70Vide “Seven Lamps,” Chap. IV. § 34.71Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this, Shakspeare, in Richard II.:—“But when, from under this terrestrial ball,He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.”And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy:“My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pinesOn the steep’s lofty verge—how it blackened the air!But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shinesWith threads that seem part of his own silver hair.”72Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice of the “Seven Lamps” in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I think, however, the writer attaches too great importance to one out of many ornamental necessities.
70Vide “Seven Lamps,” Chap. IV. § 34.
71Shakspeare and Wordsworth (I think they only) have noticed this, Shakspeare, in Richard II.:—
“But when, from under this terrestrial ball,He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.”
“But when, from under this terrestrial ball,
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines.”
And Wordsworth, in one of his minor poems, on leaving Italy:
“My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pinesOn the steep’s lofty verge—how it blackened the air!But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shinesWith threads that seem part of his own silver hair.”
“My thoughts become bright like yon edging of pines
On the steep’s lofty verge—how it blackened the air!
But, touched from behind by the sun, it now shines
With threads that seem part of his own silver hair.”
72Some valuable remarks on this subject will be found in a notice of the “Seven Lamps” in the British Quarterly for August, 1849. I think, however, the writer attaches too great importance to one out of many ornamental necessities.
§I.Wehave now examined the treatment and specific kinds of ornament at our command. We have lastly to note the fittest places for their disposal. Not but that all kinds of ornament are used in all places; but there are some parts of the building, which, without ornament, are more painful than others, and some which wear ornament more gracefully than others; so that, although an able architect will always be finding out some new and unexpected modes of decoration, and fitting his ornament into wonderful places where it is least expected, there are, nevertheless, one or two general laws which may be noted respecting every one of the parts of a building, laws not (except a few) imperative like those of construction, but yet generally expedient, and good to be understood, if it were only that we might enjoy the brilliant methods in which they are sometimes broken. I shall note, however, only a few of the simplest; to trace them into their ramifications, and class in due order the known or possible methods of decoration for each part of a building, would alone require a large volume, and be, I think, a somewhat useless work; for there is often a high pleasure in the very unexpectedness of the ornament, which would be destroyed by too elaborate an arrangement of its kinds.
§II. I think that the reader must, by this time, so thoroughly understand the connection of the parts of a building, that I may class together, in treating of decoration, several parts which I kept separate in speaking of construction. Thus I shall put under one head (A) the base of the wall and of the shaft; then (B) the wall veil and shaft itself; then (C) thecornice and capital; then (D) the jamb and archivolt, including the arches both over shafts and apertures, and the jambs of apertures, which are closely connected with their archivolts; finally (E) the roof, including the real roof, and the minor roofs or gables of pinnacles and arches. I think, under these divisions, all may be arranged which is necessary to be generally stated; for tracery decorations or aperture fillings are but smaller forms of application of the arch, and the cusps are merely smaller spandrils, while buttresses have, as far as I know, no specific ornament. The best are those which have least; and the little they have resolves itself into pinnacles, which are common to other portions of the building, or into small shafts, arches, and niches, of still more general applicability. We shall therefore have only five divisions to examine in succession, from foundation to roof.
§III. But in the decoration of these several parts, certain minor conditions of ornament occur which are of perfectly general application. For instance, whether, in archivolts, jambs, or buttresses, or in square piers, or at the extremity of the entire building, we necessarily have the awkward (moral or architectural) feature, thecorner. How to turn a corner gracefully becomes, therefore, a perfectly general question; to be examined without reference to any particular part of the edifice.
§IV. Again, the furrows and ridges by which bars of parallel light and shade are obtained, whether these are employed in arches, or jambs, or bases, or cornices, must of necessity present one or more of six forms: square projection,a(Fig. LI.), or square recess,b, sharp projection,c, or sharp recess,d, curved projection,e, or curved recess,f. What odd curves the projection or recess may assume, or how these differentconditions may be mixed and run into one another, is not our present business. We note only the six distinct kinds or types.
Now, when these ridges or furrows are on a small scale they often themselves constitute all the ornament required for larger features, and are left smooth cut; but on a very large scale they are apt to become insipid, and they require a sub-ornament of their own, the consideration of which is, of course, in great part, general, and irrespective of the place held by the mouldings in the building itself: which consideration I think we had better undertake first of all.
§V. But before we come to particular examination of these minor forms, let us see how far we can simplify it. Look back toFig. LI., above. There are distinguished in it six forms of moulding. Of these,cis nothing but a small corner; but, for convenience sake, it is better to call it an edge, and to consider its decoration together with that of the membera, which is called a fillet; whilee, which I shall call a roll (because I do not choose to assume that it shall be only of the semicircular section here given), is also best considered together with its relative recess,f; and because the shape of a recess is of no great consequence, I shall class all the three recesses together, and we shall thus have only three subjects for separate consideration:—
1. The Angle.
2. The Edge and Fillet.
3. The Roll and Recess.
§VI. There are two other general forms which may probably occur to the reader’s mind, namely, the ridge (as of a roof), which is a corner laid on its back, or sloping,—a supine corner, decorated in a very different manner from a stiff upright corner: and the point, which is a concentrated corner, and has wonderfully elaborate decorations all to its insignificant self, finials, and spikes, and I know not what more. But both these conditions are so closely connected with roofs (even the cusp finial being a kind of pendant to a small roof), that I think itbetter to class them and their ornament under the head of roof decoration, together with the whole tribe of crockets and bosses; so that we shall be here concerned only with the three subjects above distinguished: and, first, the corner or Angle.
§VII. The mathematician knows there are many kinds of angles; but the one we have principally to deal with now, is that which the reader may very easily conceive as the corner of a square house, or square anything. It is of course the one of most frequent occurrence; and its treatment, once understood, may, with slight modification, be referred to other corners, sharper or blunter, or with curved sides.
