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Title: The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3)
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: December 27, 2009 [eBook #30754]
Language: English
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The Complete Works of John Ruskin
Volume VII
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME I
[Illustration: VENICE.
FROM A PAINTING BY
J. M. W. TURNER.]
Library Edition
The Complete Works of John Ruskin
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUMES I-II
National Library Association
New York Chicago
THE
STONES OF VENICE
VOLUME I.
THE FOUNDATIONS
PREFACE.
In the course of arranging the following essay, I put many things aside
in my thoughts to be said in the Preface, things which I shall now put
aside altogether, and pass by; for when a book has been advertised a
year and a half, it seems best to present it with as little preface as
possible.
Thus much, however, it is necessary for the reader to know, that, when I
planned the work, I had materials by me, collected at different times of
sojourn in Venice during the last seventeen years, which it seemed to me
might be arranged with little difficulty, and which I believe to be of
value as illustrating the history of Southern Gothic. Requiring,
however, some clearer assurance respecting certain points of chronology,
I went to Venice finally in the autumn of 1849, not doubting but that
the dates of the principal edifices of the ancient city were either
ascertained, or ascertainable without extraordinary research. To my
consternation, I found that the Venetian antiquaries were not agreed
within a century as to the date of the building of the façades of the
Ducal Palace, and that nothing was known of any other civil edifice of
the early city, except that at some time or other it had been fitted up
for somebody's reception, and been thereupon fresh painted. Every date
in question was determinable only by internal evidence, and it became
necessary for me to examine not only every one of the older palaces,
stone by stone, but every fragment throughout the city which afforded
any clue to the formation of its styles. This I did as well as I could,
and I believe there will be found, in the following pages, the only
existing account of the details of early Venetian architecture on which
dependence can be placed, as far as it goes. I do not care to point out
the deficiencies of other works on this subject; the reader will find,
if he examines them, either that the buildings to which I shall
specially direct his attention have been hitherto undescribed, or else
that there are great discrepancies between previous descriptions and
mine: for which discrepancies I may be permitted to give this single and
sufficient reason, that my account of every building is based on
personal examination and measurement of it, and that my taking the pains
so to examine what I had to describe, was a subject of grave surprise to
my Italian friends. The work of the Marchese Selvatico is, however, to
be distinguished with respect; it is clear in arrangement, and full of
useful, though vague, information; and I have found cause to adopt, in
great measure, its views of the chronological succession of the edifices
of Venice. I shall have cause hereafter to quarrel with it on other
grounds, but not without expression of gratitude for the assistance it
has given me. Fontana's "Fabbriche di Venezia" is also historically
valuable, but does not attempt to give architectural detail. Cicognara,
as is now generally known, is so inaccurate as hardly to deserve
mention.
Indeed, it is not easy to be accurate in an account of anything, however
simple. Zoologists often disagree in their descriptions of the curve of
a shell, or the plumage of a bird, though they may lay their specimen on
the table, and examine it at their leisure; how much greater becomes the
likelihood of error in the description of things which must be in many
parts observed from a distance, or under unfavorable circumstances of
light and shade; and of which many of the distinctive features have been
worn away by time. I believe few people have any idea of the cost of
truth in these things; of the expenditure of time necessary to make sure
of the simplest facts, and of the strange way in which separate
observations will sometimes falsify each other, incapable of
reconcilement, owing to some imperceptible inadvertency. I am ashamed of
the number of times in which I have had to say, in the following pages,
"I am not sure," and I claim for them no authority, as if they were
thoroughly sifted from error, even in what they more confidently state.
Only, as far as my time, and strength, and mind served me, I have
endeavored down to the smallest matters, to ascertain and speak the
truth.
Nor was the subject without many and most discouraging difficulties,
peculiar to itself. As far as my inquiries have extended, there is not a
building in Venice, raised prior to the sixteenth century, which has not
sustained essential change in one or more of its most important
features. By far the greater number present examples of three or four
different styles, it may be successive, it may be accidentally
associated; and, in many instances, the restorations or additions have
gradually replaced the entire structure of the ancient fabric, of which
nothing but the name remains, together with a kind of identity,
exhibited in the anomalous association of the modernized portions: the
Will of the old building asserted through them all, stubbornly, though
vainly, expressive; superseded by codicils, and falsified by
misinterpretation; yet animating what would otherwise be a mere group of
fantastic masque, as embarrassing to the antiquary, as to the
mineralogist, the epigene crystal, formed by materials of one substance
modelled on the perished crystals of another. The church of St. Mark's
itself, harmonious as its structure may at first sight appear, is an
epitome of the changes of Venetian architecture from the tenth to the
nineteenth century. Its crypt, and the line of low arches which support
the screen, are apparently the earliest portions; the lower stories of
the main fabric are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with later
Gothic interpolations; the pinnacles are of the earliest fully developed
Venetian Gothic (fourteenth century); but one of them, that on the
projection at the eastern extremity of the Piazzetta de Leoni, is of far
finer, and probably earlier workmanship than all the rest. The southern
range of pinnacles is again inferior to the northern and western, and
visibly of later date. Then the screen, which most writers have
described as part of the original fabric, bears its date inscribed on
its architrave, 1394, and with it are associated a multitude of small
screens, balustrades, decorations of the interior building, and probably
the rose window of the south transept. Then come the interpolated
traceries of the front and sides; then the crocketings of the upper
arches, extravagances of the incipient Renaissance: and, finally, the
figures which carry the waterspouts on the north side--utterly barbarous
seventeenth or eighteenth century work--connect the whole with the
plastered restorations of the year 1844 and 1845. Most of the palaces in
Venice have sustained interpolations hardly less numerous; and those of
the Ducal Palace are so intricate, that a year's labor would probably be
insufficient altogether to disentangle and define them. I therefore gave
up all thoughts of obtaining a perfectly clear chronological view of the
early architecture; but the dates necessary to the main purposes of the
book the reader will find well established; and of the evidence brought
forward for those of less importance, he is himself to judge. Doubtful
estimates are never made grounds of argument; and the accuracy of the
account of the buildings themselves, for which alone I pledge myself,
is of course entirely independent of them.
In like manner, as the statements briefly made in the chapters on
construction involve questions so difficult and so general, that I
cannot hope that every expression referring to them will be found free
from error: and as the conclusions to which I have endeavored to lead
the reader are thrown into a form the validity of which depends on that
of each successive step, it might be argued, if fallacy or weakness
could be detected in one of them, that all the subsequent reasonings
were valueless. The reader may be assured, however, that it is not so;
the method of proof used in the following essay being only one out of
many which were in my choice, adopted because it seemed to me the
shortest and simplest, not as being the strongest. In many cases, the
conclusions are those which men of quick feeling would arrive at
instinctively; and I then sought to discover the reasons of what so
strongly recommended itself as truth. Though these reasons could every
one of them, from the beginning to the end of the book, be proved
insufficient, the truth of its conclusions would remain the same. I
should only regret that I had dishonored them by an ill-grounded
defence; and endeavor to repair my error by a better one.
I have not, however, written carelessly; nor should I in any wise have
expressed doubt of the security of the following argument, but that it
is physically impossible for me, being engaged quite as much with
mountains, and clouds, and trees, and criticism of painting, as with
architecture, to verify, as I should desire, the expression of every
sentence bearing upon empirical and technical matters. Life is not long
enough; nor does a day pass by without causing me to feel more bitterly
the impossibility of carrying out to the extent which I should desire,
the separate studies which general criticism continually forces me to
undertake. I can only assure the reader, that he will find the certainty
of every statement I permit myself to make, increase with its
importance; and that, for the security of the final conclusions of the
following essay, as well as for the resolute veracity of its account of
whatever facts have come under my own immediate cognizance, I will
pledge myself to the uttermost.
It was necessary, to the accomplishment of the purpose of the work (of
which account is given in the First Chapter), that I should establish
some canons of judgment, which the general reader should thoroughly
understand, and, if it pleased him, accept, before we took cognizance,
together, of any architecture whatsoever. It has taken me more time and
trouble to do this than I expected; but, if I have succeeded, the thing
done will be of use for many other purposes than that to which it is now
put. The establishment of these canons, which I have called "the
Foundations," and some account of the connection of Venetian
architecture with that of the rest of Europe, have filled the present
volume. The second will, I hope, contain all I have to say about Venice
itself.
It was of course inexpedient to reduce drawings of crowded details to
the size of an octavo volume,--I do not say impossible, but inexpedient;
requiring infinite pains on the part of the engraver, with no result
except farther pains to the beholder. And as, on the other hand, folio
books are not easy reading, I determined to separate the text and the
unreducible plates. I have given, with the principal text, all the
illustrations absolutely necessary to the understanding of it, and, in
the detached work, such additional text as has special reference to the
larger illustrations.
A considerable number of these larger plates were at first intended to
be executed in tinted lithography; but, finding the result
unsatisfactory, I have determined to prepare the principal subjects for
mezzotinting,--a change of method requiring two new drawings to be made
of every subject; one a carefully penned outline for the etcher, and
then a finished drawing upon the etching. This work does not proceed
fast, while I am also occupied with the completion of the text; but the
numbers of it will appear as fast as I can prepare them.
For the illustrations of the body of the work itself, I have used any
kind of engraving which seemed suited to the subjects--line and
mezzotint, on steel, with mixed lithographs and woodcuts, at
considerable loss of uniformity in the appearance of the volume, but, I
hope, with advantage, in rendering the character of the architecture it
describes. And both in the plates and the text I have aimed chiefly at
clear intelligibility; that any one, however little versed in the
subject, might be able to take up the book, and understand what it meant
forthwith. I have utterly failed of my purpose, if I have not made all
the essential parts of the essay intelligible to the least learned, and
easy to the most desultory readers, who are likely to take interest in
the matter at all. There are few passages which even require so much as
an acquaintance with the elements of Euclid, and these may be missed,
without harm to the sense of the rest, by every reader to whom they may
appear mysterious; and the architectural terms necessarily employed
(which are very few) are explained as they occur, or in a note; so that,
though I may often be found trite or tedious, I trust that I shall not
be obscure. I am especially anxious to rid this essay of ambiguity,
because I want to gain the ear of all kinds of persons. Every man has,
at some time of his life, personal interest in architecture. He has
influence on the design of some public building; or he has to buy, or
build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge
of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or
statues: but, in architecture, all must in some way commit themselves;
they _must_ do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how
to turn it to account. Churches, and shops, and warehouses, and
cottages, and small row, and place, and terrace houses, must be built,
and lived in, however joyless or inconvenient. And it is assuredly
intended that all of us should have knowledge, and act upon our
knowledge, in matters with which we are daily concerned, and not to be
left to the caprice of architects or mercy of contractors. There is not,
indeed, anything in the following essay bearing on the special forms and
needs of modern buildings; but the principles it inculcates are
universal; and they are illustrated from the remains of a city which
should surely be interesting to the men of London, as affording the
richest existing examples of architecture raised by a mercantile
community, for civil uses, and domestic magnificence.
DENMARK HILL, _February_, 1851.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface, iii
CHAPTER I.
The Quarry, 1
CHAPTER II.
The Virtues of Architecture, 36
CHAPTER III.
The Six Divisions of Architecture, 47
CHAPTER IV.
The Wall Base, 52
CHAPTER V.
The Wall Veil, 58
CHAPTER VI.
The Wall Cornice, 63
CHAPTER VII.
The Pier Base, 71
CHAPTER VIII.
The Shaft, 84
CHAPTER IX.
The Capital, 105
CHAPTER X.
The Arch Line, 122
CHAPTER XI.
The Arch Masonry, 132
CHAPTER XII.
The Arch Load, 144
CHAPTER XIII.
The Roof, 148
CHAPTER XIV.
The Roof Cornice, 155
CHAPTER XV.
The Buttress, 166
CHAPTER XVI.
Form of Aperture, 174
CHAPTER XVII.
Filling of Aperture, 183
CHAPTER XVIII.
Protection of Aperture, 195
CHAPTER XIX.
Superimposition, 200
CHAPTER XX.
The Material of Ornament, 211
CHAPTER XXI.
Treatment of Ornament, 236
CHAPTER XXII.
The Angle, 259
CHAPTER XXIII.
The Edge and Fillet, 267
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Roll and Recess, 276
CHAPTER XXV.
The Base, 281
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Wall Veil and Shaft, 294
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Cornice and Capital, 305
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The Archivolt and Aperture, 333
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Roof, 343
CHAPTER XXX.
The Vestibule, 349
* * * * *
APPENDIX.
1. Foundation of Venice, 359
2. Power of the Doges, 360
3. Serrar del Consiglio, 360
4. S. Pietro di Castello, 361
5. Papal Power in Venice, 362
6. Renaissance Ornament, 369
7. Varieties of the Orders, 370
8. The Northern Energy, 371
9. Wooden Churches of the North, 381
10. Church of Alexandria, 381
11. Renaissance Landscape, 381
12. Romanist Modern Art, 384
13. Mr. Fergusson's System, 388
14. Divisions of Humanity, 394
15. Instinctive Judgments, 399
16. Strength of Shafts, 402
17. Answer to Mr. Garbett, 403
18. Early English Capitals, 411
19. Tombs near St. Anastasia, 412
20. Shafts of the Ducal Palace, 413
21. Ancient Representations of Water, 417
22. Arabian Ornamentation, 429
23. Varieties of Chamfer, 429
24. Renaissance Bases, 431
25. Romanist Decoration of Bases, 432
LIST OF PLATES.
Facing Page
Plate 1. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan and Ca' Dario, 13
" 2. Plans of Piers, 100
" 3. Arch Masonry, 134
" 4. Arch Masonry, 137
" 5. Arch Masonry, Bruletto of Como, 141
" 6. Types of Towers, 207
" 7. Abstracts Lines, 222
" 8. Decorations by Disks, Ca' Badoari, 241
" 9. Edge Decoration, 268
" 10. Profiles of Bases, 283
" 11. Plans of Bases, 288
" 12. Decorations of Bases, 289
" 13. Wall Veil Decorations, 295
" 14. Spandril Decorations, Ducal Palace, 298
" 15. Cornice Profiles, 306
" 16. Cornice Decorations, 311
" 17. Capitals--Concave, 323
" 18. Capitals--Convex, 327
" 19. Archivolt Decoration, Verona, 333
" 20. Wall Veil Decoration, Ca' Trevisan, 369
" 21. Wall Veil Decoration, San Michele, Lucca, 378
THE STONES OF VENICE.
CHAPTER I.
THE QUARRY.
§ I. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three
thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the
thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers
only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which
inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through
prouder eminence to less pitied destruction.
The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded
for us, in perhaps the most touching words ever uttered by the Prophets
of Israel against the cities of the stranger. But we read them as a
lovely song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning: for
the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we
forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and
the sea, that they were once "as in Eden, the garden of God."
Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, though less in
endurance of dominion, is still left for our beholding in the final
period of her decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak--so
quiet,--so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt,
as we watched her faint reflection in the mirage of the lagoon, which
was the City, and which the Shadow.
I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be for ever
lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to
be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like
passing bells, against the STONES OF VENICE.
§ II. It would be difficult to overrate the value of the lessons which
might be derived from a faithful study of the history of this strange
and mighty city: a history which, in spite of the labor of countless
chroniclers, remains in vague and disputable outline,--barred with
brightness and shade, like the far away edge of her own ocean, where the
surf and the sand-bank are mingled with the sky. The inquiries in which
we have to engage will hardly render this outline clearer, but their
results will, in some degree, alter its aspect; and, so far as they bear
upon it at all, they possess an interest of a far higher kind than that
usually belonging to architectural investigations. I may, perhaps, in
the outset, and in few words, enable the general reader to form a
clearer idea of the importance of every existing expression of Venetian
character through Venetian art, and of the breadth of interest which the
true history of Venice embraces, than he is likely to have gleaned from
the current fables of her mystery or magnificence.
§ III. Venice is usually conceived as an oligarchy: She was so during a
period less than the half of her existence, and that including the days
of her decline; and it is one of the first questions needing severe
examination, whether that decline was owing in any wise to the change in
the form of her government, or altogether, as assuredly in great part,
to changes, in the character of the persons of whom it was composed.
The state of Venice existed Thirteen Hundred and Seventy-six years, from
the first establishment of a consular government on the island of the
Rialto,[1] to the moment when the General-in-chief of the French army of
Italy pronounced the Venetian republic a thing of the past. Of this
period, Two Hundred and Seventy-six[2] years were passed in a nominal
subjection to the cities of old Venetia, especially to Padua, and in an
agitated form of democracy, of which the executive appears to have been
entrusted to tribunes,[3] chosen, one by the inhabitants of each of the
principal islands. For six hundred years,[4] during which the power of
Venice was continually on the increase, her government was an elective
monarchy, her King or doge possessing, in early times at least, as much
independent authority as any other European sovereign, but an authority
gradually subjected to limitation, and shortened almost daily of its
prerogatives, while it increased in a spectral and incapable
magnificence. The final government of the nobles, under the image of a
king, lasted for five hundred years, during which Venice reaped the
fruits of her former energies, consumed them,--and expired.
§ IV. Let the reader therefore conceive the existence of the Venetian
state as broadly divided into two periods: the first of nine hundred,
the second of five hundred years, the separation being marked by what
was called the "Serrar del Consiglio;" that is to say, the final and
absolute distinction of the nobles from the commonalty, and the
establishment of the government in their hands to the exclusion alike of
the influence of the people on the one side, and the authority of the
doge on the other.
Then the first period, of nine hundred years, presents us with the most
interesting spectacle of a people struggling out of anarchy into order
and power; and then governed, for the most part, by the worthiest and
noblest man whom they could find among them,[5] called their Doge or
Leader, with an aristocracy gradually and resolutely forming itself
around him, out of which, and at last by which, he was chosen; an
aristocracy owing its origin to the accidental numbers, influence, and
wealth of some among the families of the fugitives from the older
Venetia, and gradually organizing itself, by its unity and heroism, into
a separate body.
This first period includes the rise of Venice, her noblest achievements,
and the circumstances which determined her character and position among
European powers; and within its range, as might have been anticipated,
we find the names of all her hero princes,--of Pietro Urseolo, Ordalafo
Falier, Domenico Michieli, Sebastiano Ziani, and Enrico Dandolo.
§ V. The second period opens with a hundred and twenty years, the most
eventful in the career of Venice--the central struggle of her
life--stained with her darkest crime, the murder of Carrara--disturbed
by her most dangerous internal sedition, the conspiracy of
Falier--oppressed by her most fatal war, the war of Chiozza--and
distinguished by the glory of her two noblest citizens (for in this
period the heroism of her citizens replaces that of her monarchs),
Vittor Pisani and Carlo Zeno.
I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo
Zeno, 8th May, 1418;[6] the _visible_ commencement from that of another
of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who
expired five years later. The reign of Foscari followed, gloomy with
pestilence and war; a war in which large acquisitions of territory were
made by subtle or fortunate policy in Lombardy, and disgrace,
significant as irreparable, sustained in the battles on the Po at
Cremona, and in the marshes of Caravaggio. In 1454, Venice, the first of
the states of Christendom, humiliated herself to the Turk: in the same
year was established the Inquisition of State,[7] and from this period
her government takes the perfidious and mysterious form under which it
is usually conceived. In 1477, the great Turkish invasion spread terror
to the shores of the lagoons; and in 1508 the league of Cambrai marks
the period usually assigned as the commencement of the decline of the
Venetian power;[8] the commercial prosperity of Venice in the close of
the fifteenth century blinding her historians to the previous evidence
of the diminution of her internal strength.
§ VI. Now there is apparently a significative coincidence between the
establishment of the aristocratic and oligarchical powers, and the
diminution of the prosperity of the state. But this is the very question
at issue; and it appears to me quite undetermined by any historian, or
determined by each in accordance with his own prejudices. It is a triple
question: first, whether the oligarchy established by the efforts of
individual ambition was the cause, in its subsequent operation, of the
Fall of Venice; or (secondly) whether the establishment of the oligarchy
itself be not the sign and evidence, rather than the cause, of national
enervation; or (lastly) whether, as I rather think, the history of
Venice might not be written almost without reference to the construction
of her senate or the prerogatives of her Doge. It is the history of a
people eminently at unity in itself, descendants of Roman race, long
disciplined by adversity, and compelled by its position either to live
nobly or to perish:--for a thousand years they fought for life; for
three hundred they invited death: their battle was rewarded, and their
call was heard.
