that employed in the execution of timber roofs is the most remarkable.
These were in a measure, at least upon so large a scale, a feature wholly
English, for nothing approaching them is found elsewhere. The roof of
Westminster Hall is the most justly celebrated and is unique in general
character.
The natural stonework showing all its joints was generally left untouched
in the interior of Gothic buildings, and afforded the best finish as well
as contrast to the stained glass in the windows.
Polychrome decoration was attempted occasionally, chiefly on the
Continent, and in some instances successfully. The best examples are the
restorations of the Ste. Chapelle and St. Germain des Prés, in Paris,
though the latter belongs more properly to the Romanesque period. Many
churches have been completely spoiled as regards their inside appearance
by coats of whitewash applied to the whole interior surface, giving them
a bleak and barn-like aspect fatal to architectural effect; this is
especially frequent in Belgium.
This whitewash, coupled with horribly incongruous late
Renaissance decoration, has gone far in many cases to ruin what would
otherwise be fine buildings.
Externally all _good_ Gothic buildings showed a direct correspondence
with the interior: buttresses, flying buttresses, pinnacles, etc., were
all constructive and never decorative devices; there was never such a
thing as a façade or false front built independently of the interior,
and though the harmony of the lines of both were often difficult to
reconcile, it was just in the overcoming of such difficulties that the
brilliant qualities of Gothic architects were called forth.
In the arrangement of the West fronts the French were at their best,
for the combination of deeply recessed porches with the rose window and
gable above, flanked by the towers, which in France were usually placed
here, was both judicious and effective. In England such porches as those
of Rheims, or deep openings, such as the entrances to the cathedral of
Paris, were not used, and the West elevations are consequently less
interesting. Peterborough is an exception to this rule, but the design is
so exaggerated, that the three immense arcades dwarf everything connected
with them.
The custom of placing a tower and spire over the intersection of the nave
and transept was always adhered to in England, and was always a happy
arrangement which gave the building dignity and character, even when
the Western towers were omitted. Of this the celebrated
Salisbury Cathedral is a beautiful example.
The spires of Chartres and of St. Ouen, at Rouen, are the finest in
France, where towers were frequently built to receive spires which
were never added. The height to which the nave was carried there often
prevented the towers from having their due effect, as it was impossible
to carry them out on a scale large enough to give them a corresponding
proportion. English architects contented themselves with moderate
interior heights, rendering the proportioning of their buildings a much
easier task than that which their neighbours imposed upon themselves,
by attempting with each new building a more daring altitude, until the
crumbling vaults of Beauvais set a limit to their audacity.
The comparison of contemporary Gothic in England and France covers the
subject more accurately than between that of any other countries, for
these two nations rivalled each other all along in the solution of the
various problems which arose with each step in their progress, while the
architects of other countries profited by the results they attained and
erected their buildings on Anglo-French principles.
The cathedrals of Cologne, in Germany, and Toledo, in Spain, are as
fine as any to be found in France or England, but they are neither
German nor Spanish in conception and principle, and therefore do not
belong to the national architecture of these countries. In Italy,
Gothic architecture was never understood as it was in the North,
and whenever anything was attempted in direct imitation of Northern
principles of design, the result was always hard and mechanical.
The true Italian Gothic was of itself often beautiful, but this was
almost a separate style, in which the influences of pointed forms,
Oriental colour, and the example which the Classical ruins held out so
conspicuously on their own soil, were brought together by the Italians
so as to form an harmonious whole.
In Venice a peculiar development of the style was attained, adapted to
the flat elevations of the canal palaces. This arrangement consisted of a
consecutive series of arcades, in which the mouldings of each arch were
carried up and returned, forming a second and sometimes a third row of
lights, replacing, in the play of light and shadow, the forced absence of
projections.