§VIII. Evidently the first and roughest idea which would occur to any one who found a corner troublesome, would be to cut it off. This is a very summary and tyrannical proceeding, somewhat barbarous, yet advisable if nothing else can be done: an amputated corner is said to be chamfered. It can, however, evidently be cut off in three ways: 1. with a concave cut,a; 2. with a straight cut,b; 3. with a convex cut,c,Fig. LII.
The first two methods, the most violent and summary, have the apparent disadvantage that we get by them,—two corners instead of one; much milder corners, however, and with a different light and shade between them; so that both methods are often very expedient. You may see the straight chamfer (b) on most lamp posts, and pillars at railway stations, it being the easiest to cut: the concave chamfer requires more care, and occurs generally in well-finished but simple architecture—very beautifully in the small arches of the Broletto of Como,Plate V.; and the straight chamfer in architecture of every kind, very constantly in Norman cornices and arches, as in Fig. 2,Plate IV., at Sens.
§IX. The third, or convex chamfer, as it is the gentlest mode of treatment, so (as in medicine and morals) it is very generally the best. For while the two other methods produce two corners instead of one, this gentle chamfer does verily getrid of the corner altogether, and substitutes a soft curve in its place.
But it has, in the form above given, this grave disadvantage, that it looks as if the corner had been rubbed or worn off, blunted by time and weather, and in want of sharpening again. A great deal often depends, and in such a case as this, everything depends, on theVoluntarinessof the ornament. The work of time is beautiful on surfaces, but not on edges intended to be sharp. Even if we needed them blunt, we should not like them blunt on compulsion; so, to show that the bluntness is our own ordaining, we will put a slight incised line to mark off the rounding, and show that it goes no farther than we choose. We shall thus have the sectiona,Fig. LIII.; and this mode of turning an angle is one of the very best ever invented. By enlarging and deepening the incision, we get in succession the formsb,c,d; and by describing a small equal arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we gete,f,g,h.
§X. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects chamfers or beads; but I thinkbeada bad word for a continuous moulding, and the proper sense of the wordchamfer is fixed by Spenser as descriptive not merely of truncation, but of trench or furrow:—
“Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,You thinken to be lords of the year;But eft when ye count you freed from fear,Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows.”
“Tho gin you, fond flies, the cold to scorn,
And, crowing in pipes made of green corn,
You thinken to be lords of the year;
But eft when ye count you freed from fear,
Comes the breme winter with chamfred brows,
Full of wrinkles and frosty furrows.”
So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when there is any chance of confusion with the plain chamfer,a, orb, ofFig. LII.: and when there is no such chance, I shall use the word chamfer only.
§XI. Of those above given,bis the constant chamfer of Venice, andaof Verona:abeing the grandest and best, and having a peculiar precision and quaintness of effect about it. I found it twice in Venice, used on the sharp angle, as ataandb,Fig. LIV.,abeing from the angle of a house on the Rio San Zulian, andbfrom the windows of the church of San Stefano.
§XII. There is, however, evidently another variety of the chamfers,fandg,Fig. LIII., formed by an unbroken curve instead of two curves, asc,Fig. LIV.; and when this, or the chamferd,Fig. LIII., is large, it is impossible to say whether they have been devised from the incised angle, or from small shafts set in a nook, as ate,Fig. LIV., or in the hollow of the curved chamfer, asd,Fig. LIV.In general, however, the shallow chamfers,a,b,e, andf,Fig. LIII., are peculiar to southern work; and may be assumed to have been derived from theincised angle, while the deep chamfers,c,d,g,h, are characteristic of northern work, and may be partly derived or imitated from the angle shaft; while, with the usual extravagance of the northern architects, they are cut deeper and deeper until we arrive at the conditionf,Fig. LIV., which is the favorite chamfer at Bourges and Bayeux, and in other good French work.
I have placed in the Appendix73a figure belonging to this subject, but which cannot interest the general reader, showing the number of possible chamfers with a roll moulding of given size.
§XIII. If we take the plain chamfer,b, ofFig. LII., on a large scale, as ata,Fig. LV., and bead both its edges, cutting away the parts there shaded, we shall have a form much used in richly decorated Gothic, both in England and Italy. It might be more simply described as the chamferaofFig. LII., with an incision on each edge; but the part here shaded is often worked into ornamental forms, not being entirely cut away.
§XIV. Many other mouldings, which at first sight appear very elaborate, are nothing more than a chamfer, with a series of small echoes of it on each side, dying away with a ripple on the surface of the wall, as inb,Fig. LV., from Coutances (observe, here the white part is the solid stone, the shade is cut away).
Chamfers of this kind are used on a small scale and in delicate work: the coarse chamfers are found on all scales:fandg,Fig. LIII., in Venice, form the great angles of almost every Gothic palace; the roll being a foot or a foot and a half round, and treated as a shaft, with a capital and fresh base at every story, while the stones of which it is composed form alternatequoins in the brickwork beyond the chamfer curve. I need hardly say how much nobler this arrangement is than a common quoined angle; it gives a finish to the aspect of the whole pile attainable in no other way. And thus much may serve concerning angle decoration by chamfer.
73Appendix 23: “Varieties of Chamfer.”
73Appendix 23: “Varieties of Chamfer.”
§I.Thedecoration of the angle by various forms of chamfer and bead, as above described, is the quietest method we can employ; too quiet, when great energy is to be given to the moulding, and impossible, when, instead of a bold angle, we have to deal with a small projecting edge, likecinFig. LI.In such cases we may employ a decoration, far ruder and easier in its simplest conditions than the bead, far more effective when not used in too great profusion; and of which the complete developments are the source of mouldings at once the most picturesque and most serviceable which the Gothic builders invented.
§II. The gunwales of the Venetian heavy barges being liable to somewhat rough collision with each other, and with the walls of the streets, are generally protected by a piece of timber, which projects in the form of the fillet,a,Fig. LI.; but which, like all other fillets, may, if we so choose, be considered as composed of two angles or edges, which the natural and most wholesome love of the Venetian boatmen for ornament, otherwise strikingly evidenced by their painted sails and glittering flag-vanes, will not suffer to remain wholly undecorated. The rough service of these timbers, however, will not admit of rich ornament, and the boatbuilder usually contents himself with cutting a series of notches in each edge, one series alternating with the other, as represented at 1,Plate IX.