§ VII. Throughout her career, the victories of Venice, and, at many
periods of it, her safety, were purchased by individual heroism; and the
man who exalted or saved her was sometimes (oftenest) her king,
sometimes a noble, sometimes a citizen. To him no matter, nor to her:
the real question is, not so much what names they bore, or with what
powers they were entrusted, as how they were trained; how they were made
masters of themselves, servants of their country, patient of distress,
impatient of dishonor; and what was the true reason of the change from
the time when she could find saviours among those whom she had cast into
prison, to that when the voices of her own children commanded her to
sign covenant with Death.[9]
§ VIII. On this collateral question I wish the reader's mind to be fixed
throughout all our subsequent inquiries. It will give double interest to
every detail: nor will the interest be profitless; for the evidence
which I shall be able to deduce from the arts of Venice will be both
frequent and irrefragable, that the decline of her political prosperity
was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion.
I say domestic and individual; for--and this is the second point which I
wish the reader to keep in mind--the most curious phenomenon in all
Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its
deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthusiasm, chivalry, or
fanaticism of the other states of Europe, Venice stands, from first to
last, like a masked statue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only
aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial
interest,--this the one motive of all her important political acts, or
enduring national animosities. She could forgive insults to her honor,
but never rivalship in her commerce; she calculated the glory of her
conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility.
The fame of success remains, when the motives of attempt are forgotten;
and the casual reader of her history may perhaps be surprised to be
reminded, that the expedition which was commanded by the noblest of her
princes, and whose results added most to her military glory, was one in
which while all Europe around her was wasted by the fire of its
devotion, she first calculated the highest price she could exact from
its piety for the armament she furnished, and then, for the advancement
of her own private interests, at once broke her faith[10] and betrayed
her religion.
§ IX. And yet, in the midst of this national criminality, we shall be
struck again and again by the evidences of the most noble individual
feeling. The tears of Dandolo were not shed in hypocrisy, though they
could not blind him to the importance of the conquest of Zara. The habit
of assigning to religion a direct influence over all _his own_ actions,
and all the affairs of _his own_ daily life, is remarkable in every
great Venetian during the times of the prosperity of the state; nor are
instances wanting in which the private feeling of the citizens reaches
the sphere of their policy, and even becomes the guide of its course
where the scales of expediency are doubtfully balanced. I sincerely
trust that the inquirer would be disappointed who should endeavor to
trace any more immediate reasons for their adoption of the cause of
Alexander III. against Barbarossa, than the piety which was excited by
the character of their suppliant, and the noble pride which was provoked
by the insolence of the emperor. But the heart of Venice is shown only
in her hastiest councils; her worldly spirit recovers the ascendency
whenever she has time to calculate the probabilities of advantage, or
when they are sufficiently distinct to need no calculation; and the
entire subjection of private piety to national policy is not only
remarkable throughout the almost endless series of treacheries and
tyrannies by which her empire was enlarged and maintained, but
symbolised by a very singular circumstance in the building of the city
itself. I am aware of no other city of Europe in which its cathedral was
not the principal feature. But the principal church in Venice was the
chapel attached to the palace of her prince, and called the "Chiesa
Ducale." The patriarchal church,[11] inconsiderable in size and mean in
decoration, stands on the outermost islet of the Venetian group, and its
name, as well as its site, is probably unknown to the greater number of
travellers passing hastily through the city. Nor is it less worthy of
remark, that the two most important temples of Venice, next to the ducal
chapel, owe their size and magnificence, not to national effort, but to
the energy of the Franciscan and Dominican monks, supported by the vast
organization of those great societies on the mainland of Italy, and
countenanced by the most pious, and perhaps also, in his generation, the
most wise, of all the princes of Venice,[12] who now rests beneath the
roof of one of those very temples, and whose life is not satirized by
the images of the Virtues which a Tuscan sculptor has placed around his
tomb.
§ X. There are, therefore, two strange and solemn lights in which we
have to regard almost every scene in the fitful history of the Rivo
Alto. We find, on the one hand, a deep and constant tone of individual
religion characterising the lives of the citizens of Venice in her
greatness; we find this spirit influencing them in all the familiar and
immediate concerns of life, giving a peculiar dignity to the conduct
even of their commercial transactions, and confessed by them with a
simplicity of faith that may well put to shame the hesitation with which
a man of the world at present admits (even if it be so in reality) that
religious feeling has any influence over the minor branches of his
conduct. And we find as the natural consequence of all this, a healthy
serenity of mind and energy of will expressed in all their actions, and
a habit of heroism which never fails them, even when the immediate
motive of action ceases to be praiseworthy. With the fulness of this
spirit the prosperity of the state is exactly correspondent, and with
its failure her decline, and that with a closeness and precision which
it will be one of the collateral objects of the following essay to
demonstrate from such accidental evidence as the field of its inquiry
presents. And, thus far, all is natural and simple. But the stopping
short of this religious faith when it appears likely to influence
national action, correspondent as it is, and that most strikingly, with
several characteristics of the temper of our present English
legislature, is a subject, morally and politically, of the most curious
interest and complicated difficulty; one, however, which the range of
my present inquiry will not permit me to approach, and for the treatment
of which I must be content to furnish materials in the light I may be
able to throw upon the private tendencies of the Venetian character.
§ XI. There is, however, another most interesting feature in the policy
of Venice which will be often brought before us; and which a Romanist
would gladly assign as the reason of its irreligion; namely, the
magnificent and successful struggle which she maintained against the
temporal authority of the Church of Rome. It is true that, in a rapid
survey of her career, the eye is at first arrested by the strange drama
to which I have already alluded, closed by that ever memorable scene in
the portico of St. Mark's,[13] the central expression in most men's
thoughts of the unendurable elevation of the pontifical power; it is
true that the proudest thoughts of Venice, as well as the insignia of
her prince, and the form of her chief festival, recorded the service
thus rendered to the Roman Church. But the enduring sentiment of years
more than balanced the enthusiasm of a moment; and the bull of Clement
V., which excommunicated the Venetians and their doge, likening them to
Dathan, Abiram, Absalom, and Lucifer, is a stronger evidence of the
great tendencies of the Venetian government than the umbrella of the
doge or the ring of the Adriatic. The humiliation of Francesco Dandolo
blotted out the shame of Barbarossa, and the total exclusion of
ecclesiastics from all share in the councils of Venice became an
enduring mark of her knowledge of the spirit of the Church of Rome, and
of her defiance of it.
To this exclusion of Papal influence from her councils, the Romanist
will attribute their irreligion, and the Protestant their success.[14]
The first may be silenced by a reference to the character of the policy
of the Vatican itself; and the second by his own shame, when he reflects
that the English legislature sacrificed their principles to expose
themselves to the very danger which the Venetian senate sacrificed
theirs to avoid.
§ XII. One more circumstance remains to be noted respecting the Venetian
government, the singular unity of the families composing it,--unity far
from sincere or perfect, but still admirable when contrasted with the
fiery feuds, the almost daily revolutions, the restless successions of
families and parties in power, which fill the annals of the other states
of Italy. That rivalship should sometimes be ended by the dagger, or
enmity conducted to its ends under the mask of law, could not but be
anticipated where the fierce Italian spirit was subjected to so severe a
restraint: it is much that jealousy appears usually unmingled with
illegitimate ambition, and that, for every instance in which private
passion sought its gratification through public danger, there are a
thousand in which it was sacrificed to the public advantage. Venice may
well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which
are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there
is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and
that one was a watch-tower only: from first to last, while the palaces
of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of
rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the
bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and
her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes
suspended on the leaves of lilies.[15]
§ XIII. These, then, appear to me to be the points of chief general
interest in the character and fate of the Venetian people. I would next
endeavor to give the reader some idea of the manner in which the
testimony of Art bears upon these questions, and of the aspect which the
arts themselves assume when they are regarded in their true connexion
with the history of the state.
1st. Receive the witness of Painting.
It will be remembered that I put the commencement of the Fall of Venice
as far back as 1418.
Now, John Bellini was born in 1423, and Titian in 1480. John Bellini,
and his brother Gentile, two years older than he, close the line of the
sacred painters of Venice. But the most solemn spirit of religious faith
animates their works to the last. There is no religion in any work of
Titian's: there is not even the smallest evidence of religious temper or
sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His
larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial
rhetoric,--composition and color. His minor works are generally made
subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the
Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connexion
between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family who
surround her.
Now this is not merely because John Bellini was a religious man and
Titian was not. Titian and Bellini are each true representatives of the
school of painters contemporary with them; and the difference in their
artistic feeling is a consequence not so much of difference in their own
natural characters as in their early education: Bellini was brought up
in faith; Titian in formalism. Between the years of their births the
vital religion of Venice had expired.
§ XIV. The _vital_ religion, observe, not the formal. Outward observance
was as strict as ever; and doge and senator still were painted, in
almost every important instance, kneeling before the Madonna or St.
Mark; a confession of faith made universal by the pure gold of the
Venetian sequin. But observe the great picture of Titian's in the ducal
palace, of the Doge Antonio Grimani kneeling before Faith: there is a
curious lesson in it. The figure of Faith is a coarse portrait of one of
Titian's least graceful female models: Faith had become carnal. The eye
is first caught by the flash of the Doge's armor. The heart of Venice
was in her wars, not in her worship.
The mind of Tintoret, incomparably more deep and serious than that of
Titian, casts the solemnity of its own tone over the sacred subjects
which it approaches, and sometimes forgets itself into devotion; but the
principle of treatment is altogether the same as Titian's: absolute
subordination of the religious subject to purposes of decoration or
portraiture.
The evidence might be accumulated a thousandfold from the works of
Veronese, and of every succeeding painter,--that the fifteenth century
had taken away the religious heart of Venice.
§ XV. Such is the evidence of Painting. To collect that of Architecture
will be our task through many a page to come; but I must here give a
general idea of its heads.
Philippe de Commynes, writing of his entry into Venice in 1495, says,--
"Chascun me feit seoir au meillieu de ces deux ambassadeurs qui est
l'honneur d'Italie que d'estre au meillieu; et me menerent au long de la
grant rue, qu'ilz appellent le Canal Grant, et est bien large. Les
gallees y passent à travers et y ay ven navire de quatre cens tonneaux
ou plus pres des maisons: et est la plus belle rue que je croy qui soit
en tout le monde, et la mieulx maisonnee, et va le long de la ville. Les
maisons sont fort grandes et haultes, et de bonne pierre, et les
anciennes toutes painctes; les aultres faictes depuis cent ans: toutes
ont le devant de marbre blanc, qui leur vient d'Istrie, à cent mils de
là, et encores maincte grant piece de porphire et de sarpentine sur le
devant.... C'est la plus triumphante cité que j'aye jamais vene et qui
plus faict d'honneur à ambassadeurs et estrangiers, et qui plus
saigement se gouverne, et où le service de Dieu est le plus
sollempnellement faict: et encores qu'il y peust bien avoir d'aultres
faultes, si je croy que Dieu les a en ayde pour la reverence qu'ilz
portent au service de l'Eglise."[16]
[Illustration: Plate I. Wall-Veil-Decoration.
CA'TREVISAN
CA'DARIO.]
§ XVI. This passage is of peculiar interest, for two reasons. Observe,
first, the impression of Commynes respecting the religion of Venice: of
which, as I have above said, the forms still remained with some
glimmering of life in them, and were the evidence of what the real life
had been in former times. But observe, secondly, the impression
instantly made on Commynes' mind by the distinction between the elder
palaces and those built "within this last hundred years; which all have
their fronts of white marble brought from Istria, a hundred miles away,
and besides, many a large piece of porphyry and serpentine upon their
fronts."
On the opposite page I have given two of the ornaments of the palaces
which so struck the French ambassador.[17] He was right in his notice of
the distinction. There had indeed come a change over Venetian
architecture in the fifteenth century; and a change of some importance
to us moderns: we English owe to it our St. Paul's Cathedral, and Europe
in general owes to it the utter degradation or destruction of her
schools of architecture, never since revived. But that the reader may
understand this, it is necessary that he should have some general idea
of the connexion of the architecture of Venice with that of the rest of
Europe, from its origin forwards.
§ XVII. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived
from Greece through Rome, and colored and perfected from the East. The
history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes
and directions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if you
hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of
successive architectural invention upon it like so many beads. The Doric
and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Romanesque,
massy-capitaled buildings--Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you
can name of the kind; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English,
French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe: those old Greeks gave the
shaft; Rome gave the arch; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The
shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from
the race of Japheth: the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael,
Abraham, and Shem.
§ XVIII. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft
system from Egypt; but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in
the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to
refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first
perfected. But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did
indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the
earth have each contributed their part to its noblest architecture: and
Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing
member, the shaft; Japheth the arch; Shem the spiritualisation of both.
§ XIX. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the
roots of all European architecture. You have, perhaps, heard of five
orders; but there are only two real orders, and there never can be any
more until doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex:
those are Doric, Norman, and what else you recollect of the kind. On the
other the ornament is concave: those are Corinthian, Early English,
Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional
form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of
both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phantasms and
grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species.[18]
§ XX. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily
copied and varied by the Romans with no particular result, until they
begun to bring the arch into extensive practical service; except only
that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavors to mend it, and the
Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very
beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity: seized
upon the arch as her own; decorated it, and delighted in it; invented a
new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one: and all over the
Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand,
to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian
architecture is the exact expression of the Christianity of the time,
very fervid and beautiful--but very imperfect; in many respects
ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, childlike light of imagination,
which flames up under Constantine, illumines all the shores of the
Bosphorus and the Ægean and the Adriatic Sea, and then gradually, as the
people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes Corpse-light. The
architecture sinks into a settled form--a strange, gilded, and embalmed
repose: it, with the religion it expressed; and so would have remained
for ever,--so _does_ remain, where its languor has been undisturbed.[19]
But rough wakening was ordained for it.
§ XXI. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two
great branches, western and eastern; one centred at Rome, the other at
Byzantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly
so called, and the other, carried to higher imaginative perfection by
Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as Byzantine. But I wish the
reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in
his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same; that is to
say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome
itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and
entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found--Latins in Italy
and Greeks in Greece; and thus both branches may be ranged under the
general term of Christian Romanesque, an architecture which had lost the
refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was
elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek
workmen endowed with brighter forms. And this art the reader may
conceive as extending in its various branches over all the central
provinces of the empire, taking aspects more or less refined, according
to its proximity to the seats of government; dependent for all its power
on the vigor and freshness of the religion which animated it; and as
that vigor and purity departed, losing its own vitality, and sinking
into nerveless rest, not deprived of its beauty, but benumbed and
incapable of advance or change.
§ XXII. Meantime there had been preparation for its renewal. While in
Rome and Constantinople, and in the districts under their immediate
influence, this Roman art of pure descent was practised in all its
refinement, an impure form of it--a patois of Romanesque--was carried by
inferior workmen into distant provinces; and still ruder imitations of
this patois were executed by the barbarous nations on the skirts of the
empire. But these barbarous nations were in the strength of their youth;
and while, in the centre of Europe, a refined and purely descended art
was sinking into graceful formalism, on its confines a barbarous and
borrowed art was organising itself into strength and consistency. The
reader must therefore consider the history of the work of the period as
broadly divided into two great heads: the one embracing the elaborately
languid succession of the Christian art of Rome; and the other, the
imitations of it executed by nations in every conceivable phase of early
organisation, on the edges of the empire, or included in its now merely
nominal extent.
§ XXIII. Some of the barbaric nations were, of course, not susceptible
of this influence; and when they burst over the Alps, appear, like the
Huns, as scourges only, or mix, as the Ostrogoths, with the enervated
Italians, and give physical strength to the mass with which they mingle,
without materially affecting its intellectual character. But others,
both south and north of the empire, had felt its influence, back to the
beach of the Indian Ocean on the one hand, and to the ice creeks of the
North Sea on the other. On the north and west the influence was of the
Latins; on the south and east, of the Greeks. Two nations, pre-eminent
above all the rest, represent to us the force of derived mind on either
side. As the central power is eclipsed, the orbs of reflected light
gather into their fulness; and when sensuality and idolatry had done
their work, and the religion of the empire was laid asleep in a
glittering sepulchre, the living light rose upon both horizons, and the
fierce swords of the Lombard and Arab were shaken over its golden
paralysis.
§ XXIV. The work of the Lombard was to give hardihood and system to the
enervated body and enfeebled mind of Christendom; that of the Arab was
to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The
Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured
representations of bodily exercises--hunting and war.[20] The Arab
banished all imagination of creature form from his temples, and
proclaimed from their minarets, "There is no god but God." Opposite in
their character and mission, alike in their magnificence of energy, they
came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava
stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire; and
the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead
water of the opposite eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the
Roman wreck, is VENICE.
The Ducal palace of Venice contains the three elements in exactly equal
proportions--the Roman, Lombard, and Arab. It is the central building of
the world.
§ XXV. The reader will now begin to understand something of the
importance of the study of the edifices of a city which includes, within
the circuit of some seven or eight miles, the field of contest between
the three pre-eminent architectures of the world:--each architecture
expressing a condition of religion; each an erroneous condition, yet
necessary to the correction of the others, and corrected by them.
§ XXVI. It will be part of my endeavor, in the following work, to mark
the various modes in which the northern and southern architectures were
developed from the Roman: here I must pause only to name the
distinguishing characteristics of the great families. The Christian
Roman and Byzantine work is round-arched, with single and
well-proportioned shafts; capitals imitated from classical Roman;
mouldings more or less so; and large surfaces of walls entirely covered
with imagery, mosaic, and paintings, whether of scripture history or of
sacred symbols.
The Arab school is at first the same in its principal features, the
Byzantine workmen being employed by the caliphs; but the Arab rapidly
introduces characters half Persepolitan, half Egyptian, into the shafts
and capitals: in his intense love of excitement he points the arch and
writhes it into extravagant foliations; he banishes the animal imagery,
and invents an ornamentation of his own (called Arabesque) to replace
it: this not being adapted for covering large surfaces, he concentrates
it on features of interest, and bars his surfaces with horizontal lines
of color, the expression of the level of the Desert. He retains the
dome, and adds the minaret. All is done with exquisite refinement.
§ XXVII. The changes effected by the Lombard are more curious still, for
they are in the anatomy of the building, more than its decoration. The
Lombard architecture represents, as I said, the whole of that of the
northern barbaric nations. And this I believe was, at first, an
imitation in wood of the Christian Roman churches or basilicas. Without
staying to examine the whole structure of a basilica, the reader will
easily understand thus much of it: that it had a nave and two aisles,
the nave much higher than the aisles; that the nave was separated from
the aisles by rows of shafts, which supported, above, large spaces of
flat or dead wall, rising above the aisles, and forming the upper part
of the nave, now called the clerestory, which had a gabled wooden roof.
These high dead walls were, in Roman work, built of stone; but in the
wooden work of the North, they must necessarily have been made of
horizontal boards or timbers attached to uprights on the top of the nave
pillars, which were themselves also of wood.[21] Now, these uprights
were necessarily thicker than the rest of the timbers, and formed
vertical square pilasters above the nave piers. As Christianity extended
and civilisation increased, these wooden structures were changed into
stone; but they were literally petrified, retaining the form which had
been made necessary by their being of wood. The upright pilaster above
the nave pier remains in the stone edifice, and is the first form of the
great distinctive feature of Northern architecture--the vaulting shaft.
In that form the Lombards brought it into Italy, in the seventh century,
and it remains to this day in St. Ambrogio of Milan, and St. Michele of
Pavia.
§ XXVIII. When the vaulting shaft was introduced in the clerestory
walls, additional members were added for its support to the nave piers.
Perhaps two or three pine trunks, used for a single pillar, gave the
first idea of the grouped shaft. Be that as it may, the arrangement of
the nave pier in the form of a cross accompanies the superimposition of
the vaulting shaft; together with corresponding grouping of minor shafts
in doorways and apertures of windows. Thus, the whole body of the
Northern architecture, represented by that of the Lombards, may be
described as rough but majestic work, round-arched, with grouped shafts,
added vaulting shafts, and endless imagery of active life and fantastic
superstitions.
