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Transcriber's Note
A considerable number of the page references in the index are incorrect; however,
they have been preserved as printed. The transcriber has, as far as possible, linked
to the correct place in the text.
ILLUSTRATED TEXT-BOOKS OF ART
EDUCATION
EDITED BY EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A.
ARCHITECTURE
GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE
BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A.
P.
THE CERTOSA, NEAR PAVIA. From the Cloisters.
Begun by Marco di Campione, A.D. 1393.
TEXT-BOOK OF ART EDUCATION, EDITED BY
EDWARD J. POYNTER, R.A.
ARCHITECTURE
GOTHIC AND RENAISSANCE
BY T. ROGER SMITH, F.R.I.B.A.
Occasional Lecturer on Architecture at University College, London
NEW YORK
SCRIBNER AND WELFORD.
LONDON
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET
1880
(All rights reserved.)
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL, E. C.
PREFACE.
THE history, the features, and the most famous
examples of European architecture, during a period
extending from the rise of the Gothic, or pointed, style
in the twelfth century to the general depression which
overtook the Renaissance style at the close of the eighteenth,
form the subject of this little volume. I have
endeavoured to adopt as free and simple a mode of treatment
as is compatible with the accurate statement of at
least the outlines of so very technical a subject.
Though it is to be hoped that many professional students
of architecture will find this hand-book serviceable to
them in their elementary studies, it has been my principal
endeavour to adapt it to the requirements of those
who are preparing for the professional pursuit of the
sister arts, and of that large and happily increasing number
of students who pursue the fine arts as a necessary part
of a complete liberal education, and who know that a
solid and comprehensive acquaintance with art, especially
if joined to some skill in the use of the pencil,
the brush, the modelling tool, or the etching needle, will
open sources of pleasure and interest of the most refined
description.
The broad facts of all art history; the principles which
underlie each of the fine arts; and the most precious or
most noteworthy examples of each, ought to be familiar
to every art student, whatever special branch he may
follow. Beyond these limits I have not attempted to
carry this account of Gothic and Renaissance architecture;
within them I have endeavoured to make the work
as complete as the space at my disposal permitted.
Some portions of the text formed part of two courses
of lectures delivered before the students of the School
of Military Engineering at Chatham, and are introduced
here by the kind permission of Sir John Stokes. Many
of the descriptive and critical remarks are transcripts of
notes made by myself, almost under the shadow of the
buildings to which they refer. It would, however, have
been impossible to give a condensed view of so extended
a subject had not every part of it been treated
at much greater length by previous writers. The number
and variety of the books consulted renders it impossible
to make any other acknowledgment here than this general
recognition of my indebtedness to their authors.
T. R. S.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
ILLUSTRATED GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL WORDS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER II.
THE BUILDINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
CHAPTER III.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER IV.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND.
Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls. Towers and Spires. Gables. Piers and Columns
CHAPTER V.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND (continued).
Analysis (continued). Openings. Roofs. Spires. Ornaments. Stained Glass. Sculpture
CHAPTER VI.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN EUROPE.
1. France. Chronological Sketch. Analysis of Buildings.
Plans. Walls, Towers and Gables. Columns and
Piers. Roofs and Vaults. Openings. Mouldings and
Ornaments. Construction and Design
2. Belgium and the Netherlands
3. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
CHAPTER VII.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
1. Germany. Chronological Sketch. Analysis of Buildings.
Plans. Walls, Towers and Gables. Roofs and Vaults.
Openings. Ornaments. Construction and Design
2. Northern Europe
CHAPTER VIII.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.
1. Italy and Sicily. Topographical Sketch. Northern
Italy. Central Italy. Southern Italy. Analysis
of Buildings. Plans. Walls, Towers, and Columns.
Openings and Arches. Roofs and Vaults. Mouldings
and Ornaments. Construction and Design
2. Spain. Chronological Sketch
3. Portugal
CHAPTER IX.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
Principles of Construction and Design. Materials and Construction
CHAPTER X.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.
General View. Analysis of Buildings. Plans. Walls
and Columns. Openings. Construction and Design
CHAPTER XI.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.
Florence. Rome. Venice, Vicenza, Verona. Milan,
Pavia. Genoa, Turin, Naples. Country Villas
CHAPTER XII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
1. France. Chronological Sketch
2. Belgium and the Netherlands
3. Germany
CHAPTER XIII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL.
1. England. Chronological Sketch
2. Scotland
3. Spain and Portugal
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Certosa, The, near Pavia. From the Cloisters
Saint George. Panel from the Tomb of Cardinal Amboise in Rouen Cathedral
Glossary. Forty Engravings of Details
1.
West Entrance, Lichfield Cathedral. (1275.)
2.
Ground Plan of Peterborough Cathedral. (1118 to 1193.)
3.
Transverse Section of the Nave of Salisbury Cathedral
4.
Choir of Worcester Cathedral. (Begun 1224.)
5.
Nave of Wells Cathedral. (1206 to 1242.)
6.
Ground Plan of Westminster Abbey
7.
House of Jaques Cœur at Bourges. (Begun 1443.)
8.
Plan of Warwick Castle. (14th and 15th Centuries.)
9.
Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice. (14th Century.)
10.
Well at Regensburg. (15th Century.)
11.
Gothic Ornament. From Sens Cathedral (Headpiece)
12.
Lincoln Cathedral. (Mostly Early English.)
13.
St. Pierre, Caen, Tower and Spire. (Spire, 1302.)
14.
House at Chester. (16th Century.)
15.
Houses at Lisieux, France. (16th Century.)
16.
Lancet Window. (12th Century.)
17.
Two-light Window. (13th Century.)
18.
Geometrical Tracery. (14th Century.)
19.
Triforium Arcade, Westminster Abbey. (1269.)
20.
Rose Window from the Transept of Lincoln Cathedral
21.
Perpendicular Window
22.
Roof of Hall at Eltham Palace. (15th Century.)
23.
Henry VII.’s Chapel. (1503-1512.)
24.
Spire of St. Mary Magdalene, Warboys, Lincolnshire
25.
Decorated Spire. All Saints’ Church, Oakham
26.
Early Arch in Receding Planes
27.
Arch in Receding Planes Moulded
28.
Doorway, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. (15th Cent.)
29.
Stained Glass Window from Chartres Cathedral
30.
Sculpture from Chapter House, Westminster Abbey
31.
Church at Fontevrault. (Begun 1125.)
32.
Doorway at Loches, France. (1180.)
33.
Notre Dame, Paris, West Front. (1214.)
34.
Plan of Amiens Cathedral. (1220-1272.)
35.
Amiens Cathedral, West Front. (1220-1272.)
36.
Piers and Superstructure, Rheims Cathedral. (1211-1240.)
37.
Capital from St. Nicholas, Blois, France. (13th Century.)
38.
Beauvais Cathedral, Interior. (1225-1537.)
39.
The Town Hall of Middleburgh. (1518.)
40.
Tower at Ghent. (Begun 1183.)
41.
Abbey Church of Arnstein. (12th and 13th Centuries.)
42.
Church at Andernach. (Early 13th Century.)
43.
Church of St. Barbara at Kuttenberg. East End. (1358-1548.)
44.
Double Church at Schwartz-Rheindorff. Section. (1158.)
45.
Double Church at Schwartz-Rheindorff. (1158.)
46.
Cologne Cathedral. Ground Plan. (Begun 1248.)
47.
Western Doorway of Church at Thann. (14th Century.)
48.
Church of St. Catherine at Oppenheim. (1262 to 1439.)
49.
St. Sebald’s Church at Nuremberg. The Bride’s Doorway
50.
Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona
51.
Cathedral at Florence. With Giotto’s Campanile
52.
Cathedral at Siena. West Front and Campanile
53.
Cathedral at Orvieto. (Begun 1290; Façade, 1310.)
54.
Ogival Window-head
55.
Tracery in Window-head, from Venice
56.
Window from Tivoli
57.
Italian Gothic Window, with Tracery in Head
58.
Cathedral at Toledo. Interior. (Begun 1227.)
59.
The Giralda at Seville. (Begun in 1196; Finished in 1568.)
60.
Doorway from Church at Batalha. (Begun 1385.)
61.
Strozzi Palace at Florence. (Begun 1489.)
62.
Part of the Loggia del Consiglio at Verona
63.
The Pandolfini Palace, Florence. Designed by Raphael
64.
St. Peter’s at Rome. Interior. (1506-1661.)
65.
Monument by Sansovino, in Sta. Maria del Popolo, Rome
66.
Palazzo Giraud, Rome. By Bramante. (1506.)
67.
Italian Shell Ornament
68.
The Church of the Redentore, Venice. (1576.)
69.
Certosa near Pavia. Part of West Front. (Begun 1473.)
70.
Villa Medici—On the Pincian Hill near Rome. By Annibale Lippi (now the
Académie Française). (A.D. 1540.)
70a.
Early Renaissance Corbel
71.
Window from a House at Orleans. (Early 16th Century.)
72.
Capital from the House of Francis I., Orleans. (1540.)
73.
Pavillon Richelieu of the Louvre, Paris
74.
Part of the Tuileries, Paris. (Begun 1564.)
75.
Capital from Delorme’s work at the Louvre
76.
Hôtel des Invalides, Paris
77.
Window from Colmar. (1575.)
78.
Zeughaus, Dantzic. (1605.)
79.
Council-house at Leyden. (1599.)
80.
Quadrangle of the Castle of Schalaburg
81.
Holland House, Kensington. (1607.)
82.
St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. (1675-1710.)
83.
Houses at Chester. (16th Century.)
84.
The Alcazar at Toledo. (Begun 1568.)
GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL WORDS.
Abacus.—The upper portion of the capital of a column, upon which
the weight to be carried rests.
Aisle (Lat. ala).—The side subdivision in a church; occasionally all
the subdivisions, including the nave, are called aisles.
Apse.—A semicircular or polygonal termination to, or projection
from, a church or other public building.
Arcade.—A range of arches, supported on piers or columns.
Arch.—A construction of wedge-shaped blocks of stone, or of bricks,
of a curved outline, and spanning an open space. The principal
forms of arch in use are Semicircular; Acutely-pointed, or Lancet;
Equilateral, or Less Acutely-pointed; Four-centred, or Depressed
Tudor; Three-centred, or Elliptic; Ogival; Segmental; and
Stilted. (Figs. .)
Architrave.—(1) The stone which in Classic and Renaissance architecture
is thrown from one column or pilaster to the next. (2)
The moulding which in the same styles is used to ornament the
margin of a door or window opening or arch.
Ashlar.—Finely-wrought masonry, employed for the facing of a wall
of coarser masonry or brick.
Attic (In Renaissance Architecture).—A low upper story, distinctly
marked in the architecture of the building, usually surmounting
an order; (2) in ordinary building, any story in a roof.
Bailey (from vallum).—The enclosure of the courtyard of a castle.
Ball-flower.—An ornament representing a globular bud, placed
usually in a hollow moulding.
Baluster.—A species of small column, generally of curved outline.
Balustrade.—A parapet or rail formed of balusters.
Fig. a.—Semicircular Arch.
Fig. b.—Stilted Arch.
The Semicircular and the Stilted Semicircular Arch were the only arches
in use till the introduction of the Pointed Arch. Throughout the Early
English, Decorated, and Perpendicular periods they occur as exceptional
features, but they were practically superseded after the close of the 12th cent.
Fig. c.—Equilateral Arch.
Fig. d.—Lancet Arch.
The Lancet Arch was characteristic of the Early English period, is never
found earlier, and but rarely occurs later. The Equilateral Arch was the
favourite arch of the architects of the geometrical Decorated, but is not
unfrequently met with in the early part of the Perpendicular period.
Fig. e.—Ogival Arch.
Fig. f.—Depressed Tudor Arch.
The Depressed (or Four-centred) Tudor Arch is characteristic of the Perpendicular
period, and was then constantly employed. The Ogival Arch is
occasionally employed late in that period, but was more used by French and
Italian architects than by those of Great Britain.
Band.—A flat moulding or projecting strip of stone.
Barrel-vaulting.—See Waggon-head vaulting.
Barge-board (or Verge-board).—An inclined and pierced or ornamented
board placed along the edge of a roof when it overhangs
a gable wall.
Base.—(1) The foot of a column; (2) sometimes that of a buttress
or wall.
Fig. g.—Base of Early English Shaft.
Fig. h.—Base of Perpendicular Shaft.
Fig. i.—Base of Decorated Shaft.
Basilica.—(1) A Roman public hall; (2) an early Christian church,
similar to a Roman basilica in disposition.
Bastion (in Fortification).—A bold projecting mass of building, or
earthwork thrown out beyond the general line of a wall.
Battlement.—A notched or indented parapet.
Bay.—One of the compartments in a building which is made up of
several repetitions of the same group of features; e.g., in a church
the space from one column of the nave arcade to the next is a
bay.
Bay-window.—A window projecting outward from the wall. It may
be rectangular or polygonal. It must be built up from the ground.
If thrown out above the ground level, a projecting window is
called an Oriel. (See Bow window.)
Bead.—A small moulding of circular profile.
Belfry.—A chamber fitted to receive a peal of bells.
Belfry Stage.—The story of a tower where the belfry occurs. Usually
marked by large open arches or windows, to let the sound escape.
Bell (of a capital).—The body between the necking and the abacus
(which see).
Billet Moulding.—A moulding consisting of a group of small
blocks separated by spaces about equal to their own length.
Blind Story.—Triforium (which see).
Boss.—A projecting mass of carving placed to conceal the intersection
of the ribs of a vault, or at the end of a string course
which it is desired to stop, or in an analogous situation.
Bow Window.—Similar to a Bay-window (which see), but circular or
segmental.
Broach-spire.—A spire springing from a tower without a parapet and
with pyramidal features at the feet of its four oblique sides (see
Fig. ) to connect them to the four angles of the tower.
Broachead (Spire).—Formed as above described.
Buttress.—A projection built up against a wall to create additional
strength or furnish support (see Flying Buttress).
Byzantine.—The round-arched Christian architecture of the Eastern
Church, which had its origin in Byzantium (Constantinople).
Canopy.—(1) An ornamented projection over doors, windows, &c.;
(2) a covering over niches, tombs, &c.
Campanile.—The Italian name for a bell-tower.
Fig. j.—Buttress.
Capital.—The head of a column or pilaster (Figs. ).
Cathedral.—A church which contains the seat of a bishop; usually
a building of the first class.
Certosa.—A monastery (or church) of Carthusian monks.
Chamfer.—A slight strip pared off from a sharp angle.
Chancel.—The choir or eastern part of a church.
Chantry Chapel.—A chapel connected with a monument or tomb
in which masses were to be chanted. This was usually of small
size and very rich.
Chapel.—(1) A chamber attached to a church and opening out of it,
or formed within it, and in which an altar was placed; (2) a
small detached church.
Chapter House.—The hall of assembly of the chapter (dean and
canons) of a cathedral.
Fig. l.—Early Norman Capital.
Fig. m.—Early English Capital.
Fig. n.—Later Norman Capital.
Fig. o.—Perpendicular Capital.
Fig. p.—Early French Capital.
Château.—The French name for a country mansion.
Chevron.—A zig-zag ornament.
Chevet.—The French name for an apse when surrounded by chapels;
see the plan of Westminster Abbey (Fig. ).
Choir.—The part of a church in which the services are celebrated;
usually, but not always, the east end or chancel. In a Spanish
church the choir is often at the crossing.
Clerestory.—The upper story or row of windows lighting the nave of
a Gothic church.
Cloister.—A covered way round a quadrangle of a monastic building.
Clustered (shafts).—Grouped so as to form a pier of some mass out
of several small shafts.
Corbel.—A projecting stone (or timber) supporting, or seeming to
support, a weight (Fig. ).
Fig. k.—Early Renaissance Corbel.
Corbelling.—A series of mouldings doing the same duty as a corbel;
a row of corbels.
Corbel Table.—A row of corbels supporting an overhanging parapet
or cornice.
Cortile (Italian).—The internal arcaded quadrangle of a palace,
mansion, or public building.
Column.—A stone or marble post, divided usually into base, shaft,
and capital; distinguished from a pier by the shaft being cylindrical
or polygonal, and in one, or at most, in few pieces.
Cornice.—The projecting and crowning portion of an order (which
see) or of a building, or of a stage or story of a building.
Course.—A horizontal layer of stones in the masonry of a building.
Crocket.—A tuft of leaves arranged in a formal shape, used to decorate
ornamental gables, the ribs of spires, &c.
Fig. q.—Decorated Crocket.
Fig. r.—Perpendicular Crocket.
Crossing.—The intersection (which see) in a church or cathedral.
Cross Vault.—A vault of which the arched surfaces intersect one
another, forming a groin (which see).
Crypt.—The basement under a church or other building (almost invariably
vaulted).
Cusp.—The projecting point thrown out to form the leaf-shaped forms
or foliations in the heads of Gothic windows, and in tracery and
panels.
}
Dec.
The Gothic architecture of the fourteenth century in England. Abbreviated Dec.
Decorated.
Detail.—The minuter features of a design or building, especially its
mouldings and carving.
Diaper (Gothic).—An uniform pattern of leaves or flowers carved or
painted on the surface of a wall.
Fig. s.—Diaper in Spandrel, from Westminster Abbey.
Dogtooth.—A sharply-pointed ornament in a hollow moulding which
is peculiar to Early English Gothic. It somewhat resembles a
blunt tooth.
Dormer Window.—A window pierced through a sloping roof and
placed under a small gable or roof of its own.
Dome.—A cupola or spherical convex roof, ordinarily circular on plan.
Domical Vaulting.—Vaulting in which a series of small domes are
employed; in contradistinction to a waggon-head vault, or an
intersecting vault.
Double Tracery.—Two layers of tracery one behind the other and
with a clear space between.
}
E. E.
The Gothic architecture of England in the thirteenth century. Abbreviated E. E.
Early English.
Eaves.—The verge or edge of a roof overhanging the wall.
Eaves-course.—A moulding carrying the eaves.
Elevation.—(1) A geometrical drawing of part of the exterior or
interior walls of a building; (2) the architectural treatment of the
exterior or interior walls of a building.
Elizabethan.—The architecture of England in, and for some time
after, the reign of Elizabeth.
Embattled.—Finished with battlements, or in imitation of battlements.
Enrichments.—The carved (or coloured) decorations applied to the
mouldings or other features of an architectural design. (See
Mouldings.)
Entablature (in Classic and Renaissance architecture).—The superstructure
above the columns where an order is employed. It is
divided into the architrave, which rests on the columns, the frieze
and the cornice.
Façade.—The front of a building or of a principal part of a building.
Fan Vault.—The vaulting in use in England in the fifteenth
century, in which a series of conoids bearing some resemblance to
an open fan are employed.
Fillet.—A small moulding of square flat section.
Fig. t.—Perpendicular Finial.
Finial.—A formally arranged bunch of foliage or other similar ornament
forming the top of a pinnacle, gablet, or other ornamented
feature of Gothic architecture.
Flamboyant Style.—The late Gothic architecture of France at the
end of the fifteenth century, so called from the occurrence of
flame-shaped forms in the tracery.
Flèche.—A name adapted from the French. A slender spire, mostly
placed on a roof; not often so called if on a tower.
Flying Buttress.—A buttress used to steady the upper and inner
walls of a vaulted building, placed at some distance from the
wall which it supports, and connected with it by an arch.
Fig. u.—Flying Buttress.
Foil.—A leaf-shaped form produced by adding cusps to the curved
outline of a window head or piece of tracery.
Foliation.—The decoration of an opening, or of tracery by means of
foils and cusps.
Fosse.—The ditch of a fortress.
François I. Style.—The early Renaissance architecture of France
during part of the sixteenth century.
Frieze.—(1) The middle member of a Classic or Renaissance entablature;
this was often sculptured and carved; (2) any band of
sculptured ornament.
Gable.—The triangular-shaped wall carrying the end of a roof.
Gablet.—A small gable (usually ornamental only).
Gallery.—(1) An apartment of great length in proportion to its
width; (2) a raised floor or stage in a building.
Gargoyle.—A projecting waterspout, usually carved in stone, more
rarely formed of metal.
Geometrical.—The architecture of the earlier part of the decorated
period in England.
Grille.—A grating or ornamental railing of metal.
Groin.—The curved line which is made by the meeting of the surfaces
of two vaults or portions of vaults which intersect.
Group.—An assemblage of shafts or mouldings or other small features
intended to produce a combined effect.
Grouping.—Combining architectural features as above.
Hall.—(1) The largest room in an ancient English mansion, or a
college, &c.; (2) any large and stately apartment.
Half Timbered Construction.—A mode of building in which a
framework of timbers is displayed and the spaces between them
are filled in with plaster or tiles.
Hammer Beam Roof.—A roof peculiar to English architecture of the
fifteenth century, deriving its name from the use of a hammer
beam (a large bracket projecting from the walls) to partly support
the rafters.
Head (of an arch or other opening).—The portion within the curve;
whether filled in by masonry or left open, sometimes called a
tympanum.
Hip.—The external angle formed by the meeting of two sloping sides
of a roof where there is no gable.
Hôtel (French).—A town mansion.
Impost.—A moulding or other line marking the top of the jambs
of an arched opening, and the starting point, or apparent starting
point, of the arch.
Inlay.—A mode of decoration in which coloured materials are laid
into sinkings of ornamental shape, cut into the surface to be
decorated.
Intersection (or Crossing).—The point in a church where the
transepts cross the nave.
Intersecting Vaults.—Vaults of which the surfaces cut one another.
Interpenetration.—A German mode of treating mouldings, as though
two or more sets of them existed in the same stone and they
could pass through (interpenetrate) each other.
Jamb.—The side of a door or window or arch, or other opening.
Fig. v.—Plan of a Jamb and Central Pier of a Gothic Doorway.
Keep.—The tower which formed the stronghold of a mediæval castle.
King Post.—The middle post in the framing of a timber roof.
Lancet Arch.—The sharply-pointed window-head and arch, characteristic
of English Gothic in the thirteenth century.
Lantern.—A conspicuous feature rising above a roof or crowning a
dome, and intended usually to light a Hall, but often introduced
simply as an architectural finish to the whole building.
Lierne (rib).—A rib intermediate between the main ribs in Gothic
vaulting.
Light.—One of the divisions of a window of which the entire width
is divided by one or more mullions.
Lintel.—The stone or beam covering a doorway or other opening not
spanned by an arch. Sometimes applied to the architrave of an
order.
Loggia (Italian).—An open arcade with a gallery behind.
Loop.—Short for loophole. A very narrow slit in the wall of a fortress,
serving as a window, or to shoot through.
Lucarne.—A spire-light. A small window like a slender dormer
window.
Moat (or Fosse).—The ditch round a fortress or semi-fortified house.
Mosaic.—An ornament for pavements, walls, and the surfaces of
vaults, formed by cementing together small pieces of coloured
material (stone, marble, tile, &c.) so as to produce a pattern or
picture.
Moulding.—A term applied to all varieties of contour or outline given
to the angles, projections, or recesses of the various parts of a
building. The object being either to produce an outline satisfactory
to the eye; or, more frequently, to obtain a play of light
and shade, and to produce the appearance of a line or a series of
lines, broad or narrow, and of varying intensity of lightness or
shade in the building or some of its features.
The contour which a moulding would present when cut across
in a direction at right angles to its length is called its profile.
The profile of mouldings varied with each style of architecture
and at each period (Figs. ). When ornaments are carved
out of some of the moulded surfaces the latter are technically
termed enriched mouldings. The enrichments in use varied with
each style and each period, as the mouldings themselves did.
Mullion.—The upright bars of stone frequently employed (especially
in Gothic architecture) to subdivide one window into two or more
lights.
Nave.—(1) The central avenue of a church or cathedral; (2) the
western part of a church as distinguished from the chancel or
choir; (3) occasionally, any avenue in the interior of a building
which is divided by one or more rows of columns running lengthways
is called a nave.
Necking (of a column).—The point (usually marked by a fillet or other
small projecting moulding) where the shaft ends and the capital
begins.
Newel Post.—The stout post at the foot of a staircase from which
the balustrade or the handrail starts.
Fig. w.—Arch Moulding.
(Gothic, 12th Century.)
Fig. y.—Arch Moulding.
(Decorated, 14th Century.)
Fig. z.—Arch Moulding. (Gothic, 13th Century.)
Niche.—A recess in a wall for a statue, vase, or other upright ornament.
Norman.—The architecture of England from the Norman Conquest
till the latter part of the twelfth century.
Ogee.—A moulding or line of part concave and part convex curvature
(see Fig. , showing an ogee-shaped arch).
Ogival.—Ogee-shaped (see Fig. ).
Open Tracery.—Tracery in which the spaces between the bars are
neither closed by slabs of stone nor glazed.
Order.—(1) In Classical and Renaissance architecture a single column
or pilaster and its appropriate entablature or superstructure; (2) a
series of columns or pilasters with their entablature; (3) an entire
decorative system appropriate to the kind of column chosen. In
Renaissance architecture there are five orders—the Tuscan, Doric,
Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite. Each has its own proper
column, and its proper base, shaft, and capital; and its own entablature.
The proportions and the degree of enrichment appropriate
to each vary. The Tuscan being the sturdiest and plainest, the
Composite the most slender and most small, and the others taking
place in the succession in which they stand enumerated above.
Where more than one order occurs in a building, as constantly
happens in Classic and Renaissance buildings, the orders which
are the plainest and most sturdy (and have been named first) if
employed, are invariably placed below the more slender orders;
e.g. the Doric is never placed over the Corinthian or the Ionic,
but if employed in combination with either of those orders it is
always the lowest in position.
Oriel.—A window projecting like a bay or bow window, not resting
on the ground but thrown out above the ground level and resting
on a corbel.
Palladian.—A phase of fully developed Renaissance architecture
introduced by the architect Palladio, and largely followed in
England as well as in Italy.
Panel.—(1) The thinner portions of the framed woodwork of doors
and other such joiner’s work; (2) all sunk compartments in
masonry, ceilings, &c.
Panelling.—(1) Woodwork formed of framework containing panels;
(2) any decoration formed of a series of sunk compartments.
Parapet.—A breastwork or low wall used to protect the gutters and
screen the roofs of buildings; also, perhaps primarily, to protect
the ramparts of fortifications.
Fig. a a.—Open Parapet, late Decorated.
Fig. b b.—Battlemented Parapet, Perpendicular.
Pavilion.—A strongly marked single block of building; most frequently
applied to those blocks in French and other Renaissance
buildings that are marked out by high roofs.
Pedestal.—(1) A substructure sometimes placed under a column in
Renaissance architecture; (2) a similar substructure intended to
carry a statue, vase, or other ornament.
Pediment.—(1) The gable, where used in Renaissance buildings; (2)
an ornamental gable sometimes placed over windows, doors, and
other features in Gothic buildings.
}
Perp.
The Gothic architecture of the fifteenth century in England. Abbreviated Perp.
Perpendicular.
Pier.—(1) A mass of walling, either a detached portion of a wall or
a distinct structure of masonry, taking the place of a column in
the arcade of a church or elsewhere; (2) a group or cluster of
shafts substituted for a column.
Fig. c c.—Early English Piers.
Fig. d d.—Late Decorated and Perpendicular Piers.
Pilaster.—A square column, usually attached to a wall; frequently
used in Classic and Renaissance architecture in combination with
columns.
Pinnacle (in Gothic architecture).—A small turret, or ornament,
usually with a pointed top, employed to mark the summit of
gables, buttresses, and other tall features.
Pitch.—The degree of slope given to a roof, gable, or pediment.
Plan.—(1) A map of the floor of a building, showing the piers, if
any, and the walls which inclose and divide it, with the openings
in them; (2) the actual arrangement and disposition of the floors,
piers, and walls of the building itself.
Plane.—The imaginary surface within which a series of mouldings
lies, and which coincides with the salient and important points
of that series. Mouldings are said to be on an oblique plane when
their plane forms an angle less than a right angle with the face
of the wall; and in receding planes, when they can be divided
into a series of groups of more or less stepped outline, each within
and behind the other, and each partly bounded by a plane parallel
with the face of the wall.
Plaster.—The plastic material, of which the groundwork is lime
and sand, used to cover walls internally and to form ceilings.
Sometimes employed as a covering to walls externally.
Plinth.—The base of a wall or of a column or range of columns.
Portal.—A dignified and important entrance doorway.
Portico.—A range of columns with their entablature (and usually
covered by a pediment), marking the entrance to a Renaissance or
Classic building.
Prismatic Rustication.—In Elizabethan architecture rusticated
masonry with diamond-shaped projections worked on the face
of each stone.
Profile.—The contour or outline of mouldings as they would appear
if sawn across at right angles to their length.
Porch.—A small external structure to protect and ornament the doorway
to a building (rarely met with in Renaissance).
Quatrefoil.—A four-leaved ornament occupying a circle in tracery
or a panel.
Rafters.—The sloping beams of a roof upon which the covering of
the roof rests.
Ragstone.—A coarse stone found in parts of Kent and elsewhere, and
used for walling.
Receding Planes.—(See Plane.)
Recess.—A sinking in a building deeper than a mere panel.
Recessing.—Forming one or more recesses. Throwing back some
part of a building behind the general face.
Renaissance.—The art of the period of the Classic revival which
began in the sixteenth century. In this volume used chiefly
to denote the architecture of Europe in that and the succeeding
centuries.
Rib (in Gothic vaulting).—A bar of masonry or moulding projecting
beyond the general surface of a vault, to mark its intersections or
subdivide its surface, and to add strength.
Ridge.—(1) The straight line or ornament which marks the summit
of a roof; (2) the line or rib, straight or curved, which marks the
summit of a vault.
Roll.—A round moulding.
Rose Window.—A wheel window (which see).
Rubble.—Rough stonework forming the heart of a masonry wall;
sometimes faced with ashlar (which see), sometimes shown.
Rustication (or Rusticated Masonry).—The sort of ornamental
ashlar masonry (chiefly Classic and Renaissance) in which each
stone is distinguished by a broad channel all round it, marking
the joints.
Rustics.—The individual blocks of stone used in rustication (as
described above).
Screen.—An internal partition or inclosure cutting off part of a
building. At the entrance to the choir of a church screens of
beautiful workmanship were used.
Scroll Moulding.—A round roll moulding showing a line along its
face (distinctive of decorated Gothic).
Scroll Work.—Ornament showing winding spiral lines like the edge
of a scroll of paper (chiefly found in Elizabethan).
Section.—(1) A drawing of a building as it would appear if cut
through at some fixed plane. (2) That part of the construction of
a building which would be displayed by such a drawing as
described above. (3) The profile of a moulding.
Set-off.—A small ledge formed by diminishing the thickness of a
wall or pier.
Sexpartite Vaulting.—Where each bay or compartment is divided
by its main ribs into six portions.
Sgraffito (Italian).—An ornament produced by scratching lines on
the plastered face of a building so as to show a different colour
filling up the lines or surfaces scratched away.
Shaft.—(1) The middle part of a column between its base and capital.
(2) In Gothic, slender columns introduced for ornamental
purposes, singly or in clusters.
Shell Ornament.—A decoration frequently employed in Italian and
French Renaissance, and resembling the interior of a shell.
Sky-line.—The outline which a building will show against the sky.
Spandrel.—The triangular (or other shaped) space between the outside
of an arch and the mouldings, or surfaces inclosing it or in
contact with it. (See Fig. , under Diaper.)
Spire.—The steep and pointed roof of a tower (usually a church
tower).
Spire-light (or Lucarne).—A dormer window (which see) in a spire.
Splay.—A slope making with the face of a wall an angle less than a
right angle.
Stage.—One division in the height of any building or portion of a
building where horizontal divisions are distinctly marked, e.g., the
belfry stage of a tower, the division in which the bells are hung.
Steeple.—A tower and spire in combination. Sometimes applied to
a tower or spire separately.
Stepped Gable.—A gable in which, instead of a sloping line, the outline
is formed by a series of steps.
Stilted Arch.—An arch of which the curve does not commence till
above the level of the impost (which see).
Story.—(1) The portion of a building between one floor and the
next; (2) any stage or decidedly marked horizontal compartment
of a building, even if not corresponding to an actual story marked
by a floor.
Strap-work (Elizabethan).—An ornament representing strap-like
fillets interlaced.
String-course.—A projecting horizontal (or occasionally sloping)
band or line of mouldings.
Tabernacle Work.—The richly ornamented and carved work with
which the smaller and more precious features of a church, e.g., the
fittings of a choir, were adorned and made conspicuous.
Terminal (or Finial).—The ornamental top of a pinnacle, gable, &c.
Terra-cotta.—A fine kind of brick capable of being highly ornamented,
and formed into blocks of some size.
Thrust.—The pressure exercised laterally by an arch or vault, or by
the timbers of a roof on the abutments or supports.
Tie.—A beam of wood, bar of iron, or similar expedient employed to
hold together the feet or sides of an arch, vault, or roof, and so
counteract the thrust.
Torus.—A large convex moulding.
Tower.—A portion of a building rising conspicuously above the general
mass, and obviously distinguished by its height from that mass.
A detached building of which the height is great, relative to the
width and breadth.
Tracery (Gothic).—The ornamental stonework formed by the curving
and interlacing of bars of stone, and occupying the heads of
windows, panels, and other situations where decoration and lightness
have to be combined. The simplest and earliest tracery might
be described as a combination of openings pierced through the stone
head of an arch. Cusping and foliation (which see) are features of
tracery. (See Figs. , ,
, and in the text.)
Fig. e e.—Perpendicular Window-head.
Fig. f f.—Late Perpendicular Window-head.
Transept.—The arms of a church or cathedral which cross the line of
the nave.
Transition.—The architecture of a period coming between and sharing
the characteristics of two distinctly marked styles or phases of
architecture, one of which succeeded the other.
Transom.—A horizontal bar (usually of stone) across a window or
panel.
Trefoil.—A three-leaved or three-lobed form found constantly in
the heads of windows and in other situations where tracery is
employed.
Triforium (or Thorough-fare).—The story in a large church or
cathedral intermediate between the arcade separating the nave and
aisles, and the clerestory.
Tudor.—The architecture of England during the reigns of the Tudor
kings. The use of the term is usually, however, restricted to a
period which closes with the end of Henry VIII.’s reign, 1547.
Turret.—A small tower, sometimes rising from the ground, but often
carried on corbels and commencing near the upper part of the
building to which it is an appendage.
Tympanum.—The filling in of the head of an arch, or occasionally of
an ornamental gable.