§III. In that simple ornament, not as confined to Venetian boats, but as representative of a general human instinct tohack at an edge, demonstrated by all school-boys and all idle possessors of penknives or other cutting instruments on both sides of the Atlantic;—in that rude Venetian gunwale, I say, is the germ of all the ornament which has touched, with its rich successions of angular shadow, the portals and archivolts of nearly every early building of importance, from the North Cape to the Straits of Messina. Nor are the modifications of the first suggestion intricate. All that is generic in their character may be seen onPlate IX.at a glance.
§IV. Taking a piece of stone instead of timber, and enlarging the notches, until they meet each other, we have the condition 2, which is a moulding from the tomb of the Doge Andrea Dandolo, in St. Mark’s. Now, considering this moulding as composed of two decorated edges, each edge will be reduced, by the meeting of the notches, to a series of four-sided pyramids (as marked off by the dotted lines), which, the notches here being shallow, will be shallow pyramids; but by deepening the notches, we get them as at 3, with a profilea, more or less steep. This moulding I shall always call “the plain dogtooth;” it is used in profusion in the Venetian and Veronese Gothic, generally set with its front to the spectator, as here at 3; but its effect may be much varied by placing it obliquely (4, and profile as atb); or with one side horizontal (5, and profilec). Of these three conditions, 3 and 5 are exactly the same in reality, only differently placed; but in 4 the pyramid is obtuse, and the inclination of its base variable, the upper side of it being always kept vertical. It is comparatively rare. Of the three, the last, 5, is far the most brilliant in effect, giving in the distance a zigzag form to the high light on it, and a full sharp shadow below. The use of this shadow is sufficiently seen by fig. 7 in this plate (the arch on the left, the number beneath it), in which these levelled dogteeth, with a small interval between each, are employed to set off by their vigor the delicacy of floral ornament above. This arch is the side of a niche from the tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, at Verona; and the value, as well as the distant expression of its dogtooth, may be seen by referring to Prout’s beautiful drawing of thistomb in his “Sketches in France and Italy.” I have before observed that this artist never fails of seizing the true and leading expression of whatever he touches: he has made this ornament the leading feature of the niche, expressing it, as in distance it is only expressible, by a zigzag.
§V. The reader may perhaps be surprised at my speaking so highly of this drawing, if he take the pains to compare Prout’s symbolism of the work on the niche with the facts as they stand here inPlate IX.But the truth is that Prout has rendered the effect of the monument on the mind of the passer-by;—the effect it was intended to have on every man who turned the corner of the street beneath it: and in this sense there is actually more truth and likeness74in Prout’s translation than in my fac-simile, made diligently by peering into the details from a ladder. I do not say that all the symbolism in Prout’s Sketch is the best possible; but it is the best which any architectural draughtsman has yet invented; and in its application to special subjects it always shows curious internal evidence that the sketch has been made on the spot, and that the artist tried to draw what he saw, not to invent an attractive subject. I shall notice other instances of this hereafter.
§VI. The dogtooth, employed in this simple form, is, however, rather a foil for other ornament, than itself a satisfactory or generally available decoration. It is, however, easy to enrich it as we choose: taking up its simple form at 3, and describing the arcs marked by the dotted lines upon its sides, and cutting a small triangular cavity between them, we shall leave its ridges somewhat rudely representative of four leaves, as at 8, which is the section and front view of one of the Venetian stone cornices described above,Chap. XIV., §IV., the figure 8 being here put in the hollow of the gutter. The dogtooth is put on the outer lower truncation, and is actually in position as fig. 5; but being always looked up to, is to the spectator as 3, and alwaysrich and effective. The dogteeth are perhaps most frequently expanded to the width of fig. 9.
§VII. As in nearly all other ornaments previously described, so in this,—we have only to deepen the Italian cutting, and we shall get the Northern type. If we make the original pyramid somewhat steeper, and instead of lightly incising, cut it through, so as to have the leaves held only by their points to the base, we shall have the English dogtooth; somewhat vulgar in its piquancy, when compared with French mouldings of a similar kind.75It occurs, I think, on one house in Venice, in the Campo St. Polo; but the ordinary moulding, with light incisions, is frequent in archivolts and architraves, as well as in the roof cornices.
§VIII. This being the simplest treatment of the pyramid, fig. 10, from the refectory of Wenlock Abbey, is an example of the simplest decoration of the recesses or inward angles between the pyramids; that is to say, of a simple hacked edge like one of those in fig. 2, thecutsbeing taken up and decorated instead of thepoints. Each is worked into a small trefoiled arch, with an incision round it to mark its outline, and another slight incision above, expressing the angle of the first cutting. I said that the teeth in fig. 7 had in distance the effect of a zigzag: in fig. 10 this zigzag effect is seized upon and developed, but with the easiest and roughest work; the angular incision being a mere limiting line, like that described in §IX. of the last chapter. But hence the farther steps to every condition of Norman ornament are self evident. I do not say that all of them arose from development of the dogtooth in this manner, many being quite independent inventions and uses of zigzag lines; still, they may all be referred to this simple type as their root and representative, that is to say, the mere hack of the Venetian gunwale, with a limiting line following the resultant zigzag.
§IX. Fig. 11 is a singular and much more artificial condition, cast in brick, from the church of the Frari, and givenhere only for future reference. Fig. 12, resulting from a fillet with the cuts on each of its edges interrupted by a bar, is a frequent Venetian moulding, and of great value; but the plain or leaved dogteeth have been the favorites, and that to such a degree, that even the Renaissance architects took them up; and the best bit of Renaissance design in Venice, the side of the Ducal Palace next the Bridge of Sighs, owes great part of its splendor to its foundation, faced with large flat dogteeth, each about a foot wide in the base, with their points truncated, and alternating with cavities which are their own negatives or casts.