§ XXIX. The glacier stream of the Lombards, and the following one of the
Normans, left their erratic blocks, wherever they had flowed; but
without influencing, I think, the Southern nations beyond the sphere of
their own presence. But the lava stream of the Arab, even after it
ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the Northern air; and the history of
Gothic architecture is the history of the refinement and
spiritualisation of Northern work under its influence. The noblest
buildings of the world, the Pisan-Romanesque, Tuscan (Giottesque)
Gothic, and Veronese Gothic, are those of the Lombard schools
themselves, under its close and direct influence; the various Gothics of
the North are the original forms of the architecture which the Lombards
brought into Italy, changing under the less direct influence of the
Arab.
§ XXX. Understanding thus much of the formation of the great European
styles, we shall have no difficulty in tracing the succession of
architectures in Venice herself. From what I said of the central
character of Venetian art, the reader is not, of course, to conclude
that the Roman, Northern, and Arabian elements met together and
contended for the mastery at the same period. The earliest element was
the pure Christian Roman; but few, if any, remains of this art exist at
Venice; for the present city was in the earliest times only one of many
settlements formed on the chain of marshy islands which extend from the
mouths of the Isonzo to those of the Adige, and it was not until the
beginning of the ninth century that it became the seat of government;
while the cathedral of Torcello, though Christian Roman in general form,
was rebuilt in the eleventh century, and shows evidence of Byzantine
workmanship in many of its details. This cathedral, however, with the
church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
islands.
§ XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the body
of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The first
church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs,[22] it being
quite immaterial whether the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or
both Arabic; the workmen being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the
invention of new forms by their Arabian masters, and bringing these
forms into use in whatever other parts of the world they were employed.
To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with vestiges as
remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first division of the
following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist of three noble
churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part of St.
Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.
§ XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character much
more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the arches
consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes, not to be
enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and mouldings.
This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for the
Venetians to imitate the beautiful details of the Arabian
dwelling-house, while they would with reluctance adopt those of the
mosque for Christian churches.
I have not succeeded in fixing limiting dates for this style. It appears
in part contemporary with the Byzantine manner, but outlives it. Its
position is, however, fixed by the central date, 1180, that of the
elevation of the granite shafts of the Piazetta, whose capitals are the
two most important pieces of detail in this transitional style in
Venice. Examples of its application to domestic buildings exist in
almost every street of the city, and will form the subject of the second
division of the following essay.
§ XXXIII. The Venetians were always ready to receive lessons in art from
their enemies (else had there been no Arab work in Venice). But their
especial dread and hatred of the Lombards appears to have long prevented
them from receiving the influence of the art which that people had
introduced on the mainland of Italy. Nevertheless, during the practice
of the two styles above distinguished, a peculiar and very primitive
condition of pointed Gothic had arisen in ecclesiastical architecture.
It appears to be a feeble reflection of the Lombard-Arab forms, which
were attaining perfection upon the continent, and would probably, if
left to itself, have been soon merged in the Venetian-Arab school, with
which it had from the first so close a fellowship, that it will be found
difficult to distinguish the Arabian ogives from those which seem to
have been built under this early Gothic influence. The churches of San
Giacopo dell'Orio, San Giovanni in Bragora, the Carmine, and one or two
more, furnish the only important examples of it. But, in the thirteenth
century, the Franciscans and Dominicans introduced from the continent
their morality and their architecture, already a distinct Gothic,
curiously developed from Lombardic and Northern (German?) forms; and the
influence of the principles exhibited in the vast churches of St. Paul
and the Frari began rapidly to affect the Venetian-Arab school. Still
the two systems never became united; the Venetian policy repressed the
power of the church, and the Venetian artists resisted its example; and
thenceforward the architecture of the city becomes divided into
ecclesiastical and civil: the one an ungraceful yet powerful form of the
Western Gothic, common to the whole peninsula, and only showing Venetian
sympathies in the adoption of certain characteristic mouldings; the
other a rich, luxuriant, and entirely original Gothic, formed from the
Venetian-Arab by the influence of the Dominican and Franciscan
architecture, and especially by the engrafting upon the Arab forms of
the most novel feature of the Franciscan work, its traceries. These
various forms of Gothic, the _distinctive_ architecture of Venice,
chiefly represented by the churches of St. John and Paul, the Frari, and
San Stefano, on the ecclesiastical side, and by the Ducal palace, and
the other principal Gothic palaces, on the secular side, will be the
subject of the third division of the essay.
§ XXXIV. Now observe. The transitional (or especially Arabic) style of
the Venetian work is centralised by the date 1180, and is transformed
gradually into the Gothic, which extends in its purity from the middle
of the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century; that is to
say, over the precise period which I have described as the central epoch
of the life of Venice. I dated her decline from the year 1418; Foscari
became doge five years later, and in his reign the first marked signs
appear in architecture of that mighty change which Philippe de Commynes
notices as above, the change to which London owes St. Paul's, Rome St.
Peter's, Venice and Vicenza the edifices commonly supposed to be their
noblest, and Europe in general the degradation of every art she has
since practised.
§ XXXV. This change appears first in a loss of truth and vitality in
existing architecture all over the world. (Compare "Seven Lamps," chap.
ii.) All the Gothics in existence, southern or northern, were corrupted
at once: the German and French lost themselves in every species of
extravagance; the English Gothic was confined, in its insanity, by a
strait-waistcoat of perpendicular lines; the Italian effloresced on the
mainland into the meaningless ornamentation of the Certosa of Pavia and
the Cathedral of Como (a style sometimes ignorantly called Italian
Gothic), and at Venice into the insipid confusion of the Porta della
Carta and wild crockets of St. Mark's. This corruption of all
architecture, especially ecclesiastical, corresponded with, and marked
the state of religion over all Europe,--the peculiar degradation of the
Romanist superstition, and of public morality in consequence, which
brought about the Reformation.
§ XXXVI. Against the corrupted papacy arose two great divisions of
adversaries, Protestants in Germany and England, Rationalists in France
and Italy; the one requiring the purification of religion, the other its
destruction. The Protestant kept the religion, but cast aside the
heresies of Rome, and with them her arts, by which last rejection he
injured his own character, cramped his intellect in refusing to it one
of its noblest exercises, and materially diminished his influence. It
may be a serious question how far the Pausing of the Reformation has
been a consequence of this error.
The Rationalist kept the arts and cast aside the religion. This
rationalistic art is the art commonly called Renaissance, marked by a
return to pagan systems, not to adopt them and hallow them for
Christianity, but to rank itself under them as an imitator and pupil. In
Painting it is headed by Giulio Romano and Nicolo Poussin; in
Architecture by Sansovino and Palladio.
§ XXXVII. Instant degradation followed in every direction,--a flood of
folly and hypocrisy. Mythologies ill understood at first, then perverted
into feeble sensualities, take the place of the representations of
Christian subjects, which had become blasphemous under the treatment of
men like the Caracci. Gods without power, satyrs without rusticity,
nymphs without innocence, men without humanity, gather into idiot groups
upon the polluted canvas, and scenic affectations encumber the streets
with preposterous marble. Lower and lower declines the level of abused
intellect; the base school of landscape[23] gradually usurps the place
of the historical painting, which had sunk into prurient pedantry,--the
Alsatian sublimities of Salvator, the confectionery idealities of
Claude, the dull manufacture of Gaspar and Canaletto, south of the Alps,
and on the north the patient devotion of besotted lives to delineation
of bricks and fogs, fat cattle and ditchwater. And thus Christianity and
morality, courage, and intellect, and art all crumbling together into
one wreck, we are hurried on to the fall of Italy, the revolution in
France, and the condition of art in England (saved by her Protestantism
from severer penalty) in the time of George II.
§ XXXVIII. I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything
towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape
painting. But the harm which has been done by Claude and the Poussins is
as nothing when compared to the mischief effected by Palladio, Scamozzi,
and Sansovino. Claude and the Poussins were weak men, and have had no
serious influence on the general mind. There is little harm in their
works being purchased at high prices: their real influence is very
slight, and they may be left without grave indignation to their poor
mission of furnishing drawing-rooms and assisting stranded conversation.
Not so the Renaissance architecture. Raised at once into all the
magnificence of which it was capable by Michael Angelo, then taken up by
men of real intellect and imagination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino,
Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its
influence on the European mind; and that the more, because few persons
are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number
regard it with slight attention; but all men are concerned with
architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with
it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three
hundred pounds in buying a bad picture, but it is to be regretted that a
nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous
building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distempered conception which
we have to regret in this Renaissance architecture: but we shall find in
it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of
modern times--over-sophistication and ignorant classicalism; the one
destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our
schools and universities useless to a large number of the men who pass
through them.
Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most
corrupt, of European states; and as she was in her strength the centre
of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline
the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of
the palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in
the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation,
and graceful in her follies, obtained wider worship in her decrepitude
than in her youth, and sank from the midst of her admirers into the
grave.
§ XXXIX. It is in Venice, therefore, and in Venice only that effectual
blows can be struck at this pestilent art of the Renaissance. Destroy
its claims to admiration there, and it can assert them nowhere else.
This, therefore, will be the final purpose of the following essay. I
shall not devote a fourth section to Palladio, nor weary the reader with
successive chapters of vituperation; but I shall, in my account of the
earlier architecture, compare the forms of all its leading features with
those into which they were corrupted by the Classicalists; and pause, in
the close, on the edge of the precipice of decline, so soon as I have
made its depths discernible. In doing this I shall depend upon two
distinct kinds of evidence:--the first, the testimony borne by
particular incidents and facts to a want of thought or of feeling in the
builders; from which we may conclude that their architecture must be
bad:--the second, the sense, which I doubt not I shall be able to excite
in the reader, of a systematic ugliness in the architecture itself. Of
the first kind of testimony I shall here give two instances, which may
be immediately useful in fixing in the readers mind the epoch above
indicated for the commencement of decline.
§ XL. I must again refer to the importance which I have above attached
to the death of Carlo Zeno and the doge Tomaso Mocenigo. The tomb of
that doge is, as I said, wrought by a Florentine; but it is of the same
general type and feeling as all the Venetian tombs of the period, and it
is one of the last which retains it. The classical element enters
largely into its details, but the feeling of the whole is as yet
unaffected. Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a
sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful
but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of
the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet--his
head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow--his hands are simply
crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so
pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked
like marble even in their animation. They are deeply worn away by
thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the
skin gathered in sharp folds; the brow high-arched and shaggy; the
eye-ball magnificently large; the curve of the lips just veiled by the
light mustache at the side; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed:
all noble and quiet; the white sepulchral dust marking like light the
stern angles of the cheek and brow.
This tomb was sculptured in 1424, and is thus described by one of the
most intelligent of the recent writers who represent the popular feeling
respecting Venetian art.
"Of the Italian school is also the rich but ugly (ricco ma non bel)
sarcophagus in which repose the ashes of Tomaso Mocenigo. It may be
called one of the last links which connect the declining art of the
Middle Ages with that of the Renaissance, which was in its rise. We
will not stay to particularise the defects of each of the seven
figures of the front and sides, which represent the cardinal and
theological virtues; nor will we make any remarks upon those which
stand in the niches above the pavilion, because we consider them
unworthy both of the age and reputation of the Florentine school,
which was then with reason considered the most notable in Italy."[24]
It is well, indeed, not to pause over these defects; but it might have
been better to have paused a moment beside that noble image of a king's
mortality.
§ XLI. In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another
tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1478, after a
short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice.
He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried
to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea
and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue
distances of Friuli; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb
ever bestowed on her monarchs.
§ XLII. If the writer above quoted was cold beside the statue of one of
the fathers of his country, he atones for it by his eloquence beside the
tomb of the Vendramin. I must not spoil the force of Italian superlative
by translation.
"Quando si guarda a quella corretta eleganza di profili e di
proporzioni, a quella squisitezza d'ornamenti, a quel certo sapore
antico che senza ombra d'imitazione traspare da tutta l'opera"--&c.
"Sopra ornatissimo zoccolo fornito di squisiti intagli s'alza uno
stylobate"--&c. "Sotto le colonne, il predetto stilobate si muta
leggiadramente in piedistallo, poi con bella novità di pensiero e di
effetto va coronato da un fregio il più gentile che veder si
possa"--&c. "Non puossi lasciar senza un cenno l'_arca dove_ sta
chiuso il doge; capo lavoro di pensiero e di esecuzione," &c.
There are two pages and a half of closely printed praise, of which the
above specimens may suffice; but there is not a word of the statue of the
dead from beginning to end. I am myself in the habit of considering this
rather an important part of a tomb, and I was especially interested in it
here, because Selvatico only echoes the praise of thousands. It is
unanimously declared the chef d'oeuvre of Renaissance sepulchral work,
and pronounced by Cicognara (also quoted by Selvatico)
"Il vertice a cui l'arti Veneziane si spinsero col ministero del
scalpello,"--"The very culminating point to which the Venetian arts
attained by ministry of the chisel."
To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I
attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the
ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's
keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of
feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spectator, for it is thrown
off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the
Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins
finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the
veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is
far more laboriously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes
us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for
it has been entirely bestowed in cutting gouty wrinkles about the
joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought
it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the
wretched effigy had only _one_ hand, and was a mere block on the inner
side. The face, heavy and disagreeable in its features, is made
monstrous by its semi-sculpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled
elaborately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is
chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and
distorted besides; finally, the ermine robe, which is elaborately
imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side,
is blocked out only on the other: it having been supposed throughout the
work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side.
§ XLIII. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one; and I do not
blame--I should, on the contrary, have praised--the sculptor for
regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had
not involved, first, dishonesty, in giving only half a face, a
monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead; and,
secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an
extreme of intellectual and moral degradation: Who, with a heart in his
breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old
man's countenance--unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by
the solemnities of death--could have stayed his hand, as he reached the
bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so
much the zecchin?
I do not think the reader, if he has feeling, will expect that much
talent should be shown in the rest of his work, by the sculptor of this
base and senseless lie. The whole monument is one wearisome aggregation
of that species of ornamental flourish, which, when it is done with a
pen, is called penmanship, and when done with a chisel, should be called
chiselmanship; the subject of it being chiefly fat-limbed boys sprawling
on dolphins, dolphins incapable of swimming, and dragged along the sea
by expanded pocket-handkerchiefs.
But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This
lying monument to a dishonored doge, this culminating pride of the
Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in
its testimony to the character of its sculptor. _He was banished from
Venice for forgery_ in 1487.[25]
§ XLIV. I have more to say about this convict's work hereafter; but I
pass at present, to the second, slighter, but yet more interesting piece
of evidence, which I promised.
The ducal palace has two principal façades; one towards the sea, the
other towards the Piazzetta. The seaward side, and, as far as the
seventh main arch inclusive, the Piazzetta side, is work of the early
part of the fourteenth century, some of it perhaps even earlier; while
the rest of the Piazzetta side is of the fifteenth. The difference in
age has been gravely disputed by the Venetian antiquaries, who have
examined many documents on the subject, and quoted some which they never
examined. I have myself collated most of the written documents, and one
document more, to which the Venetian antiquaries never thought of
referring,--the masonry of the palace itself.
§ XLV. That masonry changes at the centre of the eighth arch from the
sea angle on the Piazzetta side. It has been of comparatively small
stones up to that point; the fifteenth century work instantly begins
with larger stones, "brought from Istria, a hundred miles away."[26] The
ninth shaft from the sea in the lower arcade, and the seventeenth, which
is above it, in the upper arcade, commence the series of fifteenth
century shafts. These two are somewhat thicker than the others, and
carry the party-wall of the Sala del Scrutinio. Now observe, reader. The
face of the palace, from this point to the Porta della Carta, was built
at the instance of that noble Doge Mocenigo beside whose tomb you have
been standing; at his instance, and in the beginning of the reign of his
successor, Foscari; that is to say, circa 1424. This is not disputed; it
is only disputed that the sea façade is earlier; of which, however, the
proofs are as simple as they are incontrovertible: for not only the
masonry, but the sculpture, changes at the ninth lower shaft, and that
in the capitals of the shafts both of the upper and lower arcade: the
costumes of the figures introduced in the sea façade being purely
Giottesque, correspondent with Giotto's work in the Arena Chapel at
Padua, while the costume on the other capitals is Renaissance-Classic:
and the lions' heads between the arches change at the same point. And
there are a multitude of other evidences in the statues of the angels,
with which I shall not at present trouble the reader.
§ XLVI. Now, the architect who built under Foscari, in 1424 (remember my
date for the decline of Venice, 1418), was obliged to follow the
principal forms of the older palace. But he had not the wit to invent
new capitals in the same style; he therefore clumsily copied the old
ones. The palace has seventeen main arches on the sea façade, eighteen
on the Piazzetta side, which in all are of course carried by thirty-six
pillars; and these pillars I shall always number from right to left,
from the angle of the palace at the Ponte della Paglia to that next the
Porta della Carta. I number them in this succession, because I thus have
the earliest shafts first numbered. So counted, the 1st, the 18th, and
the 36th, are the great supports of the angles of the palace; and the
first of the fifteenth century series, being, as above stated, the 9th
from the sea on the Piazzetta side, is the 26th of the entire series,
and will always in future be so numbered, so that all numbers above
twenty-six indicate fifteenth century work, and all below it, fourteenth
century, with some exceptional cases of restoration.
Then the copied capitals are: the 28th, copied from the 7th; the 29th,
from the 9th; the 30th, from the 10th; the 31st, from the 8th; the 33rd,
from the 12th; and the 34th, from the 11th; the others being dull
inventions of the 15th century, except the 36th, which is very nobly
designed.
§ XLVII. The capitals thus selected from the earlier portion of the
palace for imitation, together with the rest, will be accurately
described hereafter; the point I have here to notice is in the copy of
the ninth capital, which was decorated (being, like the rest, octagonal)
with figures of the eight Virtues:--Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice,
Temperance, Prudence, Humility (the Venetian antiquaries call it
Humanity!), and Fortitude. The Virtues of the fourteenth century are
somewhat hard-featured; with vivid and living expression, and plain
every-day clothes of the time. Charity has her lap full of apples
(perhaps loaves), and is giving one to a little child, who stretches his
arm for it across a gap in the leafage of the capital. Fortitude tears
open a lion's jaws; Faith lays her hand on her breast, as she beholds
the Cross; and Hope is praying, while above her a hand is seen emerging
from sunbeams--the hand of God (according to that of Revelations, "The
Lord God giveth them light"); and the inscription above is, "Spes optima
in Deo."
§ XLVIII. This design, then, is, rudely and with imperfect chiselling,
imitated by the fifteenth century workmen: the Virtues have lost their
hard features and living expression; they have now all got Roman noses,
and have had their hair curled. Their actions and emblems are, however,
preserved until we come to Hope: she is still praying, but she is
praying to the sun only: _The hand of God is gone._
Is not this a curious and striking type of the spirit which had then
become dominant in the world, forgetting to see God's hand in the light
He gave; so that in the issue, when that light opened into the
Reformation, on the one side, and into full knowledge of ancient
literature on the other, the one was arrested and the other perverted?
§ XLIX. Such is the nature of the accidental evidence on which I shall
depend for the proof of the inferiority of character in the Renaissance
workmen. But the proof of the inferiority of the work itself is not so
easy, for in this I have to appeal to judgments which the Renaissance
work has itself distorted. I felt this difficulty very forcibly as I
read a slight review of my former work, "The Seven Lamps," in "The
Architect:" the writer noticed my constant praise of St. Mark's: "Mr.