Undercutting.—A moulding or ornament of which the greater part
stands out from the mouldings or surfaces which it adjoins, as
though almost or quite detached from them, is said to be undercut.
Vault.—An arched ceiling to a building, or part of a building, executed
in masonry or in some substitute for masonry.
The vaults of the Norman period were simple barrel- or waggon-headed
vaults, and semicircular arches only were used in their
construction. With the Gothic period the use of intersecting,
and as a result of pointed arches, was introduced into vaulting,
and vaults went on increasing in complexity and elaboration till
the Tudor period, when fan-vaulting was employed. Our illustrations
show some of the steps in the development of Gothic
vaults referred to in Chapter of the text. No. 1 represents a
waggon-head vault with an intersecting vault occupying part of
its length. No. 2 represents one of the expedients adopted for
vaulting an oblong compartment before the pointed arch was introduced.
The narrower arch is stilted and the line of the groin
is not true. No. 3 represents a similar compartment vaulted
without any distortion or irregularity by the help of the pointed
arch. No. 4 represents one lay of a sexpartite Gothic vault.
No. 5 represents a vault with lierne ribs making a star-shaped
pallom on plan, and No. 6 is a somewhat more intricate example
of the same class of vault.
Fig. g g.—Vaults.
Vaults are met with in Renaissance buildings, but they are a less
distinctive feature of such buildings than they were in the Gothic
period; and in many cases where a vault or a series of vaults would
have been employed by a Gothic architect, a Renaissance architect
has preferred to make use of a dome or a series of domes. This
is called domical vaulting. Examples of it occur occasionally in
Gothic work.
Waggon-head Vaulting, or Barrel-Vaulting.—A simple form
of tunnel-like vaulting, which gets its name from its resemblance
to the tilt often seen over large waggons, or to the half of a barrel.
Wainscot.—(1) The panelling often employed to line the walls of a
room or building; (2) a finely marked variety of oak imported
chiefly from Holland; probably so called because wainscot oak
was at one time largely employed for such panelling.
Weathering.—A sloping surface of stone employed to cover the set-off
(which see) of a wall or buttress and protect it from the effects
of weather.
Wheel Window.—A circular window, and usually one in which
mullions radiate from a centre towards the circumference like the
spokes of a wheel; sometimes called a rose-window.
Window-head.—For illustrations of the various forms and filling-in
of Gothic window-heads, see the words Arch and Tracery.
HEAD AND TAILPIECES.
PAGE
Headpiece.—
Crête from Notre Dame, Paris
”
Sculptured Ornament from Rheims Cathedral
”
” ” Sens Cathedral
”
” ” Westminster Abbey
Tailpiece.—
Norman Capitals
Headpiece.—
Sculptured Ornament from Westminster Abbey
Tailpiece.—
Miserere Seat from Wells Cathedral
Headpiece.—
Stained Glass from Chartres Cathedral
Tailpiece.—
Miserere Seat from Wells Cathedral
”
Ornament from Rheims Cathedral
Headpiece.—
Renaissance Ornament from a Frieze
”
From a terra-cotta Frieze at Lodi
Tailpiece.—
From a Door in Santa Maria, Venice
Headpiece.—
Ornament by Giulio Romano
”
From a Frieze at Venice
The are from a Tapestry in Hardwick Hall.
The Lily of Florence.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
THE architecture generally known as Gothic, but often
described as Christian Pointed, prevailed throughout
Europe to the exclusion of every rival for upwards
of three centuries; and it is to be met with, more or less,
during two others. Speaking broadly, it may be said
that its origin took place in the twelfth century, that
the thirteenth was the period of its development, the
fourteenth that of its perfection, and the fifteenth that
of its decline; while many examples of its employment
occur in the sixteenth.
In the following chapters the principal changes in the
features of buildings which occurred during the progress
of the style in England will be described. Subsequently,
the manner in which the different stages of development
were reached in different countries will be given; for
architecture passed through very nearly the same phases
in all European nations, though not quite simultaneously.
It must be understood that through the whole Gothic
period, growth or at least change was going on; the
transitions from one stage to another were only periods of
more rapid change than usual. The whole process may be
illustrated by the progress of a language. If, for instance, we
compare round-arched architecture in the eleventh century
to the Anglo-Saxon form of speech of the time of Alfred
the Great, and the architecture of the twelfth century to
the English of Chaucer, that of the thirteenth will correspond
to the richer language of Shakespeare, that of the
fourteenth to the highly polished language of Addison and
Pope, and that of the fifteenth to the English of our own
day. We can thus obtain an apt parallel to the gradual
change and growth which went on in architecture; and
we shall find that the oneness of the language in the
former case, and of the architecture in the latter, was
maintained throughout.
For an account of the Christian round-arched architecture
which preceded Gothic, the reader is referred to the
companion volume in this series. Here it will be only
necessary briefly to review the circumstances which went
before the appearance of the pointed styles.
The Roman empire had introduced into Europe some
thing like a universal architecture, so that the buildings
of any Roman colony bore a strong resemblance to those
of every other colony and of the metropolis; varying, of
course, in extent and magnificence, but not much in design.
The architecture of the Dark Ages in Western Europe
exhibited, so far as is known, the same general similarity.
Down to the eleventh century the buildings erected (almost
exclusively churches and monastic buildings) were not
large or rich, and were heavy in appearance and simple
in construction. Their arches were all semicircular.
The first rays of light across the gloom of the Dark
Ages seem to have come from the energy and ability of
Charlemagne in the eighth century.
In the succeeding century, this activity received a
check; an idea became generally prevalent that the year
one thousand was to see the end of the world; men’s minds
were overshadowed with apprehension; and buildings, in
common with other undertakings of a permanent nature,
were but little attempted.
When the millennium came and passed, and left all as it
had been, a kind of revulsion of feeling was experienced;
many important undertakings were set on foot, such as
during the preceding years it had not been thought
worth while to prosecute. The eleventh century thus
became a time of great religious activity; and if the First
Crusade, which took place 1095, may be taken as one
outcome of that pious zeal, another can certainly be found
in the large and often costly churches and monasteries
which rose in every part of England, France, Germany,
Lombardy, and South Italy. Keen rivalry raged among
the builders of these churches; each one was built larger
and finer than the previous examples, and the details began
to grow elaborate. Construction and ornament were in
fact advancing and improving, if not from year to year,
at any rate from decade to decade, so that by the commencement
of the twelfth century a remarkable development
had taken place. The ideas of the dimensions of
churches then entertained were really almost as liberal as
during the best period of Gothic architecture.
An illustration of this fact is furnished by the rebuilding
of Westminster Abbey under Edward the Confessor. He
pulled down a small church which he found standing on
the site, in order to erect one suitable in size and style to
the ideas of the day. The style of his cathedral (but not its
dimensions) soon became so much out of date that Henry III.
pulled the buildings down in order to re-erect them of the
lofty proportions and with the pointed arches which we now
see in the choir and transepts of the Abbey; but the size
remained nearly the same, for there is evidence to show that
the Confessor’s buildings must have occupied very nearly, if
not quite, as much ground as those which succeeded them.
At the beginning of the twelfth century many local
peculiarities, some of them due to accident, some to the
nature and quality of the building materials obtainable,
some to differences of race, climate, and habits, and some
to other causes, had begun to make their appearance in the
buildings of various parts of Europe; and through the
whole Gothic period such peculiarities were to be met
with. Still the points of similarity were greater and more
numerous than the differences; so much so, that by going
through the course which Gothic architecture ran in one
of the countries in which it flourished, it will readily be
possible to furnish a general outline of the subject as a
whole; it will then only be requisite to point out the
principal variations in the practice of other countries. On
some grounds France would be the most suitable country
to select for this purpose, for Gothic appeared earlier and
flourished more brilliantly in that country than in any
other; the balance of advantage lies however, when writing
for English students, in the selection of Great Britain.
The various phases through which the art passed are well
marked in this country, they have been fully studied and
described, and, what is of the greatest importance, English
examples are easily accessible to the majority of students,
while those which cannot be visited may be very readily
studied from engravings and photographs. English Gothic
will therefore be first considered; but as a preliminary a
few words remain to be said describing generally the buildings
which have come down to us from the Gothic period.
The word Gothic, which was in use in the eighteenth
century, and probably earlier, was invented at a time when
a Goth was synonymous with everything that was barbarous;
and its use then implied a reproach. It denotes,
according to Mr. Fergusson, “all the styles invented and
used by the Western barbarians who overthrew the Roman
empire, and settled within its limits.”
Fig 1.—West Entrance, Lichfield Cathedral, (1275.)
(See Chapter )
CHAPTER II.
THE BUILDINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
BY far the most important specimens of Gothic architecture
are the cathedrals and large churches which were
built during the prevalence of the style. They were more
numerous, larger, and more complete as works of art than
any other structures, and accordingly they are to be considered
on every account as the best examples of pointed
architecture.
Fig. 2.—Ground Plan of Peterborough Cathedral. (1118 to 1193.)
A. Nave. B B. Transepts. C. Choir. D D. Aisles. E. Principal Entrance.
Fig. 3.—Transverse Section of the Nave of Salisbury Cathedral.
(A.D. 1217).
The arrangement and construction of a Gothic cathedral
were customarily as follows:—(See Fig. .) The main
axis of the building was always east and west, the principal
entrance being at the west end, usually under a grand porch
or portal, and the high altar stood at the east end. The plan
(or main floor) of the building almost always displays the
form of a cross. The stem of the cross is the part from the
west entrance to the crossing, and is called the nave. The
arms of the cross are called transepts, and point respectively
north and south. Their crossing with the nave is often
called the intersection. The remaining arm, which prolongs
the stem eastwards, is ordinarily called the choir, but
sometimes the presbytery, and sometimes the chancel. All these
names really refer to the position of the internal fittings
of the church, and it is often more accurate simply to
employ the term eastern arm for this portion of a church.
The nave is flanked by two avenues running parallel to
it, narrower and lower than itself, called aisles. They are
separated from it by rows of columns or piers, connected
together by arches. Thus the nave has an arcade on
each side of it, and each aisle has an arcade on one
side, and a main external wall on the other. The aisle
walls are usually pierced by windows. The arches of the
arcade carry walls which rise above the roofs of the aisles,
and light the nave. These walls are usually subdivided
internally into two heights or stories; the lower story
consists of a series of small arches, to which the name of
triforium is given. This arcade usually opens into the dark
space above the ceiling or vault of the aisle, and hence it is
sometimes called the blind story. The upper story is the
range of windows already alluded to as lighting the nave,
and is called the clerestory. Thus a spectator standing
in the nave, and looking towards the side (Figs. and ),
will see opposite him the main arcade, and over that the
triforium, and over that the clerestory, crowned by the nave
vault or roof; and looking through the arches of the nave
arcade, he will see the side windows of the aisle. Above
the clerestory of the nave, and the side windows of the
aisles, come the vaults or roofs. In some instances double
aisles (two on each side) have been employed.
The transepts usually consist of well-marked limbs,
divided like the nave into a centre avenue and two side
aisles, and these usually are of the same width and height
as the nave and its aisles. Sometimes there are no transepts;
sometimes they do not project beyond the line of the
walls, but still are marked by their rising above the lower
height of the nave aisles. Sometimes the transepts have no
aisles, or an aisle only on one side. On the other hand, it
is sometimes customary, especially in English examples,
to form two pairs of transepts. This occurs in Lichfield
Cathedral.
Fig. 4.—Choir of Worcester
Cathedral. (Begun 1224.)
A. Nave Arcade. B. Triforium. C. Clerestory.
Fig. 5.—Nave of Wells Cathedral.
(1206 to 1242.)
A. Nave Arcade. B. Triforium. C. Clerestory.
The eastern arm of the cathedral is the part to which
most importance was attached, and it is usual to mark
that importance by greater richness, and by a difference in
the height of its roof or vault as compared with the nave;
its floor is always raised. It also has its central passage
and its aisles; and it has double aisles much more frequently
than the nave. The eastern termination of the cathedral
is sometimes semicircular, sometimes polygonal, and when
it takes this form it is called an apse or an apsidal east
end; sometimes it is square, the apse being most in use
on the Continent, and the square east end in England.
Attached to some of the side walls of the church it is
usual to have a series of chapels; these are ordinarily
chambers partly shut off from the main structure, but
opening into it by arched openings; each chapel contains
an altar. The finest chapel is usually one placed on the
axis of the cathedral, and east of the east end of the main
building; this is called, where it exists, the Lady Chapel,
and was customarily dedicated to the ***. Henry VII.’s
Chapel at Westminster (Fig. ) furnishes a familiar instance
of the lady chapel of a great church. Next in importance
rank the side chapels which open out of the aisles of the
apse, when there is one. Westminster Abbey furnishes
good examples of these also. The eastern wall of the
transept is a favourite position for chapels. They are
less frequently added to the nave aisles.
The floor of the eastern arm of the cathedral, as has
been pointed out, is always raised, so as to be approached
by steps; it is inclosed by screen work which shuts off
the choir, or inclosure for the performance of divine service,
from the nave. The fittings of this part of the building
generally include stalls for the clergy and choristers
and a bishop’s throne, and are usually beautiful works of
art. Tombs, and inclosures connected with them, called
chantry chapels, are constantly met with in various
positions, but most frequently in the eastern arm.
Fig. 6.—Ground Plan of Westminster Abbey.
Below the raised floor of the choir, and sometimes below
other parts of the building, there often exists a subterranean
vaulted structure known as the crypt.
Passing to the exterior of the cathedral, the principal
doorway is in the western front: usually supplemented by
entrances at the ends of the transepts, and one or more
side entrances to the nave. A porch on the north side of
the nave is a common feature. The walls are now seen to
be strengthened by stone piers, called buttresses. Frequently
arches are thrown from these buttresses to the
higher walls of the building. The whole arrangement of
pier and arch is called a flying buttress, and, as will be
explained later, is used to steady the upper part of the
building when a stone vault is employed (see Chap. ).
The lofty gables in which the nave and transepts, and
the eastern arm when square terminate, form prominent
features, and are often occupied by great windows.
In a complete cathedral, the effect of the exterior is
largely due to the towers with which it was adorned. The
most massive tower was ordinarily one which stood, like
the central one of Lichfield Cathedral, at the crossing of
the nave and transepts. Two towers were usually intended
at the western front of the building, and sometimes one, or
occasionally two, at the end of each transept. It is rare to
find a cathedral where the whole of these towers have been
even begun, much less completed. In many cases only one,
in others three, have been built. In some instances they
have been erected, and have fallen. In others they have
never been carried up at all. During a large portion of
the Gothic period it was usual to add to each tower a lofty
pyramidal roof or spire, and these are still standing in
some instances, though many of them have disappeared.
Occasionally a tower was built quite detached from the
church to which it belonged.
To cathedrals and abbey churches a group of monastic
buildings was appended. It will not be necessary to describe
these in much detail. They were grouped round an
open square, surrounded by a vaulted and arcaded passage,
which is known as the cloister. This was usually fitted
into the warm and sheltered angle formed by the south
side of the nave and the south transept, though occasionally
the cloister is found on the north side of the nave.
The most important building opening out of the cloister is
the chapter-house, frequently a lofty and richly-ornamented
room, often octagonal, and generally standing south of the
south transept. The usual arrangement of the monastic
buildings round and adjoining the cloister varied in details
with the requirements of the different monastic orders, and
the circumstances of each individual religious house, but,
as in the case of churches, the general principles of disposition
were fixed early. They are embodied in a manuscript
plan, dating as far back as the ninth century, and found at
St. Gall in Switzerland, and never seem to have been widely
departed from. The monks’ dormitory here occupies the
whole east side of the great cloister, there being no
chapter-house. It is usually met with as nearly in this
position as the transept and the chapter-house will permit.
The refectory is on the south side of the cloister, and has
a connected kitchen. The west side of the cloister in this
instance was occupied by a great cellar. Frequently a
hospitum, or apartment for entertaining guests, stood here.
The north side of the cloister was formed by the church.
For the abbot a detached house was provided in the
St. Gall plan to stand on the north side of the church; and
a second superior hospitum for his guests. Eastward of
the church are placed the infirmary with its chapel, and
an infirmarer’s lodging. The infirmary was commonly
arranged with a nave and aisles, much like, a small parish
church. Other detached buildings gave a public school, a
school for novices with its chapel, and, more remotely
placed, granaries, mills, a bakehouse, and other offices. A
garden and a cemetery formed part of the scheme, which
corresponds tolerably well with that of many monastic
buildings remaining in England, as e.g., those at Fountains’
Abbey, Furness Abbey, or Westminster Abbey, so far as
they can be traced.
Generally speaking the principal buildings in a monastery
were long and not very wide apartments, with windows on
both sides. Frequently they were vaulted, and they often
had a row of columns down the middle. Many are two
stories high. Of the dependencies, the kitchen, which was
often a vaulted apartment with a chimney, and the
barn, which was often of great size, were the most prominent.
They are often fine buildings. At Glastonbury very
good examples of a monastic barn and kitchen can be seen.
Second only in importance to the churches and religious
buildings come the military and domestic buildings of the
Gothic period (Fig. ).
Fig. 7.—House of Jaques Cœur at Bourges. (Begun 1413.)
Every dwelling-house of consequence was more or less
fortified, at any rate during the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth centuries. A lofty square tower, called a keep,
built to stand a siege, and with a walled inclosure at its
feet, often protected by a wide ditch (fosse or moat),
formed the castle of the twelfth century, and in some cases
(e.g. the White Tower of London), this keep was of considerable
size. The first step in enlargement was to
increase the number and importance of the buildings which
clustered round the keep, and to form two inclosures for
them, known as an inner and an outer bailey. The
outer buildings of the Tower of London, though much
modernised, will give a good idea of what a first class
castle grew to be by successive additions of this sort. In
castles erected near the end of the thirteenth century
(e.g. Conway Castle in North Wales), and later, the
square form of the keep was abandoned, and many more
arrangements for the comfort and convenience of the
occupants were introduced; and the buildings and additions
to buildings of the fifteenth century took more the
shape of a modern dwelling-house, partly protected against
violence, but by no means strong enough to stand a siege.
Penshurst may be cited as a good example of this class of
building.
It will be understood that, unlike the religious buildings
which early received the form and disposition from which
they did not depart widely, mediæval domestic buildings
exhibit an amount of change in which we can readily trace
the effects of the gradual settlement of this country, the
abandonment of habits of petty warfare, the ultimate
cessation of civil wars, the introduction of gunpowder, the
increase in wealth and desire for comfort, and last, but
not least, the confiscation by Henry VIII. of the property
of the monastic houses.
Fig. 8.—Plan of Warwick Castle. (14th and following Centuries.)
Warwick Castle, of which we give a plan (Fig. ), maybe
cited as a good example of an English castellated mansion
of the time of Richard II. Below the principal story there
is a vaulted basement containing the kitchens and many of
the offices. On the main floor we find the hall, entered as
usual at the lower or servants’ end, from a porch. The upper
end gives access to a sitting-room, built immediately behind
it, and beyond are a drawing-room and state bed-rooms,
while across a passage are placed the private chapel and
a large dining-room (a modern addition). Bed-rooms
occupy the upper floors of the buildings at both ends of
the hall.
Perhaps even more interesting as a study than Warwick
Castle is Haddon Hall, the well-preserved residence of the
Duke of Rutland, in Derbyshire. The five or six successive
enlargements and additions which this building has
received between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries
show the growth of ideas of comfort and even luxury in
this country.
As it now stands, Haddon Hall contains two internal
quadrangles, separated from one another by the great hall
with its dais, its minstrels’ gallery, its vast open fire-place,
and its traceried windows, and by the kitchens, butteries,
&c., belonging to it.
The most important apartments are reached from the
upper end of the hall, and consist of the magnificent ball-room,
and a dining-room in the usual position, i.e. adjoining
the hall and opening out of it; with, on the upper floor, a
drawing-room, and a suite of state bed-rooms, occupying
the south side of both quadrangles and the east end of
one. A large range of apartments, added at a late period,
and many of them finely panelled and lined with tapestry,
occupies the north side of this building and the northwestern
tower. At the south-western corner of the building
stands a chapel of considerable size, and which once
seems to have served as a kind of parochial church; and a
very considerable number of rooms of small size, opening
out of both quadrangles, would afford shelter, if not comfortable
lodging, to retainers, servants, and others. The
portions built in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries are more or less fortified. The ball-room, which is
of Elizabethan architecture, opens on to a terraced garden,
accessible from without by no more violent means than
climbing over a not very formidable wall. Probably
nowhere in England, can the growth of domestic architecture
be better studied, whether we look to the alterations
which took place in accommodation and arrangement, or to
the changes which occurred in the architectural treatment
of windows, battlements, doorways and other features,
than at Haddon Hall.
Fig. 9.—Palaces on the Grand Canal, Venice. (14th Century.)
In towns and cities much beautiful domestic architecture
is to be found in the ordinary dwelling-houses,
e.g. houses from Chester and Lisieux (Figs. and ); but
many specimens have of course perished, especially as timber
was freely used in their construction. Dwelling-houses of a
high order of excellence, and of large size, were also built
during this period. The Gothic palaces of Venice, of which
many stand on the Grand Canal (Fig. ), are the best
examples of these, and the lordly Ducal Palace in that
city is perhaps the finest secular building which exists
of Gothic architecture.
Municipal buildings of great size and beauty are to be
found in North Italy and Germany, but chiefly in
Belgium, where the various town-halls of Louvain,
Bruges, Ypres, Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, &c., vie with
each other in magnificence and extent.
Many secular buildings also remain to us of which the
architecture is Gothic. Among these we find public halls
and large buildings for public purposes—as Westminster
Hall, or the Palace of Justice at Rouen; hospitals, as
that at Milan; or colleges, as King’s College, Cambridge,
with its unrivalled chapel. Many charming minor works,
such as fountains, wells (Fig. ), crosses, tombs, monuments,
and the fittings of the interior of churches, also
remain to attest the versatility, the power of design, and
the cultivated taste of the architects of the Gothic period.
Fig. 10.—Well at Regensburg. (15th Century.)
FOOTNOTES:
As the north transept at Peterborough (Fig. ).
At E on the plan of Peterborough (Fig. ).
See .
Fig. 11.
CHAPTER III.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN.
ENGLISH Gothic architecture has been usually subdivided
into three periods or stages of advancement,
corresponding to those enumerated on page ; the
early stage known as Early English, or sometimes as
Lancet, occupying the thirteenth century and something
more; the middle stage, known as Decorated, occupying
most of the fourteenth century; and the latest stage,
known as Perpendicular, occupying the fifteenth century
and part of the sixteenth.
The duration of each of these coincides approximately
with the century, the transition from each phase to the
next taking place chiefly in the last quarter of the century.
Adding the periods of the English types of round arched
Architecture, we obtain the following table:—
Up to 1066 or up to middle of 11th century,
Saxon.
A.D. 1066 to 1189 or up to end of 12th ”
Norman.
A.D. 1189 to 1307 or up to end of 13th ”
Early English.
A.D. 1307 to 1377 or up to end of 14th ”
Decorated.
A.D. 1377 to 1546 or up to middle of 16th ”
Perpendicular.
The term “Early English” (short for Early English
Gothic) applied to English thirteenth-century architecture
explains itself.
The term “Lancet” sometimes applied to the Early
English style, is derived from the shape of the ordinary
window-heads, which resemble the point of a lancet in outline
(Fig. ). Whatever term be adopted, it is necessary
to remark that a wide difference exists between the earlier
and the late examples of this period. It will suffice for our
purposes if, when speaking of the fully-developed style of
the late examples, we refer to it as Advanced Early English.
The architecture of the fourteenth century is called
“Decorated,” from the great increase of ornament, especially
in window tracery and carved enrichments.
The architecture of the fifteenth century is called
“Perpendicular,” from the free use made of perpendicular
lines, both in general features and in ornaments, especially
in the tracery of the windows and the panelling with
which walls are ornamented.
The following condensed list, partly from Morant, of the
most striking peculiarities of each period, may be found
useful for reference, and is on that account placed here,
notwithstanding that it contains many technical words,
for the meaning of which the student must consult the
which forms part of this volume.
Anglo-Saxon—(Prior to the Norman Conquest).—
Rude work and rough material; walls mostly of rubble or ragstone
with ashlar at the angles in long and short courses alternately;
openings with round or triangular heads, sometimes divided by a rude
baluster. Piers plain, square, and narrow. Windows splayed externally
and internally. Rude square blocks of stone in place of capitals
and bases. Mouldings generally semi-cylindrical and coarsely chiselled.
Corners of buildings square without buttresses.
Norman.
William I.
A.D.
1066.
William II.
”
1087.
Henry I.
”
1100.
Stephen
”
1135.
Henry II.
”
1154 to 1189.
Arches semicircular, occasionally stilted; at first plain, afterwards
enriched with chevron or other mouldings; and frequent repetition of
same ornament on each stone. Piers low and massive, cylindrical,
square, polygonal, or composed of clustered shafts, often ornamented
with spiral bands and mouldings. Windows generally narrow and
splayed internally only; sometimes double and divided by a shaft.
Walls sometimes a series of arcades, a few pierced as windows, the rest
left blank. Doorways deeply recessed and richly ornamented with
bands of mouldings. Doors often square headed, but under arches the
head of the arch filled with carving. Capitals carved in outline, often
grotesquely sculptured with devices of animals and leaves. Abacus
square, lower edge moulded. Bases much resembling the classic orders.
The mouldings at first imperfectly formed. Pedestals of piers square.
Buttresses plain, with broad faces and small projections. Parapets plain
with projecting corbel table under.
Plain mouldings consist of chamfers, round or pointed rolls at
edges, divided from plain face by shallow channels. Enriched
mouldings—the chevrons or zig-zag, the billet square or round, the
cable, the lozenge, the chain, nail heads, and others. Niches with
figures over doorways. Roofs of moderately high pitch, and open
to the frame; timbers chiefly king-post trusses. Towers square and
massive—those of late date richly adorned with arcades. Openings in
towers often beautifully grouped. Vaulting waggon-headed, and simple
intersecting vaults of semicircular outline.
Towards the close of the style in reign of Henry II., details of
transitional character begin to appear. Pointed arch with Norman
pier. Arcades of intersecting semicircular arches. Norman abacus
blended with Early English foliage in capitals.
Early English.
Richard I.
A.D.
1189 Transition.
John
”
1199.
Henry III.
”
1216.
Edward I.
”
1272 to 1307.
General proportions more slender, and height of walls, columns, &c.,
greater. Arches pointed, generally lancet; often richly moulded.
Triforium arches and arcades open with trefoiled heads. Piers slender,
composed of a central circular shaft surrounded by several smaller ones,
almost or quite detached; generally with horizontal bands. In small
buildings plain polygonal and circular piers are used. Capitals concave
in outline, moulded, or carved with conventional foliage delicately
executed and arranged vertically. The abacus always undercut.
Detached shafts often of Purbeck marble. Base a deep hollow between
two rounds. Windows at first long, narrow, and deeply splayed
internally, the glass within a few inches of outer face of wall; later
in the style less acute, divided by mullions, enriched with cusped
circles in the head, often of three or more lights, the centre light being
the highest. Doorways often deeply recessed and enriched with slender
shafts and elaborate mouldings. Shafts detached. Buttresses about
equal in projection to width, with but one set-off, or without any.
Buttresses at angles always in pairs. Mouldings bold and deeply undercut,
consisting chiefly of round mouldings sometimes pointed or with
a fillett, separated by deep hollows. Great depth of moulded surface
generally arranged on rectangular planes. Hollows of irregular curve
sometimes filled with dogtooth ornament or with foliage. Roofs of
high pitch, timbers plain, and where there is no vault open.
Early in the style finials were plain bunches of leaves; towards the
close beautifully carved finials and crockets with carved foliage of conventional
character were introduced. Flat surfaces often richly diapered.
Spires broached. Vaulting pointed with diagonal and main
ribs only; ridge ribs not introduced till late in the style; bosses at
intersection of ribs.
Decorated.
Edward II.
A.D.
1307.
Edward III.
”
1377 to 1379.
Proportions less lofty than in the previous style. Arches mostly
inclosing an equilateral angle, the mouldings often continued down the
pier. Windows large, and divided into two or more lights by mullions.
Tracery in the head, at first composed geometrical forms, later of
flowing character. Clerestory windows generally small. Diamond
shaped piers with shafts engaged. Capitals with scroll moulding on
under side of abacus, with elegant foliage arranged horizontally.
Doors frequently without shafts, the arch moulding running down the
jambs. Rich doorways and windows often surrounded with triangular
and ogee-shaped canopies. Buttresses in stages variously ornamented.
Parapet pierced with quatrefoils and flowing tracery. Niches panelled
and with projecting canopies. Spires lofty; the broach rarely used,
parapets and angle pinnacles take the place of it. Roofs of moderate
pitch open to the framing. Mouldings bold and finely proportioned,
generally in groups, the groups separated from each other by hollows,
composed of segments of circles. Deep hollows, now generally confined
to inner angles. Mouldings varying in size and kind, arranged
on diagonal as well as rectangular planes, often ornamented with
ball flower. Foliage chiefly of ivy, oak, and vine leaves; natural,
also conventional. Rich crockets, finials, and pinnacles. Vaulting
with intermediate ribs, ridge ribs, and late in the style lierne ribs, and
bosses.
Perpendicular.
Richard II.
A.D.
1377. (Transition.)
Henry IV.
”
1399.
Henry V.
”
1413.
Henry VI.
”
1422.
Edward IV.
”
1461.
Edward V.
”
1483.
Richard III.
”
1483.
Tudor.
Henry VII.
”
1485.
Henry VIII.
”
1509 to 1546.
Arches at first inclosing an equilateral triangle, afterwards obtusely
pointed and struck from four centres. Piers generally oblong; longitudinal
direction north and south. Mouldings continued from base
through arch. Capitals with mouldings large, angular, and few, with
abacus and bell imperfectly defined. Foliage of conventional character,
shallow, and square in outline. Bases polygonal. Windows where
lofty divided into stories by transoms. The mullions often continued
perpendicularly into the head. Canopies of ogee character enriched
with crockets. Doors generally with square label over arch, the
spandrels filled with ornament. Buttresses with bold projection often
ending in finials. Flying buttresses pierced with tracery. Walls
profusely ornamented with panelling. Parapets embattled and panelled.
Open timber roofs of moderate pitch, of elaborate construction, often
with hammer beams, richly ornamented with moulded timbers, carved
figures of angels and with pierced tracery in spandrels. Roofs sometimes
of very flat pitch. Lofty clerestories. Mouldings large, coarse,
and with wide and shallow hollows and hard wiry edges, meagre in
appearance and wanting in minute and delicate detail, generally
arranged on diagonal planes. Early in the style the mouldings partake
of decorated character.
In the Tudor period depressed four-centered arch prevails; transoms
of windows battlemented. Tudor flower, rose, portcullis, and fleur-de-lis
common ornaments. Crockets and pinnacles much projected.
Roofs of low pitch.
Vaulting. Fan vaulting, with tracery and pendants elaborately
carved.
Other modes of distinguishing the periods of English
Gothic have been proposed by writers of authority. The
division given above is that of Rickman, and is generally
adopted. A more minute subdivision and a different set
of names were proposed by Sharpe as follows:—
Romanesque.
Saxon
A.D.
to 1066.
Norman
”
1066 to 1145.
Gothic.
Transitional
”
1145 to 1190.
Lancet
”
1190 to 1245.
Geometrical
”
1245 to 1315.
Curvilinear
”
1315 to 1360.
Rectilinear
”
1360 to 1550.
Of the new names proposed by Mr. Sharpe “transitional”
explains itself; and “geometrical, curvilinear,
and rectilinear” refer to the characters of the window
tracery at the different periods which they denote.
The history of English Gothic proper may be said to
begin with the reign of Henry II., coinciding very nearly
with the commencement of the period named by Mr. Sharpe
transitional (1145 to 1190), when Norman architecture
was changing into Gothic. This history we propose now to
consider somewhat in detail, dividing the buildings in the
simplest possible way, namely, into floors, walls, columns,
roofs, openings, and ornaments. After this we shall have
to consider the mode in which materials were used by the
builders of the Gothic period, i.e. the construction of the
buildings; and the general artistic principles which guided
their architects, i.e. the design of the buildings.
It may be useful to students in and near London to give
Sir G. Gilbert Scott’s list of striking London examples of
Gothic architecture (with the omission of such examples as
are more antiquarian than architectural in their interest):—
Norman (temp. Conquest).—The Keep and Chapel of the Tower of
London.
Advanced Norman.—Chapel of St. Catherine, Westminster Abbey;
St. Bartholomew’s Priory, Smithfield.
Transitional.—The round part of the Temple Church.
Early English.—Eastern part of the Temple Church; Choir and
Lady Chapel of St. Mary Overy, Southwark; Chapel of Lambeth
Palace.
Advanced Early English (passing to decorated).—Eastern part of
Westminster Abbey generally and its Chapter House.
Early Decorated.—Choir of Westminster, (but this has been much
influenced by the design of the earlier parts adjacent); Chapel of St.
Etheldreda, Ely Place, Holborn.
Late Decorated.—The three bays of the Cloister at Westminster
opposite the entrance to Chapter House; Crypt of St. Stephen’s
Chapel, Westminster; Dutch Church, Austin Friars.
Early Perpendicular.—South and West walks of the Cloister, Westminster;
Westminster Hall.
Advanced Perpendicular (Tudor period).—Henry VII.’s Chapel;
Double Cloister of St. Stephen’s, Westminster.
FOOTNOTES:
The abbreviations, E. E., Dec., and Perp., will be employed to
denote these three periods.
Notes on English Architecture, Costumes, Monuments, &c. Privately
printed. Quoted here with the author’s permission.
See examples in Chapter and in .
Address to Conference of Architects, Builder, June 24, 1876.
CHAPTER IV.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.—ENGLAND.
ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.—FLOOR, WALLS, TOWERS, GABLES,
COLUMNS.
Floor, or Plan.
THE excellences or defects of a building are more due
to the shape and size of its floor and, incidentally,
of the walls and columns or piers which inclose and subdivide
its floor than to anything else whatever. A map of
the floor and walls (usually showing also the position of the
doors and windows), is known as a plan, but by a pardonable
figure of speech the plan of a building is often understood
to mean the shape and size and arrangement of its
floor and walls themselves, instead of simply the drawing
representing them. It is in this sense that the word plan
will be used in this volume.
The plan of a Gothic Cathedral has been described, and
it has been already remarked that before the Gothic period
had commenced the dimensions of great churches had been
very much increased. The generally received disposition
of the parts of a church had indeed been already settled
or nearly so. There were consequently few radical alterations
in church plans during the Gothic period. One, however,
took place in England in the abandonment of the
apse.