§X. One other form of the dogtooth is of great importance in northern architecture, that produced by oblique cuts slightly curved, as in the margin,Fig. LVI.It is susceptible of the most fantastic and endless decoration; each of the resulting leaves being, in the early porches of Rouen and Lisieux, hollowed out and worked into branching tracery: and at Bourges, for distant effect, worked into plain leaves, or bold bony processes with knobs at the points, and near the spectator, into crouching demons and broad winged owls, and other fancies and intricacies, innumerable and inexpressible.
§XI. Thus much is enough to be noted respecting edge decoration. We were next to consider the fillet. Professor Willis has noticed an ornament, which he has called the Venetian dentil, “as the most universal ornament in its own district that ever I met with;” but has not noticed the reason for its frequency. It is nevertheless highly interesting.
The whole early architecture of Venice is architecture of incrustation: this has not been enough noticed in its peculiar relation to that of the rest of Italy. There is, indeed, much incrusted architecture throughout Italy, in elaborate ecclesiastical work, but there is more which is frankly of brick, or thoroughly of stone. But the Venetian habitually incrusted his work withnacre; he built his houses, even the meanest, as if he had been a shell-fish,—roughly inside,mother-of-pearl on the surface: he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick for his substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea had beaten upon till it coated it with marble: at first a dark city—washed white by the sea foam. And I told you before that it was also a city of shafts and arches, and that its dwellings were raised upon continuous arcades, among which the sea waves wandered. Hence the thoughts of its builders were early and constantly directed to the incrustation of arches.
§XII. InFig. LVII.I have given two of these Byzantine stilted arches: the one on the right,a, as they now too often appear, in its bare brickwork; that on the left, with its alabaster covering, literally marble defensive armor, riveted together in pieces, which follow the contours of the building. Now, on the wall, these pieces are mere flat slabs cut to the arch outline; but under the soffit of the arch the marble mail is curved, often cut singularly thin, like bent tiles, and fitted together so that the pieces would sustain each other even without rivets. It is of course desirable that this thin sub-arch of marble should project enough to sustain the facing of the wall; and the reader will see, inFig. LVII., that its edge forms a kind of narrow band round the arch (b), a band which the least enrichment would render a valuable decorative feature. Now this band is, of course, if the soffit-pieces project a little beyond the face of the wall-pieces, a mere fillet, like the wooden gunwale inPlate IX.; and the question is, how to enrich it most wisely. It might easily have been dogtoothed, but the Byzantine architects had not invented the dogtooth, and would not have used it here, if they had; for the dogtoothcannot be employed alone, especially on so principal an angle as this of the main arches, without giving to the whole building a peculiar look, which I cannototherwise describe than as being to the eye, exactly what untempered acid is to the tongue. The mere dogtooth is anacidmoulding, and can only be used in certain mingling with others, to give them piquancy; never alone. What, then, will be the next easiest method of giving interest to the fillet?
§XIII. Simply to make the incisions square instead of sharp, and to leave equal intervals of the square edge between them.Fig. LVIII.is one of the curved pieces of arch armor, with its edge thus treated; one side only being done at the bottom, to show the simplicity and ease of the work. This ornament gives force and interest to the edge of the arch, without in the least diminishing its quietness. Nothing was ever, nor could be ever invented, fitter for its purpose, or more easily cut. From the arch it therefore found its way into every position where the edge of a piece of stone projected, and became, from its constancy of occurrence in the latest Gothic as well as the earliest Byzantine, most truly deserving of the name of the “Venetian Dentil.” Its complete intention is now, however, only to be seen in the pictures of Gentile Bellini and Vittor Carpaccio; for, like most of the rest of the mouldings of Venetian buildings, it was always either gilded or painted—often both, gold being laid on the faces of the dentils, and their recesses colored alternately red and blue.
§XIV. Observe, however, that the reason above given for theuniversalityof this ornament was by no means the reason of itsinvention. The Venetian dentil is a particular application (consequent on the incrusted character of Venetian architecture) of the general idea of dentil, which had been originally given by theGreeks, and realised both by them and by the Byzantines in many laborious forms, long before there was need of them for arch armor; and the lower half ofPlate IX.will give some idea of the conditions which occur in the Romanesque of Venice, distinctly derived from the classical dentil; and of the gradual transition to the more convenient and simple type, the running-hand dentil, which afterwards became the characteristic of Venetian Gothic. No. 1376is the common dentiled cornice, which occurs repeatedly in St. Mark’s; and, as late as the thirteenth century, a reduplication of it, forming the abaci of the capitals of the Piazzetta shafts. Fig. 15 is perhaps an earlier type; perhaps only one of more careless workmanship, from a Byzantine ruin in the Rio di Ca’ Foscari: and it is interesting to compare it with fig. 14 from the Cathedral of Vienne, in South France. Fig. 17, from St. Mark’s, and 18, from the apse of Murano, are two very early examples in which the future true Venetian dentil is already developed in method of execution, though the object is still only to imitate the classical one; and a rude imitation of the bead is joined with it in fig. 17. No. 16 indicates two examples of experimental forms: the uppermost from the tomb of Mastino della Scala, at Verona; the lower from a door in Venice, I believe, of the thirteenth century: 19 is a more frequent arrangement, chiefly found in cast brick, and connecting the dentils with the dogteeth: 20 is a form introduced richly in the later Gothic, but of rare occurrence until the latter half of the thirteenth century. I shall call it thegableddentil. It is found in the greatest profusion in sepulchral Gothic, associated with several slight variations from the usual dentil type, of which No. 21, from the tomb of Pietro Cornaro, may serve as an example.