Ruskin thinks it a very beautiful building! We," said the Architect,
"think it a very ugly building." I was not surprised at the difference
of opinion, but at the thing being considered so completely a subject of
opinion. My opponents in matters of painting always assume that there
_is_ such a thing as a law of right, and that I do not understand it:
but my architectural adversaries appeal to no law, they simply set their
opinion against mine; and indeed there is no law at present to which
either they or I can appeal. No man can speak with rational decision of
the merits or demerits of buildings: he may with obstinacy; he may with
resolved adherence to previous prejudices; but never as if the matter
could be otherwise decided than by a majority of votes, or pertinacity
of partizanship. I had always, however, a clear conviction that there
_was_ a law in this matter: that good architecture might be indisputably
discerned and divided from the bad; that the opposition in their very
nature and essence was clearly visible; and that we were all of us just
as unwise in disputing about the matter without reference to principle,
as we should be for debating about the genuineness of a coin, without
ringing it. I felt also assured that this law must be universal if it
were conclusive; that it must enable us to reject all foolish and base
work, and to accept all noble and wise work, without reference to style
or national feeling; that it must sanction the design of all truly great
nations and times, Gothic or Greek or Arab; that it must cast off and
reprobate the design of all foolish nations and times, Chinese or
Mexican, or modern European: and that it must be easily applicable to
all possible architectural inventions of human mind. I set myself,
therefore, to establish such a law, in full belief that men are
intended, without excessive difficulty, and by use of their general
common sense, to know good things from bad; and that it is only because
they will not be at the pains required for the discernment, that the
world is so widely encumbered with forgeries and basenesses. I found the
work simpler than I had hoped; the reasonable things ranged themselves
in the order I required, and the foolish things fell aside, and took
themselves away so soon as they were looked in the face. I had then,
with respect to Venetian architecture, the choice, either to establish
each division of law in a separate form, as I came to the features with
which it was concerned, or else to ask the reader's patience, while I
followed out the general inquiry first, and determined with him a code
of right and wrong, to which we might together make retrospective
appeal. I thought this the best, though perhaps the dullest way; and in
these first following pages I have therefore endeavored to arrange those
foundations of criticism, on which I shall rest in my account of
Venetian architecture, in a form clear and simple enough to be
intelligible even to those who never thought of architecture before. To
those who have, much of what is stated in them will be well known or
self-evident; but they must not be indignant at a simplicity on which
the whole argument depends for its usefulness. From that which appears a
mere truism when first stated, they will find very singular consequences
sometimes following,--consequences altogether unexpected, and of
considerable importance; I will not pause here to dwell on their
importance, nor on that of the thing itself to be done; for I believe
most readers will at once admit the value of a criterion of right and
wrong in so practical and costly an art as architecture, and will be apt
rather to doubt the possibility of its attainment than dispute its
usefulness if attained. I invite them, therefore, to a fair trial, being
certain that even if I should fail in my main purpose, and be unable to
induce in my reader the confidence of judgment I desire, I shall at
least receive his thanks for the suggestion of consistent reasons, which
may determine hesitating choice, or justify involuntary preference. And
if I should succeed, as I hope, in making the Stones of Venice
touchstones, and detecting, by the mouldering of her marble, poison more
subtle than ever was betrayed by the rending of her crystal; and if thus
I am enabled to show the baseness of the schools of architecture and
nearly every other art, which have for three centuries been predominant
in Europe, I believe the result of the inquiry may be serviceable for
proof of a more vital truth than any at which I have hitherto hinted.
For observe: I said the Protestant had despised the arts, and the
Rationalist corrupted them. But what has the Romanist done meanwhile? He
boasts that it was the papacy which raised the arts; why could it not
support them when it was left to its own strength? How came it to yield
to Classicalism which was based on infidelity, and to oppose no barrier
to innovations, which have reduced the once faithfully conceived imagery
of its worship to stage decoration? Shall we not rather find that
Romanism, instead of being a promoter of the arts, has never shown
itself capable of a single great conception since the separation of
Protestantism from its side?[27] So long as, corrupt though it might be,
no clear witness had been borne against it, so that it still included in
its ranks a vast number of faithful Christians, so long its arts were
noble. But the witness was borne--the error made apparent; and Rome,
refusing to hear the testimony or forsake the falsehood, has been struck
from that instant with an intellectual palsy, which has not only
incapacitated her from any further use of the arts which once were her
ministers, but has made her worship the shame of its own shrines, and
her worshippers their destroyers. Come, then, if truths such as these
are worth our thoughts; come, and let us know, before we enter the
streets of the Sea city, whether we are indeed to submit ourselves to
their undistinguished enchantment, and to look upon the last changes
which were wrought on the lifted forms of her palaces, as we should on
the capricious towering of summer clouds in the sunset, ere they sank
into the deep of night; or whether, rather, we shall not behold in the
brightness of their accumulated marble, pages on which the sentence of
her luxury was to be written until the waves should efface it, as they
fulfilled--"God has numbered thy kingdom, and finished it."
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Appendix 1, "Foundation of Venice."
[2] Appendix 2, "Power of the Doges."
[3] Sismondi, Hist. des Rép. Ital., vol. i. ch. v.
[4] Appendix 3, "Serrar del Consiglio."
[5] "Ha saputo trovar modo che non uno, non pochi, non molti,
signoreggiano, ma molti buoni, pochi migliori, e insiememente, _un
ottimo solo_." (_Sansovino._) Ah, well done, Venice! Wisdom this,
indeed.
[6] Daru, liv. xii. ch. xii.
[7] Daru, liv. xvi. cap. xx. We owe to this historian the discovery
of the statutes of the tribunal and date of its establishment.
[8] Ominously signified by their humiliation to the Papal power (as
before to the Turkish) in 1509, and their abandonment of their right
of appointing the clergy of their territories.
[9] The senate voted the abdication of their authority by a majority
of 512 to 14. (Alison, ch. xxiii.)
[10] By directing the arms of the Crusaders against a Christian
prince. (Daru, liv. iv. ch. iv. viii.)
[11] Appendix 4, "San Pietro di Castello."
[12] Tomaso Mocenigo, above named, § V.
[13] "In that temple porch,
(The brass is gone, the porphyry remains,)
Did BARBAROSSA fling his mantle off,
And kneeling, on his neck receive the foot
Of the proud Pontiff--thus at last consoled
For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake
On his stone pillow."
I need hardly say whence the lines are taken: Rogers' "Italy" has, I
believe, now a place in the best beloved compartment of all
libraries, and will never be removed from it. There is more true
expression of the spirit of Venice in the passages devoted to her in
that poem, than in all else that has been written of her.
[14] At least, such success as they had. Vide Appendix 5, "The Papal
Power in Venice."
[15] The inconsiderable fortifications of the arsenal are no
exception to this statement, as far as it regards the city itself.
They are little more than a semblance of precaution against the
attack of a foreign enemy.
[16] Mémoires de Commynes, liv. vii. ch. xviii.
[17] Appendix 6, "Renaissance Ornaments."
[18] Appendix 7, "Varieties of the Orders."
[19] The reader will find the _weak_ points of Byzantine
architecture shrewdly seized, and exquisitely sketched, in the
opening chapter of the most delightful book of travels I ever
opened,--Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant."
[20] Appendix 8, "The Northern Energy."
[21] Appendix 9, "Wooden Churches of the North."
[22] Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."
[23] Appendix 11, "Renaissance Landscape."
[24] Selvatico, "Architettura di Venezia," p. 147.
[25] Selvatico, p. 221.
[26] The older work is of Istrian stone also, but of different
quality.
[27] Appendix 12, "Romanist Modern Art."
CHAPTER II.
THE VIRTUES OF ARCHITECTURE.
§ I. We address ourselves, then, first to the task of determining some
law of right which we may apply to the architecture of all the world and
of all time; and by help of which, and judgment according to which, we
may easily pronounce whether a building is good or noble, as, by
applying a plumb-line, whether it be perpendicular.
The first question will of course be: What are the possible Virtues of
architecture?
In the main, we require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of
goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be
graceful and pleasing in doing it; which last is itself another form of
duty.
Then the practical duty divides itself into two branches,--acting and
talking:--acting, as to defend us from weather or violence; talking, as
the duty of monuments or tombs, to record facts and express feelings; or
of churches, temples, public edifices, treated as books of history, to
tell such history clearly and forcibly.
We have thus, altogether, three great branches of architectural virtue,
and we require of any building,--
1. That it act well, and do the things it was intended to do in the best
way.
2. That it speak well, and say the things it was intended to say in the
best words.
3. That it look well, and please us by its presence, whatever it has to
do or say.[28]
§ II. Now, as regards the second of these virtues, it is evident that
we can establish no general laws. First, because it is not a virtue
required in all buildings; there are some which are only for covert or
defence, and from which we ask no conversation. Secondly, because there
are countless methods of expression, some conventional, some natural:
each conventional mode has its own alphabet, which evidently can be no
subject of general laws. Every natural mode is instinctively employed
and instinctively understood, wherever there is true feeling; and this
instinct is above law. The choice of conventional methods depends on
circumstances out of calculation, and that of natural methods on
sensations out of control; so that we can only say that the choice is
right, when we feel that the means are effective; and we cannot always
say that it is wrong when they are not so.
A building which recorded the Bible history by means of a series of
sculptural pictures, would be perfectly useless to a person unacquainted
with the Bible beforehand; on the other hand, the text of the Old and
New Testaments might be written on its walls, and yet the building be a
very inconvenient kind of book, not so useful as if it had been adorned
with intelligible and vivid sculpture. So, again, the power of exciting
emotion must vary or vanish, as the spectator becomes thoughtless or
cold; and the building may be often blamed for what is the fault of its
critic, or endowed with a charm which is of its spectator's creation. It
is not, therefore, possible to make expressional character any fair
criterion of excellence in buildings, until we can fully place ourselves
in the position of those to whom their expression was originally
addressed, and until we are certain that we understand every symbol, and
are capable of being touched by every association which its builders
employed as letters of their language. I shall continually endeavor to
put the reader into such sympathetic temper, when I ask for his judgment
of a building; and in every work I may bring before him I shall point
out, as far as I am able, whatever is peculiar in its expression; nay, I
must even depend on such peculiarities for much of my best evidence
respecting the character of the builders. But I cannot legalize the
judgment for which I plead, nor insist upon it if it be refused. I can
neither force the reader to feel this architectural rhetoric, nor compel
him to confess that the rhetoric is powerful, if it have produced no
impression on his own mind.
§ III. I leave, therefore, the expression of buildings for incidental
notice only. But their other two virtues are proper subjects of
law,--their performance of their common and necessary work, and their
conformity with universal and divine canons of loveliness: respecting
these there can be no doubt, no ambiguity. I would have the reader
discern them so quickly that, as he passes along a street, he may, by a
glance of the eye, distinguish the noble from the ignoble work. He can
do this, if he permit free play to his natural instincts; and all that I
have to do for him is to remove from those instincts the artificial
restraints which prevent their action, and to encourage them to an
unaffected and unbiassed choice between right and wrong.
§ IV. We have, then, two qualities of buildings for subjects of separate
inquiry: their action, and aspect, and the sources of virtue in both;
that is to say, Strength and Beauty, both of these being less admired in
themselves, than as testifying the intelligence or imagination of the
builder.
For we have a worthier way of looking at human than at divine
architecture: much of the value both of construction and decoration, in
the edifices of men, depends upon our being led by the thing produced or
adorned, to some contemplation of the powers of mind concerned in its
creation or adornment. We are not so led by divine work, but are content
to rest in the contemplation of the thing created. I wish the reader to
note this especially: we take pleasure, or _should_ take pleasure, in
architectural construction altogether as the manifestation of an
admirable human intelligence; it is not the strength, not the size, not
the finish of the work which we are to venerate: rocks are always
stronger, mountains always larger, all natural objects more finished;
but it is the intelligence and resolution of man in overcoming physical
difficulty which are to be the source of our pleasure and subject of our
praise. And again, in decoration or beauty, it is less the actual
loveliness of the thing produced, than the choice and invention
concerned in the production, which are to delight us; the love and the
thoughts of the workman more than his work: his work must always be
imperfect, but his thoughts and affections may be true and deep.
§ V. This origin of our pleasure in architecture I must insist upon at
somewhat greater length, for I would fain do away with some of the
ungrateful coldness which we show towards the good builders of old time.
In no art is there closer connection between our delight in the work,
and our admiration of the workman's mind, than in architecture, and yet
we rarely ask for a builder's name. The patron at whose cost, the monk
through whose dreaming, the foundation was laid, we remember
occasionally; never the man who verily did the work. Did the reader ever
hear of William of Sens as having had anything to do with Canterbury
Cathedral? or of Pietro Basegio as in anywise connected with the Ducal
Palace of Venice? There is much ingratitude and injustice in this; and
therefore I desire my reader to observe carefully how much of his
pleasure in building is derived, or should be derived, from admiration
of the intellect of men whose names he knows not.
§ VI. The two virtues of architecture which we can justly weigh, are, we
said, its strength or good construction, and its beauty or good
decoration. Consider first, therefore, what you mean when you say a
building is well constructed or well built; you do not merely mean that
it answers its purpose,--this is much, and many modern buildings fail of
this much; but if it be verily well built, it must answer this purpose
in the simplest way, and with no over-expenditure of means. We require
of a light-house, for instance, that it shall stand firm and carry a
light; if it do not this, assuredly it has been ill built; but it may do
it to the end of time, and yet not be well built. It may have hundreds
of tons of stone in it more than were needed, and have cost thousands
of pounds more than it ought. To pronounce it well or ill built, we must
know the utmost forces it can have to resist, and the best arrangements
of stone for encountering them, and the quickest ways of effecting such
arrangements: then only, so far as such arrangements have been chosen,
and such methods used, is it well built. Then the knowledge of all
difficulties to be met, and of all means of meeting them, and the quick
and true fancy or invention of the modes of applying the means to the
end, are what we have to admire in the builder, even as he is seen
through this first or inferior part of his work. Mental power, observe:
not muscular nor mechanical, nor technical, nor empirical,--pure,
precious, majestic, massy intellect; not to be had at vulgar price, nor
received without thanks, and without asking from whom.
§ VII. Suppose, for instance, we are present at the building of a
bridge: the bricklayers or masons have had their centring erected for
them, and that centring was put together by a carpenter, who had the
line of its curve traced for him by the architect: the masons are
dexterously handling and fitting their bricks, or, by the help of
machinery, carefully adjusting stones which are numbered for their
places. There is probably in their quickness of eye and readiness of
hand something admirable; but this is not what I ask the reader to
admire: not the carpentering, nor the bricklaying, nor anything that he
can presently see and understand, but the choice of the curve, and the
shaping of the numbered stones, and the appointment of that number;
there were many things to be known and thought upon before these were
decided. The man who chose the curve and numbered the stones, had to
know the times and tides of the river, and the strength of its floods,
and the height and flow of them, and the soil of the banks, and the
endurance of it, and the weight of the stones he had to build with, and
the kind of traffic that day by day would be carried on over his
bridge,--all this specially, and all the great general laws of force and
weight, and their working; and in the choice of the curve and numbering
of stones are expressed not only his knowledge of these, but such
ingenuity and firmness as he had, in applying special means to overcome
the special difficulties about his bridge. There is no saying how much
wit, how much depth of thought, how much fancy, presence of mind,
courage, and fixed resolution there may have gone to the placing of a
single stone of it. This is what we have to admire,--this grand power
and heart of man in the thing; not his technical or empirical way of
holding the trowel and laying mortar.
§ VIII. Now there is in everything properly called art this concernment
of the intellect, even in the province of the art which seems merely
practical. For observe: in this bridge-building I suppose no reference
to architectural principles; all that I suppose we want is to get safely
over the river; the man who has taken us over is still a mere
bridge-builder,--a _builder_, not an architect: he may be a rough,
artless, feelingless man, incapable of doing any one truly fine thing
all his days. I shall call upon you to despise him presently in a sort,
but not as if he were a mere smoother of mortar; perhaps a great man,
infinite in memory, indefatigable in labor, exhaustless in expedient,
unsurpassable in quickness of thought. Take good heed you understand him
before you despise him.
§ IX. But why is he to be in anywise despised? By no means despise him,
unless he happen to be without a soul,[29] or at least to show no signs
of it; which possibly he may not in merely carrying you across the
river. He may be merely what Mr. Carlyle rightly calls a human beaver
after all; and there may be nothing in all that ingenuity of his greater
than a complication of animal faculties, an intricate bestiality,--nest
or hive building in its highest development. You need something more
than this, or the man is despicable; you need that virtue of building
through which he may show his affections and delights; you need its
beauty or decoration.
§ X. Not that, in reality, one division of the man is more human than
another. Theologists fall into this error very fatally and continually;
and a man from whom I have learned much, Lord Lindsay, has hurt his
noble book by it, speaking as if the spirit of the man only were
immortal, and were opposed to his intellect, and the latter to the
senses; whereas all the divisions of humanity are noble or brutal,
immortal or mortal, according to the degree of their sanctification; and
there is no part of the man which is not immortal and divine when it is
once given to God, and no part of him which is not mortal by the second
death, and brutal before the first, when it is withdrawn from God. For
to what shall we trust for our distinction from the beasts that perish?
To our higher intellect?--yet are we not bidden to be wise as the
serpent, and to consider the ways of the ant?--or to our affections?
nay; these are more shared by the lower animals than our intelligence.
Hamlet leaps into the grave of his beloved, and leaves it,--a dog had
stayed. Humanity and immortality consist neither in reason, nor in love;
not in the body, nor in the animation of the heart of it, nor in the
thoughts and stirrings of the brain of it,--but in the dedication of
them all to Him who will raise them up at the last day.
§ XI. It is not, therefore, that the signs of his affections, which man
leaves upon his work, are indeed more ennobling than the signs of his
intelligence; but it is the balance of both whose expression we need,
and the signs of the government of them all by Conscience; and
Discretion, the daughter of Conscience. So, then, the intelligent part
of man being eminently, if not chiefly, displayed in the structure of
his work, his affectionate part is to be shown in its decoration; and,
that decoration may be indeed lovely, two things are needed: first, that
the affections be vivid, and honestly shown; secondly, that they be
fixed on the right things.
§ XII. You think, perhaps, I have put the requirements in wrong order.
Logically I have; practically I have not: for it is necessary first to
teach men to speak out, and say what they like, truly; and, in the
second place, to teach them which of their likings are ill set, and
which justly. If a man is cold in his likings and dislikings, or if he
will not tell you what he likes, you can make nothing of him. Only get
him to feel quickly and to speak plainly, and you may set him right. And
the fact is, that the great evil of all recent architectural effort has
not been that men liked wrong things: but that they either cared nothing
about any, or pretended to like what they did not. Do you suppose that
any modern architect likes what he builds, or enjoys it? Not in the
least. He builds it because he has been told that such and such things
are fine, and that he _should_ like them. He pretends to like them, and
gives them a false relish of vanity. Do you seriously imagine, reader,
that any living soul in London likes triglyphs?[30]--or gets any hearty
enjoyment out of pediments?[31] You are much mistaken. Greeks did:
English people never did,--never will. Do you fancy that the architect
of old Burlington Mews, in Regent Street, had any particular
satisfaction in putting the blank triangle over the archway, instead of
a useful garret window? By no manner of means. He had been told it was
right to do so, and thought he should be admired for doing it. Very few
faults of architecture are mistakes of honest choice: they are almost
always hypocrisies.
§ XIII. So, then, the first thing we have to ask of the decoration is
that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not
so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and
enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked
hawthorns; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn,--it is a perfect
Niobe of May. Never was such hawthorn; you would try to gather it
forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects
liked hunting; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and
men blowing trumpets two yards long. The base Renaissance architects of
Venice liked masquing and fiddling; so they covered their work with
comic masks and musical instruments. Even that was better than our
English way of liking nothing, and professing to like triglyphs.
§ XIV. But the second requirement in decoration, is a sign of our liking
the right thing. And the right thing to be liked is God's work, which He
made for our delight and contentment in this world. And all noble
ornamentation is the expression of man's delight in God's work.
§ XV. So, then, these are the two virtues of building: first, the signs
of man's own good work; secondly, the expression of man's delight in
better work than his own. And these are the two virtues of which I
desire my reader to be able quickly to judge, at least in some measure;
to have a definite opinion up to a certain point. Beyond a certain point
he cannot form one. When the science of the building is great, great
science is of course required to comprehend it; and, therefore, of
difficult bridges, and light-houses, and harbor walls, and river dykes,
and railway tunnels, no judgment may be rapidly formed. But of common
buildings, built in common circumstances, it is very possible for every
man, or woman, or child, to form judgment both rational and rapid. Their
necessary, or even possible, features are but few; the laws of their
construction are as simple as they are interesting. The labor of a few
hours is enough to render the reader master of their main points; and
from that moment he will find in himself a power of judgment which can
neither be escaped nor deceived, and discover subjects of interest where
everything before had appeared barren. For though the laws are few and
simple, the modes of obedience to them are not so. Every building
presents its own requirements and difficulties; and every good building
has peculiar appliances or contrivances to meet them. Understand the
laws of structure, and you will feel the special difficulty in every new
building which you approach; and you will know also, or feel
instinctively,[32] whether it has been wisely met or otherwise. And an
enormous number of buildings, and of styles of buildings, you will be
able to cast aside at once, as at variance with these constant laws of
structure, and therefore unnatural and monstrous.