These arcades were surmounted by horizontal mouldings, and the lines of
the cornices and imposts were also horizontal, the Italians never having
lost sight of the entablature, which had been dropped in France with the
rise of Romanesque architecture and replaced always afterward by the
vertical lines which are the prominent one sin of all Northern Gothic
buildings.
The celebrated Doge’s palace is the foremost of these and ranks amongst
the most picturesque buildings in Europe. It is not free, however, from
grave defects and is criticised by architects for the top-heavy and
injudicious construction, by which a high and rarely pierced wall is
sustained by the slenderest of arcades.
Most of these palaces are of the fifteenth century and should not perhaps
be mentioned first, but as they illustrate the principle of horizontal
lines more readily than by reference to the isolated parts of less
well-known buildings, they are introduced now.
Although Milan Cathedral is one of the largest and most pretentious
ecclesiastical buildings in Italy, it is scarcely a good example of
Italian Gothic, for German architects were employed in its construction
and their influence is apparent. It is rather to the Cathedral of Sienna
that we should turn for a complete typical Italian structure. Here we
find a beautiful building and yet one which can in no way be judged from
a Northern standard. The West front has three porches, but their recessed
arches are round instead of pointed, although the detail is Gothic (the
church having been begun in the middle of the thirteenth century); above
is a rose window, but, unlike the Western models, without dividing
tracery. Both the exterior and interior are striped with alternate bands
of black and white marble. The intersection of the nave and transept
is covered by a dome, a feature unknown in France or England (with
the single exception of the wooden one in the cathedral of Ely), and
the tower or campanile is placed in the angle of the South transept.
These points are all essentially different from Northern
treatment, in which some of them would be considered defects. Here,
however, the parts are sufficiently harmoniously united to produce a
whole which is pleasing and original. The cathedral of Sienna has much in
addition to these to make it interesting: attached to it is a library—a
later building, beautifully decorated in a style similar to the Loggie of
Raphael in the Vatican; the stalls of the choir are of carved wood, of
the richest Renaissance design, and the pulpit, by Nicholas Pisano, is a
gem of sculpture. This pulpit is octagonal; its sides are carved in high
relief in representation of Scriptural scenes, and it is supported by
polished columns carrying trefoiled arches and resting upon marble lions
in lieu of bases. As a work in which both sculpture and architecture
combine, it is, on a small scale, one of the most beautiful productions
of its kind, essentially Italian, and rivalled only by that in the
baptistery of Pisa by the same artist.
The body of a lion as the base of a column was a favourite device of
Italian architects, and is frequently met with. Porches formed of columns
carrying a round arch and gable and resting on lions, are often attached
to the entrance of churches.
Orvieto Cathedral is, on a smaller scale, similar to the neighbouring
cathedral of Sienna. The West front is designed with most elaborate
detail and highly ornamented with painting and sculpture. The Duomo
of Florence partakes also of the general characteristics of Sienna,
although its proportions are vastly larger. Its most striking feature
is the great dome, added by Brunelleschi, when the church, designed by
Arnolfo, was approaching completion; but it is unsatisfactory, as its
immense size dwarfs the rest of the building. The general picturesqueness
of outline, the delicate design of the doors and windows, and the
proximity of the beautiful tower of Giotto, go far to atone for this. The
exterior walls of the church are covered with a veneering of coloured
marbles, which, while judiciously treated and good of its kind, is too
false to be easily reconciled to true artistic principles, and its
skin-deep beauty has been painfully apparent, until very recently, owing
to the unfinished condition of the West front.
It may be said in extenuation of this that plaster, while generally
accepted as an honest material, is no less a shallow covering to disguise
naked walls; it is, however, frequently misused, and is only tolerable
so long as it is not employed in imitation of better materials, while
the thin marble is really intended to deceive the eye, and give the
impression that its depth is equal to that of the wall.
The interior of the Florence Cathedral is disappointing, it is
insufficiently lighted, bare, and much in need of the frescos with which
it was originally intended to be decorated.