At first the apsidal east end, common in the Norman times,
was retained. For example, it is found at Canterbury,
where the choir and transept are transitional, having been
begun soon after 1174 and completed about 1184; but the
eastern end of Chichester, which belongs to the same period
(the transition), displays the square east end, and this
termination was almost invariably preferred in our country
after the twelfth century.
A great amount of regularity marks the plans of those
great churches which had vaulted roofs, as will be readily
understood when it is remembered that the vaults were
divided into equal and similar compartments, and that the
points of support had to be placed with corresponding regularity.
Where, however, some controlling cause of this
nature was not at work much picturesque irregularity prevailed
in the planning of English Gothic buildings of all
periods. The plans of our Cathedrals are noted for their
great length in proportion to their width, for the considerable
length given to the transepts, and for the occurrence in
many cases (e.g. Salisbury, thirteenth century) of a second
transept. The principal alterations which took place in
plan as time went on originated in the desire to concentrate
material as much as possible on points of support,
leaving the walls between them thin and the openings
wide, and in the use of flying buttresses, the feet of which
occupy a considerable space outside the main walls of the
church. The plans of piers and columns also underwent
the alterations which will be presently described.
Buildings of a circular shape on plan are very rare, but
octagonal ones are not uncommon. The finest chapter-houses
attached to our Cathedrals are octagons, with a
central pier to carry the vaulting. On the whole, play of
shape on plan was less cultivated in England than in some
continental countries.
The plans of domestic buildings are usually simple, but
grew more elaborate and extensive as time went on. The
cloister with dwelling-rooms and common-rooms entered
from its walk, formed the model on which colleges, hospitals,
and alms-houses were planned. The castle, already
described, was the residence of the wealthy during the
earlier part of the Gothic period, and when, in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, houses which were rather
dwellings than fortresses began to be erected, the hall,
with a large bay window and a raised floor or dais at
one end and a mighty open fire-place, was always the most
conspicuous feature in the plan. Towards the close of the
Gothic period the plan of a great dwelling, such as
Warwick Castle (Fig. ), began to show many of
the features which distinguish a mansion of the present
day.
In various parts of the country remains of magnificent
Gothic dwelling-houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries exist, and long before the close of the perpendicular
period we had such mansions as Penshurst and
Hever, such palaces as Windsor and Wells, such castellated
dwellings as Warwick and Haddon, differing in many
respects but all agreeing in the possession of a great central
hall. Buildings for public purposes also often took the
form of a great hall. Westminster Hall may be cited as
the finest example of such a structure, not only in England
but in Europe.
The student who desires to obtain anything beyond the
most superficial acquaintance with architecture must endeavour
to obtain enough familiarity with ground plans, to
be able to sketch, measure, and lay down a plan to scale
and to read one. The plan shows to the experienced
architect the nature, arrangement, and qualities of a building
better than any other drawing, and a better memorandum
of a building is preserved if a fairly correct sketch
of its plan, or of the plan of important parts of it, is
preserved than if written notes are alone relied upon.
Walls.
The walls of Gothic buildings are generally of stone;
brick being the exception. They were in the transitional
and Early English times extremely thick, and became
thinner afterwards. All sorts of ornamental masonry were
introduced into them, so that diapers, bands, arcades,
mouldings, and inlaid patterns are all to be met with
occasionally, especially in districts where building materials
of varied colours, or easy to work, are plentiful. In the
perpendicular period the walls were systematically covered
with panelling closely resembling the tracery of the
windows (e.g., Henry VII.’s Chapel at Westminster).
The wall of a building ordinarily requires some kind of
base and some kind of top. The base or plinth in English
Gothic buildings was usually well marked and bold, especially
in the perpendicular period, and it is seldom absent.
The eaves of the roof in some cases overhang the walls,
resting on a simple stone band, called an eaves-course,
and constitute the crowning feature. In many instances,
however, the eaves are concealed behind a parapet which
is often carried on a moulded cornice or on corbels. This,
in the E. E. period, was usually very simple. In the Dec.
it was panelled with ornamental panels, and often made
very beautiful. In the Perp. it was frequently battlemented
as well as panelled.
A distinguishing feature of Gothic walls is the buttress.
It existed, but only in the form of a flat pier of very slight
projection in Norman, as in almost all Romanesque buildings,
but in the Gothic period it became developed.
The buttress, like many of the peculiarities of Gothic
architecture, originated in the use of stone vaults and the
need for strong piers at these points, upon which the
thrust and weight of those vaults were concentrated. The
use of very large openings, for wide windows full of
stained glass also made it increasingly necessary in the
Dec. and Perp. periods to fortify the walls at regular
points.
A buttress is, in fact, a piece of wall set athwart the
main wall, usually projecting considerably at the base and
diminished by successive reductions of its mass as it approaches
the top, and so placed as to counteract the thrust
of some arch or vault inside. It had great artistic value;
in the feeble and level light of our Northern climate it
casts bold shadows and catches bright lights, and so adds
greatly to the architectural effect of the exterior. In the
E. E. the buttress was simple and ordinarily projected
about its own width. In the Dec. it obtained much more
projection, was constructed with several diminutions (technically
called weatherings), and was considerably ornamented.
In the Perp. it was frequently enriched by
panelling. The buttresses in the Dec. period are often set
diagonally at the corner of a building or tower. In the
E. E. period this was never done.
The flying buttress is one of the most conspicuous
features of the exterior of those Gothic buildings which
possessed elaborate stone vaults. It was a contrivance for
providing an abutment to counterbalance the outward pressure
of the vault covering the highest and central parts
of the building in cases where that vault rested upon and
abutted against walls which themselves were carried by
arches, and were virtually internal walls, so that no buttress
could be carried up from the ground to steady them.
A pier of masonry, sometimes standing alone, sometimes
thrown out from the aisle wall opposite the point to be
propped, formed the solid part of this buttress; it was
carried to the requisite height and a flying arch spanning
the whole width of the aisles was thrown across from it
to the wall at the point whence the vault sprung. The
pier itself was in many cases loaded by an enormous
pinnacle, so that its weight might combine with the pressure
transmitted along the slope of the flying arch to give
a resultant which should fall within the base of the
buttress. The back of such an arch was generally used as
a water channel.
The forest of flying buttresses round many French
cathedrals produces an almost bewildering effect, as, for
instance, at the east end of Notre Dame;—our English
specimens, at Westminster Abbey for example, are
comparatively simple.
Towers.
The gable and the tower are developments of the
walls of the building. Gothic is par excellence the style
of towers. Many towers were built detached from all
other buildings, but no great Gothic building is complete
without one main tower and some subordinate ones.
In the E. E. style church towers were often crowned by
low spires, becoming more lofty as the style advanced. In
the Dec. style lofty spires were almost universal. In the
Perp. the tower rarely has a visible roof.
The artistic value of towers in giving unity coupled
with variety to a group of buildings can hardly be
exaggerated.
The positions which towers occupy are various. They
produce the greatest effect when central, i.e. placed over
the crossing of the nave and transepts. Lichfield, Chichester,
and Salisbury may be referred to as examples of cathedrals
with towers in this position and surmounted by spires.
Canterbury, York, Lincoln, and Gloucester are specimens
of the effectiveness of the tower similarly placed, but without
a spire (Fig. ). At Wells a fine central octagon
occupies the crossing, and is remarkable for the skill with
which it is fitted to the nave and aisles internally. Next
to central towers rank a pair of towers at the western end
of the building. These exist at Lichfield with their spires;
they exist (square-topped) at Lincoln, and (though carried
up since the Gothic period) at Westminster. Many
churches have a single tower in this position (Fig. ).
The obvious purpose of a tower, beyond its serviceableness
as a feature of the building and as a landmark, is to
lift up a belfry high into the air: accordingly, almost
without exception, church and cathedral towers are designed
with a large upper story, pierced by openings of
great size and height called the belfry stage; and the
whole artistic treatment of the tower is subordinate to
this feature. It is also very often the case that a turret to
contain a spiral staircase which may afford the means of
access to the upper part of the tower, forms a prominent
feature of its whole height, especially in the Dec. and
Perp. periods.
Fig. 12.—Lincoln Cathedral. (Mostly Early English.)
In domestic and monastic buildings, low towers were
frequently employed with excellent effect. Many castles
retained the Norman keep, or square strong tower, which
had served as the nucleus round which other buildings had
afterwards clustered; but where during the Gothic period
a castle was built, or rebuilt, without such a keep, one or
more towers, often of great beauty, were always added.
Examples abound; good ones will be found in the
Edwardian castles in Wales (end of thirteenth century), as
for example at Conway and Caernarvon.
Gables.
The gable forms a distinctive Gothic feature. The gables
crowned those parts of a great church in which the skill
of the architect was directed to producing a regular composition,
often called a front, or a façade. The west
fronts of Cathedrals were the most important architectural
designs of this sort, and with them we may include the
ends of the transepts and the east fronts.
The same parts of parish churches are often excellent
compositions. The gable of the nave always formed the
central feature of the main front. This was flanked by the
gables, or half-gables, of the aisles where there were no
towers, or by the lower portions of the towers. As a rule
the centre and sides of the façade are separated by buttresses,
or some other mode of marking a vertical division,
and the composition is also divided by bands of mouldings
or otherwise, horizontally into storeys. Some of the
horizontal divisions are often strongly marked, especially
in the lower part of the building, where in early examples
there is sometimes in addition to the plinth, or base of the
wall, an arcade or a band of sculpture running across the
entire front (e.g. east front of Lincoln Cathedral). The
central gable is always occupied by a large window—or in
early buildings a group of windows—sometimes two storeys
in height. A great side window usually occurs at the end
of each aisle. Below these great windows are introduced,
at any rate in west fronts, the doorways, which, even in the
finest English examples, are comparatively small. The
gable also contains as a rule one or more windows often
circular which light the space above the vaults.
Fig. 13.—St. Pierre, Caen, Tower and Spire. (Spire, 1302.)
Part of the art in arranging such a composition is to combine
and yet contrast its horizontal and vertical elements.
The horizontal lines, or features, are those which serve to
bind the whole together, and the vertical ones are those
which give that upward tendency which is the great charm
and peculiar characteristic of Gothic architecture. It is
essential for the masses of solid masonry and the openings
to be properly contrasted and proportioned to each other,
and here, as in every part of a building, such ornaments
and ornamental features as are introduced must be designed
to contribute to the enrichment of the building
as a whole, so that no part shall be conspicuous either
by inharmonious treatment, undue plainness, or excessive
enrichment.
Fig. 14.—House at Chester. (16th Century.)
During the transition the gable became steeper in pitch
than the comparatively moderate slope of Norman times.
In the E. E. it was acutely pointed, in the Dec. the usual
slope was that of the two sides of an equilateral triangle:
in the Perp. it became extremely flat and ceased to be so
marked a feature as it had formerly been. In domestic buildings
the gable was employed in the most effective manner,
and town dwelling-houses were almost invariably built
their gable ends to the street (Fig. ).
A very effective form of wall was frequently made use of
in dwelling-houses. This consisted of a sturdy framework
of stout timbers exposed to view, with the spaces between
them filled in with plaster. Of this work, which is known
as half-timbered work, many beautiful specimens remain
dating from the fifteenth and following centuries (Figs.
and ), and a few of earlier date. In those parts of England
where tiles are manufactured such framework was often
covered by tiles instead of being filled in with plastering.
In half-timbered houses, the fire-places and chimneys, and
sometimes also the basement storeys, are usually of brickwork
or masonry; so are the side walls in the case of
houses in streets. It was usual in such buildings to cause
the upper storeys to overhang the lower ones.
Columns and Piers.
The columns and piers of a building virtually form
portions of its walls, so far as aiding to support the weight
of the roof is concerned, and are appropriately considered
in connection with them. In Gothic architecture very
little use is made of columns on the outside of a building,
and the porticoes and external rows of columns proper to
the classic styles are quite unknown. On the other
hand the series of piers, or columns, from which spring
the arches which separate the central avenues of nave,
transepts and choir from the aisles, are among the most
prominent features in every church. These piers varied
in each century.
The Norman piers had been frequently circular or
polygonal, but sometimes nearly square, and usually of
enormous mass. Thus, at Durham (Norman), oblong piers
of about eleven feet in diameter occur alternately with
round ones of about seven feet. In transitional examples
columns of more slender proportions were employed either
(as in the choir of Canterbury) as single shafts or collected
into groups. Where grouping took place it was
intended that each shaft of the group should be seen to
support some definite feature of the superincumbent structure,
as where a separate group of mouldings springs
from each shaft in a doorway, and this principle was
very steadily adhered to during the greater part of the
Gothic period.
Fig. 15.—Houses at Lisieux, France. (16th Century.)
Through the E. E. period groups of shafts are generally
employed; they are often formed of detached shafts
clustering round a central one, and held together at
intervals by bands or belts of masonry, and generally the
entire group is nearly circular on plan. In the succeeding
century (Dec. period) the piers also take the form of
groups of shafts, but they are generally carved out of one
block of stone, and the ordinary arrangement of the pier
is on a lozenge-shaped plan. In the Perp., the piers retain
the same general character, but are slenderer, and the shafts
have often shrunk to nothing more than reedy mouldings.
The column is often employed in Transitional and E. E.
churches as a substitute for piers carrying arches. In
every period small columns are freely used as ornamental
features. They are constantly met with, for example, in
the jambs of doorways and of windows.
Every column is divided naturally into three parts, its
base, or foot; its shaft, which forms the main body; and
its capital, or head. Each of these went through a series of
modifications. Part of the base usually consisted of a flat
stone larger than the diameter of the column, sometimes
called a plinth, and upon this stood the moulded base
which gradually diminished to the size of the shaft. This
plain stone was in E. E. often square, and in that case the
corner spaces which were not covered by the mouldings
of the base were often occupied by an elegantly carved
leaf. In Dec. and Perp. buildings the lower part of the
base was often polygonal, and frequently moulded so as
to make it into a pedestal.
The proportions of shafts varied extraordinarily; they
were, as a rule, extremely slender when their purpose was
purely decorative, and comparatively sturdy when they
really served to carry a weight.
The capital of the column has been perhaps the most
conspicuous feature in the architecture of every age and
every country, and it is one of the features which a student
may make use of as an indication of date and style of
buildings, very much as the botanist employs the flower as
an index to the genus and species of plants. The capital
almost invariably starts from a ring, called the neck of
the column. This serves to mark the end of the shaft and
the commencement of the capital. Above this follows
what is commonly called the bell,—the main portion of the
capital, which is that part upon which the skill of the
carver and the taste of the designer can be most freely
expended, and on the top of the bell is placed the abacus,
a flat block of stone upon the upper surface of which is
built the superstructure or is laid the beam or block which
the column has to support. The shape and ornaments
given to the abacus are often of considerable importance
as indications of the position in architectural history which
the building in which it occurs should occupy.
The Norman capital differed to some extent from
the Romanesque capitals of other parts of Europe. It was
commonly of a heavy, strong-looking shape, and is often
appropriately called the cushion capital. In its simpler
forms the cushion capital is nothing but a cubical block
of stone with its lower corners rounded off to make it fit
the circular shaft on which it is placed, and with a slab by
way of abacus placed upon it. In later Norman and
transitional work the faces of this block and the edges of
the abacus are often richly moulded. By degrees, however,
as the transition to E. E. approached, a new sort of
capital was introduced, having the outline of the bell
hollow instead of convex. The square faces of the Norman
capital of course disappeared, and the square abacus soon
(at least in this country) became circular, involving no small
loss of vigour in the appearance of the work. The bell of
this capital was often decorated with rich mouldings, and
had finely-designed and characteristic foliage, which almost
always seemed to grow up the capital, and represented a
conventional kind of leaf easily recognised when once
seen.
In the Dec. period the capitals have, as a rule, fewer and
less elaborate mouldings; the foliage is often very beautifully
carved in imitation of natural leaves, and wreathed
round the capital instead of growing up it. In the Perp.
this feature is in every way less ornate, the mouldings
are plainer, and the foliage, often absent, is, when it occurs,
conventional and stiff. Polygonal capitals are common in
this period.
Later Norman Capital.
FOOTNOTES:
For illustrations consult the under Pier.
For illustration consult the .
For illustrations consult the .
For illustration consult the under Flying buttress.
For remarks on Spires, see Chap.
York, Lichfield, and Lincoln, are the cathedrals distinguished by
the possession of three towers.
For illustrations consult the under Pier.
For illustrations consult the under Base.
For illustrations consult the .
CHAPTER V.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.—ENGLAND.
ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS (continued)—OPENINGS, ROOFS,
SPIRES, ORNAMENTS, STAINED GLASS, SCULPTURE.
Openings and Arches.
THE openings (i.e. doors and windows) in the walls of
English Gothic buildings are occasionally covered
by flat heads or lintels, but this is exceptional; ordinarily
they have arched heads. The shape of the arch varies at
all periods. Architects always felt themselves free to
adopt any shape which best met the requirements of
any special case; but at each period there was one shape
of arch which it was customary to use.
In the first transitional period (end of twelfth century)
semicircular and pointed arches are both met with, and
are often both employed in the same part of the same
building. The mouldings and enrichments which are
common in Norman work are usually still in use. In the
E. E. period the doorways are almost invariably rather
acutely pointed, the arched heads are enriched by a large
mass of rich mouldings, and the jambs have usually a
series of small columns, each of which is intended to carry
a portion of the entire group of mouldings. Large doorways
are often subdivided into two, and frequently approached
by porches. A most beautiful example occurs in the
splendid west entrance to Ely Cathedral. Other examples
will be found at Lichfield (Fig. ) and Salisbury. It was
not uncommon to cover doorways with a lintel, the whole
being under an archway; this left a space above the head
of the door which was occupied by carving often of great
beauty. Ornamental gables are often formed over the entrances
of churches, and are richly sculptured; but though
beautiful, these features rarely attained magnificence.
The most remarkable entrance to an English cathedral is
the west portal of Peterborough—a composition of lofty
and richly moulded arches built
in front of the original west wall.
A portal on a smaller scale, but
added in the same manner adorns
the west front of Wells. As a
less exceptional example we may
refer to the entrance to Westminster
Abbey at the end of the
north transept (now under restoration),
which must have been a
noble example of an E. E. portal
when in its perfect state.
Fig. 16.—Lancet Window. (12th Century.)
The windows in this style were
almost always long, narrow, and
with a pointed head resembling
the blade of a lancet (Fig. ).
The glass is generally near the
outside face of the wall, and the sides of the opening are
splayed towards the inside. It was very customary to
place these lancet windows in groups. The best known group
is the celebrated one of “the five sisters,” five lofty single
lights, occupying the eastern end of one of the transepts of
York Minster. A common arrangement in designing such
a group was to make the central light the highest, and
to graduate the height of the others. It after a time became
customary to render the opening more ornamental
by adding pointed projections called cusps. By these the
shape of the head of the opening was turned into a form
resembling a trefoil leaf. Sometimes two cusps were
added on each side. The head is, in the former case, said
to be trefoiled—in the latter, cinqfoiled.
Fig. 17.—Two-light Window. (13th Century.)
Fig. 18.—Geometrical Tracery. (14th Century.)
When two windows were placed close together it began
to be customary to include them under one outer arch, and
after a time to pierce the solid head between them with
a circle, which frequently was cusped, forming often a
quatrefoil (Fig. ). This completed the idea of a
group, and was rapidly followed by ornamental treatment.
Three, four, five, or more windows (which in such a position
are often termed lights) were often placed under one
arch, the head of which was filled by a more or less rich
group of circles; mouldings were added, and thus rose the
system of decoration for window-heads known as tracery.
So long as the tracery preserves the simple character of
piercings through a flat stone, filling the space between the
window heads, it is known as plate tracery. The thinning
down of the blank space to a comparatively narrow
surface went on, and by and by the use of mouldings
caused that plain surface to resemble bars of stone bent
into a circular form: this was called bar tracery, and it is
in this form that tracery is chiefly employed in England
(Fig. ). Westminster Abbey is full of exquisite examples
of E. E. window-tracery (temp. Henry III.); as,
for example, in the windows of the choir, the great
circular windows (technically termed rose-windows) at
the ends of the transepts, the windows of the chapter-house.
Last, but not least, the splendid arcade which
forms the triforium is filled with tracery similar in every
respect to the best window tracery of the period (Fig. ).
Fig. 19.—The Triforium Arcade, Westminster Abbey. (1269.)
In the decorated style of the fourteenth century tracery
was developed till it reached a great pitch of perfection
and intricacy. In the earlier half of the century none
save regular geometrical forms, made up of circles and segments
of circles, occur; in other words, the whole design
of the most elaborate window could be drawn with the
compasses, and a curve of contrary flexure rarely occurred.
In the latest half of that period flowing lines are introduced
into the tracery, and very much alter its character
(Fig. ). The cusping throughout is bolder than in the
E. E. period.
Fig. 20.—Rose Window from the Transept of Lincoln Cathedral. (1342-1347.)
In perpendicular windows spaces of enormous size
are occupied by the mullions and tracery. Horizontal
bars, called transoms, are now for the first time introduced,
and the upright bars or mullions form with them
a kind of stone grating; but below each transom a series
of small stone arches forms heads to the lights below that
transom, and a minor mullion often springs from the head
of each of these arches, so that as the window increases in
height, the number of its lights increases. The character
of the cusping changed again, the cusps becoming club-headed
in their form (Fig. ).
Fig. 21.—Perpendicular Window.
Arches in the great arcades of churches, or in the
smaller arcades of cloisters, or used as decorations to the
surface of the walls, were made acute, obtuse, or segmental,
to suit the duty they had to perform; but when
there was nothing to dictate any special shape, the arch
of the E. E. period was by preference acute and of lofty
proportions, and that of the Dec. less lofty, and its head
equilateral (i.e. described so that if the ends of the base
of an equilateral triangle touch the two points from which
it springs, the apex of the angle shall touch the point of
the arch). In the Perp. period the four centred depressed
arch, sometimes called the Tudor arch, was introduced,
and though it did not entirely supersede the equilateral
arch, yet its employment became at last all but universal,
and it is one of the especially characteristic features of the
Tudor period.
Roofs and Vaults.
The external and the internal covering of a building are
very often not the same; the outer covering is then usually
called a roof—the other, a vault or ceiling. In not a few
Gothic buildings, however, they were the same; such
buildings had what are known as open roofs—i.e. roofs in
which the whole of the timber framing of which they are
constructed is open to view from the interior right up to
the tiles or lead. Very few open roofs of E. E. character
are now remaining, but a good many parish churches retain
roofs of the Dec., and more of the Perp. period. The
roof of Westminster Hall (Perp., erected 1397) shows how
fine an architectural object such a roof may become. The
roof of the hall of Eltham Palace (Fig. ) is another good
example. Wooden ceilings, often very rich, are not uncommon,
especially in the churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, but
greater interest attaches to the stone vaults with which
the majority of Gothic buildings were erected, than to
any other description of covering to the interiors of
buildings.
The vault was a feature rarely absent from important
churches, and the structural requirements of the Gothic
vault were among the most influential of the elements
which determined both the plan and the section of a
mediæval church. There was a regular growth in Gothic
vaults. Those of the thirteenth century are comparatively
simple; those of the fourteenth are much richer and more
elaborate, and often involve very great structural difficulties.
Those of the fifteenth are more systematic, and
consequently more simple in principle than the ones which
preceded them, but are such marvels of workmanship, and
so enriched by an infinity of parts, that they astonish
the beholder, and it appears, till the secret is known,
impossible to imagine how they can be made to stand.
Fig. 22.—Roof of Hall at Eltham Palace. (15th Century.)
It has been held by some very good authorities that the
pointed arch was first introduced into Gothic architecture
to solve difficulties which presented themselves in the
vaulting. In all probability the desire to give to everything,
arches included, a more lofty appearance and more
slender proportions may have had as much to do with the
adoption of the pointed arch as any structural considerations,
but there can be no doubt that it was used for
structural arches from the very first, even when window heads
and wall arcades were semicircular, and that the introduction
of it cleared the way for the use of stone vaults of
large span to a wonderful extent. It is not easy to explain
this without being more technical than is perhaps desirable
in the present volume, but the subject is one of too much
importance for it to be possible to avoid making the
attempt.
Churches, it will be recollected, were commonly built
with a wide nave and narrower aisles, and it was in the
Norman period customary to vault the aisles and cover the
nave with a ceiling. There was no difficulty in so spacing
the distances apart of the piers of the main arcade that the
compartments (usually termed bays) of the aisle should be
square on plan; and it was quite possible, without doing more
than the Romans had done, to vault each bay of the aisles
with a semicircular intersecting vault (i.e. one which has the
appearance of a semicircular or waggon-head vault, intersected
by another vault of the same outline and height). This
produced a simple series of what are called groined or cross
vaults, which allowed height to be given to the window
heads of the aisle and to the arcades between the aisles
and nave.
After a time it was desired to vault the nave also, and
to adopt for it an intersecting vault, so that the heads of
the windows of the clerestory might be raised above the
springing line of the vault, but so long as the arches
remained semicircular, this was very difficult to accomplish.
The Romans would probably have contented themselves
with employing a barrel vault and piercing it to the extent
required by short lateral vaults, but the result would have
been an irregular, weak, curved line at each intersection
with the main vault; and the aisle vaults having made the
pleasing effect of a perfectly regular intersection familiar,
this expedient does not seem to have found favour, at any
rate in England.
Other expedients were however tried, and with curious
results. It was for example attempted to vault the nave
with a cross vault, embracing two bays of the arcade to
one of the vault, but the wall space so gained was particularly
ill suited to the clerestory windows, as may be seen
by examining the nave of St. Stephen’s at Caen. In short,
if the vaulting compartment were as wide as the nave one
way, but only as wide as the aisle the other way, and semicircular
arches alone were employed, a satisfactory result
seemed to be unattainable.
In the search for some means of so vaulting a bay of
oblong plan that the arches should spring all at one level,
and the groins or lines of intersection should cross one
another in the centre of the ceiling, the idea either arose
or was suggested that the curve of the smaller span should
be a pointed instead of a semicircular arch.
The moment this was tried all difficulty vanished, and
groined (i.e. intersecting) vaults, covering compartments of
any proportions became easy to design and simple to construct,
for if the vault which spanned the narrow way of
the compartment were acutely pointed, and that which
spanned it the wide way were either semicircular or flatly-pointed,
it became easy to arrange that the startings of
both vaults should be at the same level, and that they
should rise to the same height, which is the condition
essential to the production of a satisfactory intersection.
Scott enumerates not fewer than fourteen varieties of
mediæval vaults and points out that specimens of thirteen
are to be found at Westminster. Without such minute
detail we may select some well-known varieties:—(1)
The plain waggon-head vault, as at the Chapel of the
Tower; (2) in advanced Norman works, cross-vaults
formed by two intersecting semicircular vaults, the
diagonal line being called a groin. (3) The earliest
transitional and E. E. vaults, pointed and with transverse
and diagonal ribs, and bosses at the intersection of ribs,
e.g., in the aisles and the early part of the cloisters at
Westminster. (4) In the advanced part of the E. E.
period, the addition of a rib at the ridge, as seen in the
presbytery and transepts at Westminster. (5) At the
time of the transition to Dec. (temp. Ed. 1.) additional
ribs began to be introduced between the diagonal and the
transverse ribs. (6) As the Dec. period advanced other
ribs, called liernes, were introduced, running in various
directions over the surface of the vault, making star-like
figures on the vault. (7) The vault of the early Perp.,
which is similar to the last, but more complicated and
approaching No. 8, e.g., Abbot Islip’s chapel. (8) Lastly,
the distinctive vault of the advanced or Tudor Perp., is
the fan-tracery vault of which Henry VII.’s Chapel roof is
the climax. The vaulting surfaces in these are portions
of hollow conoids, and are covered by a net-work of fine
ribs, connected together by bands of cusping (Fig. ).
Fig. 23.—Henry VII.’s Chapel. (1503-1512.)
In Scott’s enumeration the vaults of octagons and irregular
compartments, and such varieties as the one called
sexpartite, find a place; here they have been intentionally
excluded. Many of them are works of the greatest skill
and beauty, especially the vaults of octagonal chapter
houses springing from one centre pier (e.g., Chapter Houses
at Worcester, Westminster, Wells, and Salisbury).
Externally, the roofs of buildings became very steep in
the thirteenth century; they were not quite so steep in the
fourteenth, and in the fifteenth they were frequently
almost flat. They were always relied upon to add to the
effectiveness of a building, and were enriched sometimes
by variegated tiles or other covering, sometimes by the
introduction of small windows, known as dormer windows,
each with its own gablet and its little roof, and sometimes
by the addition of a steep sided roof in the shape of
a lantern or a “flèche” on the ridge, or a pyramidal covering
to some projecting octagon or turret.
All these have their value in breaking up the sky-line
of the building, and adding interest and beauty to it.
Still more striking, however, in its effect on the sky-line
was the spire, a feature to which great attention was paid
in English architecture.
Spires.
The early square towers of Romanesque churches were
sometimes surmounted by pyramidal roofs of low pitch.
We have probably none now remaining, but we have some
examples of large pinnacles, crowned with pyramids, which
show what the shape must have been. They were square
in plan and somewhat steep in slope.
The spire was developed
early in the E. E.
period. It was octagonal
in plan, and the
four sides which coincided
with the faces
of the tower rose direct
from the walls above
a slightly masked
eaves course. The
four oblique sides are
connected to the tower
by a feature called a
broach, which may be
described as part of
a blunt pyramid. The
broach-spire (Fig. )
is to be met with in
many parts of England,
but especially
in Northamptonshire.
The chief ornaments
of an E. E. spire
consist in small windows
(called spire-lights
or lucarnes)
each surmounted by
its gablet.
Fig. 24.—Early English Spire. Church of St.
Mary Magdalene, Warboys, Lincolnshire.
In the Dec. period
it was common to
finish the tower by a
parapet, and to start
the spire behind the
parapet, sometimes
with a broach, often
without. Pinnacles
were frequently
added at the corners
of the tower,
and an arch, like
that of a flying
buttress, was
sometimes thrown
across from the
pinnacle to the
spire. Spire-lights
occur as before,
and the surface of
the spire is often
enriched by bands
of ornament at
intervals. The
general proportions
of the spire were
more slender than
before, and the rib,
which generally
ran up each angle,
was often enriched
by crockets, i.e.
tufts of leaves arranged
in a formal
shape (Fig. ).
Fig. 25.—Decorated Spire. All Saints’ Church,
Oakham, Rutlandshire.
Towers were frequently
intended
to stand without
spires in the Perp.
period, and are
often finished by four effective angle-pinnacles and a
cornice with battlements. Where spires occur in this
period they resemble those of the Dec. period.
Spires end usually in a boss or finial, surmounted by a
weathercock. Ordinary roofs were usually finished by
ornamental cresting, and their summits were marked by
finials, frequently of exquisite workmanship.
Ornaments.
We now come to ornaments, including mouldings, carving,
and colour, and here we are landed upon a mass of
details which it would be impossible to pursue far. Mouldings
play a prominent part in Gothic architecture, and
from the first to the last they varied so constantly that
their profiles and grouping may be constantly made use of
as a kind of architectural calendar, to point out the time,
to within a few years, when the building in which they
occur was erected.
A moulding is the architect’s means of drawing a line
on his building. If he desires to mark on the exterior the
position of an internal floor, or in any other way to suggest
a division into storeys, a moulded string-course is
introduced. If he wishes to add richness and play of
light and shade to the sides of an important arch, he
introduces a series of mouldings, the profile of which
has been designed to form lights and shadows such as
will answer his purpose. If again he desires to throw
out a projection and to give the idea of its being properly
supported, he places under his projection a corbel of
mouldings which are of strong as well as pleasing form,
so as to convey to the eye the notion of support. Mouldings,
it can be understood, differ in both size and profile,
according to the purpose which they are required to serve,
the distance from the spectator at which they are fixed,
and the material out of which they are formed. In the
Gothic periods they also differed according to the date at
which they were executed.
Fig. 26.—Early Arch in Receding
Planes.
Fig. 27.—Arch in Receding Planes
Moulded.
The first step towards the Gothic system of mouldings
was taken by the Romanesque architects when the idea
of building arches in thick walls, not only one within the
others, but also in planes receding back from the face of
the wall one behind as well as within another, was formed
and carried out, and when a corresponding recessed arrangement
of the jamb of the arch was made (Fig. ). The
next step was the addition of some simple moulding to the
advancing angle of each rim of such a series of arches
either forming a bead (Fig. ) or a chamfer.
In the transitional part of the twelfth century and the
E. E. period this process went on till at last, though
the separate receding arches still continued to exist, the
mouldings into which they were cut became so numerous
and elaborate as to render it often difficult to detect the
subordination or division into distinct planes which really
remained.
Fig. 28.—Doorway, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. (15th Century.)
This passion for elaborate mouldings, often extraordinarily
undercut, reached its climax in the thirteenth
century, the E. E. period. In the Dec. period, while almost
everything else became more elaborate, mouldings grew
more simple, yet hardly less beautiful. In the Perp.
period they were not only further simplified, but often
impoverished, being usually shallow, formal, and stiff.
Ornaments abounded, and included not only enrichments
in the shape of carved foliage and figures, statuary,
mosaics, and so forth, but ornamental features, such as
canopies, pinnacles, arcades, and recesses (Fig. ).
In each period these are distinct in design from all that
went before or came after, and thus to catch the spirit of
any one Gothic period aright, it is not enough to fix the
general shapes of the arches and proportions of the piers
but every feature, every moulding, and every ornament
must be wrought in the true spirit of the work, or the
result will be marred.
Stained Glass.
Ornamental materials and every sort of decorative art,
such as mosaic, enamel, metal work and inlays, were
freely employed to add beauty in appropriate positions;
but there was one ornament, the crowning invention of
the Gothic artists, which largely influenced the design of
the finest buildings, and which reflected a glory on them
such as nothing else can approach: this was stained glass.
So much of the old glass has perished, and so little
modern glass is even passable, that this praise may
seem overcharged to those who have never seen any
of the best specimens still left. We have in the choir at
Canterbury a remnant of the finest sort of glass which
England possesses. Some good fragments remain at Westminster,
though not very many; but to judge of the effect
of glass at its best, the student should visit La Sainte
Chapelle at Paris, or the Cathedrals of Chartres, Le Mans,
Bourges, or Rheims, and he will find in these buildings
effects in colour which are nothing less than gorgeous in
their brilliancy, richness, and harmony.