§ XVI. Then, as regards decoration, I want you only to consult your own
natural choice and liking. There is a right and wrong in it; but you
will assuredly like the right if you suffer your natural instinct to
lead you. Half the evil in this world comes from people not knowing what
they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they
really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they
don't know _that_,--they rather think they like keeping it; and they
_do_ keep it under this false impression, often to their great
discomfort. Every body likes to do good; but not one in a hundred finds
_this_ out. Multitudes think they like to do evil; yet no man ever
really enjoyed doing evil since God made the world.
So in this lesser matter of ornament. It needs some little care to try
experiments upon yourself: it needs deliberate question and upright
answer. But there is no difficulty to be overcome, no abstruse reasoning
to be gone into; only a little watchfulness needed, and thoughtfulness,
and so much honesty as will enable you to confess to yourself and to all
men, that you enjoy things, though great authorities say you should not.
§ XVII. This looks somewhat like pride; but it is true humility, a trust
that you have been so created as to enjoy what is fitting for you, and a
willingness to be pleased, as it was intended you should be. It is the
child's spirit, which we are then most happy when we most recover; only
wiser than children in that we are ready to think it subject of
thankfulness that we can still be pleased with a fair color or a dancing
light. And, above all, do not try to make all these pleasures
reasonable, nor to connect the delight which you take in ornament with
that which you take in construction or usefulness. They have no
connection; and every effort that you make to reason from one to the
other will blunt your sense of beauty, or confuse it with sensations
altogether inferior to it. You were made for enjoyment, and the world
was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to
be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to
other account than mere delight. Remember that the most beautiful things
in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance; at
least I suppose this quill I hold in my hand writes better than a
peacock's would, and the peasants of Vevay, whose fields in spring time
are as white with lilies as the Dent du Midi is with its snow, told me
the hay was none the better for them.
§ XVIII. Our task therefore divides itself into two branches, and these
I shall follow in succession. I shall first consider the construction of
buildings, dividing them into their really necessary members or
features; and I shall endeavor so to lead the reader forward from the
foundation upwards, as that he may find out for himself the best way of
doing everything, and having so discovered it, never forget it. I shall
give him stones, and bricks, and straw, chisels, and trowels, and the
ground, and then ask him to build; only helping him, as I can, if I find
him puzzled. And when he has built his house or church, I shall ask him
to ornament it, and leave it to him to choose the ornaments as I did to
find out the construction: I shall use no influence with him whatever,
except to counteract previous prejudices, and leave him, as far as may
be, free. And when he has thus found out how to build, and chosen his
forms of decoration, I shall do what I can to confirm his confidence in
what he has done. I shall assure him that no one in the world could, so
far, have done better, and require him to condemn, as futile or
fallacious, whatever has no resemblance to his own performances.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] Appendix 13, "Mr. Fergusson's System."
[29] Appendix 14, "Divisions of Humanity."
[30] Triglyph. Literally, "Three Cut." The awkward upright ornament
with two notches in it, and a cut at each side, to be seen
everywhere at the tops of Doric colonnades, ancient and modern.
[31] Pediment. The triangular space above Greek porticoes, as on the
Mansion House or Royal Exchange.
[32] Appendix 15: "Instinctive Judgments."
CHAPTER III.
THE SIX DIVISIONS OF ARCHITECTURE.
§ I. The practical duties of buildings are twofold.
They have either (1), to hold and protect something; or (2), to place or
carry something.
1. Architecture of Protection. This is architecture intended to
protect men or their possessions from violence of any kind, whether
of men or of the elements. It will include all churches, houses, and
treasuries; fortresses, fences, and ramparts; the architecture of the
hut and sheepfold; of the palace and the citadel: of the dyke,
breakwater, and sea-wall. And the protection, when of living
creatures, is to be understood as including commodiousness and
comfort of habitation, wherever these are possible under the given
circumstances.
2. Architecture of Position. This is architecture intended to carry
men or things to some certain places, or to hold them there. This
will include all bridges, aqueducts, and road architecture;
light-houses, which have to hold light in appointed places; chimneys
to carry smoke or direct currents of air; staircases; towers, which
are to be watched from or cried from, as in mosques, or to hold
bells, or to place men in positions of offence, as ancient moveable
attacking towers, and most fortress towers.
§ II. Protective architecture has to do one or all of three things: to
wall a space, to roof it, and to give access to it, of persons, light,
and air; and it is therefore to be considered under the three divisions
of walls, roofs, and apertures.
We will take, first, a short, general view of the connection of these
members, and then examine them in detail: endeavoring always to keep the
simplicity of our first arrangement in view; for protective architecture
has indeed no other members than these, unless flooring and paving be
considered architecture, which it is only when the flooring is also a
roof; the laying of the stones or timbers for footing being pavior's or
carpenter's work, rather than architect's; and, at all events, work
respecting the well or ill doing of which we shall hardly find much
difference of opinion, except in points of æsthetics. We shall therefore
concern ourselves only with the construction of walls, roofs, and
apertures.
§ III. 1. _Walls._--A wall is an even and united fence, whether of wood,
earth, stone, or metal. When meant for purposes of mere partition or
enclosure, it remains a wall proper: but it has generally also to
sustain a certain vertical or lateral pressure, for which its strength
is at first increased by some general addition to its thickness; but if
the pressure becomes very great, it is gathered up into _piers_ to
resist vertical pressure, and supported by _buttresses_ to resist
lateral pressure.
If its functions of partition or enclosure are continued, together with
that of resisting vertical pressure, it remains as a wall veil between
the piers into which it has been partly gathered; but if it is required
only to resist the vertical or roof pressure, it is gathered up into
piers altogether, loses its wall character, and becomes a group or line
of piers.
On the other hand, if the lateral pressure be slight, it may retain its
character of a wall, being supported against the pressure by buttresses
at intervals; but if the lateral pressure be very great, it is supported
against such pressure by a continuous buttress, loses its wall
character, and becomes a dyke or rampart.
§ IV. We shall have therefore (A) first to get a general idea of a wall,
and of right construction of walls; then (B) to see how this wall is
gathered into piers; and to get a general idea of piers and the right
construction of piers; then (C) to see how a wall is supported by
buttresses, and to get a general idea of buttresses and the right
construction of buttresses. This is surely very simple, and it is all we
shall have to do with walls and their divisions.
[Illustration: Fig. I.]
§ V. 2. _Roofs._--A roof is the covering of a space, narrow or wide. It
will be most conveniently studied by first considering the forms in
which it may be carried over a narrow space, and then expanding these on
a wide plan; only there is some difficulty here in the nomenclature, for
an arched roof over a narrow space has (I believe) no name, except that
which belongs properly to the piece of stone or wood composing such a
roof, namely, lintel. But the reader will have no difficulty in
understanding that he is first to consider roofs on the section only,
thinking how best to construct a narrow bar or slice of them, of
whatever form; as, for instance, _x_, _y_, or _z_, over the plan or area
_a_, Fig. I. Having done this, let him imagine these several divisions,
first moved along (or set side by side) over a rectangle, _b_, Fig. I.,
and then revolved round a point (or crossed at it) over a polygon, _c_,
or circle, _d_, and he will have every form of simple roof: the arched
section giving successively the vaulted roof and dome, and the gabled
section giving the gabled roof and spire.
As we go farther into the subject, we shall only have to add one or two
forms to the sections here given, in order to embrace all the
_uncombined_ roofs in existence; and we shall not trouble the reader
with many questions respecting cross-vaulting, and other modes of their
combination.
§ VI. Now, it also happens, from its place in buildings, that the
sectional roof over a narrow space will need to be considered before we
come to the expanded roof over a broad one. For when a wall has been
gathered, as above explained, into piers, that it may better bear
vertical pressure, it is generally necessary that it should be expanded
again at the top into a continuous wall before it carries the true roof.
Arches or lintels are, therefore, thrown from pier to pier, and a level
preparation for carrying the real roof is made above them. After we have
examined the structure of piers, therefore, we shall have to see how
lintels or arches are thrown from pier to pier, and the whole prepared
for the superincumbent roof; this arrangement being universal in all
good architecture prepared for vertical pressures: and we shall then
examine the condition of the great roof itself. And because the
structure of the roof very often introduces certain lateral pressures
which have much to do with the placing of buttresses, it will be well to
do all this before we examine the nature of buttresses, and, therefore,
between parts (B) and (C) of the above plan, § IV. So now we shall have
to study: (A) the construction of walls; (B) that of piers; (C) that of
lintels or arches prepared for roofing; (D) that of roofs proper; and
(E) that of buttresses.
§ VII. 3. _Apertures._--There must either be intervals between the
piers, of which intervals the character will be determined by that of
the piers themselves, or else doors or windows in the walls proper. And,
respecting doors or windows, we have to determine three things: first,
the proper shape of the entire aperture; secondly, the way in which it
is to be filled with valves or glass; and thirdly, the modes of
protecting it on the outside, and fitting appliances of convenience to
it, as porches or balconies. And this will be our division F; and if the
reader will have the patience to go through these six heads, which
include every possible feature of protective architecture, and to
consider the simple necessities and fitnesses of each, I will answer for
it, he shall never confound good architecture with bad any more. For, as
to architecture of position, a great part of it involves necessities of
construction with which the spectator cannot become generally
acquainted, and of the compliance with which he is therefore never
expected to judge,--as in chimneys, light-houses, &c.: and the other
forms of it are so closely connected with those of protective
architecture, that a few words in Chap. XIX. respecting staircases and
towers, will contain all with which the reader need be troubled on the
subject.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WALL BASE.
§ I. Our first business, then, is with Wall, and to find out wherein
lies the true excellence of the "Wittiest Partition." For it is rather
strange that, often as we speak of a "dead" wall, and that with
considerable disgust, we have not often, since Snout's time, heard of a
living one. But the common epithet of opprobrium is justly bestowed, and
marks a right feeling. A wall has no business to be dead. It ought to
have members in its make, and purposes in its existence, like an
organized creature, and to answer its ends in a living and energetic
way; and it is only when we do not choose to put any strength nor
organization into it, that it offends us by its deadness. Every wall
ought to be a "sweet and lovely wall." I do not care about its having
ears; but, for instruction and exhortation, I would often have it to
"hold up its fingers." What its necessary members and excellences are,
it is our present business to discover.
§ II. A wall has been defined to be an even and united fence of wood,
earth, stone, or metal. Metal fences, however, seldom, if ever, take the
form of walls, but of railings; and, like all other metal constructions,
must be left out of our present investigation; as may be also walls
composed merely of light planks or laths for purposes of partition or
inclosure. Substantial walls, whether of wood or earth (I use the word
earth as including clay, baked or unbaked, and stone), have, in their
perfect form, three distinct members;--the Foundation, Body or Veil, and
Cornice.
§ III. The foundation is to the wall what the paw is to an animal. It
is a long foot, wider than the wall, on which the wall is to stand, and
which keeps it from settling into the ground. It is most necessary that
this great element of security should be visible to the eye, and
therefore made a part of the structure above ground. Sometimes, indeed,
it becomes incorporated with the entire foundation of the building, a
vast table on which walls or piers are alike set: but even then, the
eye, taught by the reason, requires some additional preparation or foot
for the wall, and the building is felt to be imperfect without it. This
foundation we shall call the Base of the wall.
§ IV. The body of the wall is of course the principal mass of it, formed
of mud or clay, of bricks or stones, of logs or hewn timber; the
condition of structure being, that it is of equal thickness everywhere,
below and above. It may be half a foot thick, or six feet thick, or
fifty feet thick; but if of equal thickness everywhere, it is still a
wall proper: if to its fifty feet of proper thickness there be added so
much as an inch of thickness in particular parts, that added thickness
is to be considered as some form of buttress or pier, or other
appliance.[33]
In perfect architecture, however, the walls are generally kept of
moderate thickness, and strengthened by piers or buttresses; and the
part of the wall between these, being generally intended only to secure
privacy, or keep out the slighter forces of weather, may be properly
called a Wall Veil. I shall always use this word "Veil" to signify the
even portion of a wall, it being more expressive than the term Body.
§ V. When the materials with which this veil is built are very loose, or
of shapes which do not fit well together, it sometimes becomes
necessary, or at least adds to security, to introduce courses of more
solid material. Thus, bricks alternate with rolled pebbles in the old
walls of Verona, and hewn stones with brick in its Lombard churches. A
banded structure, almost a stratification of the wall, is thus produced;
and the courses of more solid material are sometimes decorated with
carving. Even when the wall is not thus banded through its whole height,
it frequently becomes expedient to lay a course of stone, or at least of
more carefully chosen materials, at regular heights; and such belts or
bands we may call String courses. These are a kind of epochs in the
wall's existence; something like periods of rest and reflection in human
life, before entering on a new career. Or else, in the building, they
correspond to the divisions of its stories within, express its internal
structure, and mark off some portion of the ends of its existence
already attained.
§ VI. Finally, on the top of the wall some protection from the weather
is necessary, or some preparation for the reception of superincumbent
weight, called a coping, or Cornice. I shall use the word Cornice for
both; for, in fact, a coping is a roof to the wall itself, and is
carried by a small cornice as the roof of the building by a large one.
In either case, the cornice, small or large, is the termination of the
wall's existence, the accomplishment of its work. When it is meant to
carry some superincumbent weight, the cornice may be considered as its
hand, opened to carry something above its head; as the base was
considered its foot: and the three parts should grow out of each other
and form one whole, like the root, stalk, and bell of a flower.
These three parts we shall examine in succession; and, first, the Base.
§ VII. It may be sometimes in our power, and it is always expedient, to
prepare for the whole building some settled foundation, level and firm,
out of sight. But this has not been done in some of the noblest
buildings in existence. It cannot always be done perfectly, except at
enormous expense; and, in reasoning upon the superstructure, we shall
never suppose it to be done. The mind of the spectator does not
conceive it; and he estimates the merits of the edifice on the
supposition of its being built upon the ground. Even if there be a vast
table land of foundation elevated for the whole of it, accessible by
steps all round, as at Pisa, the surface of this table is always
conceived as capable of yielding somewhat to superincumbent weight, and
generally is so; and we shall base all our arguments on the widest
possible supposition, that is to say, that the building stands on a
surface either of earth, or, at all events, capable of yielding in some
degree to its weight.
[Illustration: Fig. II.]
§ VIII. Now, let the reader simply ask himself how, on such a surface,
he would set about building a substantial wall, that should be able to
bear weight and to stand for ages. He would assuredly look about for the
largest stones he had at his disposal, and, rudely levelling the ground,
he would lay these well together over a considerably larger width than
he required the wall to be (suppose as at _a_, Fig. II.), in order to
equalise the pressure of the wall over a large surface, and form its
foot. On the top of these he would perhaps lay a second tier of large
stones, _b_, or even the third, _c_, making the breadth somewhat less
each time, so as to prepare for the pressure of the wall on the centre,
and, naturally or necessarily, using somewhat smaller stones above than
below (since we supposed him to look about for the largest first), and
cutting them more neatly. His third tier, if not his second, will
probably appear a sufficiently secure foundation for finer work; for if
the earth yield at all, it will probably yield pretty equally under the
great mass of masonry now knit together over it. So he will prepare for
the wall itself at once by sloping off the next tier of stones to the
right diameter, as at _d_. If there be any joints in this tier within
the wall, he may perhaps, for further security, lay a binding stone
across them, _e_, and then begin the work of the wall veil itself,
whether in bricks or stones.
§ IX. I have supposed the preparation here to be for a large wall,
because such a preparation will give us the best general type. But it is
evident that the essential features of the arrangement are only two,
that is to say, one tier of massy work for foundation, suppose _c_,
missing the first two; and the receding tier or real foot of the wall,
_d_. The reader will find these members, though only of brick, in most
of the considerable and independent walls in the suburbs of London.
§ X. It is evident, however, that the general type, Fig. II., will be
subject to many different modifications in different circumstances.
Sometimes the ledges of the tiers _a_ and _b_ may be of greater width;
and when the building is in a secure place, and of finished masonry,
these may be sloped off also like the main foot _d_. In Venetian
buildings these lower ledges are exposed to the sea, and therefore left
rough hewn; but in fine work and in important positions the lower ledges
may be bevelled and decorated like the upper, or another added above
_d_; and all these parts may be in different proportions, according to
the disposition of the building above them. But we have nothing to do
with any of these variations at present, they being all more or less
dependent upon decorative considerations, except only one of very great
importance, that is to say, the widening of the lower ledge into a stone
seat, which may be often done in buildings of great size with most
beautiful effect: it looks kind and hospitable, and preserves the work
above from violence. In St. Mark's at Venice, which is a small and low
church, and needing no great foundation for the wall veils of it, we
find only the three members, _b_, _c_, and _d_. Of these the first rises
about a foot above the pavement of St. Mark's Place, and forms an
elevated dais in some of the recesses of the porches, chequered red and
white; _c_ forms a seat which follows the line of the walls, while its
basic character is marked by its also carrying certain shafts with
which we have here no concern; _d_ is of white marble; and all are
enriched and decorated in the simplest and most perfect manner possible,
as we shall see in Chap. XXV. And thus much may serve to fix the type of
wall bases, a type oftener followed in real practice than any other we
shall hereafter be enabled to determine: for wall bases of necessity
must be solidly built, and the architect is therefore driven into the
adoption of the right form; or if he deviate from it, it is generally in
meeting some necessity of peculiar circumstances, as in obtaining
cellars and underground room, or in preparing for some grand features or
particular parts of the wall, or in some mistaken idea of
decoration,--into which errors we had better not pursue him until we
understand something more of the rest of the building: let us therefore
proceed to consider the wall veil.
FOOTNOTES:
[33] Many walls are slightly sloped or curved towards their tops,
and have buttresses added to them (that of the Queen's Bench Prison
is a curious instance of the vertical buttress and inclined wall);
but in all such instances the slope of the wall is properly to be
considered a condition of incorporated buttress.
CHAPTER V.
THE WALL VEIL.
§ I. The summer of the year 1849 was spent by the writer in researches
little bearing upon his present subject, and connected chiefly with
proposed illustrations of the mountain forms in the works of J. M. W.
Turner. But there are sometimes more valuable lessons to be learned in
the school of nature than in that of Vitruvius, and a fragment of
building among the Alps is singularly illustrative of the chief feature
which I have at present to develope as necessary to the perfection of
the wall veil.
It is a fragment of some size; a group of broken walls, one of them
overhanging; crowned with a cornice, nodding some hundred and fifty feet
over its massy flank, three thousand above its glacier base, and
fourteen thousand above the sea,--a wall truly of some majesty, at once
the most precipitous and the strongest mass in the whole chain of the
Alps, the Mont Cervin.
§ II. It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast
ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin,
and lifting itself like a rearing horse with its face to the east. All
the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt
glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without
a break; and the clouds, when their day's work is done, and they are
weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till
dawn, each with his leagues of grey mantle stretched along the grisly
ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the moonlight,
three thousand feet above.
§ III. The eastern face of the promontory is hewn down, as if by the
single sweep of a sword, from the crest of it to the base; hewn concave
and smooth, like the hollow of a wave: on each flank of it there is set
a buttress, both of about equal height, their heads sloped out from the
main wall about seven hundred feet below its summit. That on the north
is the most important; it is as sharp as the frontal angle of a bastion,
and sloped sheer away to the north-east, throwing out spur beyond spur,
until it terminates in a long low curve of russet precipice, at whose
foot a great bay of the glacier of the Col de Cervin lies as level as a
lake. This spur is one of the few points from which the mass of the Mont
Cervin is in anywise approachable. It is a continuation of the masonry
of the mountain itself, and affords us the means of examining the
character of its materials.
