the
earliest years of the sixteenth century, and is one of the greatest
triumphs as it is one of the very latest productions of that strange art
which has abandoned the essential character and basis of Gothic
architecture without losing its derived and secondary charm, which may
be defined as the charm of picturesque variety and sharp contrast--the
very reverse, or so it seems, of the calm harmony of Greek design.