The cathedral of Pisa belongs in greater part to the preceding style, but
the campo-santo adjoining it has a cloister with traceried
windows, which, notwithstanding its round arches, more nearly resembles
Northern Gothic than anything in Italy, and by its greater height shows
a novel and more effective treatment than is usually seen in France or
England.
The little church of St. Maria della Spina in this town, on the banks of
the Arno, is a charming little edifice of the Sienna type.
In civil architecture Italy has much to boast of. Her palaces and
fortresses are amongst the noblest and most picturesque buildings
of the Middle Ages found anywhere in Europe. Most of these are
rectangular masses of stone, the austerity of which is relieved by heavy
window-openings with pointed heads and moulded frames, and crowned by a
battlemented cornice, occasionally enlivened by shields placed between
alternate corbels. The addition of the campanile, used as a lookout tower
rather than as a belfry, generally completes an imposing structure.
Of those in stone, the Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello, in Florence,
are among the finest of these half town-hall, half fortress buildings,
while the Municipio of Sienna, with its immensely high campanile, may be
mentioned as typical of those in brick. Nearly every large city possesses
one of these tall towers, notably Verona, Cremona, Mantua, and Florence.
In the last-named the tower of Giotto is the most highly ornamented
and graceful of this class of structure, and for general proportions
unsurpassed. Longfellow, in his well-known poem, regrets
the lack of a spire to complete it, but it is questionable whether such
an addition could have been made in keeping with the style in which it is
designed.
In France the lately restored Chateau de Pierrefonds, near Compiegne,
illustrates, perhaps as well as any, the typical military building of the
Gothic period, with all the usual accompanying structures. The exterior
walls are high and massive, with round towers at the angles crowned with
projecting battlements and conical roofs. An interior court is reached
only by traversing a drawbridge and passing through an outer gate and
passage defended by heavy portcullis. Around this court are grouped the
apartments, banqueting-halls, the chapel, and the necessary quarters for
residents and garrison.
The number of remaining domestic buildings of the period is comparatively
limited. The house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, the monastic Hotel de
Cluny, in Paris, the Palais de Justice, and the Hotel Bourgtheroulde,
in Rouen, may be mentioned among the few still standing, as the best
examples of contemporary architecture.
Of small half-timbered houses there remain a fair number in France,
though they are daily being demolished, in the principal cities, to make
way for so-called improvements.
England is rich in military and civil buildings: the castles of
Windsor, Warwick, Kenilworth, Rochester, and the Tower of
London, are all well known and have been frequently described. Perhaps
the most interesting of English civil structures of the Middle Ages,
are the colleges at Oxford; as, however, they follow, in the Gothic
treatment, the progress of the styles, as illustrated in the contemporary
ecclesiastical edifices, they do not require special description.
The town-halls of Belgium are important Gothic buildings, and are
found in all the principal cities of that country. Their flat façades
are singularly rich, but as they embody only the forms and ornament
of Gothic art, they are less interesting and poorer examples than any
less pretentious structures showing the constructive element, which
predominated in the Gothic style.
Toward the close of the style, and before the rebirth of Classic art had
completely superseded Gothic architecture, a curious transitional style
had a brief sway, in which both were blended. The wing of the Chateau
de Blois, built by Louis XII., and the Chateau de Gaillon, built by
Cardinal Amboise, in the year 1500, the façade of which is now preserved
in the courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, may be regarded as the
best specimens of this charming and short-lived art. The churches of St.
Etienne du Mont, and St. Eustache, at Paris, may be added to these as
typical of the contemporary religious edifices.
In them we see the last throes of a dying style which had
become extravagant and distorted in its final efforts to survive, but
retained traces of its former beauty even in its expiring moments.