§ IV. Few architects would like to build with them. The slope of the
rocks to the north-west is covered two feet deep with their ruins, a
mass of loose and slaty shale, of a dull brick-red color, which yields
beneath the foot like ashes, so that, in running down, you step one
yard, and slide three. The rock is indeed hard beneath, but still
disposed in thin courses of these cloven shales, so finely laid that
they look in places more like a heap of crushed autumn leaves than a
rock; and the first sensation is one of unmitigated surprise, as if the
mountain were upheld by miracle; but surprise becomes more intelligent
reverence for the great builder, when we find, in the middle of the mass
of these dead leaves, a course of living rock, of quartz as white as the
snow that encircles it, and harder than a bed of steel.
§ V. It is one only of a thousand iron bands that knit the strength of
the mighty mountain. Through the buttress and the wall alike, the
courses of its varied masonry are seen in their successive order, smooth
and true as if laid by line and plummet,[34] but of thickness and
strength continually varying, and with silver cornices glittering along
the edge of each, laid by the snowy winds and carved by the
sunshine,--stainless ornaments of the eternal temple, by which "neither
the hammer nor the axe, nor any tool, was heard while it was in
building."
§ VI. I do not, however, bring this forward as an instance of any
universal law of natural building; there are solid as well as coursed
masses of precipice, but it is somewhat curious that the most noble
cliff in Europe, which this eastern front of the Cervin is, I believe,
without dispute, should be to us an example of the utmost possible
stability of precipitousness attained with materials of imperfect and
variable character; and, what is more, there are very few cliffs which
do not display alternations between compact and friable conditions of
their material, marked in their contours by bevelled slopes when the
bricks are soft, and vertical steps when they are harder. And, although
we are not hence to conclude that it is well to introduce courses of bad
materials when we can get perfect material, I believe we may conclude
with great certainty that it is better and easier to strengthen a wall
necessarily of imperfect substance, as of brick, by introducing
carefully laid courses of stone, than by adding to its thickness; and
the first impression we receive from the unbroken aspect of a wall veil,
unless it be of hewn stone throughout, is that it must be both thicker
and weaker than it would have been, had it been properly coursed. The
decorative reasons for adopting the coursed arrangement, which we shall
notice hereafter, are so weighty, that they would alone be almost
sufficient to enforce it; and the constructive ones will apply
universally, except in the rare cases in which the choice of perfect or
imperfect material is entirely open to us, or where the general system
of the decoration of the building requires absolute unity in its
surface.
[Illustration: Fig. III.]
§ VII. As regards the arrangement of the intermediate parts themselves,
it is regulated by certain conditions of bonding and fitting the stones
or bricks, which the reader need hardly be troubled to consider, and
which I wish that bricklayers themselves were always honest enough to
observe. But I hardly know whether to note under the head of æsthetic
or constructive law, this important principle, that masonry is always
bad which appears to have arrested the attention of the architect more
than absolute conditions of strength require. Nothing is more
contemptible in any work than an appearance of the slightest desire on
the part of the builder to _direct attention_ to the way its stones are
put together, or of any trouble taken either to show or to conceal it
more than was rigidly necessary: it may sometimes, on the one hand, be
necessary to conceal it as far as may be, by delicate and close fitting,
when the joints would interfere with lines of sculpture or of mouldings;
and it may often, on the other hand, be delightful to show it, as it is
delightful in places to show the anatomy even of the most delicate human
frame: but _studiously_ to conceal it is the error of vulgar painters,
who are afraid to show that their figures have bones; and studiously to
display it is the error of the base pupils of Michael Angelo, who turned
heroes' limbs into surgeons' diagrams,--but with less excuse than
theirs, for there is less interest in the anatomy displayed. Exhibited
masonry is in most cases the expedient of architects who do not know how
to fill up blank spaces, and many a building, which would have been
decent enough if let alone, has been scrawled over with straight lines,
as in Fig. III., on exactly the same principles, and with just the same
amount of intelligence as a boy's in scrawling his copy-book when he
cannot write. The device was thought ingenious at one period of
architectural history; St. Paul's and Whitehall are covered with it, and
it is in this I imagine that some of our modern architects suppose the
great merit of those buildings to consist. There is, however, no excuse
for errors in disposition of masonry, for there is but one law upon the
subject, and that easily complied with, to avoid all affectation and
all unnecessary expense, either in showing or concealing. Every one
knows a building is built of separate stones; nobody will ever object to
seeing that it is so, but nobody wants to count them. The divisions of a
church are much like the divisions of a sermon; they are always right so
long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they
are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness
in carving when there is richness in feasting; but I have heard many a
discourse, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carving and
no meat.
FOOTNOTES:
[34] On the eastern side: violently contorted on the northern and
western.
CHAPTER VI.
THE WALL CORNICE.
§ I. We have lastly to consider the close of the wall's existence, or
its cornice. It was above stated, that a cornice has one of two offices:
if the wall have nothing to carry, the cornice is its roof, and defends
it from the weather; if there is weight to be carried above the wall,
the cornice is its hand, and is expanded to carry the said weight.
There are several ways of roofing or protecting independent walls,
according to the means nearest at hand: sometimes the wall has a true
roof all to itself; sometimes it terminates in a small gabled ridge,
made of bricks set slanting, as constantly in the suburbs of London; or
of hewn stone, in stronger work; or in a single sloping face, inclined
to the outside. We need not trouble ourselves at present about these
small roofings, which are merely the diminutions of large ones; but we
must examine the important and constant member of the wall structure,
which prepares it either for these small roofs or for weights above, and
is its true cornice.
§ II. The reader will, perhaps, as heretofore, be kind enough to think
for himself, how, having carried up his wall veil as high as it may be
needed, he will set about protecting it from weather, or preparing it
for weight. Let him imagine the top of the unfinished wall, as it would
be seen from above with all the joints, perhaps uncemented, or
imperfectly filled up with cement, open to the sky; and small broken
materials filling gaps between large ones, and leaving cavities ready
for the rain to soak into, and loosen and dissolve the cement, and
split, as it froze, the whole to pieces. I am much mistaken if his
first impulse would not be to take a great flat stone and lay it on the
top; or rather a series of such, side by side, projecting well over the
edge of the wall veil. If, also, he proposed to lay a weight (as, for
instance, the end of a beam) on the wall, he would feel at once that the
pressure of this beam on, or rather among, the small stones of the wall
veil, might very possibly dislodge or disarrange some of them; and the
first impulse would be, in this case, also to lay a large flat stone on
the top of all to receive the beam, or any other weight, and distribute
it equally among the small stones below, as at _a_, Fig. IV.
[Illustration: Fig. IV.]
§ III. We must therefore have our flat stone in either case; and let
_b_, Fig. IV., be the section or side of it, as it is set across the
wall. Now, evidently, if by any chance this weight happen to be thrown
more on the edges of this stone than the centre, there will be a chance
of these edges breaking off. Had we not better, therefore, put another
stone, sloped off to the wall, beneath the projecting one, as at _c_.
But now our cornice looks somewhat too heavy for the wall; and as the
upper stone is evidently of needless thickness, we will thin it
somewhat, and we have the form _d_. Now observe: the lower or bevelled
stone here at _d_ corresponds to _d_ in the base (Fig. II., page 59).
That was the foot of the wall; this is its hand. And the top stone here,
which is a constant member of cornices, corresponds to the under stone
_c_, in Fig. II., which is a constant member of bases. The reader has no
idea at present of the enormous importance of these members; but as we
shall have to refer to them perpetually, I must ask him to compare them,
and fix their relations well in his mind: and, for convenience, I shall
call the bevelled or sloping stone, X, and the upright edged stone, Y.
The reader may remember easily which is which; for X is an intersection
of two slopes, and may therefore properly mean either of the two sloping
stones; and Y is a figure with a perpendicular line and two slopes, and
may therefore fitly stand for the upright stone in relation to each of
the sloping ones; and as we shall have to say much more about cornices
than about bases, let X and Y stand for the stones of the cornice, and
Xb and Yb for those of the base, when distinction is needed.
[Illustration: Fig. V.]
§ IV. Now the form at _d_, Fig. IV., is the great root and primal type
of all cornices whatsoever. In order to see what forms may be developed
from it, let us take its profile a little larger--_a_, Fig. V., with X
and Y duly marked. Now this form, being the root of all cornices, may
either have to finish the wall and so keep off rain; or, as so often
stated, to carry weight. If the former, it is evident that, in its
present profile, the rain will run back down the slope of X; and if the
latter, that the sharp angle or edge of X, at _k_, may be a little too
weak for its work, and run a chance of giving way. To avoid the evil in
the first case, suppose we hollow the slope of X inwards, as at _b_; and
to avoid it in the second case, suppose we strengthen X by letting it
bulge outwards, as at c.
§ V. These (_b_ and _c_) are the profiles of two vast families of
cornices, springing from the same root, which, with a third arising
from their combination (owing its origin to æsthetic considerations, and
inclining sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other), have been
employed, each on its third part of the architecture of the whole world
throughout all ages, and must continue to be so employed through such
time as is yet to come. We do not at present speak of the third or
combined group; but the relation of the two main branches to each other,
and to the line of origin, is given at _e_, Fig. V.; where the dotted
lines are the representatives of the two families, and the straight line
of the root. The slope of this right line, as well as the nature of the
curves, here drawn as segments of circles, we leave undetermined: the
slope, as well as the proportion of the depths of X and Y to each other,
vary according to the weight to be carried, the strength of the stone,
the size of the cornice, and a thousand other accidents; and the nature
of the curves according to æsthetic laws. It is in these infinite fields
that the invention of the architect is permitted to expatiate, but not
in the alteration of primitive forms.
§ VI. But to proceed. It will doubtless appear to the reader, that, even
allowing for some of these permissible variations in the curve or slope
of X, neither the form at _b_, nor any approximation to that form, would
be sufficiently undercut to keep the rain from running back upon it.
This is true; but we have to consider that the cornice, as the close of
the wall's life, is of all its features that which is best fitted for
honor and ornament. It has been esteemed so by almost all builders, and
has been lavishly decorated in modes hereafter to be considered. But it
is evident that, as it is high above the eye, the fittest place to
receive the decoration is the slope of X, which is inclined towards the
spectator; and if we cut away or hollow out this slope more than we have
done at _b_, all decoration will be hid in the shadow. If, therefore,
the climate be fine, and rain of long continuance not to be dreaded, we
shall not hollow the stone X further, adopting the curve at _b_ merely
as the most protective in our power. But if the climate be one in which
rain is frequent and dangerous, as in alternations with frost, we may be
compelled to consider the cornice in a character distinctly protective,
and to hollow out X farther, so as to enable it thoroughly to accomplish
its purpose. A cornice thus treated loses its character as the crown or
honor of the wall, takes the office of its protector, and is called a
DRIPSTONE. The dripstone is naturally the attribute of Northern
buildings, and therefore especially of Gothic architecture; the true
cornice is the attribute of Southern buildings, and therefore of Greek
and Italian architecture; and it is one of their peculiar beauties, and
eminent features of superiority.
§ VII. Before passing to the dripstone, however, let us examine a little
farther into the nature of the true cornice. We cannot, indeed, render
either of the forms _b_ or _c_, Fig. V., perfectly protective from rain,
but we can help them a little in their duty by a slight advance of their
upper ledge. This, with the form _b_, we can best manage by cutting off
the sharp upper point of its curve, which is evidently weak and useless;
and we shall have the form _f_. By a slight advance of the upper stone
_c_, we shall have the parallel form _g_.
These two cornices, _f_ and _g_, are characteristic of early Byzantine
work, and are found on all the most lovely examples of it in Venice. The
type _a_ is rarer, but occurs pure in the most exquisite piece of
composition in Venice--the northern portico of St. Mark's; and will be
given in due time.
§ VIII. Now the reader has doubtless noticed that these forms of cornice
result, from considerations of fitness and necessity, far more neatly
and decisively than the forms of the base, which we left only very
generally determined. The reason is, that there are many ways of
building foundations, and many _good_ ways, dependent upon the peculiar
accidents of the ground and nature of accessible materials. There is
also room to spare in width, and a chance of a part of the arrangement
being concealed by the ground, so as to modify height. But we have no
room to spare in width on the top of a wall, and all that we do must be
thoroughly visible; and we can but have to deal with bricks, or stones
of a certain degree of fineness, and not with mere gravel, or sand, or
clay,--so that as the conditions are limited, the forms become
determined; and our steps will be more clear and certain the farther we
advance. The sources of a river are usually half lost among moss and
pebbles, and its first movements doubtful in direction; but, as the
current gathers force, its banks are determined, and its branches are
numbered.
§ IX. So far of the true cornice: we have still to determine the form of
the dripstone.
[Illustration: Fig. VI.]
We go back to our primal type or root of cornice, _a_ of Fig. V. We take
this at _a_ in Fig. VI., and we are to consider it entirely as a
protection against rain. Now the only way in which the rain can be kept
from running back on the slope of X is by a bold hollowing out of it
upwards, _b_. But clearly, by thus doing, we shall so weaken the
projecting part of it that the least shock would break it at the neck,
_c_; we must therefore cut the whole out of one stone, which will give
us the form _d_. That the water may not lodge on the upper ledge of
this, we had better round it off; and it will better protect the joint
at the bottom of the slope if we let the stone project over it in a
roll, cutting the recess deeper above. These two changes are made in
_e_: _e_ is the type of dripstones; the projecting part being, however,
more or less rounded into an approximation to the shape of a falcon's
beak, and often reaching it completely. But the essential part of the
arrangement is the up and under cutting of the curve. Wherever we find
this, we are sure that the climate is wet, or that the builders have
been _bred_ in a wet country, and that the rest of the building will be
prepared for rough weather. The up cutting of the curve is sometimes all
the distinction between the mouldings of far-distant countries and
utterly strange nations.
[Illustration: Fig. VII.]
Fig. VII. representing a moulding with an outer and inner curve, the
latter undercut. Take the outer line, and this moulding is one constant
in Venice, in architecture traceable to Arabian types, and chiefly to
the early mosques of Cairo. But take the inner line; it is a dripstone
at Salisbury. In that narrow interval between the curves there is, when
we read it rightly, an expression of another and mightier curve,--the
orbed sweep of the earth and sea, between the desert of the Pyramids,
and the green and level fields through which the clear streams of Sarum
wind so slowly.
[Illustration: Fig. VIII.]
And so delicate is the test, that though pure cornices are often found
in the north,--borrowed from classical models,--so surely as we find a
true dripstone moulding in the South, the influence of Northern builders
has been at work; and this will be one of the principal evidences which
I shall use in detecting Lombard influence on Arab work; for the true
Byzantine and Arab mouldings are all open to the sky and light, but the
Lombards brought with them from the North the fear of rain, and in all
the Lombardic Gothic we instantly recognize the shadowy dripstone: _a_,
Fig. VIII., is from a noble fragment at Milan, in the Piazza dei
Mercanti; _b_, from the Broletto of Como. Compare them with _c_ and
_d_; both from Salisbury; _e_ and _f_ from Lisieux, Normandy; _g_ and
_h_ from Wenlock Abbey, Shropshire.
§ X. The reader is now master of all that he need know about the
construction of the general wall cornice, fitted either to become a
crown of the wall, or to carry weight above. If, however, the weight
above become considerable, it may be necessary to support the cornice at
intervals with brackets; especially if it be required to project far, as
well as to carry weight; as, for instance, if there be a gallery on top
of the wall. This kind of bracket-cornice, deep or shallow, forms a
separate family, essentially connected with roofs and galleries; for if
there be no superincumbent weight, it is evidently absurd to put
brackets to a plain cornice or dripstone (though this is sometimes done
in carrying out a style); so that, as soon as we see a bracket put to a
cornice, it implies, or should imply, that there is a roof or gallery
above it. Hence this family of cornices I shall consider in connection
with roofing, calling them "roof cornices," while what we have hitherto
examined are proper "wall cornices." The roof cornice and wall cornice
are therefore treated in division D.
We are not, however, as yet nearly ready for our roof. We have only
obtained that which was to be the object of our first division (A); we
have got, that is to say, a general idea of a wall and of the three
essential parts of a wall; and we have next, it will be remembered, to
get an idea of a pier and the essential parts of a pier, which were to
be the subjects of our second division (B).
CHAPTER VII.
THE PIER BASE.
§ I. In § III. of Chap. III., it was stated that when a wall had to
sustain an addition of vertical pressure, it was first fitted to sustain
it by some addition to its own thickness; but if the pressure became
very great, by being gathered up into PIERS.
I must first make the reader understand what I mean by a wall's being
gathered up. Take a piece of tolerably thick drawing-paper, or thin
Bristol board, five or six inches square. Set it on its edge on the
table, and put a small octavo book on the edge or top of it, and it will
bend instantly. Tear it into four strips all across, and roll up each
strip tightly. Set these rolls on end on the table, and they will carry
the small octavo perfectly well. Now the thickness or substance of the
paper employed to carry the weight is exactly the same as it was before,
only it is differently arranged, that is to say, "gathered up."[35] If
therefore a wall be gathered up like the Bristol board, it will bear
greater weight than it would if it remained a wall veil. The sticks into
which you gather it are called _Piers_. A pier is a coagulated wall.
§ II. Now you cannot quite treat the wall as you did the Bristol board,
and twist it up at once; but let us see how you _can_ treat it. Let A,
Fig. IX., be the plan of a wall which you have made inconveniently and
expensively thick, and which still appears to be slightly too weak for
what it must carry: divide it, as at B, into equal spaces, _a_, _b_,
_a_, _b_, &c. Cut out a thin slice of it at every _a_ on each side, and
put the slices you cut out on at every _b_ on each side, and you will
have the plan at B, with exactly the same quantity of bricks. But your
wall is now so much concentrated, that, if it was only slightly too weak
before, it will be stronger now than it need be; so you may spare some
of your space as well as your bricks by cutting off the corners of the
thicker parts, as suppose _c_, _c_, _c_, _c_, at C: and you have now a
series of square piers connected by a wall veil, which, on less space
and with less materials, will do the work of the wall at A perfectly
well.
[Illustration: Fig. IX.]
§ III. I do not say _how much_ may be cut away in the corners _c_,
_c_,--that is a mathematical question with which we need not trouble
ourselves: all that we need know is, that out of every slice we take
from the "_b_'s" and put on at the "_a_'s," we may keep a certain
percentage of room and bricks, until, supposing that we do not want the
wall veil for its own sake, this latter is thinned entirely away, like
the girdle of the Lady of Avenel, and finally breaks, and we have
nothing but a row of square piers, D.
§ IV. But have we yet arrived at the form which will spare most room,
and use fewest materials. No; and to get farther we must apply the
general principle to our wall, which is equally true in morals and
mathematics, that the strength of materials, or of men, or of minds, is
always most available when it is applied as closely as possible to a
single point.
Let the point to which we wish the strength of our square piers to be
applied, be chosen. Then we shall of course put them directly under it,
and the point will be in their centre. But now some of their materials
are not so near or close to this point as others. Those at the corners
are farther off than the rest.
Now, if every particle of the pier be brought as near as possible to the
centre of it, the form it assumes is the circle.
The circle must be, therefore, the best possible form of plan for a
pier, from the beginning of time to the end of it. A circular pier is
called a pillar or column, and all good architecture adapted to vertical
support is made up of pillars, has always been so, and must ever be so,
as long as the laws of the universe hold.
The final condition is represented at E, in its relation to that at D.
It will be observed that though each circle projects a little beyond the
side of the square out of which it is formed, the space cut off at the
angles is greater than that added at the sides; for, having our
materials in a more concentrated arrangement, we can afford to part with
some of them in this last transformation, as in all the rest.
§ V. And now, what have the base and the cornice of the wall been doing
while we have been cutting the veil to pieces and gathering it together?
The base is also cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the base
of the column.
The cornice is cut to pieces, gathered together, and becomes the capital
of the column. Do not be alarmed at the new word, it does not mean a new
thing; a capital is only the cornice of a column, and you may, if you
like, call a cornice the capital of a wall.
We have now, therefore, to examine these three concentrated forms of the
base, veil, and cornice: first, the concentrated base, still called the
BASE of the column; then the concentrated veil, called the SHAFT of the
column; then the concentrated cornice, called the CAPITAL of the column.
And first the Base:--
[Illustration: Fig. X.]
