Circular Churches.

555. Cathedral, Vienne. (From Wiebeking.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.

Its plan is extremely simple, having no transept and no aisle trending round the apse, as is the case with most of the Northern churches. It consists of three aisles, the central one 35 ft. wide between the piers, the others 14 ft. The buttresses are internal, as was usual in the South, forming chapels, and making up the whole width externally to 113 ft. by a length over all of 300, so that it covers somewhere about 30,000 sq. ft. This is only half the dimensions of some of the great Northern cathedrals, but the absence of transepts, and its generally judicious proportions, make this church look much larger than it really is.

The west front and the three western bays are of the 16th century; the next seven are of an early style of pointed architecture, with semi-Roman pilasters, which will be described in speaking of Burgundian architecture, and which belong probably to the 11th or beginning of the 12th century. The apse is ascribed to the year 952, but there areno drawings on which sufficient dependence can be placed to determine the date.

Besides this, there is another church, St. André le Bas at Vienne, belonging to the 11th century, whose tower is one of the most pleasing instances of this kind of composition in the province, and though evidently a lineal descendant of the Roman and Italian campaniles, displays an amount of design seldom met with beyond the Alps.

The round shape seems never to have been a favourite for sacred buildings in Provence, and consequently was never worked into the apses of the churches nor became an important adjunct to them. One of the few examples found is a small baptistery attached to the cathedral at Aix, either very ancient or built with ancient materials, and now painfully modernised. At Riez there is a circular detached baptistery, usually, like the churches at Vaison, called a pagan temple, but evidently of Christian origin, though the pillars in the interior seem undoubtedly to have been borrowed from some more ancient and classical edifice. But the finest of its class is the church at Rieux, probably of the 11th century. Internally the vault is supported by 4 piers and 3 pillars, producing an irregularity far from pleasing, and without any apparent motive.

556. Plan of Church at Planes. (From Taylor and Nodier.)

At Planes is another church the plan of which deserves to be quoted, if not for its merit, at least for its singularity: it is a triangle with an apse attached to each side, and supporting a circular part terminating in a plain roof. As a constructive puzzle it is curious, but it is doubtful how far any legitimate use could be made of such acaprice.

There is, so far as I know, only one triapsal church, that of St. Croix at Mont Majour near Arles. Built as a sepulchral chapel, it is a singularly gloomy but appropriate erection; but it is too tall and too bare to rank high as a building even for such a purpose.

Provence is far from being rich in towers, which never seem there to have been favourite forms of architectural display. That of St. André le Bas at Vienne has already been alluded to, but this at Puissalicon (Woodcut No.557) near Béziers is even more typical ofthe style, and standing as it now does in solitary grandeur among the ruins of the church once attached to it, has a dignity seldom possessed by such monuments. In style it resembles the towers of Italy more than any found farther north, but it is not without peculiarities that point to a different mode of elaborating this peculiar feature from anything found elsewhere. As a design its principal defect seems to be a want of lightness in the upper storey. The single circular opening there is a mistake in a building gradually growing lighter towards its summit.

557. Tower at Puissalicon. (From Renouvier.)

These towers were very seldom, if ever, attached symmetrically to the churches. When height was made an object, it was more frequently attained by carrying up the dome at the intersection of the choir with the nave. At Arles this is done by a heavy square tower, gradually diminishing, but still massive to the top; but in most instances the square becomes an octagon, and this again passes into a circle, which terminates the composition. One of the best specimens of this class of domes, if they may be so called, is the church of Cruas (Woodcut No.558), where these parts are pleasingly subordinated, and form, with the apses on which they rest, a very beautiful composition. The defect is the tiled roofs or offsets at the junction of the various storeys, which give an appearance of weakness, as if the upper parts could slide, like the joints of a telescope, one into the other. This could easily be avoided, and probably was so in the original design. If this were done, we have here the principle of a more pleasing crowning member at an intersection than was afterwards used in pointed architecture, and capable of being applied to domes of any extent.

Nearly all, and certainly all the more important churches of which we have been speaking, were collegiate, and in such establishments the cloister forms as important a part as the church itself, and frequently the more beautiful object of the two. In our own cold wetclimate the cloisters lose much of their appropriateness; still, they always were used, and always with a pleasing effect; but in the warm sunny South their charm is increased tenfold. The artists seem to have felt this, and to have devoted a large share of their attention to these objects—creating, in fact, a new style of architecture for this special purpose.

558. Church at Cruas. (From Taylor and Nodier.)

With us the arcades of a cloister are generally, if not always, a range of unglazed windows, presenting the same features as those of the church, which, though beautiful when filled with glass, are somewhat out of place without that indispensable adjunct. In the South the cloister is never a window, or anything in the least approaching to it in design, but a range of small and elegant pillars, sometimes single, sometimes coupled, generally alternately so, and supporting arches of light and elegant design, all the features being of a character suited to the place where they are used, and to that only.

559. Cloister at Fontifroide. (From Taylor and Nodier.)

560. 561.Capitals in Cloister, Elne. (From Taylor and Nodier.)

The cloister at Arles has long occupied the attention of travellers and artists, and perhaps no building, or part of one, in this style has been so often drawn or so much admired. Two sides of it are of the same age and in the same style as the porch (Woodcut No.548), and equally beautiful. The other two are somewhat later, the columns supporting pointed instead of round arches. At Aix there is another similar to that at Arles, and fragments of such colonnades are found in many places. That of Fontifroide (Woodcut No.559) is one of the most complete and perfect, and some of its capitals are treated with afreedom and boldness, and at the same time with an elegance, not often rivalled anywhere. They even excel—for the purpose at least—the German capitals of the same age. Those at Elne are more curious than those of any other cloister in France, so far as I know—some of them showing so distinct an imitation of Egyptian work as instantly to strike any one at all familiar with that style. Yet they are treated with a lightness and freedom so wholly mediæval as to show that it is possible to copy the spirit without a servile adherence to the form. Here, as in all the examples, every capital is different—the artists revelling in freedom from restraint, and sparing neither time nor pains. We find in these examples a delicacy of handling and refinement of feeling far more characteristic of the South than of the ruder North, and must admit that their architects have in these cloisters produced objects with which nothing of the kind we have in England can compete.

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