§XV. All the forms given inPlate IX.are of not unfrequent occurrence: varying much in size and depth, according to the expression of the work in which they occur; generally increasing in size in late work (the earliest dentils are seldommore than an inch or an inch and a half long: the fully developed dentil of the later Gothic is often as much as four or five in length, by one and a half in breadth); but they are all somewhat rare, compared to the true or armor dentil, above described. On the other hand, there are one or two unique conditions, which will be noted in the buildings where they occur.77The Ducal Palace furnishes three anomalies in the arch, dogtooth, and dentil: it has a hyperbolic arch, as noted above,Chap. X., §XV.; it has a double-fanged dogtooth in the rings of the spiral shafts on its angles; and, finally, it has a dentil with concave sides, of which the section and two of the blocks, real size, are given inPlate XIV.The labor of obtaining this difficult profile has, however, been thrown away; for the effect of the dentil at ten feet distance is exactly the same as that of the usual form: and the reader may consider the dogtooth and dentil in that plate as fairly representing the common use of them in the Venetian Gothic.
§XVI. I am aware of no other form of fillet decoration requiring notice: in the Northern Gothic, the fillet is employed chiefly to give severity or flatness to mouldings supposed to be too much rounded, and is therefore generally plain. It is itself an ugly moulding, and, when thus employed, is merely a foil for others, of which, however, it at last usurped the place, and became one of the most painful features in the debased Gothic both of Italy and the North.
74I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout’s, and the character of the wild and broken leaves, half dead, on the stone of the foreground.75Vide the “Seven Lamps,” p. 122.76The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that which is cut into dentils left.77As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil, entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna.
74I do not here speak of artistical merits, but the play of the light among the lower shafts is also singularly beautiful in this sketch of Prout’s, and the character of the wild and broken leaves, half dead, on the stone of the foreground.
75Vide the “Seven Lamps,” p. 122.
76The sections of all the mouldings are given on the right of each; the part which is constantly solid being shaded, and that which is cut into dentils left.
77As, however, we shall not probably be led either to Bergamo or Bologna, I may mention here a curiously rich use of the dentil, entirely covering the foliation and tracery of a niche on the outside of the duomo of Bergamo; and a roll, entirely incrusted, as the handle of a mace often is with nails, with massy dogteeth or nail-heads, on the door of the Pepoli palace of Bologna.
§I.I haveclassed these two means of architectural effect together, because the one is in most cases the negative of the other, and is used to relieve it exactly as shadow relieves light; recess alternating with roll, not only in lateral, but in successive order; not merely side by side with each other, but interrupted the one by the other in their own lines. A recess itself has properly no decoration; but its depth gives value to the decoration which flanks, encloses, or interrupts it, and the form which interrupts it best is the roll.
§II. I use the word roll generally for any mouldings which present to the eye somewhat the appearance of being cylindrical, and look like round rods. When upright, they are in appearance, if not in fact, small shafts; and are a kind of bent shaft, even when used in archivolts and traceries;—when horizontal, they confuse themselves with cornices, and are, in fact, generally to be considered as the best means of drawing an architectural line in any direction, the soft curve of their side obtaining some shadow at nearly all times of the day, and that more tender and grateful to the eye than can be obtained either by an incision or by any other form of projection.
§III. Their decorative power is, however, too slight for rich work, and they frequently require, like the angle and the fillet, to be rendered interesting by subdivision or minor ornament of their own. When the roll is small, this is effected, exactly as in the case of the fillet, by cutting pieces out of it; giving in the simplest results what is called the Norman billet moulding: and when the cuts are given in couples, and the pieces rounded into spheres and almonds, we have the ordinaryGreek bead, both of them too well known to require illustration. The Norman billet we shall not meet with in Venice; the bead constantly occurs in Byzantine, and of course in Renaissance work. InPlate IX., Fig. 17, there is a remarkable example of its early treatment, where the cuts in it are left sharp.
§IV. But the roll, if it be of any size, deserves better treatment. Its rounded surface is too beautiful to be cut away in notches; and it is rather to be covered with flat chasing or inlaid patterns. Thus ornamented, it gradually blends itself with the true shaft, both in the Romanesque work of the North, and in the Italian connected schools; and the patterns used for it are those used for shaft decoration in general.
§V. But, as alternating with the recess, it has a decoration peculiar to itself. We have often, in the preceding chapters, noted the fondness of the Northern builders for deep shade and hollowness in their mouldings; and in the second chapter of the “Seven Lamps,” the changes are described which reduced the massive roll mouldings of the early Gothic to a series of recesses, separated by bars of light. The shape of these recesses is at present a matter of no importance to us: it was, indeed, endlessly varied; but needlessly, for the value of a recess is in its darkness, and its darkness disguises its form. But it was not in mere wanton indulgence of their love of shade that the Flamboyant builders deepened the furrows of their mouldings: they had found a means of decorating those furrows as rich as it was expressive, and the entire frame-work of their architecture was designed with a view to the effect of this decoration; where the ornament ceases, the frame-work is meagre and mean: but the ornament is, in the best examples of the style, unceasing.
§VI. It is, in fact, an ornament formed by the ghosts or anatomies of the old shafts, left in the furrows which had taken their place. Every here and there, a fragment of a roll or shaft is left in the recess or furrow: a billet-moulding on a huge scale, but a billet-moulding reduced to a skeleton; for the fragments of roll are cut hollow, and worked into mereentanglement of stony fibres, with the gloom of the recess shown through them. These ghost rolls, forming sometimes pedestals, sometimes canopies, sometimes covering the whole recess with an arch of tracery, beneath which it runs like a tunnel, are the peculiar decorations of the Flamboyant Gothic.
§VII. Now observe, in all kinds of decoration, we must keep carefully under separate heads, the consideration of the changes wrought in the mere physical form, and in the intellectual purpose of ornament. The relations of the canopy to the statue it shelters, are to be considered altogether distinctly from those of the canopy to the building which it decorates. In its earliest conditions the canopy is partly confused with representations of miniature architecture: it is sometimes a small temple or gateway, sometimes a honorary addition to the pomp of a saint, a covering to his throne, or to his shrine; and this canopy is often expressed in bas-relief (as in painting), without much reference to the great requirements of the building. At other times it is a real protection to the statue, and is enlarged into a complete pinnacle, carried on proper shafts, and boldly roofed. But in the late northern system the canopies are neither expressive nor protective. They are a kind of stone lace-work, required for the ornamentation of the building, for which the statues are often little more than an excuse, and of which the physical character is, as above described, that of ghosts of departed shafts.