The Gothic style arose in the latter half of the twelfth century, it
attained its greatest purity and simplicity in the thirteenth; during
the fourteenth a more extensive use of ornament was introduced, in
consequence of which it has been termed Decorated Gothic; finally, in the
fifteenth, its principles and principal features were exaggerated and
pushed to their utmost limits, until its brilliancy, flickering in the
flamboyant traceries of the latest period, expired and gave place to a
Classic revival.
XI.
THE RENAISSANCE.
A not uncommon error is made in applying the name Renaissance only to the
delicately treated style of revived Classic art, such as was prevalent
in France during the reigns of Francis the First, and his immediate
successors.
The word—derived from the verb _renaître_, signifying in French the
rebirth (of the classics understood)—cannot, however, be confined to any
such narrowed limits, for no new style having been substituted since, it
is as correct a term to-day as it was in the sixteenth century. There
is certainly a distinction between the first brilliant productions of
the revival, and the more ponderous buildings which succeeded them, but
Early and Late Renaissance express this satisfactorily. It did not always
follow, however, that all the work which, from its characteristics, would
be classified under the first head, necessarily antedated that belonging
to the later period.
In Italy, where the works of the Romans were too colossal to be utterly
destroyed, and too conspicuous to be easily forgotten, the first movement
naturally took place to reawaken the long dormant art, by
which they had been produced.
In the fifteenth century Orcagua built the Loggia dei Lanzi, in Florence,
and boldly substituted round arches for the pointed ones then in vogue.
This was the turning-point in the tide of Gothic architecture, for it
needed but little more to induce the delighted Italians to throw off the
yoke of an art which they had adopted but unwillingly, and which had
never been sympathetic to their taste. Consistently with their impetuous
nature, the change was effected without hesitation in a marvellously
short period, and with scarcely any of the usual intervening transitional
stages. The ancient forms reappeared and replaced the dying Gothic as
rapidly as in the days of the French monarchy the cry “Le roi est mort.
Vive le roi!” heralded at once the king’s death and his son’s succession
to power.
It is strange that there should have been so little to connect the
succeeding styles, that the revival should have been so completely
independent of and uninfluenced by a style which had been steadily
growing for four centuries, and which men must have become accustomed
to consider the only one suited to their times. Delicate workmanship
was, however, the only Gothic legacy the Renaissance architects
accepted, and this was the chief characteristic of the work of the early
period. The proportions and scale of their buildings were small; a
whole order: pedestal, column, and entablature generally
occupying and marking the height of an ordinary story of fifteen or
twenty feet, and the ornament used, while profuse, was executed in the
lowest relief and with most minute detail.
If the revolution in art was great, it had proportionately great
exponents: Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Sangallo, Vignola, Michael
Angelo are names as prominent in history as those of much-lauded victors
in the battlefield.
Brunelleschi, architect of the dome of St. Mary’s in Florence, was one
of the earliest innovators. He designed the Strozzi and Pitti Palaces
in that city, with the horizontal lines and round arches of the Classic
school, although still retaining the feudal traditions in their massive
stonework and in the austerity of their exteriors. The great palaces of
Rome which belong to this period partake also of this external severity,
and confine their brilliancy to interior display. The palaces of the
Cancelleria by Bramante, the Palazzo Massini by Balthasar Perruzzi, of
Sienna, the Sacchetti and Corsini Palaces by Sangallo, the Barberini
designed by Bernini, and the Farnese Palace upon which Sangallo, Vignola,
and Michael Angelo devoted their labors in turn, are a few among the most
celebrated.
Most of these buildings, while varying in size and in accordance with
the character of their sites, are rectangular in plan, and enclose
quadrangular courts, the different stories being marked by superposed
orders and arcades. They are planned on a liberal scale,
with broad proportions and with great deference to symmetry. The beauty
of the plan was, in fact, one of the best features of the new style, not
only in domestic, but in ecclesiastical architecture, for the arbitrary
Gothic arrangements being once discarded, it became possible to combine
the circle and straight line in many novel and beautiful ways, for which
the older Roman buildings furnished admirable examples. The study of
these plans forms one of the most important elements in an architect’s
education, and their examination in these days of iron props and
twelve-inch walls is fraught with much pleasure and profit.
