Fig. 51.—The Cathedral at Florence. With Giotto’s Campanile. (Begun, 1298; Dome, 1420-1444; Campanile begun, 1324.)
Our illustration (Fig.52) 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. Theintroduction 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.53) 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 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.
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 Frenchchevet, with its crown of clustering chapels, was not adopted in Italy. There is verymuch 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 ofpiano nobile.
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 cornicea 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.
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.54) 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.[27]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 separatelights 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.55). 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.
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 externalfeature 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.
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 bemet 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.
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 apparentgable 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.50) 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 thesmallest 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 thePiazza S. Croce at Tivoli, shows these peculiarities extremely well (Fig.56), 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.57), 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.52), 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.51).
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 manycases, 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 orwithout 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.
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,[28]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 thecimborio. 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.58) 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 haveculminated 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 theyleft 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.59) 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.
The architecture of Portugal has been very little investigated. The great church at Batalha[29]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.60) 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:[25]An illustration of such a campanile will be found in that belonging to the Cathedral of Siena (Fig.52).[26]SeeFrontispiece.[27]For an explanation of this term, seeante, ChapterV., page48.[28]A cast of this portal is at the South Kensington Museum.[29]SeeSculptures of the Monastery at Batalha, published by the Arundel Society.
[25]An illustration of such a campanile will be found in that belonging to the Cathedral of Siena (Fig.52).
[25]An illustration of such a campanile will be found in that belonging to the Cathedral of Siena (Fig.52).
[26]SeeFrontispiece.
[26]SeeFrontispiece.
[27]For an explanation of this term, seeante, ChapterV., page48.
[27]For an explanation of this term, seeante, ChapterV., page48.
[28]A cast of this portal is at the South Kensington Museum.
[28]A cast of this portal is at the South Kensington Museum.
[29]SeeSculptures of the Monastery at Batalha, published by the Arundel Society.
[29]SeeSculptures of the Monastery at Batalha, published by the Arundel Society.
Crête from Notre Dame, Paris
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.
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. Remarkablenumerical 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 earlierspire, 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 orpiers 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 Gothicbuilding 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 otherexceptions, frank disclosure must be reckoned one of the main principles of Gothic architecture.