Fig. 29.—Stained Glass Window from Chartres Cathedral.
The peculiar excellence of stained glass as compared with
every other sort of decoration, is that it is luminous. To
some extent fresco-painting may claim a sort of brightness;
mosaic when executed in polished materials possesses
brilliancy; but in stained glass the light which comes
streaming in through the window itself gives radiance,
while the quality of the glass determines the colour, and
thus we obtain a glowing, lustre of colour which can only
be compared to the beauty of gems. In order properly to
fill their place as decorations, stained-glass windows must be
something quite different from transparent pictures, and
the scenes they represent must not detach themselves too
violently from the general ground. The most perfect effect
is produced by such windows as those at Canterbury or
Chartres (Fig. ), which recall a cluster of jewels rather
than a picture.
Coloured Decoration.
Colour was also freely introduced by the lavish employment
of coloured materials where they were to be had,
and by painting the interiors with bright pigments. We
meet with traces of rich colour on many parts of ancient
buildings, where we should hardly dare to put it now, and
we cannot doubt that painted decoration was constantly
made use of with the happiest effect.
Sculpture.
Fig. 30.—Sculpture from the Entrance to the Chapter House,
Westminster Abbey. (1250.)
The last, perhaps the noblest ornament, is sculpture. The
Gothic architects were alive to its value, and in all their
best works statues abounded; often conventional to the last
degree; sometimes to our eyes uncouth, but always the
best which those who carved them could do at the time;
always sure to contribute to architectural effect; never
without a picturesque power, sometimes rising to grace
and even grandeur, and sometimes sinking to grotesque
ugliness. Whatever the quality of the sculpture was,
it was always there, and added life to the whole.
Monsters gaped and grinned from the water-spouts, little
figures or strange animals twisted in and out of the foliage
at angles and bosses and corbels. Stately effigies occupied
dignified niches, in places of honour; and in the mouldings
and tympanum of the head of a doorway there was
often carved a whole host of figures representing heaven,
earth, and hell, with a rude force and a native eloquence
that have not lost their power to the present day.
In the positions where modest ornamentation was required,
as for example the capitals of shafts, the hollows
of groups of mouldings, and the bosses of vaulting, carving
of the most finished execution and masterly design
constantly occurs. Speaking roughly, this was chiefly
conventional in the E. E. period, chiefly natural in the
Dec. and mixed, but with perhaps a preference for the
conventional in the Perp. Examples abound, but both
for beauty and accessibility we can refer to no better
example than the carving which enriches the entrance
to the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey (Fig. ).
Miserere Seat from Wells Cathedral.
FOOTNOTES:
For illustrations consult the under Jamb.
For illustrations consult the under Arch.
Address to the Conference of Architects. Reported in the Builder
of 24th June, 1876. Outlines illustrating some of these varieties of
vault will be found in the under Vault.
See .
For illustrations consult the .
For further illustrations see the .
CHAPTER VI.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN WESTERN EUROPE.
FRANCE.—CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
THE architecture of France during the Middle Ages
throws much light upon the history of the
country. The features in which it differs from the work
done in England at the same period can, many of them,
be directly traced to differences in the social, political, or
religious situation of the two nations at the time. For
example, we find England in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries in the hands of the Normans, a newly-conquered
country under uniform administration; and accordingly
few local variations occur in the architecture of our
Norman period. The twelfth-century work, at Durham or
Peterborough for instance, differs but little from that at
Gloucester or Winchester. In France the case is different.
That country was divided into a series of semi-independent
provinces, whose inhabitants differed, not only in the
leaders whom they followed, but in speech, race, and
customs. As might be expected, the buildings of each
province presented an aspect different in many respects
from those of every other; and we may as well add that
these peculiarities did not die out with the end of the
round-arched period of architecture, but lingered far into
the pointed period.
Fig. 31.—Church at Fontevrault. (Begun 1125.)
The south of France was occupied by people speaking
what are now known as the Romance dialects, and some
writers have adopted the name as descriptive of the
peculiarities of the architecture of these districts. The
Romance provinces clung tenaciously to their early forms
of art, so that pointed architecture was not established in
the south of France till half a century, and in some places
nearly a whole century, later than in the north.
On the other hand, the Frankish part of the country
was the cradle of Gothic. The transition from
round to pointed architecture first took place in the royal
domain, of which Paris was the centre, and it may be
assumed that the new style was already existing when in
1140 Abbot Suger laid the foundations of the choir of
the church of St. Denis, about forty years before the
commencement of the eastern arm of our own Canterbury.
De Caumont, who in his “Abécédaire” did for French
architecture somewhat the same work of analysis and
scientific arrangement which Rickman performed for
English, has adopted the following classification:—
Romanesque Architecture.Architecture Romane.
Primitive.
5th to 10th century.
Primordiale.
Second.
End of 10th to commencement of 12th century.
Secondaire.
Third or Transition 12th century.
Tertiaire ou de Transition.
Pointed Architecture.Architecture ogivale.
First.
13th century.
Primitive.
Second.
14th century.
Secondaire.
Third.
15th century.
Tertiaire.
Fig. 32.—Doorway at Loches, France. (1180.)
The transitional architecture of France is no exception to
the rule that the art of a period of change is full of interest.
Much of it has disappeared, but examples remain in the
eastern part of the cathedral of St. Denis already referred
to, in portions of the cathedrals of Noyon and Sens, the
west front of Chartres, the church of St. Germain des Prés
at Paris, and elsewhere. We here often find the pointed
arch employed for the most important parts of the
structure, while the round arch is still retained in the
window and door-heads, and in decorative arcades, as
shown in our illustrations of a section of the church
at Fontevrault (Fig. ), and of a doorway at Loches
(Fig. ).
The first pointed architecture of the thirteenth century
in France differs considerably from the early English of
this country. The arches are usually less acute, and the
windows not so tall in proportion to their width. The
mouldings employed are few and simple compared with the
many and intricate English ones. Large round columns
are much used in place of our complicated groups of small
shafts for the piers of the nave; and the abacus of the
capital remains square. An air of breadth and dignity
prevails in the buildings of this date to which the simple
details, noble proportions, and great size largely contribute.
The western front of Notre Dame, Paris (Fig.
), dates from the early years of this century, the interior
being much of it a little earlier. The well-known
cathedrals of Chartres, Rheims, Laon, and later in the
style, Amiens, and Beauvais, may be taken as grand
examples of French first pointed. To these may be added
the very graceful Sainte Chapelle of Paris, the choir and
part of the nave of the cathedral at Rouen, the church
of St. Etienne at Caen, and the cathedrals of Coutances,
Lisieux, Le Mans, and Bourges. This list of churches
could be almost indefinitely extended, and many monastic
buildings, and not a few domestic and military ones, might
be added. Among the most conspicuous of these may be
named the monastic fortress at Mont St. Michel, probably
the most picturesque structure in France, the remarkable
fortifications of Carcassonne, and the lordly castle of Couçy.
Fig. 33.—Notre Dame, Paris, West Front. (1214.)
The second pointed, or fourteenth century Gothic of
France, bears more resemblance to contemporary English
Gothic than the work of the centuries preceding or
following. Large windows for stained glass, with rich
geometrical tracery prevailed, and much the same sort of
ornamental treatment as in England was adopted in richly
decorated buildings. Specimens of the work of this century
occur everywhere in the shape of additions to the great
churches and cathedrals which had been left unfinished
from the previous century, and also of side chapels which
it became customary to add to the aisles of churches. The
great and well-known abbey of St. Ouen at Rouen is one of
the few first-class churches which can be named as begun
and almost entirely completed in this century. The tower
and spire of the church of St. Pierre at Caen (Fig. ) are
very well-known and beautiful specimens of this period.
French fifteenth century architecture, or third pointed,
is far from being so dignified or so scientific as English
perpendicular, and differs from it considerably. Exuberant
richness in decoration was the rage, and shows itself both
in sculpture, tracery, and general design. Much of the later
work of this period has received the name of flamboyant,
because of the flame-like shapes into which the tracery of
the heads of windows was thrown. In flamboyant buildings
we often meet with art which, though certainly over-florid,
is brilliant, rich, and full of true feeling for decoration.
In this century, secular and domestic buildings attained
more prominence than at any previous periods. Some of
them are among the best works which this period produced.
Familiar examples will be found in the noble
Palais de Justice at Rouen, and the Hôtel de Bourgtherould
in the same city; in parts of the great château at Blois,
the splendid château of Pierrefonds, and the Hôtels de
Ville of Oudenarde and Caen.
FRANCE.—ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.
Plan.
Fig. 34.—Plan of Amiens Cathedral. (1220-1272.)
The plans of French cathedrals and other buildings
conform in general to the description of Gothic plans
given in Chapter , but they have of course certain
distinctive peculiarities (Fig. ). The cathedrals are
as a rule much broader in proportion to their length
than English ones. Double aisles frequently occur, and
not infrequently an added range of side chapels fringes
each of the main side walls, so that the interior of
one of these vast buildings presents, in addition to the
main vista along the nave, many delightful cross views of
great extent. The transepts are also much less strongly
marked than our English examples. There are even some
great cathedrals (e.g., Bourges) without transepts; and
where they exist it is common to find that, as in the case of
Notre Dame de Paris, they do not project beyond the line
of the side walls, so that, although fairly well-marked in
the exterior and interior of the building, they add nothing
to its floor-space. The eastern end of a French cathedral
(and indeed of French churches generally, with very few
exceptions) is terminated in an apse. When, as is frequently
the case, this apse is encircled by a ring of chapels,
with flying buttresses on several stages rising from among
them, the whole arrangement is called a chevet, and very
striking and busy is the appearance which it presents.
Walls, Towers, and Gables.
The walls are rarely built of any other material than
stone, and much splendid masonry is to be found in France.
Low towers are often to be met with, and so are projecting
staircase turrets of polygonal or circular forms. The
façades of cathedrals, including ends of transepts as
well as west fronts, are most striking, and often magnificently
enriched. It is an interesting study to examine
a series of these fronts, each a little more advanced
than the last, as for example Notre Dame (Fig. ), the
transept at Rouen, Amiens (Fig. ), and Rheims, and to
note how the horizontal bands and other level features
grow less and less conspicuous, while the vertical ones
are more and more strongly marked; showing an increasing
desire, not only to make the buildings lofty, but to
suppress everything which might interfere with their
looking as high as possible.
Fig. 35.—Amiens Cathedral, West Front. (1220-1272.)
Columns and Piers.
The column is a greater favourite than the pier in
France, as has already been said. Sometimes, where
the supports of the main arcade are really piers, they are
built like circular shafts of large size; and even when they
have no capital (as was the case in third-pointed examples),
these piers still retain much of the air of solid strength
which belongs to the column, and which the French architects
appear to have valued highly. In cases where a
series of mouldings has to be carried—as for example
when the main arcade of a building is richly moulded—English
architects would usually have provided a distinct
shaft for each little group (or as Willis named them order),
into which the whole can be subdivided. In France, at
any rate during the earlier periods, the whole series of
mouldings would spring from the square unbroken abacus
of a single large column, to which perhaps one shaft, or as
in our illustration (Fig. ) four shafts, would be attached
which would be carried up to the springing of the nave
vault, at which point the same treatment would be repeated,
though on a smaller scale, with the moulded ribs
of that vault.
Fig. 36.—Piers and Superstructure, Rheims Cathedral. (1211-1240.)
A peculiarity of some districts of southern France is
the suppression of the external buttress; the buttresses
are in fact built within the church walls instead of outside,
and masonry enough is added to make each into a
separating wall which divides side chapels. Some large
churches, e.g., the cathedral at Alby, in Southern France,
consist of a wide nave buttressed in this way, and having
side chapels between the buttresses, but without side aisles.
The plans of the secular, military, and domestic buildings
of France also present many interesting peculiarities,
but not such as it is possible to review within the narrow
limits of this chapter.
Roofs and Vaults.
The peculiarly English feature of an open roof is hardly
ever met with in any shape: yet though stone vaults are
almost universal, they are rarely equal in scientific skill
to the best of those in our own country. In transitional
examples, many very singular instances of the expedients
employed before the pointed vault was fully developed
can be found. In some of the central and southern districts,
domes, or at least domical vaults, were employed.
(See the section of Fontevrault, Fig. ). The dome came
in from Byzantium. It was introduced in Perigord, where
the very curious and remarkable church of St. Front
(begun early in the eleventh century) was built. This is
to all intents a Byzantine church. It is an almost exact
copy in plan and construction of St. Mark’s at Venice, a
church designed and built by Eastern architects, and it is
roofed by a series of domes, a peculiarity which is as distinctive
of Byzantine (i.e., Eastern early Christian), as the
vaulted roof is of Romanesque (or Western early Christian)
architecture. Artists from Constantinople itself probably
visited France, and from this centre a not inconsiderable
influence extended itself in various directions, and led to
the use of many Byzantine features both of design and
ornament.
As features in the exterior of their buildings, the roofs
have been in every period valued by the French architects;
they are almost always steep, striking, and ornamented.
All appropriate modes of giving prominence and adding
ornament to a roof have been very fully developed in
French Gothic architecture, and the roofs of semicircular
and circular apses, staircase towers, &c., may be almost
looked upon as typical.
Openings.
The treatment of openings gives occasion for one of the
most strongly marked points of contrast between French
and English Gothic architecture. With us the great
windows are unquestionably the prominent features, but
with the French the doors are most elaborated. This result
is reached not so much by any lowering of the quality
of the treatment bestowed upon the windows, but by the
greatly increased importance given to doorways.
The great portals of Notre Dame at Paris (Fig. ),
Rheims, or Amiens (Fig. ), and the grand porches of
Chartres may be named as the finest examples, and
are probably the most magnificent single features which
Gothic Art produced in any age or any country;
but in its degree the western portal of every great
church is usually an object upon which the best resources
of the architect have been freely lavished. The wall is
built very thick so that enormous jambs, carrying a vast
moulded arch, can be employed. The head of the door is
filled with sculpture, which is also lavishly used in the
sides and arch, and over the whole rises an ornamental
gable, frequently profusely adorned with tracery and
sculpture, its sides being richly decorated by crockets or
similar ornaments, and crowned by a sculptured terminal
or finial.
The windows in the earliest periods are simpler than
in our E. E., as well as of less slender proportions. In
the second and third periods they are full of rich tracery,
and are made lofty and wide to receive the magnificent
stained glass with which it was intended to fill them, and
which many churches retain. Circular windows, sometimes
called wheel-windows, often occupy the gables, and are
many of them very fine compositions.
Mouldings and Ornaments.
The mouldings of the French first pointed are usually
larger than our own. Compared with ours they are also
fewer, simpler, and designed to produce more breadth of
effect. This may partly result from their originating in a
sunshiny country where effects of shade are easily obtained.
In the second and third periods they more nearly resemble
those in use in England at the corresponding times.
The carving is very characteristic and very beautiful.
In the transition and first pointed a cluster of stalks, ending
in a tuft of foliage or flowers, is constantly employed,
especially in capitals. The use of this in England is rare;
and, on the other hand, foliage like E. E. conventional
foliage is rare in France. In the second pointed, natural
foliage is admirably rendered (Fig. ). In the third a
somewhat conventional kind of foliage, very luxuriant in
its apparent growth, is constantly met with.
This carving is at every stage accompanied by figure-sculpture
of the finest character. Heads of animals, statues,
groups of figures, and has reliefs are freely employed, but
always with the greatest judgment, so that their introduction
adds richness to the very point in the whole composition
where it is most needed. In every part of France,
and in every period of Gothic architecture, good specimens
of sculpture abound. Easily accessible illustrations will
be found in the west entrance and south transept front of
Rouen Cathedral, the porches and portals at Chartres, the
choir inclosure of Notre Dame at Paris, and the richly
sculptured inclosure of the choir of Amiens Cathedral.
Fig. 37.—Capital from St. Nicholas, Blois, France.
(13th Century.)
Stained glass has been more than once referred to. It is
to be found in its greatest perfection in France, as for
example in La Sainte Chapelle at Paris, and the cathedrals
of Le Mans, Bourges, Chartres, and Rheims. All that has
been said in the introductory chapter on this, the crowning
ornament of Gothic architecture, and on its influence upon
window design, and through that, upon the whole structure
of the best churches, is to the full as applicable to French
examples. Coloured decoration was also frequently employed
in the interior of churches and other buildings, and
is constantly to be met with in French buildings, both
secular and religious. In most cases, however, it is less
easy to appreciate this than the stained glass, for, as it is
now to be seen, the colours are either faded and darkened
by time and smoke, or else restored, not always with the
exactness that could be desired.
Construction and Design.
The construction of the great buildings of the middle
ages in France is an interesting subject of study, but
necessarily a thoroughly technical one. Great sagacity
in designing the masonry, carpentry, joinery, and metal-work;
and trained skill in the carrying out the designs,
have left their traces everywhere; and while the construction
of the earlier castles and of the simple churches
shows a solidity but little inferior to that of the Romans
themselves, the most elaborate works, such for example
as the choir at Beauvais (Fig. ), can hardly be surpassed
as specimens of skill and daring, careful forethought, and
bold execution.
Fig. 38.—Beauvais Cathedral, Interior. (1225-1537.)
Design, in France, pursued the general principles of Gothic
architecture to their logical conclusions with the most
uncompromising consistency. Perhaps the most distinctive
peculiarity in French cathedrals is a love of abstract beauty,
and a strong preference for breadth, regularity, dignity,
and symmetry wherever they come into competition with
picturesqueness and irregular grouping. There is, it is
true, plenty of the picturesque element in French mediæval
art; but if we take the finest buildings, and those in
which the greatest effort would be made to secure the qualities
which were considered the greatest and most desirable,
we shall find very strong evidences of a conviction that
beauty was to be attained by regularity and order, rather
than by unsymmetrical and irregular treatment.
BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS.
Belgium is a country rich in remains of Gothic architecture.
Its art was influenced so largely by its neighbourhood
to France, that it will not be necessary to attempt
anything like a chronological arrangement of its buildings.
Fine churches exist in its principal cities, but they cannot
be said to form a series differing widely from the churches
of France, with which they were contemporary, and where
they differ the advantage is generally on the side of the
French originals.
The principal cathedral of the Low Countries, that at
Antwerp, is a building remarkable for its great width
(having seven aisles), and for the wonderful picturesqueness
of its interior. The exterior, which is unfinished,
is also very effective, with its one lofty spire. The other
cathedrals of note include those of Tournay, Brussels,
Mechlin, Louvain, Liége, and Ghent. Belgium also possesses
a great number of large parochial churches.
When we turn to secular buildings we find the Belgian
architecture of the middle ages taking a leading position.
The free cities of Belgium acquired municipal privileges
at an early date, and accumulated great wealth. Accordingly
we find town halls, trade halls, belfries, warehouses,
and excellent private dwelling-houses in abundance. The
cloth hall at Ypres has been repeatedly illustrated and
referred to as an example of a grand and effective building
for trade purposes; it is of thirteenth-century architecture
and of great size, its centre marked by a massive lofty
tower; and its angles carrying slight turrets; but in other
respects it depends for its effectiveness solely on its repetition
of similar features. Examples of the same kind
of architecture exist at Louvain and Ghent.
The Town Halls of Brussels, Louvain, Bruges, Mechlin,
Ghent, Oudenarde, and Ypres, are all buildings claiming
attention. They were most of them in progress during the
fifteenth century, and are fine, but florid examples of late
Gothic. Some one or two at least of the town halls were
begun and partly carried out in the fourteenth century; on
the other hand, the Hôtel de Ville at Oudenarde, was
begun as late as the beginning of the sixteenth; so
were the Exchange at Antwerp (destroyed by fire and
rebuilt not long since) and some other well-known
structures: their architecture, though certainly Gothic, is
debased in style.
The general aspect of these famous buildings was noble
and bold in mass, and rich in ornament. Our illustration
(Fig. ) shows the Town Hall of Middleburgh in Holland;
one which is less famous and of smaller dimensions than
those enumerated above, but equally characteristic.
The main building usually consisted of a long unbroken
block surmounted by a high-pitched roof, and usually occupied
one side of a public place. The side of the building
presents several storeys, filled by rows of fine windows,
though in some cases the lowest storey is occupied by an
open arcade. The steep roof, usually crowded with dormer
windows, carries up the eye to a lofty ridge, and from the
centre of it rises the lofty tower which forms so conspicuous
a feature in most of these buildings. In the Town Hall
at Bruges the tower is comparatively simple, though of a
mass and height that are truly imposing; but in Brussels,
Ypres, and other examples, it is a richly ornamented composition
on which every resource of the mason and the
carver has been lavished. Our illustration (Fig. )
shows the well-known tower at Ghent.
Fig. 39.—The Town Hall of Middleburgh. (1518.)
Fig. 40.—Tower at Ghent. (Begun 1183.)
The gable ends of the great roof are often adorned by
pinnacles and other ornaments; but they rarely come
prominently into view, as it is invariably the long side of
the building which is considered to be the principal front.
SCOTLAND, WALES, AND IRELAND.
In Scotland good but simple examples of early work
(transition from Romanesque to E. E.) occur, as for
example, at Jedburgh and Kelso, Dryburgh and Leuchars
abbey churches. A very interesting and in many respects
unique cathedral of the thirteenth century, with later
additions, exists at Glasgow. It is a building of much
beauty, with good tracery, and the crypt offers a perfect
study of various and often graceful modes of forming
groined vaults. The Cathedral of Elgin (thirteenth century),
an admirable Edwardian building, now in ruins, and
the Abbey at Melrose, also ruined, of fourteenth century
architecture (begun 1322), are both excellent specimens of
the art of the periods to which they belong, and bear a
close resemblance to what was being done in England at
the same time. The famous tower of St. Giles’s Cathedral,
Edinburgh, and the Chapel at Roslyn, of the fifteenth
century, on the other hand, are of thoroughly un-English
character, resembling in this respect much of the Scotch
architecture of the succeeding centuries; Roslyn is ascribed
by Mr. Fergusson to a Spanish or Portuguese architect,
with great probability.
Other abbey churches and remains of architectural work
exist at Dumblane, Arbroath, Dunkeld, and in many other
localities; and Holyrood Palace, still retains part of its
elegant early fourteenth-century chapel.
Of secular and domestic work Linlithgow is a fair
specimen, but of late date. Most of the castles and
castellated mansions of Scotland belong indeed to a later
time than the Gothic period, though there is a strong infusion
of Gothic feeling in the very picturesque style in
which they are designed.
Wales is distinguished for the splendid series of castles
to which allusion has been made in a previous chapter.
They were erected at the best time of English Gothic
architecture (Edward I.) under English direction, and are
finely designed and solidly built. Wales can also boast
the interesting Cathedrals of Chester, Llandaff, St. David’s,
and some smaller churches, but in every case there is little
to distinguish them from contemporary English work.
Ireland is more remarkable for antiquities of a date
anterior to the beginning of the Gothic period than for
works belonging to it. A certain amount of graceful
and simple domestic work, however, exists there; and in
addition to the cathedrals of Kildare, Cashel, and Dublin,
numerous monastic buildings, not as a rule large or
ambitious, but often graceful and picturesque, are
scattered about.
Miserere Seat in Wells Cathedral.
FOOTNOTE:
For an example of these see the house of Jaques Cœur (Fig. ).
CHAPTER VII.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN CENTRAL AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
GERMANY.—CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
THE architecture of Germany, from the twelfth to the
sixteenth centuries, can be divided into an early, a
middle, and a late period, with tolerable distinctness. Of
these, the early period possesses the greatest interest, and the
peculiarities of its buildings are the most marked and most
beautiful. In the middle period, German Gothic bore a
very close general resemblance to the Gothic of the same
time in France; and, as a rule, such points of difference
as exist are not in favour of the German work. Late
Gothic work in Germany is very fantastic and unattractive.
Fig. 41.—Abbey Church of Arnstein. (12th and 13th Centuries.)
Through the twelfth, and part of the thirteenth centuries,
the architects of Germany pursued a course parallel
with that followed in France and in England, but without
adopting the pointed arch. They developed the
simple and rude Romanesque architecture which prevailed
throughout Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and
which they learnt originally from Byzantine artists who fled
from their own country during the reign of the iconoclasts;
and they not only carried it to a point of elaboration which
was abreast of the art of our best Norman architecture,
but went on further in the same course; for while the
French and ourselves were adopting lancet windows and
pointed arches, they continued to employ the round-headed
window and the semicircular arch in buildings
which in their size, richness, loftiness, and general style,
correspond with early Gothic examples in other countries.
This early German architecture has been sometimes called
fully developed Romanesque, and sometimes round-arched
Gothic, and both terms may be applied to it without
impropriety, for it partakes of the qualities implied by each.
The Church of the Holy Apostles at Cologne, and those
of St. Martin and St. Maria in Capitolo, in the same city,
may be referred to as among the best works of this class.
Each of these has an eastern apse, and also an apsidal termination
to each transept. The Apostles’ church has a low
octagon at the crossing, and its sky-line is further broken
up by western and eastern towers, the latter of comparatively
small size and octagonal; and under the eaves of the
roof occurs an arcade of small arches.
A view of the Abbey Church of Arnstein (Fig. ) illustrates
some of the features of these transitional churches. It
will be noticed that though there is no transept, there are
no less than four towers, two octagonal, and two square,
and that the apse is a strongly developed feature.
In the church at Andernach, of which we give an illustration
(Fig. ), the same arrangement, namely, that of
four towers, two to the west, and two to the east, may
be noticed; but there is not the same degree of difference
between the towers, and the result is less happy. This
example, like the last, has no central feature, and in both
the arcade under the eaves of the roof is conspicuous only
by its absence. It does, however, occur on the western
towers at Andernach.
Fig. 42.—Church at Andernach. (Early 13th Century.)
The pointed arch, when adopted in Germany, was in all
probability borrowed from France, as the general aspect
of German churches of pointed architecture seems to prove.
The greatest Gothic cathedral of Germany, Cologne
Cathedral, was not commenced till about the year 1275,
and its choir was probably completed during the first
quarter of the fourteenth century. This cathedral, one of
the largest in Europe, is also one of the grandest efforts of
mediæval architecture, and it closely resembles French examples
of the same period, both in its general treatment,
and in the detail of its features. The plan of Cologne
Cathedral (Fig. ) is one of the most regular and symmetrical
which has come down to us from the middle
ages. The works were carried on slowly after the choir
was consecrated, but without any deviation from the
original plan, though some alteration in style and details
crept in. In our own day the works have been resumed
and vigorously pushed on towards completion; and, the
original drawings having been preserved, the two western
towers, the front, and other portions have been carried on in
accordance with them. Cologne, accordingly, presents the
almost unique spectacle of a great Gothic church, erected
without deviation from its original plan, and completed in
the style in which it was begun. It is fair to add that
though splendid in the extreme, this cathedral has far less
charm, and less of that peculiar quality of mystery and
vitality than many, we might say most, of the great
cathedrals of Europe.
The plan consists of a nave of eight bays, two of which
form a kind of vestibule, and five avenues, i.e. two aisles
on each side; transepts of four bays each, with single
aisles; and a choir of four bays and an apse, the double
aisle of the nave being continued and carried down the
choir. That part of the outer aisle which sweeps round
the apse has been formed into a series of seven polygonal
chapels, thus gaining a complete chevet. Over the crossing
there is a comparatively slender spire, and at the west end
stand two massive towers terminated by a pair of lofty
and elaborate spires, of open tracery, and enriched by
crockets, finials, and much ornamentation. The cathedral
is built of stone, without much variation in colour; it is
vaulted throughout, and a forest of flying buttresses
surrounds it on all sides. The beauty of the tracery, the
magnificent boldness of the scale of the whole building,
and its orderly regularity, are very imposing, and give it a
high rank among the greatest works of European architecture;
but it is almost too majestic to be lovely, and somewhat
cold and uninteresting from its uniform colour, and
perhaps from its great regularity.
Strasburg Cathedral—not so large as Cologne—has
been built at various times; the nave and west front are
the work of the best Gothic period. This building has
a nave and single aisles, short transepts, and a short
apsidal choir. There is great richness in much of the
work; double tracery, i.e. a second layer, so to speak, of
tracery, is here employed in the windows, and extended
beyond them, but the effect is not happy. The front was
designed to receive two open tracery spires, but only one of
them has been erected. It is amazingly intricate and rich,
the workmanship is very astonishing, but the artistic effect
is not half so good as that of many plain stone spires.
Another important German church famous for an open
spire is the cathedral at Friburg. Here only one tower,
standing at the middle of the west front, was ever intended,
and partly because the composition is complete
as proposed, and partly because the design of the tracery
in the spire itself is more telling, this building forms a
more effective object than Strasburg, though by no means
so lofty or so grandiose.
Fig. 43.—Church of St. Barbara at Kuttenberg. East End. (1358-1548.)
The Cathedral of St. Stephen at Vienna is a large and
exceedingly rich church. In this building the side aisles
are carried to almost the same height as the centre avenue—an
arrangement not infrequent in German churches
having little save novelty to recommend it, and by which
the triforium, and, as a rule, the clerestory disappear, and
the church is lighted solely by large side windows. The
three avenues are covered by one wide roof, which makes
a vast and rather clumsy display externally. A lofty
tower, surmounted by a fine and elaborate spire of open
tracery, stands on one side of the church—an unusual
position—and an unfinished companion tower is begun on
the corresponding side. Great churches and cathedrals
are to be found in many of the cities of Germany, but
their salient points are, as a rule, similar to those of
the examples which have been already described.
The incomplete Church of St. Barbara at Kuttenberg, in
Bohemia, is one of somewhat exceptional design. It has
double aisles, but the side walls for the greater part of the
length of the church rest upon the arcade dividing the
two aisles, instead of that separating the centre avenue from
the side one; and a vault over the inner side aisle forms
in effect a kind of balcony or gallery in the nave. The
illustration (Fig. ) which we give of the exterior does not
of course indicate this peculiarity, but it shows a very good
example of a German adaptation of the French chevet, and
may be considered as a specimen of German pointed architecture
at its ripest stage. The church is vaulted, as might
be inferred from the forest of flying buttresses; and the
vaulting displays some resemblance to our English fan-vaulting
in general idea.
German churches include some specimens of unusual
disposition or form, as for example the Church of St. Gereon
at Cologne, with an oval choir, and one or two double
churches, one of the most curious being the one at
Schwartz-Rheindorff, of which we give a section and view.
(Figs. , .)
In their doorways and porches the German architects
are often very happy. Our illustration (Fig. ) of one of
the portals of the church at Thann may be taken as giving
a good idea of the amount of rich ornament often concentrated
here: it displays a wealth of decorative sculpture,
which was one of the great merits of the German
architects.
Fig. 44.—Double Church at Schwartz-Rheindorff. Section. (1158.)
The latest development of Gothic in Germany, of which
the Church of St. Catherine at Oppenheim (Fig. ) is a
specimen, was marked (just as late French was by flamboyant
tracery, and late English by fan-vaulting) by a
peculiarity in the treatment of mouldings by which they
were robbed of almost all their grace and beauty, while
the execution of them became a kind of masonic puzzle.
Two or more groups of mouldings were supposed to coexist
in the same stone, and sometimes a part of one
group, sometimes a part of the other group, became visible
at the surface. The name given to this eccentric development
is interpenetration.
Fig. 45.—Double Church at Schwartz-Rheindorff. (A.D. 1158.)
Secular architecture in Germany, though not carried to
such a pitch of perfection as in Belgium, was by no means
overlooked; but the examples are not numerous. In some
of the older cities, such as Prague, Nuremberg, and
Frankfort, much picturesque domestic architecture abounds,
most of it of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and
even later, and all full of piquancy and beauty. In North
Germany, where there is a large tract of country in which
building stone is scarce, a style of brick architecture was
developed, which was applied to all sorts of purposes with
great success. The most remarkable of these brick buildings
are the large dwelling-houses, with façades ornamented
by brick tracery and panelling, to be found in Eastern
Prussia, together with some town halls and similar
buildings.
GERMANY.—ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.
Plan.
The points of difference between German and French
Gothic are not so numerous as to render a very minute
analysis of the Gothic of Germany requisite in order to
make them clear.
The plans of German churches usually show internal
piers; and columns occur but rarely. The churches have
nave and aisles, transepts and apsidal choir; but they
are peculiar from the frequent use of apses at the ends of
the transepts, and also from the occurrence, in not a few
instances, of an apse at the west end of the nave as
well as at the east end of the choir. They are almost
invariably vaulted.
As the style advanced, large churches were constantly
planned with double aisles, and the western apse disappeared.
Some German church plans, notably those of
Cologne Cathedral (Fig. ) and the great church of St.
Lawrence at Nuremberg, are fine specimens of regularity
of disposition, though full of many parts.
Fig. 46.—Cologne Cathedral. Ground Plan. (Begun 1248.)
Walls, Towers, and Gables.
The German architects delighted in towers with pointed
roofs, and in a multiplicity of them. A highly characteristic
feature is a tower of great mass, but often extremely
low, covering the crossing. The Cathedral at Mayence
shows a fine example of this feature, which was often
not more than a low octagon. Western towers, square on
plan, are common, and small towers, frequently octagonal,
are often employed to flank the choir or in combination with
the transepts. These in early examples, are always surmounted
by high roofs; in late ones, by stone spires, often
of rich open tracery. A very characteristic feature of the
round arched Gothic churches is an arcade of small arches
immediately below the eaves of the roof and opening into
the space above the vaults (Fig. ). This is rarely
wanting in churches built previous to the time when the
French type was followed implicitly.
The gables are seldom such fine compositions as in
France, or even in Italy; but in domestic and secular
buildings many striking gabled fronts occur, the gable
being often stepped in outline and full of windows.
Roofs and Vaults.
Vaults are universal in the great churches, and German
vaulting has some special peculiarities, but they are such
as hardly come within the scope of this hand-book. Roofs,
however, are so conspicuous that in any general account of
German architecture attention must be paid to them. They
were from very early times steep in pitch and picturesque in
outline, and are evidently much relied upon as giving play
to the sky-line. Indeed, for variety of form and piquancy
of detail the German roofs are the most successful of the
middle ages. The spires, as will have been easily gathered
from the descriptions of those at Strasburg, Cologne, &c.,
became extremely elaborate, and were constructed in many
cases entirely of open tracery.
Fig. 47.—Western Doorway of Church at Thann. (14th Century.)
Fig. 48.—Church of St. Catherine at Oppenheim. (1262 to 1439.)
Openings.