§VIII. There is, of course, much rich tabernacle work which will not come literally under this head, much which is straggling or flat in its plan, connecting itself gradually with the ordinary forms of independent shrines and tombs; but the general idea of all tabernacle work is marked in the common phrase of a “niche,” that is to say a hollow intended for a statue, and crowned by a canopy; and this niche decoration only reaches its full development when the Flamboyant hollows are cut deepest, and when the manner and spirit of sculpture had so much lost their purity and intensity that it became desirable to draw the eye away from the statue to its covering, so that at last the canopy became the more important ofthe two, and is itself so beautiful that we are often contented with architecture from which profanity has struck the statues, if only the canopies are left; and consequently, in our modern ingenuity, even set up canopies where we have no intention of setting statues.
§IX. It is a pity that thus we have no really noble example of the effect of the statue in the recesses of architecture: for the Flamboyant recess was not so much a preparation for it as a gulf which swallowed it up. When statues were most earnestly designed, they were thrust forward in all kinds of places, often in front of the pillars, as at Amiens, awkwardly enough, but with manly respect to the purpose of the figures. The Flamboyant hollows yawned at their sides, the statues fell back into them, and nearly disappeared, and a flash of flame in the shape of a canopy rose as they expired.
§X. I do not feel myself capable at present of speaking with perfect justice of this niche ornament of the north, my late studies in Italy having somewhat destroyed my sympathies with it. But I once loved it intensely, and will not say anything to depreciate it now, save only this, that while I have studied long at Abbeville, without in the least finding that it made me care less for Verona, I never remained long in Verona without feeling some doubt of the nobility of Abbeville.
§XI. Recess decoration by leaf mouldings is constantly and beautifully associated in the north with niche decoration, but requires no special notice, the recess in such cases being used merely to give value to the leafage by its gloom, and the difference between such conditions and those of the south being merely that in the one the leaves are laid across a hollow, and in the other over a solid surface; but in neither of the schools exclusively so, each in some degree intermingling the method of the other.
§XII. Finally the recess decoration by the ball flower is very definite and characteristic, found, I believe, chiefly in English work. It consists merely in leaving a small boss or sphere, fixed, as it were, at intervals in the hollows; suchbosses being afterwards carved into roses, or other ornamental forms, and sometimes lifted quite up out of the hollow, on projecting processes, like vertebræ, so as to make them more conspicuous, as throughout the decoration of the cathedral of Bourges.
The value of this ornament is chiefly in thespottedcharacter which it gives to the lines of mouldings seen from a distance. It is very rich and delightful when not used in excess; but it would satiate and weary the eye if it were ever used in general architecture. The spire of Salisbury, and of St. Mary’s at Oxford, are agreeable as isolated masses; but if an entire street were built with this spotty decoration at every casement, we could not traverse it to the end without disgust. It is only another example of the constant aim at piquancy of effect which characterised the northern builders; an ingenious but somewhat vulgar effort to give interest to their grey masses of coarse stone, without overtaking their powers either of invention or execution. We will thank them for it without blame or praise, and pass on.
§I.Weknow now as much as is needful respecting the methods of minor and universal decorations, which were distinguished in Chapter XXII., §III., from the ornament which has special relation to particular parts. This local ornament, which, it will be remembered, we arranged in §II. of the same chapter under five heads, we have next, under those heads, to consider. And, first, the ornament of the bases, both of walls and shafts.
It was noticed in our account of the divisions of a wall, that there are something in those divisions like the beginning, the several courses, and the close of a human life. And as, in all well-conducted lives, the hard work, and roughing, and gaining of strength come first, the honor or decoration in certain intervals during their course, but most of all in their close, so, in general, the base of the wall, which is its beginning of labor, will bear least decoration, its body more, especially those epochs of rest called its string courses; but its crown or cornice most of all. Still, in some buildings, all these are decorated richly, though the last most; and in others, when the base is well protected and yet conspicuous, it may probably receive even more decoration than other parts.
§II. Now, the main things to be expressed in a base are its levelness and evenness. We cannot do better than construct the several members of the base, as developed in Fig. II.,p. 55, each of a different colored marble, so as to produce marked level bars of color all along the foundation. This is exquisitely done in all the Italian elaborate wall bases; that of St. Anastasia at Verona is one of the most perfect existing, forplay of color; that of Giotto’s campanile is on the whole the most beautifully finished. Then, on the vertical portions,a,b,c, we may put what patterns in mosaic we please, so that they be not too rich; but if we choose rather to have sculpture (ormusthave it for want of stones to inlay), then observe that all sculpture on bases must be in panels, or it will soon be worn away, and that a plain panelling is often good without any other ornament. The memberb, which in St. Mark’s is subordinate, andc, which is expanded into a seat, are both of them decorated with simple but exquisitely-finished panelling, in red and white or green and white marble; and the membereis in bases of this kind very valuable, as an expression of a firm beginning of the substance of the wall itself. This member has been of no service to us hitherto, and was unnoticed in the chapters on construction; but it was expressed in the figure of the wall base, on account of its great value when the foundation is of stone and the wall of brick (coated or not). In such cases it is always better to add the coursee, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the common masonry of the wall.
§III. It is, however, with the memberd, or Xb, that we are most seriously concerned; for this being the essential feature of all bases, and the true preparation for the wall or shaft, it is most necessary that here, if anywhere, we should have full expression of levelness and precision; and farther, that, if possible, the eye should not be suffered to rest on the points of junction of the stones, which would give an effect of instability. Both these objects are accomplished by attracting the eye to two rolls, separated by a deep hollow, in the memberditself. The bold projections of their mouldings entirely prevent the attention from being drawn to the joints of the masonry, and besides form a simple but beautifully connected group of bars of shadow, which express, in their perfect parallelism, the absolute levelness of the foundation.