§ VI. Look back to the main type, Fig. II., page 55, and apply its
profiles in due proportion to the feet of the pillars at E in Fig. IX.
p. 72: If each step in Fig. II. were gathered accurately, the projection
of the entire circular base would be less in proportion to its height
than it is in Fig. II.; but the approximation to the result in Fig. X.
is quite accurate enough for our purposes. (I pray the reader to observe
that I have not made the smallest change, except this necessary
expression of a reduction in diameter, in Fig. II. as it is applied in
Fig. X., only I have not drawn the joints of the stones because these
would confuse the outlines of the bases; and I have not represented the
rounding of the shafts, because it does not bear at present on the
argument.) Now it would hardly be convenient, if we had to pass between
the pillars, to have to squeeze ourselves through one of those angular
gaps or brêches de Roland in Fig. X. Our first impulse would be to cut
them open; but we cannot do this, or our piers are unsafe. We have but
one other resource, to fill them up until we have a floor wide enough to
let us pass easily: this we may perhaps obtain at the first ledge, we
are nearly sure to get it at the second, and we may then obtain access
to the raised interval, either by raising the earth over the lower
courses of foundation, or by steps round the entire building.
Fig. XI. is the arrangement of Fig. X. so treated.
[Illustration: Fig. XI.]
§ VII. But suppose the pillars are so vast that the lowest chink in Fig.
X. would be quite wide enough to let us pass through it. Is there then
any reason for filling it up? Yes. It will be remembered that in Chap.
IV. § VIII. the chief reason for the wide foundation of the wall was
stated to be "that it might equalise its pressure over a large surface;"
but when the foundation is cut to pieces as in Fig. X., the pressure is
thrown on a succession of narrowed and detached spaces of that surface.
If the ground is in some places more disposed to yield than in others,
the piers in those places will sink more than the rest, and this
distortion of the system will be probably of more importance in pillars
than in a wall, because the adjustment of the weight above is more
delicate; we thus actually want the _weight_ of the stones between the
pillars, in order that the whole foundation may be bonded into one, and
sink together if it sink at all: and the more massy the pillars, the
more we shall need to fill the intervals of their foundations. In the
best form of Greek architecture, the intervals are filled up to the root
of the shaft, and the columns have no independent base; they stand on
the even floor of their foundation.
§ VIII. Such a structure is not only admissible, but, when the column is
of great thickness in proportion to its height, and the sufficient
firmness, either of the ground or prepared floor, is evident, it is the
best of all, having a strange dignity in its excessive simplicity. It
is, or ought to be, connected in our minds with the deep meaning of
primeval memorial. "And Jacob took the stone that he had put for his
pillow, and set it up for a pillar." I do not fancy that he put a base
for it first. If you try to put a base to the rock-piers of Stonehenge,
you will hardly find them improved; and two of the most perfect
buildings in the world, the Parthenon and Ducal palace of Venice, have
no bases to their pillars: the latter has them, indeed, to its upper
arcade shafts; and had once, it is said, a continuous raised base for
its lower ones: but successive elevations of St. Mark's Place have
covered this base, and parts of the shafts themselves, with an
inundation of paving stones; and yet the building is, I doubt not, as
grand as ever. Finally, the two most noble pillars in Venice, those
brought from Acre, stand on the smooth marble surface of the Piazzetta,
with no independent bases whatever. They are rather broken away beneath,
so that you may look under parts of them, and stand (not quite erect,
but leaning somewhat) safe by their own massy weight. Nor could any
bases possibly be devised that would not spoil them.
§ IX. But it is otherwise if the pillar be so slender as to look
doubtfully balanced. It would indeed stand quite as safely without an
independent base as it would with one (at least, unless the base be in
the form of a socket). But it will not appear so safe to the eye. And
here for the first time, I have to express and apply a principle, which
I believe the reader will at once grant,--that features necessary to
express security to the imagination, are often as essential parts of
good architecture as those required for security itself. It was said
that the wall base was the foot or paw of the wall. Exactly in the same
way, and with clearer analogy, the pier base is the foot or paw of the
pier. Let us, then, take a hint from nature. A foot has two offices, to
bear up, and to hold firm. As far as it has to bear up, it is uncloven,
with slight projection,--look at an elephant's (the Doric base of
animality);[36] but as far as it has to hold firm, it is divided and
clawed, with wide projections,--look at an eagle's.
§ X. Now observe. In proportion to the massiness of the column, we
require its foot to express merely the power of bearing up; in fact, it
can do without a foot, like the Squire in Chevy Chase, if the ground
only be hard enough. But if the column be slender, and look as if it
might lose its balance, we require it to look as if it had hold of the
ground, or the ground hold of it, it does not matter which,--some
expression of claw, prop, or socket. Now let us go back to Fig. XI., and
take up one of the bases there, in the state in which we left it. We may
leave out the two lower steps (with which we have nothing more to do, as
they have become the united floor or foundation of the whole), and, for
the sake of greater clearness, I shall not draw the bricks in the shaft,
nor the flat stone which carries them, though the reader is to suppose
them remaining as drawn in Fig. XI.; but I shall only draw the shaft and
its two essential members of base, Xb and Yb, as explained at p. 65,
above: and now, expressing the rounding of these numbers on _a_ somewhat
larger scale, we have the profile _a_, Fig. XII.; _b_, the perspective
appearance of such a base seen from above; and _c_, the plan of it.
§ XI. Now I am quite sure the reader is not satisfied of the stability
of this form as it is seen at _b_; nor would he ever be so with the main
contour of a circular base. Observe, we have taken some trouble to
reduce the member Yb into this round form, and all that we have gained
by so doing, is this unsatisfactory and unstable look of the base; of
which the chief reason is, that a circle, unless enclosed by right
lines, has never an appearance of fixture, or definite place,[37]--we
suspect it of motion, like an orb of heaven; and the second is, that the
whole base, considered as the foot of the shaft, has no grasp nor hold:
it is a club-foot, and looks too blunt for the limb,--it wants at least
expansion, if not division.
[Illustration: Fig. XII.]
§ XII. Suppose, then, instead of taking so much trouble with the member
Yb, we save time and labor, and leave it a square block. Xb must,
however, evidently follow the pillar, as its condition is that it slope
to the very base of the wall veil, and of whatever the wall veil
becomes. So the corners of Yb will project beyond the circle of Xb, and
we shall have (Fig. XII.) the profile _d_, the perspective appearance
_e_, and the plan _f_. I am quite sure the reader likes _e_ much better
than he did _b_. The circle is now placed, and we are not afraid of its
rolling away. The foot has greater expansion, and we have saved labor
besides, with little loss of space, for the interval between the bases
is just as great as it was before,--we have only filled up the corners
of the squares.
But is it not possible to mend the form still further? There is surely
still an appearance of separation between Xb and Yb, as if the one might
slip off the other. The foot is expanded enough; but it needs some
expression of grasp as well. It has no toes. Suppose we were to put a
spur or prop to Xb at each corner, so as to hold it fast in the centre
of Yb. We will do this in the simplest possible form. We will have the
spur, or small buttress, sloping straight from the corner of Yb up to
the top of Xb, and as seen from above, of the shape of a triangle.
Applying such spurs in Fig. XII., we have the diagonal profile at _g_,
the perspective _h_, and the plan _i_.
§ XIII. I am quite sure the reader likes this last base the best, and
feels as if it were the firmest. But he must carefully distinguish
between this feeling or imagination of the eye, and the real stability
of the structure. That this real stability has been slightly increased
by the changes between _b_ and _h_, in Fig. XII., is true. There is in
the base _h_ somewhat less chance of accidental dislocation, and
somewhat greater solidity and weight. But this very slight gain of
security is of no importance whatever when compared with the general
requirements of the structure. The pillar must be _perfectly_ secure,
and more than secure, with the base _b_, or the building will be unsafe,
whatever other base you put to the pillar. The changes are made, not for
the sake of the almost inappreciable increase of security they involve,
but in order to convince the eye of the real security which the base _b_
_appears_ to compromise. This is especially the case with regard to the
props or spurs, which are absolutely useless in reality, but are of the
highest importance as an expression of safety. And this will farther
appear when we observe that they have been above quite arbitrarily
supposed to be of a triangular form. Why triangular? Why should not the
spur be made wider and stronger, so as to occupy the whole width of the
angle of the square, and to become a complete expansion of Xb to the
edge of the square? Simply because, whatever its width, it has, in
reality, no supporting power whatever; and the _expression_ of support
is greatest where it assumes a form approximating to that of the spur or
claw of an animal. We shall, however, find hereafter, that it ought
indeed to be much wider than it is in Fig. XII., where it is narrowed in
order to make its structure clearly intelligible.
§ XIV. If the reader chooses to consider this spur as an æsthetic
feature altogether, he is at liberty to do so, and to transfer what we
have here said of it to the beginning of Chap. XXV. I think that its
true place is here, as an _expression_ of safety, and not a means of
beauty; but I will assume only, as established, the form _e_ of Fig.
XII., which is absolutely, as a construction, easier, stronger, and more
perfect than _b_. A word or two now of its materials. The wall base, it
will be remembered, was built of stones more neatly cut as they were
higher in place; and the members, Y and X, of the pier base, were the
highest members of the wall base gathered. But, exactly in proportion to
this gathering or concentration in form, should, if possible, be the
gathering or concentration of substance. For as the whole weight of the
building is now to rest upon few and limited spaces, it is of the
greater importance that it should be there received by solid masonry. Xb
and Yb are therefore, if possible, to be each of a single stone; or,
when the shaft is small, both cut out of one block, and especially if
spurs are to be added to Xb. The reader must not be angry with me for
stating things so self-evident, for these are all necessary steps in the
chain of argument which I must not break. Even this change from detached
stones to a single block is not without significance; for it is part of
the real service and value of the member Yb to provide for the reception
of the shaft a surface free from joints; and the eye always conceives it
as a firm covering over all inequalities or fissures in the smaller
masonry of the floor.
§ XV. I have said nothing yet of the proportion of the height of Yb to
its width, nor of that of Yb and Xb to each other. Both depend much on
the height of shaft, and are besides variable within certain limits, at
the architect's discretion. But the limits of the height of Yb may be
thus generally stated. If it looks so thin as that the weight of the
column above might break it, it is too low; and if it is higher than its
own width, it is too high. The utmost admissible height is that of a
cubic block; for if it ever become higher than it is wide, it becomes
itself a part of a pier, and not the base of one.
§ XVI. I have also supposed Yb, when expanded from beneath Xb, as always
expanded into a square, and four spurs only to be added at the angles.
But Yb may be expanded into a pentagon, hexagon, or polygon; and Xb then
may have five, six, or many spurs. In proportion, however, as the sides
increase in number, the spurs become shorter and less energetic in their
effect, and the square is in most cases the best form.
§ XVII. We have hitherto conducted the argument entirely on the
supposition of the pillars being numerous, and in a range. Suppose,
however, that we require only a single pillar: as we have free space
round it, there is no need to fill up the first ranges of its
foundations; nor need we do so in order to equalise pressure, since the
pressure to be met is its own alone. Under such circumstances, it is
well to exhibit the lower tiers of the foundation as well as Yb and Xb.
The noble bases of the two granite pillars of the Piazzetta at Venice
are formed by the entire series of members given in Fig. X., the lower
courses expanding into steps, with a superb breadth of proportion to the
shaft. The member Xb is of course circular, having its proper decorative
mouldings, not here considered; Yb is octagonal, but filled up into a
square by certain curious groups of figures representing the trades of
Venice. The three courses below are octagonal, with their sides set
across the angles of the innermost octagon, Yb. The shafts are 15 feet
in circumference, and the lowest octagons of the base 56 (7 feet each
side).
§ XVIII. Detached buildings, like our own Monument, are not pillars, but
towers built in imitation of Pillars. As towers they are barbarous,
being dark, inconvenient, and unsafe, besides lying, and pretending to
be what they are not. As shafts they are barbarous, because they were
designed at a time when the Renaissance architects had introduced and
forced into acceptance, as _de rigueur_, a kind of columnar high-heeled
shoe,--a thing which they called a pedestal, and which is to a true base
exactly what a Greek actor's cothurnus was to a Greek gentleman's
sandal. But the Greek actor knew better, I believe, than to exhibit or
to decorate his cork sole; and, with shafts as with heroes, it is rather
better to put the sandal off than the cothurnus on. There are, indeed,
occasions on which a pedestal may be necessary; it may be better to
raise a shaft from a sudden depression of plinth to a level with others,
its companions, by means of a pedestal, than to introduce a higher
shaft; or it may be better to place a shaft of alabaster, if otherwise
too short for our purpose, on a pedestal, than to use a larger shaft of
coarser material; but the pedestal is in each case a make-shift, not an
additional perfection. It may, in the like manner, be sometimes
convenient for men to walk on stilts, but not to keep their stilts on as
ornamental parts of dress. The bases of the Nelson Column, the Monument,
and the column of the Place Vendôme, are to the shafts, exactly what
highly ornamented wooden legs would be to human beings.
§ XIX. So far of bases of detached shafts. As we do not yet know in what
manner shafts are likely to be grouped, we can say nothing of those of
grouped shafts until we know more of what they are to support.
Lastly; we have throughout our reasoning upon the base supposed the pier
to be circular. But circumstances may occur to prevent its being
reduced to this form, and it may remain square or rectangular; its base
will then be simply the wall base following its contour, and we have no
spurs at the angles. Thus much may serve respecting pier bases; we have
next to examine the concentration of the Wall Veil, or the Shaft.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] The experiment is not quite fair in this rude fashion; for the
small rolls owe their increase of strength much more to their
tubular form than their aggregation of material; but if the paper be
cut up into small strips, and tied together firmly in three or four
compact bundles, it will exhibit increase of strength enough to show
the principle. Vide, however, Appendix 16, "Strength of Shafts."
[36] Appendix 17, "Answer to Mr. Garbett."
[37] Yet more so than any other figure enclosed by a curved line:
for the circle, in its relations to its own centre, is the curve of
greatest stability. Compare § XX. of Chap. XX.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHAFT.
§ I. We have seen in the last Chapter how, in converting the wall into
the square or cylindrical shaft, we parted at every change of form with
some quantity of material. In proportion to the quantity thus
surrendered, is the necessity that what we retain should be good of its
kind, and well set together, since everything now depends on it.
It is clear also that the best material, and the closest concentration,
is that of the natural crystalline rocks; and that, by having reduced
our wall into the shape of shafts, we may be enabled to avail ourselves
of this better material, and to exchange cemented bricks for
crystallised blocks of stone. Therefore, the general idea of a perfect
shaft is that of a single stone hewn into a form more or less elongated
and cylindrical. Under this form, or at least under the ruder one of a
long stone set upright, the conception of true shafts appears first to
have occurred to the human mind; for the reader must note this
carefully, once for all, it does not in the least follow that the order
of architectural features which is most reasonable in their arrangement,
is most probable in their invention. I have theoretically deduced shafts
from walls, but shafts were never so reasoned out in architectural
practice. The man who first propped a thatched roof with poles was the
discoverer of their principle; and he who first hewed a long stone into
a cylinder, the perfecter of their practice.
§ II. It is clearly necessary that shafts of this kind (we will call
them, for convenience, _block_ shafts) should be composed of stone not
liable to flaws or fissures; and therefore that we must no longer
continue our argument as if it were always possible to do what is to be
done in the best way; for the style of a national architecture may
evidently depend, in great measure, upon the nature of the rocks of the
country.
Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building stone from their
thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable
of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and
whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary
purposes;--and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of
the block shaft applied on an extensive scale; while the facility of
obtaining large masses of marble has in Greece and Italy been partly the
cause of the adoption of certain noble types of architectural form
peculiar to those countries, or, when occurring elsewhere, derived from
them.
We have not, however, in reducing our walls to shafts, calculated on the
probabilities of our obtaining better materials than those of which the
walls were built; and we shall therefore first consider the form of
shaft which will be best when we have the best materials; and then
consider how far we can imitate, or how far it will be wise to imitate,
this form with any materials we can obtain.
§ III. Now as I gave the reader the ground, and the stones, that he
might for himself find out how to build his wall, I shall give him the
block of marble, and the chisel, that he may himself find out how to
shape his column. Let him suppose the elongated mass, so given him,
rudely hewn to the thickness which he has calculated will be
proportioned to the weight it has to carry. The conditions of stability
will require that some allowance be made in finishing it for any chance
of slight disturbance or subsidence of the ground below, and that, as
everything must depend on the uprightness of the shaft, as little chance
should be left as possible of its being thrown off its balance. It will
therefore be prudent to leave it slightly thicker at the base than at
the top. This excess of diameter at the base being determined, the
reader is to ask himself how most easily and simply to smooth the
column from one extremity to the other. To cut it into a true
straight-sided cone would be a matter of much trouble and nicety, and
would incur the continual risk of chipping into it too deep. Why not
leave some room for a chance stroke, work it slightly, _very_ slightly
convex, and smooth the curve by the eye between the two extremities? you
will save much trouble and time, and the shaft will be all the stronger.
[Illustration: Fig. XIII.]
This is accordingly the natural form of a detached block shaft. It is
the best. No other will ever be so agreeable to the mind or eye. I do
not mean that it is not capable of more refined execution, or of the
application of some of the laws of æsthetic beauty, but that it is the
best recipient of execution and subject of law; better in either case
than if you had taken more pains, and cut it straight.
§ IV. You will observe, however, that the convexity is to be very
slight, and that the shaft is not to _bulge_ in the centre, but to taper
from the root in a curved line; the peculiar character of the curve you
will discern better by exaggerating, in a diagram, the conditions of its
sculpture.
Let _a_, _a_, _b_, _b_, at A, Fig. XIII., be the rough block of the
shaft, laid on the ground; and as thick as you can by any chance require
it to be; you will leave it of this full thickness at its base at A, but
at the other end you will mark off upon it the diameter _c_, _d_, which
you intend it to have at the summit; you will then take your mallet and
chisel, and working from _c_ and _d_ you will roughly knock off the
corners, shaded in the figure, so as to reduce the shaft to the figure
described by the inside lines in A and the outside lines in B; you then
proceed to smooth it, you chisel away the shaded parts in B, and leave
your finished shaft of the form of the _inside_ lines _e_, _g_, _f_,
_h_.
The result of this operation will be of course that the shaft tapers
faster towards the top than it does near the ground. Observe this
carefully; it is a point of great future importance.
§ V. So far of the shape of detached or block shafts. We can carry the
type no farther on merely structural considerations: let us pass to the
shaft of inferior materials.
Unfortunately, in practice, this step must be soon made. It is alike
difficult to obtain, transport, and raise, block shafts more than ten or
twelve feet long, except in remarkable positions, and as pieces of
singular magnificence. Large pillars are therefore always composed of
more than one block of stone. Such pillars are either jointed like
basalt columns, and composed of solid pieces of stone set one above
another; or they are filled up _towers_, built of small stones cemented
into a mass, with more or less of regularity: Keep this distinction
carefully in mind, it is of great importance; for the jointed column,
every stone composing which, however thin, is (so to speak) a complete
_slice_ of the shaft, is just as strong as the block pillar of one
stone, so long as no forces are brought into action upon it which would
have a tendency to cause horizontal dislocation. But the pillar which is
built as a filled-up tower is of course liable to fissure in any
direction, if its cement give way.
But, in either case, it is evident that all constructive reason of the
curved contour is at once destroyed. Far from being an easy or natural
procedure, the fitting of each portion of the curve to its fellow, in
the separate stones, would require painful care and considerable masonic
skill; while, in the case of the filled-up tower, the curve outwards
would be even unsafe; for its greatest strength (and that the more in
proportion to its careless building) lies in its bark, or shell of
outside stone; and this, if curved outwards, would at once burst
outwards, if heavily loaded above.
If, therefore, the curved outline be ever retained in such shafts, it
must be in obedience to æsthetic laws only.
§ VI. But farther. Not only the curvature, but even the tapering by
straight lines, would be somewhat difficult of execution in the pieced
column. Where, indeed, the entire shaft is composed of four or five
blocks set one upon another, the diameters may be easily determined at
the successive joints, and the stones chiselled to the same slope. But
this becomes sufficiently troublesome when the joints are numerous, so
that the pillar is like a pile of cheeses; or when it is to be built of
small and irregular stones. We should be naturally led, in the one case,
to cut all the cheeses to the same diameter; in the other to build by
the plumb-line; and in both to give up the tapering altogether.