The light and brilliant creations of the early period are abundant in
Northern Italy, and were models with which the French were readily
impressed. The façade of the church in the Certosa of Pavia, with its
elaborate detail and delicate ornament, and such buildings as the
Spinelli Rezzonico and Vendramin palaces, the church of St. Zachariah,
the Logetta and Library of St Mark’s of Sansovino, in Venice, and
farther South the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, the Capella Pazzi attached
to the older Sta. Croce in Florence, and the monument to Julius II. in
Sta. Maria del Popolo in Rome are a few beautiful examples of the early
treatment which has so much affinity with the works produced in France
under the Valois.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ST. PETER’S AS ORIGINALLY DESIGNED BY MICHAEL
ANGELO.]
The great Italian cathedral upon which nearly all subsequent churches
were modelled was commenced upon the site of the old basilica of St.
Peter’s in Rome in the year 1506, upon plans by Bramante, and occupied
a century and a half in completion. After Bramante, Giocondo, Julian
Sangallo, Raphael, Perruzzi, Antonio di Sangallo, Michael Angelo and
Carlo Maderno each worked upon it in turn.
Michael Angelo, who designed the dome, wished to adopt the plan of the
Greek cross, that is, with equal arms, as shown in the accompanying plan.
The result would have been much more monumental and would have given the
dome its due effect within a moderate distance, while now it can only be
properly judged from afar, and the high façade terminating the nave is
both poor in composition and detrimental to the general conception. The
building is essentially Classic in all its details, but differs from the
general design of any particular Classical building. The nave is formed
by a Corinthian arcade similar to those of ancient Rome, though on a
vastly larger scale, supporting a tunnel-vault, which is decorated with
sunken panels like those of the ancient Baths. The dome is supported
on a circular drum carried on four immense piers and improves on the
Pantheon only in size, while it is surpassed by St. Sophia in scientific
construction.
The cathedral is most richly, even gaudily, decorated within, with
coloured marbles and mosaics and contains numerous tombs of great
magnificence and an altar with twisted columns designed by Bernini.
It is the largest church in the world, and yet its proportions are so
harmoniously, or inharmoniously designed, that it does not produce
a corresponding sense of its vastness upon the beholder. The single
order occupying the height of two stories is a feature, the invention,
or rather arrangement of which, is attributed to Michael Angelo. In
subsequent buildings it was nearly always adopted in preference to the
smaller orders marking each floor.
The life of this great artist forms of itself a chapter in the history
of architecture. Michael Buonarotti, surnamed Angelo, the most brilliant
architect of the sixteenth century, was born of noble parentage in Arezzo
in the year 1575. He developed extraordinary talents at an early age,
and after outstripping his first instructor, took up his residence in
Florence, where he studied anatomy and the human figure until he became
the most expert draughtsman of his time. In Rome, where he was summoned
by Julius II., he produced several fine works in statuary, but owing
to the jealousy of Bramante was forced to quit the city and return to
Florence. There he aided the citizens to sustain a siege during a year,
by his superior knowledge of fortification, and subsequently went to
Venice, where he designed the famous Rialto bridge. At the earnest
solicitation of the pope he returned to Rome and commenced the great
paintings in the Sistine Chapel, to which work he had been assigned by
the counsels of Bramante, who wished to prove his inferiority to his own
nephew Raphael. The result of the work, completed in a marvellously short
period, however, was so successful that all Rome ran to see it.
After the accession of Paul III. to the Papal see, Michael Angelo was
definitely appointed architect of St. Peter’s and worked on the building
during the remainder of his life, although he returned to Florence
several times and there executed the splendid statues which adorn the
chapel of the Medicis. In his later days he was assisted by Vignola
in his work, but died before its completion at the advanced age of
eighty-eight.