Openings are, on the whole, treated very much as the
French treated them. A good example is the western doorway
at Thann (Fig. ); but the use of double tracery in
the windows in late examples is characteristic. Sometimes
a partial screen of outside tracery is employed in other
features besides windows, as may be seen by the very
elegant doorway of St. Sebald’s Church at Nuremberg,
which we have illustrated (Fig. ).
Ornaments.
The ornaments of German Gothic are often profuse,
but rarely quite happy. Sculpture, often of a high class,
carving of every sort, tracery, and panelling, are largely
employed; but with a hardness and a tendency to cover
all surfaces with a profusion of weak imitations of
tracery that disfigures much of the masonry. The tracery
became towards the latter part of the time intricate and
unmeaning, and the interpenetrating mouldings already
described, though of course intended to be ornamental, are
more perplexing and confusing than pleasing: the carving
exaggerates the natural markings of the foliage represented,
and being thin, and very boldly undercut, resembles leaves
beaten out in metal, rather than foliage happily and easily
imitated in stone, which is what good architectural carving
should be.
The use of coloured building materials and of inlays
and mosaics does not prevail to any great extent in
Germany, though stained glass is often to be found and
coloured wall decoration occasionally.
Fig. 49.—St. Sebald’s Church at Nuremberg.
The Bride’s Doorway. (1303-1377.)
Construction and Design.
The marked peculiarities of construction by which the
German Gothic buildings are most distinguished, are the
prevalent high-pitched roofs, the vaulting with aisle
vaults carried to the same height as in the centre, and
the employment in certain districts of brick to the exclusion
of stone, all of which have been already referred
to. In a great part of that large portion of Europe, which
is included under the name of Germany, the materials and
modes of construction adopted during the middle ages,
bear a close resemblance to those in general use in France
and England.
Some of the characteristics of German Gothic design
have been already alluded to. The German architects
display an exuberant fancy, a great love of the picturesque,
and even the grotesque, and a strong predilection for
creating artificial difficulties in order to enjoy the pleasure
of surmounting them. Their work is full of unrest; they
attach small value to the artistic quality of breadth, and
destroy the value of the plain surfaces of their buildings as
contrasts to the openings, by cutting them up by mouldings
and enrichments of various sorts. The sculpture introduced
is, as a rule, naturalistic rather than conventional.
The capitals of piers and columns are often fine specimens
of effective carving, while the delicate and ornamental details
of the tabernacle work with which church furniture is
enriched, are unsurpassed in elaboration, and often of rare
beauty. The churches of Nuremberg are specially distinguished
for the richness and number of their sculptured
fittings. There is, moreover, in some of the best German
buildings a rugged grandeur which approaches the sublime;
and in the humbler ones a large amount of picturesque and
thoroughly successful architecture.
In the smaller objects upon which the art of the architect
was often employed the Germans were frequently happy.
Public fountains, such for example as the one illustrated
in Chapter (Fig. ), are to be met within the streets
of many towns, and rarely fail to please by their simple,
graceful, and often quaint design. Crosses, monuments,
and individual features in domestic buildings, such e.g. as
bay windows, frequently show a very skilful and picturesque
treatment and happy enrichment.
NORTHERN EUROPE.
Gothic architecture closely resembling German work may
be found in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden, and Denmark;
but there are few very conspicuous buildings, and
not enough variety to form a distinct style. In Norway and
Sweden curious and picturesque buildings exist, erected
solely of timber, and both there and in Switzerland many
of the traditions of the Gothic period have been handed
down to our own day with comparatively little change, in
the pleasing and often highly enriched timber buildings
which are to be met with in considerable numbers in
those countries.
FOOTNOTE:
See p. for an explanation of chevet.
CHAPTER VIII.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE.
ITALY AND SICILY.—TOPOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
GOTHIC architecture in Italy may be considered as
a foreign importation. The Italians, it is true,
displayed their natural taste and artistic instinct in their
use of the style, and a large number of their works
possess, as we shall see, strongly-marked characteristics
and much charm; but it is impossible to avoid the feeling
that the architects were working in a style not thoroughly
congenial to their instincts nor to the traditions they had
inherited from classical times; and not entirely in harmony
with the requirements of the climate and the nature of their
building materials.
Italian Gothic may be conveniently considered geographically,
dividing the buildings into three groups, the
first and most important containing the architecture of
Northern Italy (Lombardy, Venetia, and the neighbourhood),
the second that of Central Italy (Tuscany, &c.), the
third that of the south and of Sicily—a classification which
will suit the subject better than the chronological arrangement
which has been our guide in examining the art of
other countries; for the variations occasioned by development
as time went on are less strongly marked in Italy
than elsewhere.
Northern Italy.
Lombardy in the Romanesque period was thoroughly
under German influence, and the buildings remaining to
us from the eleventh and twelfth centuries bear a close
resemblance to those erected north of the Alps at the same
date. The twelfth century Lombard churches again are specimens
of round-arched Gothic, just as truly as those on the
banks of the Rhine. Many of them are also peculiar as
being erected chiefly in brickwork; the great alluvial plain
of Lombardy being deficient in building-stone. St. Michele
at Pavia, a well-known church of this date, may be cited
as a good example. This is a vaulted church, with an
apsidal east end and transepts. The round arch is employed
in this building, but the general proportions and
treatment are essentially Gothic. A striking campanile
(bell tower) belongs to the church, and is a good specimen
of a feature very frequently met with in Lombardy; the
tower here (and usually) is square, and rises by successive
stages, but with only few and small openings or ornaments,
to a considerable height. There are no buttresses, no
diminution of bulk, no staircase turrets. At the summit
is an open belfry-stage, with large semicircular-headed
arches, crowned by a cornice and a low-pitched conical roof.
In the same city a good example of an Italian Gothic
church, erected after the pointed arch had been introduced,
may be found in the church of Sta. Maria del Carmine.
The west front of this church is but clumsy in general
design. Its width is divided into five compartments by flat
buttresses. The gables are crowned by a deep and heavy
cornice of moulded brick and the openings are grouped
with but little skill. Individually, however, the features of
this front are very beautiful, and the great wheel-window,
full of tracery, and the two-light windows flanking it,
may be quoted as remarkable specimens of the ornamental
elaboration which can be accomplished in brickwork.
The campanile of this church, like the one just described,
is a plain square tower. It rises by successive stages,
each taller than the last, each stage being marked by a
rich brick cornice. The belfry-stage has on each face a
three-light window, with a traceried head, and above the
cornice the square tower is finished by a tall conical roof,
circular on plan, an arrangement not unfrequently met with.
The Certosa, the great Carthusian Church and Monastery
near Pavia, best known by the elaborate marble front
added in a different style about a century after the ***
of the main building, is a good example of a highly-enriched
church, with dependencies, built in brickwork, and possessing
most of the distinctive peculiarities of a great Gothic
church, except the general use of the pointed arch. It was
begun in 1396, and is consistent in its exterior architecture,
the front excepted, though it took a long time to
build. Attached to it are two cloisters, of which the
arches are semicircular, and the enrichments, of wonderful
beauty, are modelled in terra-cotta.
This church resembles the great German round-arched
Gothic churches on the Rhine in many of its features.
Its plan includes a nave, with aisles and side chapels, transepts
and a choir. The eastern arm and the transepts are
each ornamented by an apse, somewhat smaller than would
be met with in a German church; but as a compensation
each of these three arms has two side apses, as well as the
one at the end. The exterior possesses the German arcade
of little arches immediately under the eaves of the roof;
it is marked by the same multiplicity of small towers, each
with its own steep roof; and it possesses the same striking
central feature, internally a small dome, externally a kind
of light pyramidal structure, ornamented by small arcades
rising tier above tier, and ending in a central pointed roof.
The finest Gothic cathedral in North Italy, if dimensions,
general effectiveness, and beauty of material be the
test, is that of Milan. This building is disfigured by a west
front in a totally inappropriate style, but apart from this
it is virtually a German church of the first class, erected
entirely in white marble, and covered with a profusion of
decoration. Its dimensions show that, with the exception
of Seville, this was the largest of all the Gothic cathedrals
of Europe. It has double aisles, transepts, and a polygonal
apse. At the crossing of the nave and transepts a low
dome rises, covered by a conical roof, and surmounted
by an elegant marble spire.
The structure is vaulted throughout, and each of the
great piers which carry the nave arcade is surmounted by
a mass of niches and tabernacle work, occupied by statues—a
splendid substitute for ordinary capitals. The interior
effect of Milan Cathedral is grand and full of beauty.
The exterior, though much of its power is destroyed by
the weakly-designed ornament with which all the surfaces
of the walls are covered, is endowed with a wonderful
charm. This building was commenced in the year 1385,
and consecrated in the year 1418. The details of the
window-tracery, pinnacles, &c. (but not the statues which
are of Italian character), correspond very closely to those
of German buildings erected at the same period (close of
the fourteenth century).
Milan possesses, among other examples of pointed architecture,
one secular building, the Great Hospital, well
known for its Gothic façade. This hospital was founded
in 1456, and most of it is of later date and of renaissance
character; the street front of two storeys in height, with
pointed arches, is very rich. The church of Chiaravalle,
near Milan, which has been more than once illustrated and
described, ought not to be passed unnoticed, on account
of the beauty of its fully developed central dome. It was
built in the early part of the thirteenth century (1221).
Almost all the great cities of North Italy possess striking
Gothic buildings. Genoa, for instance, can boast of her
cathedral, with a front in alternate courses of black and
white marble, dating from about the year 1300, and full
of beauty; the details bearing much resemblance to
the best Western Gothic work. Passing eastward, Verona
possesses a wealth of Gothic work in the well-known
tombs of the Scaligers, the churches of Sta. Anastasia,
San Zenone, and several minor churches and campaniles;
and at Como, Bergamo, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Cremona,
Bologna, and many other cities and towns, good churches
of pointed architecture are to be found.
Our illustration (Fig. ) of the ancient Palace of the
Jurisconsults at Cremona, is a good specimen of the
secular architecture of North Italy. Originally the lower
storey was a loggia, or open arcaded storey, but the arches
have been built up. Telling, simple, and graceful, this
building owes its effect chiefly to its well-designed openings
and a characteristic brick cornice. It is entirely without
buttresses, has no spreading base, no gables, and no visible
roof: some of these features would have been present had
it been designed and erected north of the Alps.
Fig. 50.—The Palace of the Jurisconsults at Cremona.
Venice is the city in the whole of North Italy where
Gothic architecture has had freest scope and has achieved
the greatest success, not, however, in ecclesiastical, but in
secular buildings. The great Cathedral of St. Mark, perhaps
the most wonderful church in Europe, certainly the foremost
in Italy, is a Byzantine building, and though it has
received some additions in Gothic times, does not fairly
come within the scope of this volume; and the Gothic
churches of Venice are not very numerous nor, with the
exception of the fine brick church of the Frari, extremely
remarkable. On the banks of the Grand Canal and its
tributaries, however, stand not a few Gothic palaces of
noble design (see Fig. , p. 18), while the Ducal Palace
itself alone is sufficient to confer a reputation upon the city
which it adorns.
The Ducal Palace at Venice is a large rectangular block
of buildings erected round a vast quadrangle. Of its exterior
two sides only are visible from a distance, one being the sea
front looking over the lagoon, and the other the land front
directed towards the piazzetta. Rather less than one half
the height of each front is occupied by two storeys of
arcades; the lower storey bold, simple, and vigorous;
the upper storey lighter, and ending in a mass of bold
tracery. Above this open work, and resting upon it, rises
the external wall of the palace, faced with marble in
alternate slabs of rose-colour and white, pierced by a few
large pointed windows and crowned by an open parapet.
Few buildings are so familiar, even to untravelled persons,
as this fine work, which owes its great charm to the extent,
beauty, and mingled solidity and grace of its arcades, and
to the fine sculpture by which the capitals from which
they spring are enriched.
The Gothic palaces are almost invariably remarkable for
the skill with which the openings in their fronts are
arranged and designed. It was not necessary to render
any other part of the exterior specially architectural, as
the palaces stand side by side like houses in a modern
street, as can be seen from our illustration (Fig. ). In
almost all cases a large proportion of the openings are
grouped together in the centre of the front, and the sides
are left comparatively plain and strong-looking, the composition
presenting a centre and two wings. By this
simple expedient each portion of the composition is made
to add emphasis to the other, and a powerful but not
inharmonious contrast between the open centre and the
solid sides is called into existence. The earliest Gothic
buildings in point of date are often the most delicate and
graceful, and this rule holds good in the Gothic palaces of
Venice; yet one of the later palaces, the Ca’ d’Oro, must
be at least named on account of the splendid richness of
its marble front—of which, however, only the centre and
one wing is built—and the beauty of the ornament lavishly
employed upon it.
The balconies, angle windows, and other minor features
with which the Venetian Gothic palaces abound, are among
the most graceful features of the architecture of Italy.
Central Italy.
Those towns of Central Italy (by which is meant Tuscany
and the former States of the Church), in which the best
Gothic buildings are to be found, are Pisa, Lucca, Florence,
Siena, Orvieto, and Perugia. As a general rule the Gothic
work in this district is more developed and more lavishly
enriched than that in Lombardy.
In Pisa, the Cathedral and the Campanile (the famous
leaning tower) belong to the late Romanesque style, but
the Baptistry, an elegant circular building, has a good deal
of Gothic ornament in its upper storeys, and may be fairly
classed as a transitional building. The most charming
and thoroughly characteristic work of Gothic architecture
in Pisa is, however, a small gem of a chapel, the church
of Sta. Maria della Spina. It displays exquisite ornament,
and, notwithstanding much false construction, the beauty
of its details, of its sculpture, and of the marble of which
it is built, invest it with a great charm.
Pisan Gothic is remarkable as being associated with the
name of a family of highly gifted sculptors and architects,
the Pisani, of whom Nicola Pisano was the earliest and
greatest artist; he was followed by his descendants
Giovanni, Nino, and Andrea. With the Pisani and Giotto
the series of the known names of architects of great
buildings may be said to begin.
Florence, the most important of the cities we have
named, is distinguished by a cathedral built in the early
part of the fourteenth century, and one of the grandest
in Italy. It has very few columns, and its walls and
vaults are of great height. The walls are adorned externally
with inlays in coloured marble, and the windows
have stained glass—a rarity in Italy; but its lofty dome,
added after the completion of the rest of the building,
is its chief feature. This was always intended, but the
pointed octagonal dome actually erected by Brunelleschi,
between the years 1420 and 1444, though it harmonises
fairly well with the general lines of the building, and
forms, as can be seen from our illustration (Fig. ), a
striking object in all distant views of the city, is probably
very different from what was originally intended. Near
the cathedral stand the Baptistry, famous for the possession
of the finest gates in the world, and the Campanile
of Giotto. This tower is built, or at least faced, entirely
with marble; and when it is stated that its height is not
far short of that of the Victoria Tower of our Houses of
Parliament, though of slenderer proportions, it will be
seen that it is magnificently liberal in its general scheme.
The tower is covered with panels of variously coloured
marbles from base to summit, and enriched by fine sculpture.
The angles are strengthened by slightly projecting
piers. The windows are comparatively small till the
highest or belfry stage is reached, and here each face of
the tower is pierced by a magnificent three-light window.
A deep and elaborate cornice now crowns the whole, but
it was originally designed to add a high-pitched roof or
a spire as a terminal.
Fig. 51.—The Cathedral at Florence. With Giotto’s Campanile. (Begun, 1298; Dome, 1420-1444;
Campanile begun, 1324.)
Our illustration (Fig. ) shows the west front and
campanile of the Cathedral at Siena, an exceedingly good
specimen of the beauties and peculiarities of the style.
This building was commenced in 1243. The plan is simple
but singular, for the central feature is a six-sided dome,
at the crossing of the nave and transepts; and some
ingenuity has been spent in fitting this figure to the arches
of the main avenues of the building. The interior is rich
and effective; the exterior, as can be seen by the illustration,
is covered with ornament, and the front is the richest
and probably the best designed of all the cathedral fronts
of Central Italy. The strongly-marked horizontal lines
of cornices, arcades, &c., the moulded gables, the great
wheel-window set in a square panel, and the use of marble
of various colours, are all points to note. So is the
employment of the semicircular arch for the doorways of
this thoroughly Gothic building. The campanile is a good
example of that feature, except that instead of the rich
window which usually occupies the belfry stage, or highest
storey, two storeys of small lights have been formed. The
introduction of angle turrets is not very usual, and it here
supplies a deficiency which makes itself felt in other
campaniles, where the junction of tower and spire is not
always happy.
Fig. 52.—Cathedral at Siena. West Front and Campanile.
(Façade begun 1284.)
Gothic churches of importance can be found in many of
the cities and towns of Central Italy. None are more
remarkable than the singular double church of St. Francis
at Assisi, with its wealth of mural paintings and stained
glass, and the cathedral at Orvieto (Fig. ) with its
splendid front.
In Rome, so rich in specimens of the architecture of
many styles and times, Gothic could find no footing;
the one solitary church which can be claimed as Gothic
may be taken as an exception. And south of the Capital
there lies a considerable tract of country, containing few
if any examples of the style we are considering.
Southern Italy.
Southern Italy is conveniently grouped with Sicily, but
the mainland is deficient in examples of Gothic buildings.
The old towns of Apulia indeed, such as Bari, Bitonto and
Brindisi, possess an architecture which the few who have
had an opportunity of examining, declare to be surpassingly
rich in its decoration, but it is for the most part Romanesque.
The Gothic work remaining in and about Naples is most
of it extremely florid, and often rich, but seldom possesses
the grace and charm of that which exists further north.
Sicily shows the picturesquely mixed results of a complication
of agencies which have not affected the mainland,
and is accordingly an interesting field for architectural
study. The island was first under Byzantine influence;
was next occupied and held by the Saracens; and was later
seized and for some time retained by the Normans.
Fig. 53.—The Cathedral at Orvieto. (Begun 1290; Façade, 1310.)
The most striking early Gothic building in Sicily is the
richly adorned cathedral of Monreale, commenced in the
twelfth century. Here very simple pointed arches are
made use of, as the entire surface of the interior is
covered with mosaic pictures of Norman origin. The
small Capella Palatina in Palermo itself is of the same
simple and early architectural character, and adorned with
equally magnificent mosaics. In these buildings the
splendour of the colouring is only equalled by the vigorous
and often pathetic power with which the stories of sacred
history are embodied in these mosaics. The cathedral of
Cefalu is a building bearing a general resemblance to that
at Monreale, but not enriched in the same manner.
Of the fourteenth century are the richly ornamented
cathedral of Palermo and that of Messina. The latter
has been so much altered as to have lost a good deal of its
interest; but at Palermo there is much that is striking and
almost unique. This building has little in common with
the works of northern or central Italy, and not much more
alliance with the Gothic of North Europe. It is richly
panelled and decorated, but its most striking feature is
its bold arcaded portal.
ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.
Plan.
The plans of Italian churches are simple, compared with
those of the northern and western architects. As a rule
they are also moderate in size, and they bear a close resemblance
to those of the early basilica churches from
which they are directly descended. Though the apse is all
but universal, the French chevet, with its crown of clustering
chapels, was not adopted in Italy. There is very
much in common between the churches of Lombardy and
those of Germany, but the German western apse and the
apsidal ends to the transept do not occur. The spaces
between the piers of the main arcade are greater than in
French or English examples, so that there are fewer piers,
and the vaults are of wider span. In the churches
founded by the great preaching orders, the division into
nave and aisle does not take place, and the church consists
of nothing but a large hall for the congregation, with a
chancel for the choir.
In monastic, secular, and domestic building a general
squareness and simplicity of plan prevails, and where an
internal arcaded quadrangle can be made use of (e.g. in
the cloister of a monastery), it is almost always relied upon
to add effect. The famous external arcade at the Ducal
Palace, Venice, was nowhere repeated, though simpler
external arcades occur frequently; but it is so splendid
as to form, itself alone a feature in Italian planning.
The arrangements of the mansions and palaces found in
the great cities were a good deal influenced by the circumstance
that it was customary, in order to secure as much
cool air as possible, to devote one of the upper floors to the
purpose of a suite of reception rooms; to this was given
the name of piano nobile.
Walls, Towers, Columns.
Walls are usually thick and stand unbuttressed, and
rarely have such slopes and diminutions of apparent thickness
towards their upper part as are not uncommon in England.
Base mouldings are not universal. The cornice, on
the other hand, is far more cared for, and is made much
more conspicuous than with us. In the brick buildings
especially it attains great development. Above the cornice
a kind of ornamental parapet, bearing some resemblance
to battlements, is common. The strikingly peculiar use of
materials of different colours in alternate courses, or in
panels, to decorate the wall surfaces, has already been
referred to. It is very characteristic of the style.
The campanile or bell-tower of an Italian church is
a feature very different from western towers. It is
never placed over the crossing of nave and aisles and
rarely forms an essential part of the church, often being
quite detached and not seldom placed at an angle with
the walls of the main building. Such towers are not unfrequently
appended to palaces, and are sometimes (e.g. at
Venice) erected alone. Some of the Italian cities were
also remarkable for strong towers erected in the city
itself as fortresses by the heads of influential families.
Many of these are still standing in Bologna. The smaller
towers in which northern architects took so much delight
are almost unknown in Italy, though on a few
of the great churches of the north (e.g. the Certosa at Pavia,
and St. Antonio at Padua) they are to be found.
The use of constructive columns is general; piers
are by no means unknown, but fine shafts of marble
meet the eye frequently in Italian churches. The constant
use of the column for decorative purposes is a
marked characteristic. Not only is it employed where
French and English architects used it, as in the jambs of
doorways, but it constantly replaces the mullion in traceried
windows. It is employed as an ornament at the angles of
buildings to take off the harshness of a sharp corner, and
it is introduced in many unexpected and often picturesque
situations. Twisted, knotted, and otherwise carved and
ornamental shafts are not unfrequently made use of in
columns that serve purely decorative purposes.
Openings and Arches.
The constructive arches in Italian Gothic buildings are,
as a rule, pointed, but it is remarkable that at every period
round and pointed arches are indiscriminately employed for
doors and windows, both being constantly met with in the
same building.
The naves of Italian churches rarely show the division
into three, common in the north. The triforium
is almost invariably absent, and the clerestory is often
reduced to a series of small round windows, sufficient to
admit the moderate light which, in a very bright climate,
is grateful in the interior of such a building as a church;
but they are far less effective features than our own well-marked
clerestory windows.
Fig. 54.—Ogival Window-head.
The doorways are often very beautiful, and are frequently
sheltered by projecting porches of extreme elegance
and lightness. The window openings are, as a rule, cusped.
An ogee-shaped arch (Fig. ) is
constantly in use in window-heads,
especially at Venice, and much
graceful design is lavished on the
arched openings of domestic and
secular buildings. A great deal
of the tracery employed is plate
tracery. The tracery in terra-cotta
has already been referred to. In
the large windows of the principal
apartments and other similar positions
of the palaces in Venice and Vicenza, a sort of tracery
not met with in other countries is freely employed. The
openings are square-headed, and are divided into separate
lights by small columns; the heads of these lights are
ogee-shaped, and the spaces between them and the horizontal
lintel are filled in with circles, richly quatrefoiled
or otherwise cusped (Fig. ). The upper arcade of the
Ducal Palace at Venice offers the best known and finest
example of this class of tracery.
Fig. 55.—Tracery, from Venice.
Roofs and Vaults.
The vaulting of Italian churches is always simple, and
the bays, as has been pointed out, are usually wider than
those of the northern Gothic churches. Frequently there
are no ribs of any sort to the groins of the vaults. A
characteristic feature of Italian Gothic is the central dome.
It is rarely very large or overpowering, and in the one
instance of a magnificent dome—the Cathedral at Florence,
the feature, though intended from the first, was added
after the Gothic period had closed. Still many churches
have a modest dome, and it frequently forms a striking
feature in the interior, while in some northern instances (e.g.
at the Certosa at Pavia, or at Chiaravalle) it is treated
like a many storeyed pyramid and becomes an external
feature of importance. At Sant’ Antonio at Padua there
are five domes.
The churches of the preaching orders are some of them
covered by timber ceilings, not perfectly flat but having an
outline made up of hollow curves of rather flat sweep.
The great halls at Padua and Vicenza displayed a vast
wooden curved ceiling resembling the hull of a ship turned
upside down.
The ordinary church roof is of flat pitch and frequently
concealed behind a parapet. Dormer windows, crestings,
and other similar features, by the use of which northern
architects enriched their roofs, are hardly ever employed by
Italian architects.
Mouldings and Ornaments.
Ornament is almost instinctively understood by the
Italians, and their mastery of it is well shown in their
architecture. The carving of spandrels, capitals, and other
ornaments, and the sculpture of the heads and statues introduced
is full of power and beauty. The famous capitals
of the lower arcade of the Ducal Palace may be quoted as
illustrations.
The employment of coloured materials is carried so far
as sometimes to startle an eye trained to the sombreness of
English architecture, but a great deal of the beauty of this
style is derived from colour, and much of the comparative
simplicity and scarcity of mouldings is due to the desire
to leave large unbroken surfaces for marble linings,
mosaics or fresco painting. Mouldings, where they are
introduced, differ from northern mouldings in being flatter
and far less bold, their enrichments are chiefly confined to
dentils, notches, and small and simple ornaments. Stained
glass is not so often seen as in France, but is to be
met with, as, for example, in the fine church of San
Petronio at Bologna, and in Sta. Maria Novella, and in the
Cathedral at Florence. At Florence the stained glass has
a character of its own both in colour and style of treatment.
It is not too much to say that every kind of
decoration which can be employed to add beauty to
a building may be found at its best in Italy. In the
churches much of the finest furniture, such as stall-work,
screens, altar frontals, will be found in profusion; and the
church porches and the mural monuments should be especially
studied on account of the singular elegance with which
they are usually designed.
Construction and Design.
The material employed for the external and internal face
of the walls in a very large proportion of the buildings
mentioned in this chapter is marble. This is sometimes used
in blocks as stone is with us, but more frequently in the
form of thin slabs as a facing upon masonry or brickwork.
In Lombardy, where brick is the natural building material,
most of the walls are not only built but faced with brick;
and the ornamental features, including tracery, are often
executed in ornamental brickwork, or in what is known as
terra-cotta (i.e. bricks or blocks of brick clay of fine quality,
moulded or otherwise ornamented and burnt like bricks).
Stone was less commonly employed as a building material in
Italy during the Gothic period, than in other countries of
Europe. The surfaces of the vaults, and the surfaces of the
internal walls were often covered with mosaics, or with
paintings in fresco. Vaulting is frequently met with, but it
is generally simple in character, the flat external roof over it
is commonly covered with tiles or metal, while the apparent
gable frequently rises more sharply than the actual roof.
The Italians seem never to have cordially welcomed the
Gothic principle of resisting the thrust of vaults or arches
by a counter-thrust, or by the weight of a buttress. The
buttress is almost unknown in Italian Gothic, and as a rule
an iron tie is introduced at the feet of such arches as would
in France or Germany have been buttressed. This
expedient is, of course, economical, but to northern eyes it
appears strange and out of place. The Italians, however,
take no pains to conceal it, and many of their lighter works,
such as canopies over tombs, porches, &c., would fall to
pieces at once were the iron ties removed.
Open timber roofs in the English fashion are unknown;
but the wooden ceilings already alluded to are found in
San Zeno at Verona, and the Eremitani at Padua. A kind
of open roof of large span, carried by curved ribs and
tied by iron ties, covers the great hall of the Basilica at
Vicenza, and the very similar hall at Padua. The ribs of
these roofs are built up of many thicknesses of material
bolted together.
The design of Italian Gothic buildings presents many
peculiarities, some of which are due to the materials made
use of. For example, where brick and terra-cotta are alone
employed, wide moulded cornices of no great projection,
and broad masses of enriched moulding encircling arches
are easily executed, and they are accordingly constantly to
be found; but bold mouldings, with deep hollows, similar to
those of Early English arches, could not be constructed of
these materials, and are not attempted. These peculiarities
will be found in the Town Hall at Cremona, of which an
illustration (Fig. ) has already been given.
Fig. 56.—Window from Tivoli.
Where marble is used, the peculiar fineness of its
surface, upon which the bright Italian sun makes the
smallest moulding effective, combined with the fact that
the material, being costly, is often used in thin slabs, has
given occasion to extreme flatness of treatment, and to the
use of modes of enrichment which do not require much
depth of material. Our illustration of a window from the
Piazza S. Croce at Tivoli, shows these peculiarities extremely
well (Fig. ), and also illustrates the strong
predilection which the Italian architects retained throughout
the Gothic period for squareness and for horizontal
lines. The whole ornamental treatment is here square;
the window rests on a strongly-moulded horizontal sill, and
is surrounded by flatly-carved enrichment, making a
square panel of the entire feature. Even in the richly-decorated
window (Fig. ), which is in its pointed outline
more truly Gothic than the Tivoli example, much of the
same quality can be traced. The arch and jamb are
richly moulded, but the whole mass of mouldings is flat,
and the flat cuspings of the tracery, elaborately carved
though it be, more resemble the cusps of early Western
Gothic, executed at a time when tracery was beginning
its career, than work belonging to the period of full
maturity to which this feature, as a whole, undoubtedly
belongs.
Where marbles were plentiful enough to be built into
the fabric, the national love of colour gave rise to the use
of black and white—or sometimes red and white—alternate
courses, already mentioned. The effect of this striped
masonry may be partly judged of from the illustration of
the cathedral at Siena (Fig. ), where it is employed
to a considerable extent. A finer method of surface
decoration, less simple, however, and perhaps less frequently
practised, was open to the Italian architect, in
the use of panels of various coloured marbles. A beautiful
example of the employment of this expedient exists in
Giotto’s campanile at Florence (Fig. ).
Fig. 57.—Italian Gothic Window, with Tracery in the Head.
(13th Century.)
The flatness of the roofs, which the Italians never
abandoned, was always found difficult to reconcile with
the Gothic tendency to height and steepness. In many
cases, the sharp pitched gables which the buildings display,
are only masks, and do not truly denote the pitch of the
roofs behind them. In other instances the walls finish with
a horizontal parapet, plain or ornamental, quite concealing
the roof. In the roofs of their campaniles, however, the
Gothic architects of Italy were usually happy; they
almost always adopted a steep conical terminal, with or
without pinnacles, which is very telling against the sky;
even if its junction with the tower is at times clumsy.
The brightness of southern suns prevented the adoption
of the great windows, adapted to masses of stained glass,
which were the ambition of northern architects in the
fourteenth century; and the tenacity with which a love for
squareness of effect and for strongly-marked horizontal
lines of various sorts retained its hold, tended to keep
Italian Gothic buildings essentially different from those of
northern nations; but the love of colour, the command of
precious materials, and of fine sculpture, the passion for
beauty and for a decorative richness, and the artistic taste
of the Italians, display themselves in these buildings in a
hundred ways: all this lends to them a charm such as few
works of the middle ages existing elsewhere can surpass.
SPAIN.—CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
An early, middle, and late period can be distinguished
in dealing with Spanish Gothic. The first period reaches
to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the second
occupies the remainder of the thirteenth and the fourteenth
centuries, the third completes the fifteenth and runs on into
part of the sixteenth.
The early style is one of much purity and dignity, and is
developed directly from the Romanesque of the country.
The cathedral of St. Iago di Compostella, a fine cruciform
church of round-arched Gothic, with a magnificent western
portal, recalling the great lateral porches at Chartres, is an
early and fine example. Like other churches of the type
in Spain, it is far plainer inside than out, but it is vaulted
throughout.
The cathedral of Zamora, and those of Tarragona and
Salamanca must also be referred to. In each of these, the
most thoroughly Spanish feature is a dome, occupying the
crossing of the nave and transepts, and apparently better
developed than those in early German churches or in
Italian ones. It is called in Spanish the cimborio. This
feature was constructed so as to consist of an inner dome,
decorated by ribs thrown over the central space, and carried
by pendentives; having above it a separate outer dome
somewhat higher and often richly decorated. This feature
unfortunately disappeared when the French designs of the
thirteenth century began to be the rage. A peculiarity of
plan, however, which was retained throughout the whole
Gothic period in Spain, is to be found in the early churches;
it consists of an inclosure for the choir quite in the body
of the church, and often west of the transepts,—in such
a position, in fact, as the choir at Westminster Abbey
occupies. A third peculiarity is the addition of an outer
aisle, not unlike the arcade of a cloister, to the side walls
of the churches, possibly with a view of protecting them
from heat.
With the thirteenth century a strong passion for churches,
closely resembling those being erected in France at the
same time, set in, as has just been remarked. Accordingly
the cathedrals of Toledo, Burgos, and Leon, approach
very closely to French types. Toledo is very large, five
aisled, and with a vast chevet. Its exterior is unfinished,
but the dignity of its fine interior may be well understood
from the illustration (Fig. ) here given. Burgos is not so
ambitious in size as Toledo, but has a florid exterior of late
architecture with two lofty, open-traceried spires, like Strasburg
and other German examples. Leon is remarkable for
its lofty clerestory. Spanish Gothic may be said to have
culminated in the vast cathedral at Seville (begun 1401),
claiming to be of greater extent than any Gothic cathedral
in the world, larger, therefore, than Milan or Cologne. It
stands on the site of a mosque, and has never been completed
externally. The interior is very imposing and rich,
but when it is stated that it was not completed till 1520,
it may be readily understood that many of the details are
very late, and far from the purity of earlier examples.
Fig. 58.—The Cathedral at Toledo. Interior. (Begun 1227.)
In the fourteenth century an innovation, of which French
architects immediately north of the Pyrenees were also
availing themselves, found favour in Barcelona. The great
buttresses by which the thrust of the vaults was met were
brought inside the boundary walls of the church, and were
made to serve as division walls between a series of side
chapels. Both here and at Manresa and Gerona, cathedrals
were built, resembling in construction that at Alby, in
Southern France; in these this arrangement was carried a
step further, and the side aisles were suppressed, leaving
the whole nave to consist of a very bold vaulted hall,
fringed by a series of side chapels, which were separated
from each other by the buttresses which supported the main
vault. These large vaults, however, when bare of decoration,
as most of the Spanish vaults are, appear bald and poor
in effect, though they are grand objects structurally.
The Gothic work of the latest period in Spain became
extraordinarily florid in its details, especially in the variety
introduced into the ribs of the vaulting and the enrichments
generally. The great cathedrals of Segovia and
Salamanca were neither of them begun till the sixteenth
century had already well set in. They are the two principal
examples of this florid Gothic.
Fig. 59.—The Giralda at Seville. (Begun in 1196. Finished in 1538).