§IV. I need hardly give any perspective drawing of an arrangement which must be perfectly familiar to the reader, as occurring under nearly every column of the too numerousclassical buildings all over Europe. But I may name the base of the Bank of England as furnishing a very simple instance of the group, with a square instead of a rounded hollow, both forming the base of the wall, and gathering into that of the shafts as they occur; while the bases of the pillars of the façade of the British Museum are as good examples as the reader can study on a larger scale.
§V. I believe this group of mouldings was first invented by the Greeks, and it has never been materially improved, as far as its peculiar purpose is concerned;78the classical attempts at its variation being the ugliest: one, the using a single roll of larger size, as may be seen in the Duke of York’s column, which therefore looks as if it stood on a large sausage (the Monument has the same base, but more concealed by pedestal decoration): another, the using two rolls without the intermediate cavetto,—a condition hardly less awkward, and which may be studied to advantage in the wall and shaftbases of the Athenæum Club-house: and another, the introduction of what are called fillets between the rolls, as may be seen in the pillars of Hanover Chapel, Regent Street, which look, in consequence, as if they were standing upon a pile of pewter collection plates. But the only successful changes have been mediæval; and their nature will be at once understood by a glance at the varieties given on the opposite page. It will be well first to give the buildings in which they occur, in order.
1. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
2. North transept, St. Mark’s, Venice.
3. Nave, Torcello.
4. Nave, Torcello.
5. South transept, St. Mark’s.
6. Northern portico, upper shafts, St. Mark’s.
7. Another of the same group.
8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan.
9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.
10. Outside wall base, St. Mark’s, Venice.
11. Fondaco de’ Turchi, Venice.
12. Nave, Vienne, France.
13. Fondaco de’ Turchi, Venice.
14. Ca’ Giustiniani, Venice.
15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
16. St. Mark’s, upper Colonnade.
17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
18. Ca’ Falier, Venice.
19. St. Zeno, Verona.
20. San Stefano, Venice.
21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
22. Nave, Salisbury.
23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
§VI. Eighteen out of the twenty eight varieties are Venetian, being bases to which I shall have need of future reference; but the interspersed examples, 8, 9, 12, and 19, from Milan, Pavia, Vienne (France), and Verona, show the exactly correspondent conditions of the Romanesque base at the period, throughout the centre of Europe. The last five examples show the changes effected by the French Gothic architects: the Salisbury base (22) I have only introduced to show its dulness and vulgarity beside them; and 23, from Torcello, for a special reason, in that place.
§VII. The reader will observe that the two bases, 8 and 9, from the two most important Lombardic churches of Italy, St. Ambrogio of Milan and St. Michele of Pavia, mark the character of the barbaric base founded on pure Roman models, sometimes approximating to such models very closely; and the varieties 10, 11, 13, 16 are Byzantine types, also founded on Roman models. But in the bases 1 to 7 inclusive, and, still more characteristically, in 23 below, there is evidently an original element, a tendency to use the fillet and hollow instead of the roll, which is eminently Gothic; which in the base 3 reminds one even of Flamboyant conditions, and is excessively remarkable as occurring in Italian work certainly not later than the tenth century, taking even the date of the last rebuilding of the Duomo of Torcello, though I am strongly inclined to consider these bases portions of the original church. And I have therefore put the base 23 among the Gothic group to which it has so strong relationship, though, on the last supposition, five centuries older than the earliest of the five terminal examples; and it is still more remarkable because it reverses the usual treatment of the lower roll, which is ingeneral a tolerably accurate test of the age of a base, in the degree of its projection. Thus, in the examples 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, the lower roll is hardly rounded at all, and diametrically opposed to the late Gothic conditions, 24 to 28, in which it advances gradually, like a wave preparing to break, and at last is actually seen curling over with the long-backed rush of surf upon the shore. Yet the Torcello base resembles these Gothic ones both in expansion beneath and in depth of cavetto above.
§VIII. There can be no question of the ineffable superiority of these Gothic bases, in grace of profile, to any ever invented by the ancients. But they have all two great faults: They seem, in the first place, to have been designed without sufficient reference to the necessity of their being usually seen from above; their grace of profile cannot be estimated when so seen, and their excessive expansion gives them an appearance of flatness and separation from the shaft, as if they had splashed out under its pressure: in the second place their cavetto is so deeply cut that it has the appearance of a black fissure between the members of the base; and in the Lyons and Bourges shafts, 24 and 26, it is impossible to conquer the idea suggested by it, that the two stones above and below have been intended to join close, but that some pebbles have got in and kept them from fitting; one is always expecting the pebbles to be crushed, and the shaft to settle into its place with a thunder-clap.
§IX. For these reasons, I said that the profile of the pure classic base had hardly been materially improved; but the various conditions of it are beautiful or commonplace, in proportion to the variety of proportion among their lines and the delicacy of their curvatures; that is to say, the expression of characters like those of the abstract lines inPlate VII.
The five best profiles inPlate X.are 10, 17, 19, 20, 21; 10 is peculiarly beautiful in the opposition between the bold projection of its upper roll, and the delicate leafy curvature of its lower; and this and 21 may be taken as nearly perfect types, the one of the steep, the other of the expansive basic profiles.The characters of all, however, are so dependent upon their place and expression, that it is unfair to judge them thus separately; and the precision of curvature is a matter of so small consequence in general effect, that we need not here pursue the subject farther.
§X. We have thus far, however, considered only the lines of moulding in the member X b, whether of wall or shaft base. But the reader will remember that in our best shaft base, inFig. XII.(p. 78), certain props or spurs were applied to the slope of X b; but now that X b is divided into these delicate mouldings, we cannot conveniently apply the spur to its irregular profile; we must be content to set it against the lower roll. Let the upper edge of this lower roll be the curved line here,a,d,e,b,Fig. LIX., andcthe angle of the square plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw inChap. VII., will be of some such form as the trianglec e d,Fig. LIX.