It will not be forgotten that the country we are now
considering was fully occupied by the Moors, and that they
left in Southern Spain buildings of great merit. A certain
number of Christian churches exist built in a style which
has been called Moresco, as being a kind of fusion of
Moorish and Gothic. The towers of these churches bear a
close resemblance to the Saracenic towers of which the
beautiful bell-tower, called the Giralda, at Seville (Fig. )
is the type; with this and similar examples in the country
it is not surprising that at Toledo, Saragoza, and other
places, towers of the same character should be erected
as parts of churches in which the architecture throughout
is as much Saracenic as Christian.
To many of these great churches, cloisters, and monastic
buildings, which are often both extensive and of a high
order of architectural excellence, are attached. The secular
buildings, of Spain in the Gothic period are, on the other
hand, neither numerous nor remarkable.
PORTUGAL.
The architecture of Portugal has been very little investigated.
The great church at Batalha is probably the
most important in the country. This building, though
interesting in plan, is more remarkable for a lavish amount
of florid ornament, of which our illustration (Fig. )
may furnish some idea, than for really fine architecture.
The conventual church at Belem, near Lisbon, a work of
the beginning of the sixteenth century, and equally
florid, is another of the small number of specimens of
Portuguese Gothic of which descriptions or illustrations
have been published.
FOOTNOTES:
An illustration of such a campanile will be found in that belonging
to the Cathedral of Siena (Fig. ).
See .
For an explanation of this term, see ante, Chapter , page .
A cast of this portal is at the South Kensington Museum.
See Sculptures of the Monastery at Batalha, published by the
Arundel Society.
CHAPTER IX.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.
PRINCIPLES OF CONSTRUCTION AND DESIGN.
Materials and Construction.
THE Gothic architects adhered, at any rate till the
fifteenth century, to the use of very small stones in
their masonry. In many buildings of large size it is hard
to find any stone heavier than two men can lift. Bad
roads and the absence of good mechanical means of
hoisting and moving big blocks led to this.
The mortar, though good, is not equal to the Roman. As
a rule in each period mortar joints are thick. They are
finest in the fifteenth century.
The masonry of all important features of the building
is always good; it is often a perfect marvel of dexterity
and skill as well as of beauty.
The arts of workers in other materials, such as carpenters,
joiners, smiths, and plumbers were carried to great
perfection during the Gothic period.
The appropriate ornamental treatment which each material
is best fitted to receive was invariably given to it,
and forms appropriate to one material were very rarely
copied in others. For example, whenever wrought iron, a
material which can be beaten and welded, or rivetted, was
employed, those ornamental forms were selected into which
hot iron can with ease be beaten, and such groups of those
forms were designed as can be obtained by welding or by
rivetting them together.
Wood, on the other hand, cannot be bent with ease, but
can be readily cut, drilled with holes, notched and carved;
accordingly, where wood had to be treated ornamentally,
we only find such forms as the drill, the chisel, the saw, or
the gouge readily and naturally leave behind them.
Again, the mode into which wood can be best framed
together was carefully considered from a constructional
point of view, and mediæval joiners’ work is always first so
designed as to reduce the damage from shrinkage to the
smallest amount possible; and the pieces of which it is
composed are then appropriately ornamented, moulded, or
carved.
Stone is now always, at least in this country, worked by
being first squared and then worked-down or “sunk”
from the squared faces to the mouldings required, and this
procedure seems to have been common, though not quite
universal, in the Middle Ages. Consequently we usually find
the whole of the external mouldings with which the doorways
and arcades of important buildings were enriched,
designed so as to be easily formed out of stones having
squared faces, or, to use the technical phrase, to be “sunk”
from the squared blocks.
The character of sculpture in wood differs from that in
stone, the material being harder, more capable of standing
alone; so in stone we find more breadth, in wood finer lines
and more elaboration.
In a word, no material was employed in simulating
another (or with the rarest exceptions), and when any
ornament was to be executed in one place in one material
and in another place in a different one, such alterations
were always made in the treatment as corresponded to the
different qualities of the two materials.
The arch was introduced whenever possible, and the
structure of a great Gothic building presents the strongest
possible contrast to that of a Greek building.
In the Greek temple there was no pressure that was not
vertical and met by a vertical support, wall, or column, and
no support that was not vastly in excess of the dimensions
actually required to do the work.
A great Gothic building attains stability through the
balanced counterpoise of a vast series of pressures, oblique,
perpendicular, or horizontal, so arranged as to counteract
each other. The vault was kept from spreading by the
flying buttress, the thrust of the arcade was resisted by
massive walls, and so on throughout.
The equilibrium thus obtained was sometimes so ticklish
that a storm of wind, a trifling settlement, or a slight concussion
sufficed to occasion a disaster; and many of the
daring feats of the masons of the Middle Ages are lost to
us, because they dared a little too much and the entire
structure collapsed. This happened more often in the
middle period of the style than in the earliest, but during
the whole Gothic period there is a constant uniform
tendency in one direction: thinner walls, wider arches,
loftier vaults, slenderer buttresses, slighter piers, confront
us at every step, and we need only compare some Norman
structure (such as Durham), with a perpendicular (such
as Henry VII.’s Chapel), to see how vast a change took
place in this respect.
The Principles of Gothic Design.
All the germs of Gothic architecture exist in the Romanesque
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and became
developed as the passion for more slender proportions,
greater lightness, and loftiness of effect, and more delicate
enrichment became marked. It is quite true that the
pointed arch is universally recognised as, so to speak, the
badge of Gothic, even to the extent of having suggested the
title of Christian pointed architecture, by which it is often
called. But the pointed arch must be regarded rather as a
token that the series of changes, which, starting from the
heavy if majestic Romanesque of such a cathedral as Peterborough,
culminated in the gracefulness of Salisbury or
Lincoln, was far advanced towards completion, than as really
essential to their perfection. Many of the examples of
the transition period exhibit the round arch blended with
the pointed (e.g. the nave of St. David’s Cathedral or the
Choir of Canterbury), and when we come to consider German
architecture we shall find that the adoption of the pointed
arch was postponed till long after the development of all, or
almost all, the other features of the Gothic style; so as to
place beyond question the existence, in that country at
least, of “round arched Gothic.” Some of the best authorities
have indeed proposed to employ this title as a designation
for much, if not all, the round arched architecture
of the west of Europe, but Scott, Sharpe, and other
authorities class mediæval art down to the middle of the
twelfth century under the general head of Romanesque,
a course which has been adopted in this volume.
The proportions of Gothic buildings were well studied,
their forms were always lofty, their gables sharp, and their
general composition more or less pyramidal. Remarkable
numerical relations between the dimensions of the different
parts of a great Gothic cathedral can be discovered upon
careful examination in most, if not all instances, and there
can be little doubt that a system of geometrical proportions
ran through the earlier design, and that much of the
harmony and beauty which the buildings present is traceable
to this fact. Independent of this the skill with which
subordinate features and important ones are fitted to their
respective positions, both by their dimensions and by their
relative elaboration or plainness, forms a complete system
of proportion, making use of the word in its broadest sense;
and the results are extremely happy.
Apparent size was imparted to almost every Gothic
building by the smallness, great number, and variety of
its features, and by the small size of the stones employed.
The effect of strength is generally, though not perhaps
so uniformly, also obtained, and dignity, beauty, and
harmony are rarely wanting.
Symmetry, though not altogether overlooked, has but a
slender hold upon Gothic architects. It is far more
observed in the interior than in the exterior of the buildings;
but it must be remembered that symmetry formed the
basis of many designs which, owing to the execution having
been carried on through a long series of years and by
different hands, came to be varied from the original intentions.
Thus, for example, Chartres is a cathedral with
two western towers. One of these was carried up and its
spire completed in the twelfth century. The companion
spire was not added till the end of the fifteenth, when
men’s ideas as to the proportions, shape, ornaments, and
details of a spire had altered entirely;—the later architect
did not value symmetry enough to think himself bound to
adhere either to the design or to the height of the earlier
spire, so we have in this great façade two similar flanking
towers but spires entirely unlike. What happened
at Chartres happened elsewhere. The original design of
buildings was in the main symmetrical, but it was never
considered that symmetry was a matter so important as to
require that much sacrifice should be made to preserve it.
On the other hand the subordination of a multitude of
small features to one dominant one enters largely into the
design of every good Gothic building; with the result that
if the great governing feature or mass has been carried out
in its entirety, almost any feature, no matter how irregular
or unsymmetrical, may be safely introduced, and will only
add picturesqueness and piquancy to the design. This is
more or less a leading principle of Gothic design. A building
with no irregularities, none of those charming additions
which add individual character to Gothic churches, and
none of the isolated features which the principle of subordination
permits the architect to employ, has missed one
of the chief qualities of the style. It is here that unskilled
architects mostly fail when they attempt Gothic designs;
they either hold on to symmetry as though they were
designing a Greek temple, and they are unaware that the
spirit of the style in which they are trying to work not
only permits, but requires some irregular features; or if
they do not fall into this error they are overtaken by the
opposite one, and omit to make their irregular features subordinate
to the general effect of the whole, an error less
serious in its effects than the other, but still destructive of
anything like the highest qualities in a building.
Repetition, like symmetry, is recognised by Gothic
architecture, but not adhered to in a rigid way. No
buildings gain more from the repetition of parts than
Gothic churches and cathedrals; the series of pillars or
piers and arches inside, the series of buttresses and
windows outside, add scale to the general effect. But so
long as it was in the main a series of features which
broadly resembled one another, the Gothic architect was
satisfied, and did not feel bound to exact repetition.
We are often, for example, surprised to find in the
columns of a church an octagonal one alternating with a
circular one, and almost invariably, if a series of capitals
be examined, each will be discovered to differ from the
others to some extent. In one bay of a church there may
be a two-light window, and in the next a three-light
window, and so on.
This we find in buildings erected at one time and under
one architect. Where, however, a building begun at one
period was continued at another (and this, it must be
remembered, was the rule, not the exception, with all large
Gothic buildings), the architect, while usually repeating the
same features, with the same general forms, invariably
followed his own predilections as to detail. There is a
very good example of this in Westminster Abbey, in the
western bays of the nave, which were built years later
than the eastern bays. They are, to a superficial observer,
identical, being of the same height and width and shape
of arch, but nearly every detail differs.
Disclosure, rather than concealment, was a principle of
Gothic design. This was demonstrated long ago by Pugin,
and many of his followers pushed the doctrine to such
extremes, that they held—and some of them still hold—that
no building is really Gothic in which any part, either
of its construction or arrangement, is not obviously visible
inside and out.
This is, however, carrying the principle too far. It is
sufficient to say that the interior disposition of every Gothic
building was as much as possible disclosed by the exterior.
Thus, in a secular building, where there is a large room,
there usually was a large window; when a lofty apartment
occurs, its roof was generally proportionately high; where
a staircase rises, we usually can detect it by a sloping row
of little windows following the line of the stair, or by a
turret roof.
The mode in which the thrust of vaults is counterpoised
is, as has been shown, frankly displayed by the Gothic
architects, and as a rule, every portion of the structure is
freely exhibited. It grows out of this, that when an ornamental
feature is desired, it is not constructed purely for
ornament, as the Romans added the columns and cornices
of the orders to the outside of their massive walls purely
as an architectural screen; but some requisite, of the building
is taken and ornamented, and in some cases elaborated.
Thus the belfry grew into the enormous bell tower; the
tower roof grew into the spire; the extra weight required
on flying buttresses grew into the ornamental pinnacle;
and the window head grew into tracery.
There were, however, some exceptions. The walls were
still constantly faced with finer masonry than in the
heart, and though some are unwilling to admit the fact,
were often plastered outside as well as in; and what is
more remarkable, no other sign of the vault appeared
outside the building than the buttresses required to
sustain it.
The external gable conforms to the shape of the roof
which covered the vault, but the vault, perhaps the most
remarkable and characteristic feature of the whole building,
does not betray its presence by any external line or
mark corresponding to its position and shape in the interior
of the building. Notwithstanding these and some other
exceptions, frank disclosure must be reckoned one of the
main principles of Gothic architecture.
Fig. 60.—Doorway from Church at Batalha. (Begun 1385.)
Elaboration and simplicity were both so well known to
the Gothic architect that it is difficult to say that either
of these qualities belongs exclusively to his work. But
he was rarely simple when he had the opportunity of
being elaborate, and simplicity was perhaps rather forced
upon him by the circumstances under which he worked, by
rude materials, scanty funds, and lack of skilled workmen,
than freely chosen. Many of the great works of the Gothic
period are as elaborate as they could be made (Fig. ),
and yet, when simplicity had to be the order of the day,
no architecture has lent it such a grace as Gothic.
The last pair of qualities is similarity and contrast.
What has been said about repetition has anticipated the
remarks called for by these qualities, so far as to point out
that even where the arrangement of the building dictated
the repetition of similar features, a general resemblance, and
not an exact similarity, was considered sufficient. In the
composition of masses of building, contrast and not similarity
was the ruling principle. Even in the interiors of
great churches which, as a rule, are far more regular than
the exteriors, the contrast between the comparative plainness
of the nave and the richness of the choir was an
essential element of design.
External design in Gothic buildings depends almost
entirely upon contrast for its power of charming the
eye, and it is this circumstance which has left the successive
generations of men who toiled at our great Gothic
cathedrals so free to follow the bent of their own taste
in their additions, rather than that of their forerunners.
But setting aside the irregularities due to the caprice of
various builders, and the constant changes which took place
in detail through the Gothic period, it is to contrast that
we must trace most of the surprising effects attained by the
architecture of the Middle Ages. The rich tracery was
made richer by contrast with plain walls, the loftiest towers
appeared higher from their contrast with the long level
lines of roofs and parapets.
It is, in truth, one of the principal marks of the decadence
which began in the fifteenth century that the
principle of contrast was, to a considerable extent, abandoned,
at least in the details of the buildings if not in
their great masses. Walls were at that time panelled in
imitation of the tracery of the adjoining windows, and no
longer acted as a foil to them by their solid plainness;
long rows of pinnacles, all exactly alike, followed the line
of the parapets, and a repetition of absolutely identical
features became the rule for the first time in the history of
Gothic art.
There can be no doubt that had this modification run its
natural course unchecked and undisturbed by the change
in taste which abruptly brought the Gothic period to a
close, it must have resulted in the deterioration of the
art.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.
CHAPTER X.
GENERAL VIEW.
GOTHIC architecture had begun, before the close of the
fifteenth century, to show marks of decadence, and
men’s minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The
change, when it did take place, arose in Italy, and was a direct
consequence of that burst of modern civilisation known as
the revival of letters. All the characteristics of the middle
ages were rapidly thrown off. The strain of old Roman
blood in the modern Italians asserted itself, and almost at
a bound, literature and the arts sprang back, like a bow
unstrung, into the forms they had displayed fifteen hundred
years before.
It became the rage to read the choice Greek and Latin
authors, and to write Latin with a pedantic purity. Can
we wonder that in painting, in sculpture, and in architecture,
men reverted to the form, the style, and the decorations
of the antique compositions, statues, and architectural
remains? This was the more easy in Italy, as
Gothic art had never at any time taken so firm a hold
upon Italians as it had upon nations north of the Alps.
Though, however, the details and forms employed were
all Roman, or Græco-Roman, they were applied to buildings
essentially modern, and used with much freedom
and spirit. This revival of classic taste in art is commonly
and appropriately called Renaissance. In Italy it
took place so rapidly that there was hardly any transition
period. Brunelleschi, the first great Renaissance architect,
began his work as early as the middle of the fifteenth
century, and his buildings, in which classic details of great
severity and purity are employed, struck, so to speak, a
keynote which had been responded to all over Italy before
the close of the fifteenth century.
To other countries the change spread later, and it found
them less prepared to welcome it unreservedly. Accordingly,
in France, in England, and in many parts of Germany, we
find a transition period, during which buildings were designed
in a mixed style. In England, the transition lasted
almost through the sixteenth century.
As the century went on, a most picturesque and telling
style, the earlier phases of which are known as Tudor
and the later as Elizabethan, sprang up in England. It
betrays in its mixture of Gothic and classic forms great
incongruities and even monstrosities; but it allows unrestrained
play for the fancies, and the best mansions
and manors of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick,
Burleigh, Bramshill, and Audley End, are unsurpassed in
their picturesqueness and romantic charm.
The old red-brick, heavily chimneyed, and gabled buildings,
with their large windows divided by bold mullions
and transoms, and their simple noble outlines, are familiar
to us all, and so are their characteristic features. The
great hall with its oriel or its bay, the fine plastered ceiling,
supported by heavy beams of timber; the wide oak
staircase, with its carved balusters, and ornamented newel
post, and heavy-moulded handrail; the old wainscoted
parlour, with its magnificent chimney-piece reaching to
the ceiling; these are all essentially English features,
and are full of vigour and life, as indeed the work of
every period of transition must almost necessarily prove.
The transitional period in France produced exquisite
works more refined and elegantly treated than ours, but not
so vigorous. Its manner is known as the François Premier
(Francis I.) style. No modern buildings are more profusely
ornamented, and yet not spoilt.
In Germany, the Castle of Heidelberg may be named
as a well-known specimen of the transition period, a period
over which however we must not linger. Suffice it to say,
that sooner or later the change was fully accomplished in
every European country, and Renaissance architecture,
modified as climate, materials, habits, or even caprice suggested,
yet the same in its essential characteristics, obtained
a firm footing: this it has succeeded in retaining, though
not to the exclusion of other styles, for now nearly three
centuries.
In Italy, Renaissance churches, great and small—from
St. Peter’s downwards—and magnificent secular buildings,
some, like the Vatican Palace or the Library of St. Mark
at Venice, for public purposes, but most for the occupation
of the great wealthy and princely families, abound in
Naples, Rome, Florence, Genoa, Venice, Milan, and indeed
every great city.
In France, the transition period was succeeded by a
time when vast undertakings, e.g. the Hôtel de Ville,
the Louvre, the Tuileries, Versailles, were carried out
in the revived style with the utmost magnificence, and
were imitated in every part of the country in the structures
greater or smaller which were then built.
In England, the works of Inigo Jones, and of Wren, are
the most famous works of the developed style, and to the
last-named architect we owe a cathedral second to none in
Europe for its beauty of outline, and play of light and
shade. To Germany, and the countries of the north-east
Europe, and to Spain and Portugal on the south, the style
also extended with no very great modification, either of its
general forms or of its details.
ANALYSIS OF BUILDINGS.
Plan.
The plan of Renaissance buildings was uniform and
symmetrical, and the picturesqueness of the Gothic times
was abandoned. The plans of churches were not widely
different from those in use in Italy before the revival of
classic art took place, but it will be remembered that these
were by no means so irregular or picturesque at any time
as the plans of French and English cathedral churches.
In secular architecture, the vast piles erected in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Italian, French, and
Spanish architects are to the last degree orderly in their
disposition. They are adapted to a great variety of purposes,
and they display a varying degree of skill. The
palaces of Genoa are, on the one hand, among the cleverest
examples of planning existing; on the other hand, many
of the palaces in France are weak and poor to the last degree.
As a rule the scale of the plan is more considerable than in
Gothic work. A very large building is often not divided
into more parts than a small one, or one of moderate size.
In St. Peter’s, for example, there are only four bays between
the west front and the dome, everything being on a most
gigantic scale. As a contrast to this principle we may cite
the nave of the Gothic cathedral at Milan, which is not so
long at St. Peter’s, but has at least thrice as many bays, and
looks much larger in consequence.
No style affords more room for skill in planning than the
Renaissance, and in no style is the exercise of such skill
more repaid by results.
Walls and Columns.
In the treatment of external walls, the mediæval use
of small materials, involving many joints for the exterior
of walls has quite disappeared, and they are universally
faced with stone or plaster, and are consequently uniformly
smooth. Perhaps the principal feature to note is the very
great use made of that elaborate sort of masonry in which
the joints of the stones are very carefully channelled or
otherwise marked, and which is known by the singularly
inappropriate name of rustic work. The basements of
most Italian and French palaces are rusticated, and in
many cases (as the Pitti Palace, Florence) rustic work
covers an entire façade.
The Gothic mouldings in receding planes disappear
entirely, and the classic architrave takes their place. The
orders are again revived and are used (as the Romans often
used them) as purely decorative features added for the mere
sake of ornament to a wall sufficient without them, and are
freely piled one upon the other. Palladio (a very influential
Italian architect) reproduced the use of lofty pilasters
running through two or even more storeys of the building,
and often combined one tall order and two short ones
in his treatment of the same part of the building, a contrivance
which in less clever hands than his has given rise to
the greatest confusion.
The Renaissance architects also revived the late
Roman manner of employing the column and entablature.
They frequently carried on the top of a column a little
square pier divided up as the architrave and frieze proper
to the column would be divided, and they surmounted it
with a cornice which was carried quite round this pier, and
from this curious compound pedestal an arch will frequently
spring. The classic portico, with pediments, was constantly
employed by them; and small pediments over window heads
were common. A peculiarity worth mention is the
introduction in many Italian palaces of a great crowning
cornice, proportioned not to the size of the columns and of
the order upon which it rests (if an order be employed),
but to the height of the whole building. Much fine
effect is obtained by means of this feature; it is, however,
better fitted for sunny Italy than for gloomy England, and
it is not an unmixed success when repeated in our climate.
Towers are less frequently employed than by the Gothic
architects, and indeed in Italy the sky-line was less thought
of at this period than it was in the middle ages. In
churches, towers sometimes occur, nowhere more picturesque
than those designed by Sir Christopher Wren for many of
his London parish churches. The frequent use of the dome
takes the place of the tower both in churches and secular
buildings.
Openings.
Openings are both flat-headed and semicircular, occasionally
elliptical, but hardly ever pointed. Renaissance
buildings may be to some extent divided into those which
depend for effect upon window openings, and those which
depend chiefly upon architectural features such as cornices,
pilasters, and orders. Among the buildings where fenestration
(or the treatment of windows) is relied upon the
palaces of Venice stand pre-eminent as compositions
admirably designed for effect and very successful. In them
the openings are massed near the centre of the façade, and
strong piers are left near the angles, a simple expedient
when once known, and one inherited from the Gothic
palaces in that city, but giving remarkable individuality
of character to this group of buildings.
In roofs, including vaults and domes, we meet with a
divergence of practice between Italy and France. In
Italy low-pitched roofs were the rule: the parapet alone
often formed the sky-line, and the dome and pediment
are usually the only telling features of the outline.
France, on the other hand, revived a most picturesque
feature of Gothic days, namely, the high-pitched roof, employing
it in the shape commonly known as the Mansard
roof. Nothing adds more to the effectiveness of the great
French Renaissance buildings than these lofty terminals.
The dome is, however, the glory of this style, as it had
been of the Roman. It is the one feature by which revived
and original classic architects retain a clear and defined
advantage over Gothic architects, who, strange to say, all
but abandoned the dome. The mouldings and other
ornaments of the Renaissance are much the same as those
of the Roman style, which the Italians revived; their
sculptures and their mural decorations were all originally
drawn from classic sources. These, however, attained
very great excellence, and it is probable that such decorative
paintings as Raphael and his scholars executed in
Rome, at Genoa, at Mantua, and elsewhere, far surpass
anything which the old Roman decorative artists ever
executed.
Construction and Design.
The earlier Renaissance buildings are remarkable for
the great use which their architects made of carpentry,
as the most modern structures are for the use of wrought
and cast-iron construction. As regards carpentry, it is of
course true that all the woodwork of the classic periods,
and much of that done in the Gothic period, has perished,
either through decay or fire; but making every allowance
for this, we must still recognise a very great increase in the
employment of timber as an integral part of large structures.
Vaulted roofs for example are comparatively rare,
and domes, even when the inner dome is of brickwork
or masonry, have their outer envelope of carpentry. A
disuse of brick and rough masonry, or rather a constant
effort to conceal them from view, is a distinctive mark of
Renaissance work. The Roman method of facing rough
walls with fine stone was resorted to in the best buildings.
In humbler buildings plaster is employed.
Renaissance architects made very free use of plaster.
Inside and out this material is utilised, not merely to
cover surfaces, but to form architectural features. Cornices,
panels, and enrichments of all kinds modelled in
plaster are constantly employed in the interior of rooms
and buildings. On the exterior we constantly find imitations
of similar architectural features proper to stone
executed in plaster and simulating stone; a short-sighted
practice which cannot be commended, and which has only
cheapness and convenience in its favour. There can be
no question of the fact that the features thus executed
never equal those done in stone in their effectiveness, and
are far more liable to decay.
Design in Renaissance buildings may be said to be
directed towards producing a telling result by the effect of
the buildings taken as a whole, rather than by the intricacy
or the beauty of individual parts; and herein lies one of the
great contrasts between Renaissance and Gothic architecture.
A Renaissance building which fails to produce an
impression as a whole is rarely felt to be successful. No
better example of this can be given than the straggling,
unsatisfactory Palace of Versailles, magnificent as it is in
dimensions and rich in treatment. To the production of a
homogeneous impression the arrangement of plan, the proportion
of storeys, the contrasts of voids and solids, and above
all the outline of the entire building, should be devoted.
The general arrangement of buildings is usually strictly
symmetrical, one half corresponding to the other, and with
some well-defined feature to mark the centre. Of course
in very large buildings this does not occur, nor in the
nature of things can it often take place in the sides of
churches; but the individual features of such buildings,
and all those parts of them which permit of symmetry in
their arrangement, always display it.
Proportion plays an important part in the design of
Renaissance buildings. The actual shape of openings, the
proportion which they bear to voids, the proportion of
storeys to one another; and, going into details, the proportions
which the different features—e.g., cornice, and
the columns supporting it—should bear to one another,
have to be carefully studied. It is to the possession of
a keen sense of what makes a pleasing proportion and
one satisfactory to the eye, that the great architects
of Italy owed the greater part of their success.
Renaissance architecture is so familiar in its general
features, and these have been so constantly repeated, that
we may not easily recognise the great need for skill and
taste which exists if they are to be designed so as to produce
the most refined effect possible. Many of the successful
buildings of the style owe their excellence to the great delicacy
and elegance of the mode in which the details have been
studied, rather than to the vigour and boldness with which
the masses have been shaped and disposed; and though grandeur
is the noblest quality of which the style is capable,
yet many more opportunities for displaying grace and
refinement than for attaining grandeur offer themselves,
and by nothing are the best works of the style so well
marked out as by the success with which those opportunities
have been grasped and turned to account.
The concealment both of construction and arrangement
is largely practised in Renaissance buildings. Behind an
exterior wall filled by windows of uniform size and equally
spaced, rooms large and small, corridors, staircases, and other
features have to be provided for. This is completely in contrast
to the Gothic principle of displaying frankly on the
outside the arrangement of what is within; but it must be
remembered that art often works most happily and successfully
when limited by apparently strict and difficult
conditions, and these rules have not prevented the great
architects of the Renaissance from accomplishing works
where both the exterior and the interior are thoroughly
successful, and are brought into such happy harmony
that the difficulties have clearly been no bar to success.
There is no canon of art violated by such a method, the
simple fact being that Gothic buildings are designed
under one set of conditions and Renaissance under another.
It is less easy to defend the use of pilasters and columns
large enough to appear as though they were the main
support of the building, for purely decorative purposes;
yet here perhaps the fault lies rather in the extent to
which the practice has been carried, and above all the
scale upon which it is carried out, than in anything else.
Small columns are constantly employed in Gothic buildings
in positions where they serve the æsthetic purpose of conveying
a sense of support, but where it is impossible for
them to carry any weight. The Renaissance architects
have done the same thing on a large scale, but it must not
be forgotten that they only revived a Roman practice as
part of the ancient style to which they reverted, and that
they are not responsible for originating it.
It will be understood therefore that symmetry, strict
uniformity, not mere similarity, in features intended to
correspond, and constant repetition, are leading principles
in Renaissance architecture. These qualities tend to breadth
rather than picturesqueness of effect, and to similarity
rather than contrast. Simplicity and elaboration are both
compatible with Renaissance design; the former distinguishes
the earlier and purer examples of the style, the
latter those more recent and more grandiose.
It should be observed that in the transition styles, such
as our own Elizabethan, or the French style of Francis the
First, these principles of design are mixed up in a very
miscellaneous way with those followed in the Gothic
period. The result is often puzzling and inconsistent if
we attempt to analyse it with exactness, but rarely fails
to charm by its picturesque and irregular vividness.
FOOTNOTE:
Named after a French architect of the 17th century.
CHAPTER XI.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ITALY.
RENAISSANCE architecture—the architecture of the
classic revival—had its origin in Italy, and should
be first studied in the land of its birth. There are
more ways than one in which it may be attempted to
classify Italian Renaissance buildings. The names of
conspicuous architects are sometimes adopted for this
purpose, for now, for the first time, we meet with a
complete record of the names and performances of all
architects of note: the men who raised the great works
of Gothic art are, with a few exceptions, absolutely unknown
to us. An approximate division into three stages
can also be recognised. There is an early, a developed,
and a late Renaissance, but this is very far indeed from
being a completely marked series, and was more interfered
with by local circumstances and by the character and
genius of individual artists than in Gothic. For this
reason a local division will be of most service. The best
examples exist in the great cities, with a few exceptions,
and it is almost more useful to group them—as the paintings
of the Renaissance are also often grouped—by locality
than in either of the other methods.
FLORENCE.
Renaissance architecture first sprang into existence in
Florence. Here chiefly the works of the early Renaissance
are met with, and the names of the great Florentine
architects are Brunelleschi and Alberti.
Brunelleschi was a citizen of Florence, of very ardent
temperament and great energy, and a true artist. He was
born in 1377, was originally trained as a goldsmith and
sculptor, but devoted himself to the study of architecture,
and early set his heart upon being appointed to complete
the dome of the then unfinished cathedral of Florence, of
which some account has already been given.
Florence in the fifteenth century was full of artistic
life, and the revival of learning and arts had then begun
to take definite shape. The first years of the century
found Brunelleschi studying antiquities at Rome, to fit
himself for the work he desired to undertake. After his
return to his native city, he ultimately succeeded in the
object of his ambition; the cathedral was entrusted to him,
and he erected the large pointed dome with which it is
crowned. He also erected two large churches in Florence,
which, as probably the first important buildings designed
and built in the new style, possess great interest. Santo
Spirito, one of these, shows a fully matured system of
architectural treatment, and though it is quite true that it
was a revived system, yet the application of it to a modern
building, different in its purpose and in its design from
anything the Romans had ever done, is little short of a
work of genius.
Santo Spirito has a very simple and beautifully regular
plan, and its interior has a singular charm and grace: over
the crossing is raised a low dome. The columns of the
arcade are Corinthian columns, and the refinement of their
detail and proportions strikes the eye at once on entering
the building. The influence of Brunelleschi, who died in
1440, was perpetuated by the works and writings of
Alberti (born 1398) an architect of literary cultivation
who wrote a systematic treatise which became extremely
popular, and helped to form the taste and guide the practice
of his contemporaries. He lived till near the close of the
fifteenth century, and erected some buildings of great
merit. To Alberti we owe the design of the Ruccellai
Palace in Florence, a building begun in 1460, and which
had been preceded by somewhat bolder and simpler
designs. This is a three storey building, but has pilasters
carried up the piers between the windows and a regular
entablature and cornice at each storey. The building is
elegant and graceful, and though the employment of the
orders as its decoration gives it a distinctive character, it
bears a strong general resemblance to the group of which
the Strozzi Palace (Fig. ) may be taken as the type.
The earliest Florentine palaces are the Riccardi, which
dates from 1430, and the Pitti of almost the same date;
Brunelleschi is said to have been consulted in the design of
both, but Michelozzo was the architect. The distinguishing
characteristic of the early palaces in this city is solidity,
which rises from the fact that they were also fortresses.
The Pitti, well known for its picture gallery, is a building
of vast extent, built throughout in very boldly rusticated
masonry, the joints and projections of the stones being
greatly exaggerated. The Riccardi, a square block of
building, bears a considerable resemblance to the Strozzi,
but is plainer. It is a most dignified building in its effect.
The Strozzi Palace (Fig. ) was the next great
palatial pile erected. It was designed by Cronaca, and
begun in 1498. Like the Riccardi, it is of three storeys,
with a bold projecting cornice. The whole wall is covered
with rusticated masonry; the windows of the lower floor
are small and square; those of the two upper floors are
larger and semicircular headed, and with a shaft acting
as a mullion, and carrying arches which occupy the window
head with something like tracery. The entrance is by a
semicircular headed archway. There is a great height of
unpierced wall in the lowest storey and above the heads of
the two upper ranges of windows; and to this and the
bold overhanging cornice, this building, and those like it,
owe much of their dignity and impressiveness. An elevation,
such as our illustration, may convey a fair idea of the
good proportion and ensemble of the front, but it is difficult
without actually seeing the buildings to appreciate the
effect produced by such palaces as these, seen foreshortened
in the narrow streets, and with the shadows from their
bold cornices and well-defined openings intensified by the
effect of the Italian sun.
Fig. 61.—Strozzi Palace at Florence. (Begun 1489.)
Many excellent palatial buildings belong to the end of
the fifteenth century. One among them is attributed to
Bramante (who died 1513), a Florentine, whom we shall
meet with in Rome and elsewhere. The Guadagni Palace
has an upper storey entirely open, forming a sheltered
loggia, but it is mentioned here chiefly on account of the
decorations incised on its walls by the method known as
Sgraffito. Part of the plain wall is covered in this way
with decorative designs, which appear as though drawn
with a bold line on their surface. An example of this
decoration will be found in our illustration (Fig. ),
representing a portion of the Loggia del Consiglio
at Verona.
The series of great Florentine palaces closes with a
charming example, the Pandolfini, designed by the great
Raphael, and commenced in 1520—in other words, in the
first quarter of the sixteenth century.
This palace is only one of many instances to be found in
Italy of the skill in more walks of art than one, of some of
the greatest artists. Raphael, though best known as a
painter, executed works of sculpture of great merit, and
designed some other buildings besides the one now under
notice. The Pandolfini Palace (Fig. ) is small, the main
building having only four windows in the front and two
storeys in height, with a low one-storey side building.
Its general design has been very successfully copied in the
Travellers’ Club House, Pall Mall. On comparing this
with any of the previously named designs, it will be seen
that the semicircular headed windows have disappeared,
the rusticated masonry is only now retained at the angles,
and to emphasise the side entrance; and a small order
with a little pediment (i.e. gable) is employed to mark
each opening, door or window. In short this building
belongs not only to another century, but to that advanced
school of art to which we have given the name of developed
Italian Renaissance.
Fig. 62.—Part of the Loggia del Consiglio at Verona. (16th Century.)
Showing the incised decoration known as Sgraffito.
In Florence some of the work of Michelangelo is to be
met with. His own house is here; so is the famous Medici
chapel, a work in which we find him displaying power at
once as a sculptor and an architect. This interior is very
fine and very studied both in its proportions and its details.
The church of the Annunziata, remarkable for a fine dome,
carried on a drum resting directly on the ground, is the
foremost Renaissance church in Florence.
The contrast between early and matured Renaissance
can indeed be better recognised in Florence than in almost
any other city. The early work, that of Bramante, Brunelleschi,
and the architects who drew their inspirations
from these masters, was delicate and refined. The detail
was always elegant, the ornament always unobtrusive, and
often most graceful. Features comparatively small in
scale were employed, and were set off by the use of plain
wall-surface, which was unhesitatingly displayed. The
classic orders were used in a restricted, unobtrusive way,
and with pilasters in preference to columns; and though
probably the architects themselves would have repudiated
the idea that the Gothic art, which they had cast behind
them, influenced their practice of revived classic in the
remotest degree, it is nevertheless true that many of these
peculiarities, and still more the general quality of the
designs, were to a large extent those to which the practice
of Gothic architecture had led them.
A change which was partly due to a natural desire for
progress, was helped on by the great attention paid by
students of architecture to the remains of ancient Roman
buildings; but it was the influence excited by the powerful
genius of Michelangelo, and by the gigantic scale and
vigorous treatment of his masterpiece, St. Peter’s, which
was the proximate occasion of a revolution in taste and
practice, to which, the labours, both literary and artistic,
of Vignola, and the designs of Palladio, gave form and
consistency. In the fully-developed, or, as it is sometimes
called, pure Renaissance of Italy, great use is made of the
classic orders and pediment, and indeed of all the features
which the Romans had employed. Plain wall space almost
disappears under the various architectural features introduced,
and all ornaments, details, and mouldings become
bolder and richer, but often less refined and correct in
design.
Fig. 63.—The Pandolfini Palace, Florence. Designed by Raphael. (Begun 1520.)
ROME.
Rome, the capital of the country, contains, as was fit, the
central building of the fully-developed Renaissance, St.
Peter’s. Bramante, the Florentine, was the architect to
whom the task of designing a cathedral to surpass anything
existing in Europe was committed by Pope Julius II.
at the opening of the sixteenth century. Some such project
had been entertained, and even begun, fifty years earlier,
but the enterprise was now started afresh, a new design
was made, and the first stone was laid by the Pope in
1506. Bramante died in some six or seven years, and five
or six architects in succession, one of whom was Raphael,
proceeded with the work, without advancing it rapidly, for
nearly half a century, during which time the design was
modified again and again. In 1546 the great Michelangelo
was appointed architect, and the last eighteen
years of his life were spent in carrying on this great work.
He completed the magnificent dome in all its essential
parts, and left the church a Greek cross (i.e. one which
has all its four arms equal) on plan, with the dome at the
crossing. The boast is attributed to him that he would
take the dome of the Pantheon and hang it in the air;
and this he has virtually accomplished in the dome of
St. Peter’s—a work of the greatest beauty of design and
boldness of construction.
Unfortunately, at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, Maderno was employed to lengthen the nave.
This transformed the plan of the cathedral into a Latin
cross. The existing portico was built at the same time;
and in 1661 Bernini added the vast forecourt, lined by
colonnades, which now forms the approach.
This cathedral, of which the history has been briefly
sketched, is the largest in the world. As we now see it,
it consists of a vast vestibule; a nave of four bays with
side aisles; a vast square central space over which hangs
the great dome; transepts and a choir, each of one bay and
an apse. Outside the great central space, an aisle, not
quite like the ordinary aisle of a church, exists, and there
are two side chapels. It can be well understood that if
the largest church in Christendom is divided into so few
parts, these must be themselves of colossal dimensions, and
the truth is that the piers are masses of masonry which can
be called nothing else than vast, while the spaces spanned by
the arches and vaults are prodigious. There is little sense
of mystery about the interior of the building (Fig. ), the
eye soon grasps it as a whole, and hours must be spent
in it before an idea of its gigantic size is at all taken in.
The beauty of the colouring adds wonderfully to the effect
of St. Peter’s upon the spectator, for the walls are rich
with mosaics and coloured marbles; and the interior, the
dome especially, with the drum upon which it rests, are
decorated in colour throughout, with fine effect and in
excellent taste. The interior is amply lighted, and, though
very rich, not over decorated; its design is simple and
noble in the extreme, and all its parts are wonderful
in their harmony. The connection between the dome and
the rest of the building is admirable, and there is a
sense of vast space when the spectator stands under that
soaring vault which belongs to no other building in the
world.
The exterior is disappointing as long as the building is
seen in front, for the façade is so lofty and advances so
far forward as to cut off the view of the lower part of the
dome. To have an idea of the building as Michelangelo
designed it, it is necessary to go round to the back; and
then, with the height of the drum fully seen and the contour
of the dome, with all its massy lines of living force,
carrying the eye with them right up to the elegant
lantern that crowns the summit, some conception of the
hugeness and the symmetry of this mountain of art seems
to dawn on the mind. But even here it is with the
utmost difficulty that one can apply any scale to the mass,
so that the idea which the mind forms of its bulk is continually
fluctuating.
The history of this building extends over all the period
of developed Renaissance in Rome, and its list of architects
includes all the best known names. By the side of
it every other church, even St. John Lateran, appears
insignificant; so that the secular buildings in Rome, which
are numerous, and some of them excellent, are more worth
attention than the churches, though not a few of the three
hundred churches and basilicas of the metropolis of Italy
are good examples of Renaissance.
Fig. 64.—St. Peter’s at Rome. Interior. (1506-1661.)
The altars, tombs, and other architectural or semi-architectural
works which occur in many of the churches
of Rome, are, however, finer works of art as a rule than
the buildings which they adorn. Such gems are not confined
to Rome, but are to be found throughout Italy:
many of them belong to the best period of art. Marble
is generally the material, and the light as a rule falls
on these works in one direction only. Under these
circumstances the most subtle moulding gives a play of light
and shade, and the most delicate carving produces a richness
of effect which cannot be attained in exterior architecture,
executed for the most part in stone, exposed to the weather,
and seen by diffused and reflected light. Nothing of this
sort is finer than the monuments by Sansovino, erected in
Sta. Maria del Popolo at Rome, one of which we illustrate
on a small scale (Fig. ). The magnificent altar-piece in
Sta. Coronale at Vicenza, in which is framed Bellini’s
picture of the baptism of Christ, is another example, on
an unusually large scale—fine in style, and covered with
beautiful ornament.
No secular building exists in Rome so early or so simple
as the severe Florentine palaces; but Bramante, who
belongs to the early period, erected there the fine Cancelleria
palace; and the Palazzo Giraud (Fig. ). These
buildings resemble one another very closely; each bears
the impress of refined taste, but delicacy has been carried
almost to timidity. The pilasters and cornices which are
employed have the very slightest projection, but the large
mass of the wall as compared with the openings, secures an
appearance of solidity, and hence of dignity. The interior
of the Cancelleria contains an arcaded quadrangle (cortile)
of great beauty. Smaller palaces belonging to the same
period and of the same refined, but somewhat weak,
character exist in Rome.
Fig. 65.—Monument, by Sansovino, in Sta. Maria del Popolo,
Rome. (15th Century.)
Fig. 66.—Palazzo Giraud (now Torlonia), Rome. By Bramante. (1506.)
The Vatican Palace is so vast that, like St. Peter’s, it
took more than one generation to complete. To Bramante’s
time belongs the great Belvedere, since much altered, but
in its original state an admirable work. This palace also
can show some remarkable additions by Bernini, a much
later architect, with much that is not admirable or remarkable
by other hands. The finest Roman palace is the
Farnese, begun by San Gallo in 1530, continued by
Michelangelo, and completed by Giacomo della Porta,
each architect having altered the design. This building,
notwithstanding its chequered history, is a dignified, impressive
mass. It has only three storeys and a scarcely
marked basement, and is nearly square, with a large
quadrangle in its heart. It is very lofty, and has a great
height of unpierced wall over each storey of windows,
and is crowned by a bold and highly-enriched cornice—an
unusual thing for Rome. In this, and in many palaces
built about the same time, the windows are ornamented
in the same manner as those of the Pandolfini Palace at
Florence; the use of pilasters instead of columns is
general; the openings are usually square-headed, circular
heads being usually confined to arcades and loggie; the
angles are marked by rustication, and the only cornice is
the one that crowns the whole. This general character
will apply to most of the works of Baldassare Peruzzi,
Vignola, Sangallo, and Raphael, who were, with Michelangelo,
the foremost architects in Rome in the sixteenth
century. But “the works executed by Michelangelo are
in a bolder and more pictorial style, as are also many
productions grafted on the earlier Italian manner by a
numerous class of succeeding architects. In these is to
be remarked a greater use of columns, engaged and isolated;
stronger but less studied details; and a greater
use of colonnades, in which however the combination with
the semicircular arch is still unusual, the antique in this
respect being followed to a great disadvantage. Still there
is a nobility, a palatial look about these large mansions
which is very admirable, and is to be remarked in all the
palaces, even up to the time of Borromini, circa 1640, by
whom all the principles and parts of Roman architecture
were literally turned topsy-turvey. Michelangelo’s peculiar
style was more thoroughly carried out on ecclesiastical
buildings, and as practised by his successors, exhibits much
that is fine, in large masses, boldly projecting cornices,
three-quarter columns, and noble domes; but it is otherwise
debased by great misconceptions as to the reasonable
application of architecture.”—M. D. W.
In the seventeenth century a decline set in. The late
Renaissance has neither the severity of the early, nor the
dignified richness of the mature time, but is extravagant;
though at Rome examples of its extreme phase are not
common. Maderno, who erected the west front of St.
Peter’s, and Bernini, who added the outer forecourt and
also built the curiously designed state staircase (the scala
regia) in the Vatican, are the foremost architects. To
these must be added Borromini. The great Barberini
Palace belongs to this century; but perhaps its most
characteristic works are the fountains, some of them with
elaborate architectural backgrounds, which ornament many
of the open places in Rome. Few of the buildings of the
eighteenth century in Rome, or indeed in Italy generally,
claim attention as architectural works of a high order
of merit.
Before leaving central Italy for the north, it is necessary
to mention the masterpiece of Vignola—the great
Farnese Palace at Caprarola; and to add that in every
city of importance examples more or less admirable of the
art of the time were erected.
VENICE, VICENZA, AND VERONA.
The next great group of Renaissance buildings is to be
found at Venice, where the style was adopted with some
reluctance, and not till far on in the sixteenth century.
At first we meet with some admixture of Gothic elements;
as, for example, in the rebuilding of the internal quadrangle
of the Ducal Palace. Pointed arches are partly
employed in this work, which was completed about the
middle of the sixteenth century. In the earlier palaces—which,
it will be remembered, are comparatively narrow
buildings standing side by side on the banks of the canals—the
storeys are well marked; the windows are round headed
with smaller arches within the main ones; the orders when
introduced are kept subordinate; the windows are grouped
together in the central portion of the front, as was the
case with those of the Gothic palaces, and very little use
is made of rusticated masonry. The Vendramini, Cornaro,
and Trevisano Palaces conform to this type. To the same
period belong one or two fine churches, the most famous
being San Zacaria, a building with a very delicately
panelled front, and a semicircular pediment in lieu of a
gable; here, too, semicircular-headed openings are made
use of. In many of these churches and other buildings,
a beautiful ornament, which may be regarded as typical of
early Venetian Renaissance, is to be found. It is the
shell ornament, so called from its resemblance to a flat
semicircular shell, ribbed from the centre to the circumference
(Fig. ).
Fig. 67.—Italian Shell Ornament.
As time went on the style was matured into one of great
richness, not to say ostentation, with which the names of
Sansovino, Sanmichele, Palladio, and Scamozzi are identified
as the prominent architects of the latter part of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this city of
palaces Sansovino, also a very fine sculptor, built the celebrated
Library of St. Mark, facing the Ducal Palace,
which has been followed very closely in the design of
the Carlton Club, Pall Mall. Here, as in the splendid
Cornaro Palace, the architect relied chiefly upon the
columns and entablatures of the orders, combined with
grand arcades enriched by sculpture, so arranged as to
occupy the spaces between the columns; almost the whole
of the wall-space was so taken up, and the basement only
was covered with rustication, often rough worked, as at
the beautiful Palazzo Pompeii, Verona, and the Grimani
Palace, Venice.
“Sanmichele’s works are characterised chiefly by their
excellent proportions, their carefully studied detail, their
strength, and their beauty (qualities so difficult to combine).
We believe that the buildings of this great architect
and engineer at Verona are pre-eminent in their peculiar
style over those of any other artist of the sixteenth
century. In a different, but no less meritorious, manner
are the buildings designed by Sansovino; they are characterised
by a more sculptural and ornamental character;
order over order with large arched voids in the interspaces
of the columns producing a pictorial effect which might
have led his less gifted followers into a false style, but for
the example of the celebrated Palladio.”—M. D. W.
To the latest time of the Renaissance in Venice belongs
the picturesque domed church of St. Maria della Salute,
conspicuous in many views of the Grand Canal, a building
which is a work of real genius in spite of what is considered
its false taste. It dates from 1632. The architect
is Longhena.
Fig. 68.—The Church of the Redentore, Venice. (1576.)
An almost endless series of palaces and houses can be
found in Venice, all of them rich, but few of great extent,
for every foot of space had to be won from the sea
by laborious engineering. There are some features which
never fail to present themselves, and which are consequences
of the conditions under which the structures were
designed. All rise from the water, and require to admit
of gondolas coming under the walls; hence there is always
a principal central entrance with steps in front, but this
entrance never has any sort of projecting portico or porch,
and is never very much larger than the other openings in
the front. As a straight frontage to the water had to be
preserved, we hardly ever meet with such a thing as a break
or projection of any sort; but the Venetian architects have
found other means of giving interest to their elevations,
and it is to the very restrictions imposed by circumstances
that we owe the great originality displayed in their earlier
buildings. The churches do not usually front directly on
to the water; and though they are almost all good of their
kind, they are far more commonplace than the palaces.
The system of giving variety to the façade of the secular
buildings by massing openings near the centre, has been
already referred to. Both shadow and richness were also
aimed at in the employment of projecting balconies; in fact
the two usually go together, for the great central window
or group of windows mostly has a large and rich balcony
belonging to it.
Not far from Venice is Vicenza, and here Palladio, whose
best buildings in Venice are churches, such, for example,
as the Redentore (Fig. ), enjoyed an opportunity of
erecting a whole group of palaces, the fronts of which
are extremely remarkable as designs; though, being executed
in brick and plastered, they are now falling to ruin.
There is much variety in them, and while some of them
rely upon his device of lofty pilasters to include two storeys
of the building under one storey of architectural treatment,
others are handled differently. In all a singularly fine
feeling for proportion and for the appropriate omission as
well as introduction of ornament is to be detected. The
worst defect of these fronts is, however, that they appear
more like masks than the exteriors of buildings, for there
is little obvious connection between the features of the
exterior and anything which we may suppose to exist
inside the building. The finest architectural work left
behind by Palladio in this city are, however, the great
arcades with which he surrounded the Basilica, a vast
building of the middle ages already alluded to. These
arcades are two storeys high, and are rich, yet vigorous;
they ornament the great structure, the roof of which may
be seen rising behind, without overpowering it.
MILAN AND PAVIA.
In Milan two buildings at least belong to the early
Renaissance. These are the sacristy of Sta. Maria presso
San Satiro, and the eastern portion of the church of Sta.
Maria delle Grazie; Bramante was the architect of both.
The last-named work is an addition to an existing Gothic
church; it is executed in the terra-cotta and brick of
Lombardy, materials which the Renaissance architects
seemed to shun in later times, and is full of the most
profuse and elegant ornaments. The design consists of a
dome, treated externally a little like some of the Lombard
domes of earlier date; and three apses forming choir and
transepts. It is divided into several stages, and abundantly
varied in its panelling and arcading, and is full of
vigour. By Bramante is also the very beautiful arcaded
quadrangle of the great hospital at Milan, the Gothic front
of which has been already noticed. There are many
Renaissance buildings of later date in Milan, but none
very remarkable.
Fig. 69.—The Certosa near Pavia. Part of the West Front.
(Begun by Borgognone 1473.)
To the early period belongs the design of the façade of
the Certosa near Pavia, part of which is shown (Fig. ).
This was begun as early as 1473, by Ambrogio Borgognone,
and was long in hand. It proceeded on the lines settled thus
early, and is probably the richest façade belonging to any
church in Christendom; it is executed entirely in marble.
Sculpture is employed to adorn every part that is near
the eye, and especially the portal, which is flanked by
pilasters with their faces panelled and occupied by splendid
alti relievi. The upper part is enriched by inlays of costly
marbles, but the two systems of decoration do not thoroughly
harmonise; for the upper half looks coarse, which it in
reality is not, in contrast with the delicate richness of the
carving near the eye. The great features, such as the
entrance, the windows, and the angle pinnacles are
thoroughly good, and an arcade of small arches is twice
introduced,—once running completely across the front at
about half its height, and again near the top of the
central portion,—with excellent effect (see ).
GENOA, TURIN, AND NAPLES.
Turning now to Genoa we find, as we may in several
great cities of Italy, that very great success has been
achieved by an artist whose works are to be seen in no
other city, and whose fame is proportionally restricted.
Just as the power of Luini as a painter can only be fully
understood at Milan, or that of Giulio Romano at Mantua,
so the genius of Alessio (1500 to 1572) as an architect can
only be understood at Genoa. From the designs of this
architect were built a series of well planned and imposing
palaces. These buildings have most of them the advantage
of fine and roomy sites. The fronts are varied, but as a
rule consist of a very bold basement, with admirably-treated
vigorous mouldings, supporting a lighter superstructure, and
in one or two instances flanked by an open arcade at the
wings. The entrance gives access, through a vaulted hall,
to the cortile, which is usually planned and designed in
the most effective manner; and in several instances the
state staircase is so combined with this feature that on
ascending the first flight the visitor comes to a point of
sight for which the whole may be said to have been
designed, and from which a splendid composition of
columns and arches is seen. The rooms and galleries in
these palaces are very fine, and in several instances have
been beautifully decorated in fresco by Perino del Vaga.
Alessio was also the architect of a large domical church
(il Carignano) in the same city; but it is far inferior in
merit to his series of palaces. Genoa also possesses a
famous church (the Annunziata) of late Renaissance,
attributed to Puget (1622-1694). It is vaulted, and
enriched with marbles, mosaics, and colour to such an
extent that it may fairly claim to be the most gaudy church
in Italy, which is unfortunate, as its original undecorated
design is fine and simple.
Turin in the north, and Naples in the south, are chiefly
remarkable for examples of the latest and more or less
debased Renaissance, and we therefore do not propose to
illustrate or describe any of the buildings in either city.
COUNTRY VILLAS.
Fig. 70.—Villa Medici—On the Pincian Hill near Rome. By Annibale Lippi (now the Académie Française). (A.D. 1540.)
As the ancient Roman patrician had his villa, which
was his country resort, the Italian of the revival followed
his example, and, if he was wealthy enough, built himself
a pleasure house, which he called a villa, either in the
immediate suburbs of his city, or at some little distance
away in the country. These buildings occur throughout
Italy. Many of them are excellent examples of Renaissance
architecture of a more modest type than that of the
palaces. The Villa Papa Giulio, built from the designs of
Vignola, and the Villa Medici, designed by Annibale Lippi,
but attributed, for some unknown reason, to Michelangelo,
may be mentioned as among the most thoroughly architectural
out of some twenty or more splendid villas in the
suburbs of Rome alone. Many of these buildings were
erected late in the Renaissance period, and are better
worth attention for their fine decorations and the many
works of art collected within their walls than as architectural
studies—but this is not always the case; and as
they were mostly designed to serve the purpose of elegant
museums rather than that of country houses as we understand
the term, they usually possess noble interiors, and
exhibit throughout elaborate finish, choice materials, and
lavish outlay.
FOOTNOTES:
An entablature is the superstructure which ordinarily is carried
by a column, and which it is usual to divide into architrave (or beam),
frieze, and cornice.
An order consists of a column (or pilaster) with its distinctive
base and capital, its entablature, and the appropriate decorations.
There are five orders, differing in proportions, in the degree of enrichment
required, and in the design of the base and capital of the
column or pilaster, and of the entablature.
CHAPTER XII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE AND NORTH EUROPE.
CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
THE revived classic architecture came direct from
Italy, and did not reach France till it had been well
established in the land of its origin. It was not however
received with the same welcome which hailed its appearance
in Italy. Gothic architecture had a strong hold on
France, and accordingly, instead of a sudden change, we
meet with a period of transition, during which buildings
were erected with features partly Gothic and partly
Renaissance, and on varied principles of design.
French Renaissance underwent great fluctuations, and it
is less easy to divide it into broad periods than to refer, as
most French writers prefer to do, to the work of each
prominent monarch’s reign separately.
Francis the First (1515-1547) made the architecture
of Italy fashionable in his kingdom, and his name is borne
by the beautiful transitional style of his day. This in most
cases retains some Gothic forms, and the principles of composition
are in the main Gothic, but the features are mostly
of Italian origin, though handled with a fineness of detail
and a smallness of scale that is not often met with, even
in early Italian Renaissance. There are few buildings more
charming in the architecture of any age or country than
the best specimens of the style of Francis the First, and
none that can bear so much decoration and yet remain so
little overladen by the ornaments they carry. The finest
example is the Château of Chambord, a large building,
nearly square on plan, with round corner towers, capped
by simple and very steep roofs, at the angles; and having
as its central feature, a large and lofty mass of towers,
windows and arcades, surmounted by steep roofs, ending in
a kind of huge lantern. The windows have mullions and
transoms like Gothic windows, but pilasters of elegant
Renaissance design ornament the walls. The main cornice
is a kind of compromise between an Italian and a Gothic
treatment. Dormer windows, high and sharply pointed,
but with little pilasters and pediments as their ornaments,
occur constantly; and the chimneys, which are of immense
mass and great height, are panelled profusely, and almost
ostentatiously displayed, especially on the central portion.
In the interior of the central building is a famous staircase;
but the main attractions are the bright and animated
appearance of the whole exterior, and the richness and
gracefulness of the details.
The same architecture is to be well seen in the north
side of the famous Château of Blois—a building parts of
which were executed in three different periods of French
architecture. The exterior of the François premier part of
Blois is irregular, and portions of the design are wildly picturesque;
on the side which fronts towards the quadrangle,
the architecture is more symmetrically designed, and
beauty rather than picturesque effect has been aimed at.
An open staircase is the part of the quadrangle upon which
most care has been lavished. Throughout the whole block
of buildings the character of each individual feature and
of every combination of features is graceful and piquant.
The elegance and delicacy of some of the carved decoration
in the interior is unsurpassed.
Fig. 71.—Window from a House at Orleans. (Early 16th Century.)
In the valley of the Loire there exist many noblemen’s
châteaux of this date, corresponding in general
character with Chambord and Blois, though on a smaller
scale. Of these Chénonceaux, fortunate alike in its
design and its situation, is the most elegant and the best
known: yet many others exist which approach it closely,
such, for example, as the Château de Gaillon—a fragment
of which forms part of the École des Beaux Arts at Paris—the
Hôtel de Ville of Beaugency, the Châteaux of
Châteaudun, Azay-le-Rideau, La Cote, and Ussé; the
Hôtel d’Anjou at Angers, and the house of Agnes Sorel
at Orleans.
In the streets of Orleans houses of this date (Fig. )
are to be found, showing the style cleverly adapted to
the requirements of town dwellings and shops. Several
of them also possess courtyards with arcades or other
architectural features treated with great freedom and
beauty, for instance, the arcades in the house of François
Premier (Fig. ). An arcade in the courtyard of the
Gothic Hôtel de Bourgtherould at Rouen, is one of the
best known examples of the style remaining, and instances
of it may be met with as far apart as at Caen
(east end of church of St. Pierre) and Toulouse (parts of
St. Sernin).
One Paris church, that of St. Eustache, belonging to
this transitional period claims mention, since for boldness
and completeness it is one of the best of any date
in that city. St. Eustache is a five-aisled church with
an apse, transept, and lateral chapels outside the outer
aisle. It is vaulted throughout, and its plan and
structure are those of a Gothic church in all respects. Its
details are however all Renaissance, but not so good as
those to be found at Blois, nor so appropriately used,
yet notwithstanding this it has a singularly impressive
interior.
Fig. 72.—Capital from the House of Francis I., Orleans. (1540.)
Meantime, and alongside the buildings resulting from
this fusion of styles, others which were almost direct
importations from Italy were rising; in some cases, if not
in all, under the direction of Italian architects. Thus on
Fontainebleau, which Francis I. erected, three or four
Italian architects, one of whom was Vignola, were engaged.
It may or may not have been this connection of the great
architect with this work which gave him influence in
France, but certainly almost the whole of the later
French Renaissance, or at any rate its good time, was
marked by a conformity to the practice of Vignola, in
whose designs we usually find one order of columns or
pilasters for each storey, rather than to that of Palladio,
whose use of tall columns equalling in height two or more
floors of the building has been already noticed.
Designs for the Louvre, the rebuilding of which was
commenced in the reign of Francis the First (about A.D.
1544), were made by Serlio, an Italian; and though Pierre
Lescot was the architect of the portion built in that reign,
it is probable that the design obtained from Serlio was
in the main followed. The part then finished, which, to a
certain extent gave the keynote to the whole of this vast
building, was unquestionably a happy effort, and may be
taken to mark the establishment of a French version of
matured Renaissance architecture. The main building has
two orders of pilasters with cornices, &c., and above them
a low attic storey, with short piers: at the angles a taller
pavilion was introduced, and next the quadrangle arcades
are introduced between the pilasters. The sculpture, some
of it at least, is from the chisel of Jean Goujon; it is
good and well placed, and the whole has an air of dignity
and richness. The Pavillon Richelieu, shewn in our engraving
(Fig. ), was not built till the next century. The
colossal figures are by Barye.
A little later in date than the early part of the Louvre
was the Hôtel de Ville, built from the designs of Pietro
da Cortona, an Italian, and said to have been begun in
1549. The building had been greatly extended before
its recent total destruction by fire, but the central part,
which was the original portion, was a fine vigorous composition,
having two lofty pavilions, with high roofs at the
extremities, and a remarkably rich stone lantern of great
height for a central feature.
Fig. 73.—Pavillon Richelieu of the Louvre, Paris.
In the reign of Charles IX. the Palace of the Tuileries
was commenced (1564) for Catherine de Médicis, from the
designs of Philibert Delorme. Of this building, that part
only which fronted the garden was erected at the time.
Our illustration (Fig. ) shows the architectural character
of a portion of it, and it is easy to detect that
considerable alterations have by this time been introduced
into the treatment of the features of Renaissance architecture.
The bands of rustication passing round the pilasters
as well as the walls, the broken pediments on the upper
storey, surmounted by figures, and supported by long
carved pilasters, and the shape of the dormer windows
are all of them quite foreign to Renaissance architecture
as practised in Italy, and may be looked upon as essentially
French features. Similar details were employed in the
work executed at about the same period, by the same and
other architects, in other buildings, as may be seen by our
illustration (Fig. ) of a portion of Delorme’s work at
the Louvre. In these features, which may be found in
the Château d’Anet and other works of the same time,
and in the style to which they belong, may be seen the
direct result of Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel at Florence,
a work which had much more effect on French than on
Italian architecture. The full development of the architecture
of Michelangelo (or rather the ornamental portions
of it) is to be found in French Renaissance, rather than
in the works of his own successors in Italy.
Much of the late sixteenth century architecture of France
was very inferior, and the parts of the Louvre and Tuileries
which date from the reign of Henry IV. are the least
satisfactory portions of those vast piles.
Fig. 74.—Part of the Tuileries, Paris. (Begun 1564.)
Dating from the early part of the seventeenth century,
we have the Palais Royal built for Richelieu, and the
Palace of the Luxembourg, a building perhaps more correct
and quiet than original or beautiful, but against which
the reproach of extravagant ornament cannot certainly be
brought.
Fig. 75.—Capital from Delorme’s work at the Louvre.
(Middle of 16th Century.)
With Louis the Fourteenth (1643 to 1715) came in a
great building period, of which the most striking memorial
is the vast and uninteresting Palace of Versailles. The
architect was the younger Mansard (1647 to 1768), and
the vastness of the scale upon which he worked only
makes his failure to rise to his grand opportunity the more
conspicuous. The absence of features to diversify the sky-line
is one of the greatest defects of this building, a defect
the less excusable as the high-pitched roof of Gothic origin
had never been abandoned in France. This roof has been
employed with great success in many buildings of the
French Renaissance. Apart from this fault, the architectural
features of Versailles are so monotonous, weak,
and uninteresting that the building, though its size may
astonish the spectator, seldom rouses admiration.
Far better is the eastern block of the Louvre (the portion
facing the Place du Louvre), though here also we find
the absence of high roofs, and the consequent monotony of
the sky-line—a defect attaching to hardly any other
portion of the building. Bernini was invited from Italy
for this work, and there is a curious story in one of Sir
Christopher Wren’s published letters of an interview he
had with Bernini while the latter was in Paris on this
business, and of the glimpse which he was allowed to enjoy
of the design the Italian had made. The building was, however,
after all, designed and carried out by Perrault, and,
though somewhat severe, possesses great beauty and much
of that dignity in which Versailles is wanting.
The best French work of this epoch to be found in or
out of Paris is probably the Hôtel des Invalides (Fig. ),
with its fine central feature. This is crowned by the most
striking dome in Paris, one which takes rank as second only
in Europe to our own St. Paul’s, for beauty of form and
appropriateness of treatment. The two domes are indeed
somewhat alike in general outline.
The reign of Louis XIV. witnessed a large amount of
building throughout France, as well as in the metropolis,
and to the same period we must refer an enormous amount
of lavish decoration in the interior of buildings, the taste
of which is to our eyes painfully extravagant. Purer taste
on the whole prevailed, if not in the reign of Louis XV.
certainly in that of Louis XVI., to which period much really
good decorative work, and some successful architecture
belongs. The chief building of the latter part of the
eighteenth century is the Pantheon (Ste. Geneviève), the
best domed church in France, and one which must always
take a high rank among Renaissance buildings of any age
or country. The architect was Soufflot, and his ambition,
like that of the old Gothic masons, was not only to produce
a work of art, but a feat of skill; his design accordingly
provided a smaller area of walls and piers compared with
the total floor space than any other Renaissance church, or
indeed than any great church, except a few of the very best
specimens of late Gothic construction, such for example as
King’s College Chapel. The result has been that the fabric
has not been quite stout enough to bear the weight of the
dome, and that it has required to be tied and propped and
strengthened in various ways from time to time. The plan
of the Pantheon is a Greek cross, with a short vestibule, and
a noble portico at the west, and a choir corresponding to the
vestibule on the east. It has a fine central dome, which is
excellently seen from many points of view externally, and
forms the principal feature of the very effective interior.
Each arm of the building is covered by a flat domical
vault; a single order of pilasters and columns runs quite
round the interior of the church occupying the entire
height of the walls; and the light is admitted in a most
successful manner by large semicircular windows at the
upper part of the church, starting above the cornice of
the order.
Fig. 76.—L’Église des Invalides, Paris. By J. H. Mansard.
(Begun A.D. 1645.)
One other work of the eighteenth century challenges the
admiration of every visitor to Paris and must not be overlooked,
because it is at once a specimen of architecture
and of that skilful if formal arrangement of streets and
public places in combination with buildings which the
French have carried so far in the present century. We allude
to the two blocks of buildings, occupied as government
offices, which front to the Place de la Concorde and stand
at the corner of the Rue Royale. They are the work of
Gabriel (1710-1782), and are justly admired as dignified
if a little heavy and uninteresting. As specimens of architecture
these buildings, with the Pantheon, are enough to
establish a high character for French art at a time when
in most other European countries the standard of taste
had fallen to a very low level.
The hôtels (i.e. town mansions) and châteaux of the
French nobility furnish a series of examples, showing the
successive styles of almost every part of the Renaissance
period. The phases of the style, subsequent to that of
Francis the First, can however, be so well illustrated by
public buildings in Paris, that it will be hardly necessary
to go through a list of private residences however commanding;
but the Château of Maisons, and the Royal Château
of Fontainebleau, may be named as specimens of a class of
building which shows the capacity of the Renaissance style
when freely treated.
Renaissance buildings in France are distinguished by
their large extent and the ample space which has been in
many instances secured in connection with them. They
are rarely of great height or imposing mass like the early
Italian palaces. For the most part they are a good deal
broken up, the surface of the walls is much covered by
architectural features, not usually on a large scale, so that
the impression of extent which really belongs to them is
intensified by the treatment which their architects have
adopted.
Orders are frequently introduced and usually correspond
with the storeys of the building. However this may be
the storeys are always well marked. The sky-line also
is generally picturesque and telling, though Versailles and
the work of Lescot at the Louvre form an exception.
Rustication is not much employed, and the vast but simple
crowning cornices of the Italian palaces are never made
use of. Narrow fronts like those at Venice, and open
arcades or loggias like those of Genoa, do not form features
of French Renaissance buildings; but on the other hand,
much richness, and many varieties of treatment which the
Italians never attempted, were tried, and as a rule successfully,
in France.
Much good sculpture is employed in external enrichments,
and a cultivated if often luxuriant taste is always
shown. Many of the interiors are rich with carving,
gilding, and mirrors, but harmonious coloured decoration is
rare, and the fine and costly mosaics of Italy are almost
unknown.
BELGIUM AND THE NETHERLANDS.
These countries afford but few examples of Renaissance.
The Town Hall at Antwerp, an interesting building of the
sixteenth century, and the Church of St. Anne at Bruges,
are the most conspicuous buildings; and there are other
churches in the style which are characteristic, and parts of
which are really fine. The interiors of some of the town
halls display fittings of Renaissance character, often rich
and fanciful in the extreme, and bearing a general
resemblance to French work of the same period.
Fig. 77.—Window from Colmar. (1575.)
Fig. 78.—Zeughaus, Dantzic. (1605.)