§XI. Now it has just been stated that it is of small importance whether the abstract lines of the profile of a base moulding be fine or not, because we rarely stoop down to look at them. But this triangular spur is nearly always seen from above, and the eye is drawn to it as one of the most important features of the whole base; therefore it is a point of immediate necessity to substitute for its harsh right lines (c d,c e) some curve of noble abstract character.
§XII. I mentioned, in speaking of the line of the salvia leaf atp. 224, that I had marked off the portion of it,x y, because I thought it likely to be generally useful to us afterwards; and I promised the reader that as he had built, so he should decorate his edifice at his own free will. If, therefore, he likes theabove triangular spur,c d e, by all means let him keep it; but if he be on the whole dissatisfied with it, I may be permitted, perhaps, to advise him to set to work like a tapestry bee, to cut off the little bit of line of salvia leafx y, and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward linesc d c e. He may try it any way that he likes; but if he puts the salvia curvature inside the present lines, he will find the spur looks weak, and I think he will determine at last on placing it as I have done atc d,c e,Fig. LX.(If the reader will be at the pains to transfer the salvia leaf line with tracing paper, he will find it accurately used in this figure.) Then I merely add an outer circular line to represent the outer swell of the roll against which the spur is set, and I put another such spur to the opposite corner of the square, and we have the half base,Fig. LX., which is a general type of the best Gothic bases in existence, being very nearly that of the upper shafts of the Ducal Palace of Venice. In those shafts the quadranta b, or the upper edge of the lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spurd e, is 10 inches; the lined ebeing therefore toa bas 10 to 25-3/8. InFig. LX.it is as 10 to 24, the measurement being easier and the type somewhat more generally representative of the best,i. e.broadest, spurs of Italian Gothic.
§XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothingmagical in salvia leaves: the line I take from them happened merely to fall conveniently on the page, and might as well have been taken from anything else; it is simply its character of gradated curvature which fits it for our use. OnPlate XI., opposite, I have given plans of the spurs and quadrants of twelve Italian and three Northern bases; these latter (13), from Bourges, (14) from Lyons, (15) from Rouen, are given merely to show the Northern disposition to break up bounding lines, and lose breadth in picturesqueness. These Northern bases look the prettiest in this plate, because this variation of the outline is nearly all the ornament they have, being cut very rudely; but the Italian bases above them are merely prepared by their simple outlines for far richer decoration at the next step, as we shall see presently. The Northern bases are to be noted also for another grand error: the projection of the roll beyond the square plinth, of which the corner is seen, in various degrees of advancement, in the three examples. 13 is the base whose profile is No. 26 inPlate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15 is 28.
§XIV. The Italian bases are the following; all, except 7 and 10, being Venetian: 1 and 2, upper colonnade, St. Mark’s; 3, Ca’ Falier; 4, lower colonnade, and 5, transept, St. Mark’s; 6, from the Church of St. John and Paul; 7, from the tomb near St. Anastasia, Verona, described above (p. 142); 8 and 9, Fon daco de’ Turchi, Venice; 10, tomb of Can Mastino della Scala, Verona; 11, San Stefano, Venice; 12, Ducal Palace, Venice, upper colonnade. The Nos. 3, 8, 9, 11 are the bases whose profiles are respectively Nos. 18, 11, 13, and 20 inPlate X.The flat surfaces of the basic plinths are here shaded; and in the lower corner of the square occupied by each quadrant is put, also shaded, the central profile of each spur, from its root at the roll of the base to its point; those of Nos. 1 and 2 being conjectural, for their spurs were so rude and ugly, that I took no note of their profiles; but they would probably be as here given. As these bases, though here, for the sake of comparison, reduced within squares of equal size, in reality belong to shafts of very different size, 9 being some six or seven inchesin diameter, and 6, three or four feet, the proportionate size of the roll varies accordingly, being largest, as in 9, where the base is smallest, and in 6 and 12 the leaf profile is given on a larger scale than the plan, or its character could not have been exhibited.
§XV. Now, in all these spurs, the reader will observe that the narrowest are for the most part the earliest. No. 2, from the upper colonnade of St. Mark’s, is the only instance I ever saw of the double spur, as transitive between the square and octagon plinth; the truncated form, 1, is also rare and very ugly. Nos. 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9 are the general conditions of the Byzantine spur; 8 is a very rare form of plan in Byzantine work, but proved to be so by its rude level profile; while 7, on the contrary, Byzantine in plan, is eminently Gothic in the profile. 9 to 12 are from formed Gothic buildings, equally refined in their profile and plan.
§XVI. The character of the profile is indeed much altered by the accidental nature of the surface decoration; but the importance of the broad difference between the raised and flat profile will be felt on glancing at the examples 1 to 6 inPlate XII.The three upper examples are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine types, 1 to 3 ofPlate XI.Their plans would be nearly the same; but instead of resembling flat leaves, they are literally spurs, or claws, as high as they are broad; and the third, from St. Michele of Pavia, appears to be intended to have its resemblance to a claw enforced by the transverse fillet. 1 is from St. Ambrogio, Milan; 2 from Vienne, France. The 4th type,Plate XII., almost like the extremity of a man’s foot, is a Byzantine form (perhaps worn on the edges), from the nave of St. Mark’s; and the two next show the unity of the two principles, forming the perfect Italian Gothic types,—5, from tomb of Can Signorio della Scala, Verona; 6, from San Stefano, Venice (the base 11 ofPlate XI., in perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 ofPlate XI., are conditions of the same kind, showing the varieties of rise and fall in exquisite modulation; the 10th, a type more frequent at Verona than Venice, inwhich the spur profile overlaps the roll, instead of rising out of it, and seems to hold it down, as if it were a ring held by sockets. This is a character found both in early and late work; a kind of band, or fillet, appears to hold, and even compress, thecentreof the roll in the base of one of the crypt shafts of St. Peter’s, Oxford, which has also spurs at its angles; and long bands flow over the base of the angle shaft of the Ducal Palace of Venice, next the Porta della Carta.