GERMANY AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
Buildings of pure Renaissance architecture, anterior to
the nineteenth century, are scarce in Germany, or indeed
in North-east Europe; but a transitional style, resembling
our own Elizabethan, grew up and long held its ground, so
that many picturesque buildings can be met with, of which
the design indicates a fusion of the ideas and features of
Gothic with those of classic art. This architectural style
took so strong a hold that examples of it may be found
throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in
almost every northern town.
That part of the Castle of Heidelberg, which was built
at the beginning of the seventeenth century, may be cited
as belonging to this German transitional style. The front
in this case is regularly divided by pilasters of the classic
orders, but very irregular in their proportions and position.
The windows are strongly marked, and with carved mullions.
Large dormer windows break into the high roof; ornaments
abound, and the whole presents a curiously blended
mixture of the regular and the picturesque. Rather
earlier in date, and perhaps rather more Gothic in their
general treatment, are such buildings as the great Council
Hall at Rothenberg (1572), that at Leipzig (1556), the
Castle of Stuttgart (1553), with its picturesque arcaded
quadrangle, or the lofty and elaborate Cloth Hall at
Brunswick.
Fig. 79.—Council-house at Leyden. (1599.)
Examples of similar character abound in the old inns
of Germany and Switzerland, and many charming features,
such as the window from Colmar (Fig. ), dated 1575,
which forms one of our illustrations could be brought
forward. Another development of the same mixed style
may be illustrated by the Zeug House at Dantzic (1605),
of which we give the rear elevation (Fig. ). Not
altogether dissimilar from these in character is the finely-designed
Castle of Fredericksberg at Copenhagen, testifying
to the wide spread of the phase of architecture to
which we are calling attention. The date of this building
is 1610. A richer example, but one little if at all
nearer to Italian feeling, is the Council House at Leyden,
a portion of which we illustrate (Fig. ). This building
dates from 1599, and bears more resemblance to English
Elizabethan in its ornaments, than to the architecture of
any other country.
Simultaneously with these, some buildings made their
appearance in Germany, which, though still picturesque,
showed the dawn of a wish to adopt the features of pure
Renaissance. The quadrangle of the Castle of Schalaburg
(Fig. ), may be taken as a specimen of the adoption of
Renaissance ideas as well as forms. It is in effect an Italian
cortile, though more ornate than Italian architects would
have made it. It was built in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, and seems to point to a wish to make use of the
new style with but little admixture of northern ornament
or treatment.
When architecture had quite passed through the transition
period, which fortunately lasted long, the buildings,
not only of Germany, but of the north generally, became
uninteresting and tame; in fact, they present so few distinguishing
features, that it is not necessary to describe or
illustrate them. Russia, it is true, contains a few striking
buildings belonging to the eighteenth century, but most
of those which we might desire to refer to, were built
subsequent to the close of that century.
Fig. 80.—Quadrangle of the Castle of Schalaburg.
(Late 16th Century.)
CHAPTER XIII.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND
PORTUGAL.
ENGLAND.—CHRONOLOGICAL SKETCH.
IN England, as in France and Germany, the introduction
of the Italian Renaissance was not accomplished
without a period of transition. The architecture of this
period is known as Elizabethan, though it lasted long after
Elizabeth’s reign. Sometimes it is called Tudor; but it is
more convenient and not unusual to limit the term Tudor
to the latest phase of English Gothic.
Probably the earliest introduction into any English building
of a feature derived from the newly-revived classic
sources is in the tomb of Henry VII. in Westminster Abbey.
The grille inclosing this is of good, though late Gothic
design; but when the tomb itself came to be set up, for
which a contract was made with Torregiano in 1512, it was
Italian in its details. The earliest examples of Renaissance
features actually built into a structure, so far as we are
aware, is in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Layer Marney
House in Essex, which it is certain was erected prior to
1525. It is however long—surprisingly long—after this
period before we come upon the traces of a general use of
Renaissance details. In fact, up to the accession of
Elizabeth (1558) they appear to have been little employed.
It is however said that early in her reign the treatises
on Renaissance architecture of Philibert de l’Orme and
Lomazzo were translated from Italian into English, and in
1563 John Shute published a book on Italian architecture.
John of Padua, an Italian architect, was brought to this
country by Henry VIII. and practised here; and Theodore
Havenius of Cleves was employed as architect in the
buildings of Caius College, Cambridge (1565-1574). These
two foreigners undoubtedly played an important part
in a change of taste which, though not general so early,
certainly did commence before Elizabeth’s death in 1603.
At the two universities, and in many localities throughout
England, new buildings and enlargements of old ones
were carried out during the long and prosperous reign of
Elizabeth; and the style in which they were built will be
found to have admitted of very great latitude. Where
the intention was to obtain an effect of dignity or state,
the classic principles of composition were more or less
followed. The buildings at Caius College, Cambridge,
Longleat, built between 1567 and 1579 by John of Padua,
Woollaton, built about 1580 by Smithson, and Burleigh
(built 1577), may be named as instances of this. On the
other hand where a manorial or only a domestic character
was desired, the main lines of the building are Gothic, but
the details, in either case, are partly Gothic and partly
modified Renaissance. This description will apply to such
buildings as Knowle, Penshurst, Hardwick, Hatfield,
Bramshill, or Holland House (Fig. ). In the introductory
chapter some account has been given, in general
terms, of the features familiar to most and endeared to
many, which mark these peculiarly English piles of buildings;
those remarks may be appropriately continued
here.
Fig. 81.—Holland House at Kensington. (1607.)
The hall of Gothic houses was still retained, but only as
one of a series of fine apartments. In many cases English
mansions had no internal quadrangle, and are built as large
solid blocks with boldly projecting wings. They are often
of three storeys in height, the roofs are frequently of flat
pitch, and in that case are hidden behind a parapet which is
sometimes of fantastic design. Where the roofs are steeper
and not concealed the gables are frequently of broken outline.
Windows are usually very large, and with mullions
and transoms, and it is to these large openings that Elizabethan
interiors owe their bright and picturesque effects.
Entrances are generally adorned with some classic or semi-classic
features, often, however, much altered from their
original model; here balustrades, ornamental recesses,
stone staircases, and similar formal surroundings are
commonly found, and are generally arranged with excellent
judgment, though often quaint in design.
“This style is characterised by a somewhat grotesque
application of the ancient orders and ornaments, by large
and picturesquely-formed masses, spacious staircases, broad
terraces, galleries of great length (at times 100 feet long),
orders placed on orders, pyramidal gables formed of scroll-work
often pierced, large windows divided by mullions and
transoms, bay windows, pierced parapets, angle turrets,
and a love of arcades. The principal features in the ornament
are pierced scroll-work, strap-work, and prismatic
rustication, combined with boldly-carved foliage (usually
conventional) and roughly-formed figures.”—M. D. W.
Interiors are bright and with ample space; very richly
ornamented plaster ceilings are common; the walls of
main rooms are often lined with wainscot panelling, and
noble oak staircases are frequent.
In the reign of James I., our first Renaissance architect
of mark, Inigo Jones (1572-1652) became known. He was
a man of taste and genius, and had studied in Italy. He
executed many works, the designs for which were more or
less in the style of Palladio. These include the addition
of a portico to the (then Gothic) cathedral of St. Paul’s,
and a magnificent design for a palace which Charles I.
desired to build at Whitehall. A fragment of this building,
now known as the Chapel Royal Whitehall, was
erected, and small though it be, has done much by
its conspicuous position and great beauty, to keep up a
respect for Inigo Jones’s undoubted high attainments as
an artist.
More fortunate than Inigo Jones, Christopher Wren
(1632-1723) had just attained a high position as a young
man of science, skill, and cultivation, and as the architect
of the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford, when in 1666 the
great fire of London destroyed the Metropolitan Cathedral,
the parochial churches, the Royal Exchange, the Companies’
Halls, and an immense mass of private property in
London, and created an opportunity which made great
demands upon the energy, skill, and fertility of design
of the architect who might attempt to grasp it. Fortunately,
Wren was equal to the occasion, and he has endowed
London with a Cathedral which takes rank among the
very foremost Renaissance buildings in Europe, as well
as a magnificent series of parochial churches, and other
public buildings. It is not pretended that his works are
free from defects, but there can be no question that admitting
anything which can be truly said against them,
they are works of artistic genius, full of fresh and original
design, and exhibiting rare sagacity in their practical
contrivance and construction.
St. Paul’s stands second only to St. Peter’s as a great
domical cathedral of Renaissance architecture. It falls far
short of its great rival in actual size and internal effect,
and is all but entirely devoid of that decoration in which
St. Peter’s is so rich. On the other hand, the exterior of
St. Paul’s (Fig. ) is far finer, and as the English cathedral
had the good fortune to be erected entirely from the plans
and under the supervision of one architect, it is a building
consistent with itself throughout, which, as we have seen,
is more than can be said of St. Peter’s.
The plan of St. Paul’s is a Latin cross, with well
marked transepts, a large portico, and two towers at the
western entrance; an apse of small size forms the end of
the eastern arm, and of each of the transepts; a great
dome covers the crossing; the cathedral has a crypt raising
the main floor considerably, and its side walls are carried
high above the aisle roofs so as to hide the clerestory
windows from sight.
The dome is very cleverly planted on eight piers instead
of four at the crossing, and is a triple structure; for
between the dome seen from within, and the much higher
dome seen from without, a strong cone of brickwork rises
which bears the weight of the stone lantern and ball and
cross that surmount the whole. The skill with which the
dome is made the central feature of a pyramidal composition
whatever be the point of view, the great beauty of
the circular colonnade immediately below the dome, the
elegant outline of the western towers, and the unusual
but successful distribution of the great portico, are among
the most noteworthy elements which go to make up the
charm of this very successful exterior.
Fig. 82.—St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. (1675-1710.)
Wren may be said to have introduced to Renaissance
architecture the tower and spire, for though many examples
occur in Spain, there is reason to suppose that he was
before the architects of that country in his employment of
that feature. He has enriched the City of London with
a large number of steeples, which are Gothic so far as their
general idea goes, but thoroughly classic in details, and
all more or less distinctive. The most famous of these is
the one belonging to Bow Church; others of note belong
to St. Clement Danes and St. Bride, Fleet Street.
The interiors of some of these churches, as for example
St. Stephen, Walbrook, St. Andrew, Holborn, and St.
James, Piccadilly, are excellent both for their good design
and artistic treatment, and for their being well contrived
and arranged for the special purposes they were intended
to fill.
Wren’s secular works were considerable. The Sheldonian
Theatre at Oxford, the library of Trinity College,
Cambridge, and the theatre of the College of Physicians
London (long since disused), are a group of special buildings
each of which was undoubtedly a remarkable and
successful work. Chelsea and Greenwich hospitals are noteworthy
as among the first specimens of those great buildings
for public purposes in which England is now so rich,
and which to a certain extent replace the monastic establishments
of the middle ages. At Chelsea the building is
simple and dignified. Without lavish outlay, or the use
of expensive materials, much ornament, or any extraneous
features, an artistic and telling effect has been produced,
such as few hospitals or asylums since built have equalled.
Greenwich takes a higher level, and though Wren’s work
had the disadvantage of having to be accommodated to
buildings already erected by another architect, this building,
with its twin domes, its rich outline, and its noble and
dignified masses, will always reflect honour upon its
designer. The view of Greenwich hospital from the river
may fairly be said to be unique for beauty and picturesqueness.
At Greenwich, too, we meet with some of that skill
in associating buildings and open spaces together which is
so much more common in France than in this country, and
by the exercise of which the architecture of a good building
can be in so many ways set off.
Wren, like Inigo Jones, has left behind him a great
unexecuted design which in many respects is more noble
than anything that he actually built. This is his earlier
design for St. Paul’s Cathedral, which he planned as a
Greek cross, with an ampler dome than the present
cathedral possesses, but not so lofty. A large model
of this design exists. Had it been carried out the
exterior of the building would probably not have appeared
so commanding, perhaps not so graceful, as it
actually is; but the interior would have surpassed all the
churches of the style in Europe, both by the grandeur of
the vast arched space under the dome and by the intricacy
and beauty of the various vistas and combinations of
features, for which its admirably-designed plan makes
provision.
Wren had retired from practice before his death in 1723.
His immediate successors were Hawksmoor, whose works
were heavy and uninteresting, and Sir James Vanbrugh.
Vanbrugh was a man of genius and has a style of his own,
“bold, original, and pictorial.” His greatest and best
work is Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, built for the Duke of
Marlborough. This fine mansion, equal to any French
château in extent and magnificence, is planned with much
dignity. The entrance front looks towards a large space,
inclosed right and left by low buildings, which prolong
the wings of the main block. The angles of the wings
and the centre are masked by two colonnades of quadrant
shape, and the central entrance with lofty columns which
form a grand portico, is a noble composition.
The three garden fronts of Blenheim are all fine, and
there is a magnificent entrance hall, but the most successful
part of the interior is the library, a long and lofty gallery,
occupying the entire flank of the house and treated with
the most picturesque variety both of plan and ornament.
Vanbrugh also built Castle Howard, Grimesthorpe,
Wentworth, King’s Weston, as well as many other country
mansions of more moderate size.
Campbell, Kent, and Gibbs are the best known names
next in succession. Of these Campbell is most famous as
an author, but Gibbs (1674-1754) is the architect of two
prominent London churches—St. Martin’s and St. Mary
le Strand, in which the general traditions of Wren’s
manner are ably followed. He was the architect of the
Radcliffe Library at Oxford. Kent (1684-1748) was the
architect of Holkham, the Treasury Buildings, and the
Horse Guards. He was associated with the Earl of
Burlington, who acquired a high reputation as an amateur
architect, which the design of Burlington House (now remodelled
for the Royal Academy), went far to justify.
Probably the technical part of this and other designs was
supplied by Kent.
Sir William Chambers (1726-1796) was the architect
of Somerset House, a building of no small merit, notwithstanding
that it is tame and very bare of sculpture.
This building is remarkable as one of the few in London
in which the Italian feature of an interior quadrangle is
attempted to be reproduced. Chambers wrote a treatise
which has become a general text-book of revived classical
architecture for English students. Contemporary with him
were the brothers John and Robert Adam, who built
much, and began to introduce a severity of treatment and
a fineness of detail which correspond to some extent to
the French style of Louis XVI. The interior decorations
in plaster by these architects are of great elegance and
often found in old houses in London, as in Hanover
Square, on the Adelphi Terrace, and elsewhere. The
list of the eighteenth century architects closes with the
names of Sir Robert Taylor and the two Dances, one of
whom built the Mansion House and the other Newgate;
and Stuart, who built several country mansions, but who
is best known for the magnificent work on the antiquities
of Athens, which he and Revett published together in
1762, and which went far to create a revolution in public
taste; for before the close of the century there was
a general cry for making every building and every
ornamental detail purely and solely Greek.
The architects above named, and others of less note were
much employed during the eighteenth century in the
*** of large country houses of Italian, usually Palladian
design, many of them extremely incongruous and
unsatisfactory. Here and there a design better than the
average was obtained, but as a rule these stately but cold
buildings are very far inferior to the picturesque and
home-like manors and mansions built during the reigns
of Elizabeth and James I.
Fig. 83.—Houses at Chester. (16th Century.)
It is worth notice that the picturesque element, inherited
from the Gothic architecture of the middle ages, which
before the eighteenth century had completely vanished
from our public buildings, and the mansions of the wealthy
did not entirely die out of works executed in remote places.
In the half-timbered manors and farmhouses which
abound in Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire,
and in other minor works, we always find a tinge,
sometimes a very full colouring, of the picturesque and the
irregular; the gables are sharp, upper storeys overhang, and
the treatment of the timbers is thoroughly Gothic (Fig. );
so are the mouldings, transoms and mullions to the windows,
and barge boards to the roofs. In the reign of James I.
a mode of enriching the exteriors of dwelling-houses, as
well as their ceilings, chimney-pieces, &c., with ornaments
modelled in plaster came in, and though the remaining
specimens are from year to year disappearing, yet in
some old towns (e.g. in Ipswich) examples of this sort of
treatment (known as Jacobean) still linger.
In Queen Anne’s reign a semi-Gothic version of Renaissance
architecture was practised, to which great attention
has been directed in the present day. The Queen Anne
style is usually carried out in brickwork, executed in red
bricks and often most admirable in its workmanship.
Pilasters, cornices, and panels are executed in cut bricks,
and for arches, niches, and window heads very finely
jointed bricks are employed. The details are usually
Renaissance, but of debased character; a crowning cornice
of considerable projection under a high-pitched hipped
roof (i.e. one sloping back every way like a truncated
pyramid) is commonly employed; so also are gables of
broken outline. Dormer windows rich and picturesque, and
high brick chimneys are also employed; so are bow windows,
often carried on concave corbels of a clumsy form. Prominence
is given in this style to the joiner’s work; the
windows, which are usually sash windows, are heavily
moulded and divided into small squares by wooded sash bars.
The doors have heavily moulded panels, and are often surmounted
by pediments carried by carved brackets or by
pilasters; in the interiors the woodwork of staircases
such as the balusters, newel posts, and handrails is treated
in a very effective and well considered way, the greater
part of the work being turned on the lathe and enriched
with mouldings extremely well designed for execution in
that manner. By this style and the modifications of it
which were more or less practised till they finally died
out, the traditional picturesqueness of English architecture
which it had inherited from the middle ages was kept
alive, so that it has been handed down, in certain localities
almost, if not quite, to the present century.
SCOTLAND.
The architecture of Scotland during the sixteenth and
succeeding centuries possesses exceptional interest. It
was the case here, as it had been in England, that the most
important buildings of the time were domestic; the ***
of churches and monasteries had ceased.
The castles and semi-fortified houses of Scotland form a
group apart, possessing strongly-marked and well-defined
character; they are designed in a mixed style in which the
Gothic elements predominated over the classic ones. But
the Scottish domestic Gothic, from which the new style
was partly derived, had borne little or no resemblance to
the florid Tudor of England. It was the severe and simple
architecture of strongholds built with stubborn materials,
and on rocky sites, where there was little inducement to
indulge in decoration. Dunstaffnage or Kilchurn Castles
may be referred to as examples of these plain, gloomy
keeps with their stepped gables, small loops for windows,
and sometimes angle turrets.
The classic elements of the style were not drawn (as had
been the case in England) direct from Italy, but came from
France. The Scotch, during their long struggles with the
English, became intimately allied with the French, and it
is therefore not surprising that Scottish Baronial architecture
should resemble the early Renaissance of French
châteaux very closely. The hardness of the stone in which
the Scotch masons wrought forbade their attempting the
extremely delicate detail of the François I. ornament,
executed as it is in fine, easily-worked stone of smooth texture;
and the difference in the climate of the two countries
justified in Scotland a boldness which would have appeared
exaggerated and extreme in France. Accordingly the style
in passing from one country to the other has changed its
details to no inconsiderable extent.
Many castles were erected in the sixteenth and following
centuries in Scotland, or were enlarged and altered; the
most characteristic features in almost all of them are short
round angle turrets, thrown out upon bold corbellings near
the upper part of towers and other square masses. These
are often capped by pointed roofs; and the corbels which
carry them, and which are always of bold, vigorous character,
are frequently enriched by a kind of cable ornament,
which is very distinctive. Towers of circular plan,
like bastions, and projecting from the general line of the
walls, or at the angles, constantly occur. They are frequently
crowned by conical roofs, but sometimes (as at
Fyvie Castle) they are made square near the top by means
of a series of corbels, and finished with gables or otherwise.
Parapets are in general use, and are almost always battlemented.
Roofs, when visible, are of steep pitch, and their
gables are almost always of stepped outline, while dormer
windows, frequently of fantastic form, are not infrequent.
Chimneys are prominent and lofty. Windows are square-headed,
and, as a rule, small; sometimes they retain the
Gothic mullions and transom, but in many cases these
features are absent. Doorways are generally arched, and
not often highly ornamented.
Cawdor Castle, Glamis Castle, Fyvie Castle, Castle
Fraser, the old portions of Dunrobin Castle, Tyninghame
House, the extremely picturesque palace at Falkland, and
a considerable part of Stirling Castle, may be all quoted
as good specimens of this thoroughly national style, but
it would be easy to name two or three times as many
buildings nearly, if not quite, equal to these in architectural
merit.
Heriot’s Hospital, Edinburgh, may be quoted (with part
of Holyrood Palace) as showing the style of the seventeenth
century. Heriot’s Hospital was built between the
years 1628 and 1660. It is built round a great quadrangle,
and has square towers at the four corners, each
relieved by small corbelled angle turrets. The entrance
displays columns and an entablature of debased but not
unpleasing Renaissance architecture, and the building
altogether resembles an English Elizabethan or Jacobean
building to a greater extent than most Scottish designs.
When this picturesque style, which appears indeed to
have retained its hold for long, at last died out, very little
of any artistic value was substituted for it. Late in the
eighteenth century, it is true, the Brothers Adam erected
public buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and carried
out various works of importance in a classic style which
has certainly some claim to respect; but if correct it was
tame and uninteresting, and a poor exchange for the
vigorous vitality which breathes in the works of the
architects of the early Renaissance in Scotland.
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL.
In the Spanish peninsula, Renaissance architecture ran
through three phases, very strongly distinguished from
one another, each being marked by peculiarities of more
than ordinary prominence. The early stage, to which the
Spaniards give the name of Plateresco, exhibits the same
sort of fusion of Gothic with classic which we find in
France and Scotland. The masses are often simple, but
the individual features are overladen with an extravagant
amount of ornament, and, as in France, many things which
are essentially Gothic, such as pinnacles, gargoyles, and
parapets, are retained. The Renaissance style was introduced
at the latter part of the fifteenth century, and a
very considerable number of buildings to which the description
given above will apply were erected prior to
the middle of the sixteenth. Among these may be enumerated
the cathedral at Granada, the Hospital of Santa Cruz
at Toledo (1504-1514), the dome of Burgos Cathedral
(1567), the Cathedral of Malaga, San Juan della Penitencia
at Toledo (1511), the façade of the Alcazar at Toledo
(1548), the Town Hall (1551), and Casa Zaporta (1560) at
Zarragoza, and the Town Hall of Seville (1559).
A great number of tombs, staircases, doorways, and
other smaller single features, executed during this period
from the designs of good artists, are to be found scattered
through the country. “These Renaissance monuments
exhibit an extraordinary degree of variety in their
ornaments, which are of the most fantastic nature; an
exuberant fancy would seem to have sought a vent, especially
in the sculptured ornament of the style, which though
at times crowded, overladen, and we must add disfigured
by the most grotesque ideas, is very striking for its
originality and excellent workmanship.”—(M. D. W.)
Fig. 84.—The Alcazar at Toledo. (Begun 1568.)
The second phase of Spanish architecture was marked
by a plain and simple dignity, equally in contrast with the
Plateresco which had preceded it and with the extravagant
style to which it at length gave place. The earliest
architect who introduced into Spain an architectural style
founded on the best examples of Italy, was Juan Baptista
de Toledo. He in the year 1563 commenced the Escurial
Palace—the Versailles of Spain; but the principal part
of the building was erected by his more celebrated pupil,
Juan de Herrera, who carried on the works during the
years from 1567 to 1579. This building, one of the most
extensive palaces in Europe, is noble in its external
aspect from a distance, thanks to its great extent, its fine
central dome, and its many towers, but it is disappointing
when approached. Of the interior the most noteworthy
feature is a magnificently decorated church, of great size
and unusual arrangement; and this dignified central feature
has raised the Escurial, in spite of many faults, to the
position of the most famous and probably most deservedly
admired among the great Renaissance palaces of Europe.
By the same architect numerous buildings were erected,
among others the beautiful, if somewhat cold, arcaded
interior of the Alcazar of Toledo (Fig. ), which may be
taken as a fair specimen of the noble qualities to be found
in his dignified and comparatively simple designs. About
the middle of the sixteenth century Charles V. erected his
palace at Granada; but here the architecture is strongly
coloured by Italian or French examples, and much of
the building resembles Perrault’s work at the Louvre
very closely. Herrera and his school were probably too
severe in taste to suit the fancy of their countrymen, for
Spanish architecture in the eighteenth century fell a victim
to debased forms and a fantastic and exaggerated style
of ornament. Churriguera was the architect who has the
credit of having introduced this unfortunate third manner,
and has lent it his name. For a time “Churriguerismo”
found general acceptance, and the century closed under its
influence.
We must not pass over the excellent and varied Renaissance
towers and steeples of Spain in silence. They are
not unlike Wren’s spires in general idea; they are to be
met with in many parts of the country attached to the
churches, and their variety and picturesqueness increase
the claim of Spanish architecture to our respect.
The one Renaissance building in Portugal which has
been much illustrated, and is spoken of in high terms,
is the Convent at Mafra, a building of the eighteenth
century, of great extent and picturesque effect. Great skill
is shown in dealing with the unwieldy bulk of an overgrown
establishment which does not yield even to the
Escurial in point of extent. We are, however, up to the
present time without the means of forming an opinion
upon the nature and value of the architecture of Portugal
as a whole.
INDEX.
See also at beginning.
Adam, John and Robert, .
Alberti, Architect, .
Amiens Cathedral, , .
Andernach, Church at, .
Anne, Queen, Style of, .
Arnstein Abbey, .
Baptista, Architect, .
Batalha, Monastery at, , .
Beauvais Cathedral, Interior, .
Belgium and Netherlands, Gothic, .
—— Renaissance, .
Bernini, Architect, , ,
.
Blenheim, .
Blois, Château of, .
Blois, Capital from St. Nicholas, .
Bourges, House of Jaques Cœur, .
Bramante, Architect, , ,
.
Brunelleschi, Architect, , .
Buttresses, .
Caen, Saint Pierre at, .
Cambridge, King’s College, .
Campaniles in Italy, .
Capitals, Gothic, .
Certosa, near Pavia, , .
Chambers, Architect, .
Chambord, Château of, .
Chartres, Stained glass at, , .
Chester, Old Houses at, , .
Churriguera, Architect, .
Colmar, Window at, .
Cologne Cathedral, , .
Columns and Piers, .
Cortona, Pietro da, Architect, .
Cremona, Palace at, .
Dantzic, Zeughaus at, .
De Caumont. Abécédaire, .
Decorated style of Architecture, .
Delorme, Architect, , .
Domestic Buildings, Gothic, .
Early English Architecture, .
Eltham Palace, Roof of, .
England, Gothic Architecture in, .
—— Renaissance in, .
Florence, Cathedral at, .
—— Pandolfini Palace, , .
—— Riccardi Palace, .
—— Strozzi Palace, .
Fontevrault, Church at, .
France, Gothic Architecture in, .
—— Renaissance in, .
Francis the First of France, .
Friburg Cathedral, .
Gables in Gothic Architecture, .
Germany, Gothic Architecture in, .
—— Renaissance, .
Ghent, Tower at, .
Gibbs, Architect, .
Giotto’s Campanile at Florence, .
Gothic, The word, .
Goujon, Jean, Sculptor, .
Haddon Hall, .
Havenius of Cleves, Architect, .
Hawksmoor, Architect, .
Heidelberg, Castle of, , .
Herrera, Juan de, Architect, .
Holland House, .
Italy, Gothic Architecture in, .
—— Renaissance in, .
John of Padua, Architect, .
Jones, Inigo, Architect, .
Kent, Architect, .
Kuttenberg, St. Barbara at, .
Lescot, Architect, .
Leyden, Council-house at, .
Lichfield Cathedral, West Door, .
Lincoln Cathedral, General view, .
Lippi Annibale, Architect, .
Lisieux, Old Houses at, .
Loches, Doorway at, .
London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, .
Maderno, Architect, , .
Mafra, Convent at, .
Mansard, Architect, .
Michelangelo as an Architect, ,
.
Michelozzo, Architect, .
Middleburgh, Town Hall at, .
Milan Cathedral, .
Misereres in Wells Cathedral, , .
Mouldings, Gothic, .
Nuremberg, St. Sebald’s at, .
Oakham, Decorated Spire of, .
Ogee-shaped arch, .
Oppenheim, St. Catherine at, .
Orleans, Capital from house at, .
Orleans, Window at, .
Pavia, Certosa, near, , .
Palladio, Architect, , ,
.
Paris, Cathedral of Notre Dame, .
—— Hôtel des Invalides at, .
—— Louvre, Capital from, .
—— Louvre, Pavillon Richelieu, .
—— Pantheon at, .
—— Tuileries, by Delorme, .
Perpendicular Architecture, .
Peruzzi, Architect, .
Peterborough Cathedral, Plan, .
Pisano, Nicola, Sculptor, .
Plateresco, Spanish, .
Principles of Gothic Design, .
Raphael as an Architect, .
Renaissance Architecture, .
Regensburg (Ratisbon), Well at, .
Rheims Cathedral, Piers, .
Rome, Monument in Santa Maria del Popolo, .
Rome, Palazzo Giraud, , .
—— St. Peter’s, ,
.
—— Villa Medici, .
Saint Gall Manuscript, The, .
Salisbury Cathedral, Section, .
Saint Iago di Compostella, .
Sangallo, Architect, .
Sansovino, Architect, , .
Scamozzi, Architect, .
Scotland, Cawdor Castle, .
—— Dunrobin Castle, .
—— Heriot’s Hospital, .
Schalaburg, Castle of, .
Schwartz-Rheindorff, Church at, .
Serlio, Architect, .
Seville, The Giralda at, .
Siena Cathedral, .
Spain, Gothic Architecture in, .
—— Renaissance in, .
Spires, .
Stained Glass, .
Strasburg Cathedral, .
Thann, Doorway at, .
Tivoli, Window from, .
Toledo, Alcazar at, .
—— Cathedral, .
Towers and Spires, .
Tracery, Venetian, .
Tudor Architecture, .
Vanbrugh, Architect, .
Venice, .
Venice, Church of Redentore, .
—— Ducal Palace at, .
—— Palaces on Grand Canal, .
Vienna, St. Stephen at, .
Vignola, Architect, , ,
.
Warboys, Early English Spire, .
Warwick Castle, Plan, .
Wells Cathedral, Nave, .
Westminster Abbey, Plan, .
Westminster Abbey, Carving, .
—— Henry VII.’s Chapel, .
—— Triforium, .
Windows, , , ,
, .
Window, Italian Gothic, , .
Worcester Cathedral, Choir, .
Wren, Sir C., Architect, ,
, .
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR.
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Transcriber's Note
Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.
Hyphenation and accent usage has been made consistent.
Spelling was made consistent as follows:
Page —Transome amended to Transom—"Transom.—A horizontal bar
(usually of stone) ..."
Page —Hardwicke amended to Hardwick—"The End-papers are from a Tapestry
in Hardwick Hall."
Page —di amended to da—"... built from the designs of Pietro da Cortona, ..."
Page —transomes amended to transoms—"... and with mullions and transoms, ..."
Page —transomes amended to transoms—"... large windows divided by mullions and
transoms, ..."
Page —Cotemporary amended to Contemporary—"Contemporary with him were the
brothers John and Robert Adam, ..."
Page —transomes amended to transoms—"... so are the mouldings, transoms and
mullions to the windows, ..."
Page —Middleburg amended to Middleburgh—"Middleburgh, Town Hall at, 89."
Page —Nícolo amended to Nicola—"Pisano, Nicola, Sculptor, 120."
Page —Strassburg amended to Strasburg—"Strasburg Cathedral, 98."
Page —Van Brugh amended to Vanbrugh—"Vanbrugh, Architect, 221."
The following amendments have been made:
Page —omitted page number added—"3. Scotland, Wales,
and Ireland 91"
Page —frize amended to frieze—"... the architrave, which rests on
the columns, the frieze and the cornice."
Page —The entry for Entablature originally followed Embattled. It has been
moved to the correct place in the glossary.
Page —Styl amended to Style—"François I. Style.—The
early Renaissance architecture of France during part of the sixteenth century."
Page —Lintol amended to Lintel—"Lintel.—The stone or beam
covering a doorway ..."
Page —arrangment amended to arrangement—"The whole arrangement of pier
and arch ..."
Page —ierced amended to pierced—"Parapet pierced with quatrefoils and
flowing tracery."
Page —repeated 'and' deleted—"... Gothic dwelling-houses of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries exist, ..."
Page —constrast amended to contrast—"... is to combine and yet contrast
its horizontal and vertical elements."
Page —storys amended to storeys—"... and sometimes also the basement
storeys, ..."
Page —and amended to end—"... occupying the eastern end of one of the
transepts ..."
Page —semi-circula amended to semicircular—"... and the roofs of
semicircular and circular apses, ..."
Page —achitecture amended to architecture—"... their architecture, though
certainly Gothic, is debased in style."
Page —laboration amended to elaboration—"... remarkable specimens of the
ornamental elaboration which can be accomplished in brickwork."
Page —Ths amended to The—"The great church at Batalha ..."
Page —omitted 'the' added before building—"... in his treatment of the same
part of the building ..."
Page —repeated 'is' deleted—"... as long as the building is seen in front ..."
Page —builing amended to building—"... lofty pilasters to include two storeys
of the building ..."
Page —first amended to First—"...than the best specimens of the style of
Francis the First ..."
Page —82 amended to 83—"... the treatment of the timbers is
thoroughly Gothic (Fig. 83); ..."
Page —archiect amended to architect—"The earliest architect who introduced
into Spain an architectural style ..."
Page —picuresque amended to picturesque—"... a building of the eighteenth
century, of great extent and picturesque effect."
Page —page references put into numerical order—"Brunelleschi,
Architect, 120, 166."
Page —137 amended to 173—"Florence ... —— Pandolfini Palace, 170, 173."
Page —omitted 7 added—"Haddon Hall, 17."
Illustrations have been moved where necessary so that they are not
in the middle of a paragraph.
There was an error in the List of Illustrations. The original read:
66.
Palazzo Giraud, Rome. By Bramante. (1506.)
180
67.
The Church of St. Francesco, at Ferrara. Interior
183
68.
Italian Shell Ornament
184
69.
The Church of the Redentore, Venice. (1576.)
186
70.
Certosa near Pavia. Part of West Front. (Begun 1473.)
189
70a.
Early Renaissance Corbel
192
71.
Window from a House at Orleans. (Early 16th Century.)
195
The listed Fig. 67 does not appear anywhere in the text. The List of Illustrations
has been amended to accurately list the figures in the main body of the book, by
removing the erroneous listing, renumbering the figures as necessary, including
a previously omitted figure, Fig. 70.—Villa Medici—On the Pincian Hill
near Rome. By Annibale Lippi (now the Académie Française). (A.D.
1540.), and amending the page numbers.
Alphabetic links have been added to the index for ease of navigation.
The advertising material has been moved to the end of the book.
Omitted page numbers were blank pages or full page illustrations (moved for this
e-text) in the original.