§ VII. Farther. Since the chance, in the one case, of horizontal
dislocation, in the other, of irregular fissure, is much increased by
the composition of the shaft out of joints or small stones, a larger
bulk of shaft is required to carry the given weight; and, _cæteris
paribus_, jointed and cemented shafts must be thicker in proportion to
the weight they carry than those which are of one block.
We have here evidently natural causes of a very marked division in
schools of architecture: one group composed of buildings whose shafts
are either of a single stone or of few joints; the shafts, therefore,
being gracefully tapered, and reduced by successive experiments to the
narrowest possible diameter proportioned to the weight they carry: and
the other group embracing those buildings whose shafts are of many
joints or of small stones; shafts which are therefore not tapered, and
rather thick and ponderous in proportion to the weight they carry; the
latter school being evidently somewhat imperfect and inelegant as
compared with the former.
It may perhaps appear, also, that this arrangement of the materials in
cylindrical shafts at all would hardly have suggested itself to a people
who possessed no large blocks out of which to hew them; and that the
shaft built of many pieces is probably derived from, and imitative of
the shaft hewn from few or from one.
§ VIII. If, therefore, you take a good geological map of Europe, and lay
your finger upon the spots where volcanic influences supply either
travertin or marble in accessible and available masses, you will
probably mark the points where the types of the first school have been
originated and developed. If, in the next place, you will mark the
districts where broken and rugged basalt or whinstone, or slaty
sandstone, supply materials on easier terms indeed, but fragmentary and
unmanageable, you will probably distinguish some of the birthplaces of
the derivative and less graceful school. You will, in the first case,
lay your finger on Pæstum, Agrigentum, and Athens; in the second, on
Durham and Lindisfarne.
The shafts of the great primal school are, indeed, in their first form,
as massy as those of the other, and the tendency of both is to continual
diminution of their diameters: but in the first school it is a true
diminution in the thickness of the independent pier; in the last, it is
an apparent diminution, obtained by giving it the appearance of a group
of minor piers. The distinction, however, with which we are concerned is
not that of slenderness, but of vertical or curved contour; and we may
note generally that while throughout the whole range of Northern work,
the perpendicular shaft appears in continually clearer development,
throughout every group which has inherited the spirit of the Greek, the
shaft retains its curved or tapered form; and the occurrence of the
vertical detached shaft may at all times, in European architecture, be
regarded as one of the most important collateral evidences of Northern
influence.
§ IX. It is necessary to limit this observation to European
architecture, because the Egyptian shaft is often untapered, like the
Northern. It appears that the Central Southern, or Greek shaft, was
tapered or curved on æsthetic rather than constructive principles; and
the Egyptian which precedes, and the Northern which follows it, are both
vertical, the one because the best form had not been discovered, the
other because it could not be attained. Both are in a certain degree
barbaric; and both possess in combination and in their ornaments a power
altogether different from that of the Greek shaft, and at least as
impressive if not as admirable.
§ X. We have hitherto spoken of shafts as if their number were fixed,
and only their diameter variable according to the weight to be borne.
But this supposition is evidently gratuitous; for the same weight may be
carried either by many and slender, or by few and massy shafts. If the
reader will look back to Fig. IX., he will find the number of shafts
into which the wall was reduced to be dependent altogether upon the
length of the spaces _a_, _b_, _a_, _b_, &c., a length which was
arbitrarily fixed. We are at liberty to make these spaces of what length
we choose, and, in so doing, to increase the number and diminish the
diameter of the shafts, or _vice versâ_.
§ XI. Supposing the materials are in each case to be of the same kind,
the choice is in great part at the architect's discretion, only there is
a limit on the one hand to the multiplication of the slender shaft, in
the inconvenience of the narrowed interval, and on the other, to the
enlargement of the massy shaft, in the loss of breadth to the
building.[38] That will be commonly the best proportion which is a
natural mean between the two limits; leaning to the side of grace or of
grandeur according to the expressional intention of the work. I say,
_commonly_ the best, because, in some cases, this expressional invention
may prevail over all other considerations, and a column of unnecessary
bulk or fantastic slightness be adopted in order to strike the spectator
with awe or with surprise.[39] The architect is, however, rarely in
practice compelled to use one kind of material only; and his choice
lies frequently between the employment of a larger number of solid and
perfect small shafts, or a less number of pieced and cemented large
ones. It is often possible to obtain from quarries near at hand, blocks
which might be cut into shafts eight or twelve feet long and four or
five feet round, when larger shafts can only be obtained in distant
localities; and the question then is between the perfection of smaller
features and the imperfection of larger. We shall find numberless
instances in Italy in which the first choice has been boldly, and I
think most wisely made; and magnificent buildings have been composed of
systems of small but perfect shafts, multiplied and superimposed. So
long as the idea of the symmetry of a perfect shaft remained in the
builder's mind, his choice could hardly be directed otherwise, and the
adoption of the built and tower-like shaft appears to have been the
result of a loss of this sense of symmetry consequent on the employment
of intractable materials.
§ XII. But farther: we have up to this point spoken of shafts as always
set in ranges, and at equal intervals from each other. But there is no
necessity for this; and material differences may be made in their
diameters if two or more be grouped so as to do together the work of one
large one, and that within, or nearly within, the space which the larger
one would have occupied.
§ XIII. Let A, B, C, Fig. XIV., be three surfaces, of which B and C
contain equal areas, and each of them double that of A: then supposing
them all loaded to the same height, B or C would receive twice as much
weight as A; therefore, to carry B or C loaded, we should need a shaft
of twice the strength needed to carry A. Let S be the shaft required to
carry A, and S_2 the shaft required to carry B or C; then S_3 may be
divided into two shafts, or S_2 into four shafts, as at S_3, all
equal in area or solid contents;[40] and the mass A might be carried
safely by two of them, and the masses B and C, each by four of them.
[Illustration: Fig. XIV.]
Now if we put the single shafts each under the centre of the mass they
have to bear, as represented by the shaded circles at _a_, _a2_, _a3_,
the masses A and C are both of them very ill supported, and even B
insufficiently; but apply the four and the two shafts as at _b_, _b2_,
_b3_, and they are supported satisfactorily. Let the weight on each of
the masses be doubled, and the shafts doubled in area, then we shall
have such arrangements as those at _c_, _c2_, _c3_; and if again the
shafts and weight be doubled, we shall have _d_, _d2_, _d3_.
§ XIV. Now it will at once be observed that the arrangement of the
shafts in the series of B and C is always exactly the same in their
relations to each other; only the group of B is set evenly, and the
group of C is set obliquely,--the one carrying a square, the other a
cross.
[Illustration: Fig. XV.]
You have in these two series the primal representations of shaft
arrangement in the Southern and Northern schools; while the group _b_,
of which _b2_ is the double, set evenly, and _c2_ the double, set
obliquely, is common to both. The reader will be surprised to find how
all the complex and varied forms of shaft arrangement will range
themselves into one or other of these groups; and still more surprised
to find the oblique or cross set system on the one hand, and the square
set system on the other, severally distinctive of Southern and Northern
work. The dome of St. Mark's, and the crossing of the nave and transepts
of Beauvais, are both carried by square piers; but the piers of St.
Mark's are set square to the walls of the church, and those of Beauvais
obliquely to them: and this difference is even a more essential one than
that between the smooth surface of the one and the reedy complication of
the other. The two squares here in the margin (Fig. XV.) are exactly of
the same size, but their expression is altogether different, and in that
difference lies one of the most subtle distinctions between the Gothic
and Greek spirit,--from the shaft, which bears the building, to the
smallest decoration. The Greek square is by preference set evenly, the
Gothic square obliquely; and that so constantly, that wherever we find
the level or even square occurring as a prevailing form, either in plan
or decoration, in early northern work, there we may at least suspect the
presence of a southern or Greek influence; and, on the other hand,
wherever the oblique square is prominent in the south, we may
confidently look for farther evidence of the influence of the Gothic
architects. The rule must not of course be pressed far when, in either
school, there has been determined search for every possible variety of
decorative figures; and accidental circumstances may reverse the usual
system in special cases; but the evidence drawn from this character is
collaterally of the highest value, and the tracing it out is a pursuit
of singular interest. Thus, the Pisan Romanesque might in an instant be
pronounced to have been formed under some measure of Lombardic
influence, from the oblique squares set under its arches; and in it we
have the spirit of northern Gothic affecting details of the
southern;--obliquity of square, in magnificently shafted Romanesque. At
Monza, on the other hand, the levelled square is the characteristic
figure of the entire decoration of the façade of the Duomo, eminently
giving it southern character; but the details are derived almost
entirely from the northern Gothic. Here then we have southern spirit and
northern detail. Of the cruciform outline of the load of the shaft, a
still more positive test of northern work, we shall have more to say in
the 28th Chapter; we must at present note certain farther changes in the
form of the grouped shaft, which open the way to every branch of its
endless combinations, southern or northern.
[Illustration: Fig. XVI.]
§ XV. 1. If the group at _d3_, Fig. XIV., be taken from under its
loading, and have its centre filled up, it will become a quatrefoil; and
it will represent, in their form of most frequent occurrence, a family
of shafts, whose plans are foiled figures, trefoils, quatrefoils,
cinquefoils, &c.; of which a trefoiled example, from the Frari at
Venice, is the third in Plate II., and a quatrefoil from Salisbury the
eighth. It is rare, however, to find in Gothic architecture shafts of
this family composed of a large number of foils, because multifoiled
shafts are seldom true grouped shafts, but are rather canaliculated
conditions of massy piers. The representatives of this family may be
considered as the quatrefoil on the Gothic side of the Alps; and the
Egyptian multifoiled shaft on the south, approximating to the general
type, _b_, Fig. XVI.
§ XVI. Exactly opposed to this great family is that of shafts which have
concave curves instead of convex on each of their sides; but these are
not, properly speaking, grouped shafts at all, and their proper place is
among decorated piers; only they must be named here in order to mark
their exact opposition to the foiled system. In their simplest form,
represented by _c_, Fig. XVI., they have no representatives in good
architecture, being evidently weak and meagre; but approximations to
them exist in late Gothic, as in the vile cathedral of Orleans, and in
modern cast-iron shafts. In their fully developed form they are the
Greek Doric, _a_, Fig. XVI., and occur in caprices of the Romanesque and
Italian Gothic: _d_, Fig. XVI., is from the Duomo of Monza.
§ XVII. 2. Between _c3_ and _d3_ of Fig. XIV. there may be evidently
another condition, represented at 6, Plate II., and formed by the
insertion of a central shaft within the four external ones. This central
shaft we may suppose to expand in proportion to the weight it has to
carry. If the external shafts expand in the same proportion, the entire
form remains unchanged; but if they do not expand, they may (1) be
pushed out by the expanding shaft, or (2) be gradually swallowed up in
its expansion, as at 4, Plate II. If they are pushed out, they are
removed farther from each other by every increase of the central shaft;
and others may then be introduced in the vacant spaces; giving, on the
plan, a central orb with an ever increasing host of satellites, 10,
Plate II.; the satellites themselves often varying in size, and perhaps
quitting contact with the central shaft. Suppose them in any of their
conditions fixed, while the inner shaft expands, and they will be
gradually buried in it, forming more complicated conditions of 4, Plate
II. The combinations are thus altogether infinite, even supposing the
central shaft to be circular only; but their infinity is multiplied by
many other infinities when the central shaft itself becomes square or
crosslet on the section, or itself multifoiled (8, Plate II.) with
satellite shafts eddying about its recesses and angles, in every
possible relation of attraction. Among these endless conditions of
change, the choice of the architect is free, this only being generally
noted: that, as the whole value of such piers depends, first, upon their
being wisely fitted to the weight above them, and, secondly, upon their
all working together: and one not failing the rest, perhaps to the ruin
of all, he must never multiply shafts without visible cause in the
disposition of members superimposed:[41] and in his multiplied group he
should, if possible, avoid a marked separation between the large central
shaft and its satellites; for if this exist, the satellites will either
appear useless altogether, or else, which is worse, they will look as if
they were meant to keep the central shaft together by wiring or caging
it in; like iron rods set round a supple cylinder,--a fatal fault in the
piers of Westminster Abbey, and, in a less degree, in the noble nave of
the cathedral of Bourges.
§ XVIII. While, however, we have been thus subdividing or assembling our
shafts, how far has it been possible to retain their curved or tapered
outline? So long as they remain distinct and equal, however close to
each other, the independent curvature may evidently be retained. But
when once they come in contact, it is equally evident that a column,
formed of shafts touching at the base and separate at the top, would
appear as if in the very act of splitting asunder. Hence, in all the
closely arranged groups, and especially those with a central shaft, the
tapering is sacrificed; and with less cause for regret, because it was a
provision against subsidence or distortion, which cannot now take place
with the separate members of the group. Evidently, the work, if safe at
all, must be executed with far greater accuracy and stability when its
supports are so delicately arranged, than would be implied by such
precaution. In grouping shafts, therefore, a true perpendicular line is,
in nearly all cases, given to the pier; and the reader will anticipate
that the two schools, which we have already found to be distinguished,
the one by its perpendicular and pieced shafts, and the other by its
curved and block shafts, will be found divided also in their employment
of grouped shafts;--it is likely that the idea of grouping, however
suggested, will be fully entertained and acted upon by the one, but
hesitatingly by the other; and that we shall find, on the one hand,
buildings displaying sometimes massy piers of small stones, sometimes
clustered piers of rich complexity, and on the other, more or less
regular succession of block shafts, each treated as entirely independent
of those around it.
§ XIX. Farther, the grouping of shafts once admitted, it is probable
that the complexity and richness of such arrangements would recommend
them to the eye, and induce their frequent, even their unnecessary
introduction; so that weight which might have been borne by a single
pillar, would be in preference supported by four or five. And if the
stone of the country, whose fragmentary character first occasioned the
building and piecing of the large pier, were yet in beds consistent
enough to supply shafts of very small diameter, the strength and
simplicity of such a construction might justify it, as well as its
grace. The fact, however, is that the charm which the multiplication of
line possesses for the eye has always been one of the chief ends of the
work in the grouped schools; and that, so far from employing the grouped
piers in order to the introduction of very slender block shafts, the
most common form in which such piers occur is that of a solid jointed
shaft, each joint being separately cut into the contour of the group
required.
§ XX. We have hitherto supposed that all grouped or clustered shafts
have been the result or the expression of an actual gathering and
binding together of detached shafts. This is not, however, always so:
for some clustered shafts are little more than solid piers channelled on
the surface, and their form appears to be merely the development of some
longitudinal furrowing or striation on the original single shaft. That
clustering or striation, whichever we choose to call it, is in this case
a decorative feature, and to be considered under the head of decoration.
§ XXI. It must be evident to the reader at a glance, that the real
serviceableness of any of these grouped arrangements must depend upon
the relative shortness of the shafts, and that, when the whole pier is
so lofty that its minor members become mere reeds or rods of stone,
those minor members can no longer be charged with any considerable
weight. And the fact is, that in the most complicated Gothic
arrangements, when the pier is tall and its satellites stand clear of
it, no real work is given them to do, and they might all be removed
without endangering the building. They are merely the _expression_ of a
great consistent system, and are in architecture what is often found in
animal anatomy,--a bone, or process of a bone, useless, under the
ordained circumstances of its life, to the particular animal in which it
is found, and slightly developed, but yet distinctly existent, and
representing, for the sake of absolute consistency, the same bone in its
appointed, and generally useful, place, either in skeletons of all
animals, or in the genus to which the animal itself belongs.
§ XXII. Farther: as it is not easy to obtain pieces of stone long enough
for these supplementary shafts (especially as it is always unsafe to lay
a stratified stone with its beds upright) they have been frequently
composed of two or more short shafts set upon each other, and to conceal
the unsightly junction, a flat stone has been interposed, carved into
certain mouldings, which have the appearance of a ring on the shaft. Now
observe: the whole pier was the gathering of the whole wall, the base
gathers into base, the veil into the shaft, and the string courses of
the veil gather into these rings; and when this is clearly expressed,
and the rings do indeed correspond with the string courses of the wall
veil, they are perfectly admissible and even beautiful; but otherwise,
and occurring, as they do in the shafts of Westminster, in the middle of
continuous lines, they are but sorry make-shifts, and of late since gas
has been invented, have become especially offensive from their unlucky
resemblance to the joints of gas-pipes, or common water-pipes. There are
two leaden ones, for instance, on the left hand as one enters the abbey
at Poet's Corner, with their solderings and funnels looking exactly like
rings and capitals, and most disrespectfully mimicking the shafts of
the abbey, inside.
Thus far we have traced the probable conditions of shaft structure in
pure theory; I shall now lay before the reader a brief statement of the
facts of the thing in time past and present.
§ XXIII. In the earliest and grandest shaft architecture which we know,
that of Egypt, we have no grouped arrangements, properly so called, but
either single and smooth shafts, or richly reeded and furrowed shafts,
which represent the extreme conditions of a complicated group bound
together to sustain a single mass; and are indeed, without doubt,
nothing else than imitations of bundles of reeds, or of clusters of
lotus:[42] but in these shafts there is merely the idea of a group, not
the actual function or structure of a group; they are just as much solid
and simple shafts as those which are smooth, and merely by the method of
their decoration present to the eye the image of a richly complex
arrangement.
§ XXIV. After these we have the Greek shaft, less in scale, and losing
all suggestion or purpose of suggestion of complexity, its so-called
flutings being, visibly as actually, an external decoration.
§ XXV. The idea of the shaft remains absolutely single in the Roman and
Byzantine mind; but true grouping begins in Christian architecture by
the placing of two or more separate shafts side by side, each having its
own work to do; then three or four, still with separate work; then, by
such steps as those above theoretically pursued, the number of the
members increases, while they coagulate into a single mass; and we have
finally a shaft apparently composed of thirty, forty, fifty, or more
distinct members; a shaft which, in the reality of its service, is as
much a single shaft as the old Egyptian one; but which differs from the
Egyptian in that all its members, how many soever, have each individual
work to do, and a separate rib of arch or roof to carry: and thus the
great Christian truth of distinct services of the individual soul is
typified in the Christian shaft; and the old Egyptian servitude of the
multitudes, the servitude inseparable from the children of Ham, is
typified also in that ancient shaft of the Egyptians, which in its
gathered strength of the river reeds, seems, as the sands of the desert
drift over its ruin, to be intended to remind us for ever of the end of
the association of the wicked. "Can the rush grow up without mire, or
the flag grow without water?--So are the paths of all that forget God;
and the hypocrite's hope shall perish."
§ XXVI. Let the reader then keep this distinction of the three systems
clearly in his mind: Egyptian system, an apparent cluster supporting a
simple capital and single weight; Greek and Roman system, single shaft,
single weight; Gothic system, divided shafts, divided weight: at first
actually and simply divided, at last apparently and infinitely divided;
so that the fully formed Gothic shaft is a return to the Egyptian, but
the weight is divided in the one and undivided in the other.
§ XXVII. The transition from the actual to the apparent cluster, in the
Gothic, is a question of the most curious interest; I have thrown
together the shaft sections in Plate II. to illustrate it, and exemplify
what has been generally stated above.[43]
[Illustration: Plate II.
PLANS OF PIERS.]
1. The earliest, the most frequent, perhaps the most beautiful of all
the groups, is also the simplest; the two shafts arranged as at _b_ or
_c_, (Fig. XIV.) above, bearing an oblong mass, and substituted for the
still earlier structure _a_, Fig. XIV. In Plate XVII. (Chap. XXVII.) are
three examples of the transition: the one on the left, at the top, is
the earliest single-shafted arrangement, constant in the rough
Romanesque windows; a huge hammer-shaped capital being employed to
sustain the thickness of the wall. It was rapidly superseded by the
double shaft, as on the right of it; a very early example from the
cloisters of the Duomo, Verona. Beneath, is a most elaborate and perfect
one from St. Zeno of Verona, where the group is twice complicated, two
shafts being used, both with quatrefoil sections. The plain double
shaft, however, is by far the most frequent, both in the Northern and
Southern Gothic, but for the most part early; it is very frequent in
cloisters, and in the singular one of St. Michael's Mount, Normandy, a
small pseudo-arcade runs along between the pairs of shafts, a miniature
aisle. The group is employed on a magnificent scale, but ill
proportioned, for the main piers of the apse of the cathedral of
Coutances, its purpose being to conceal one shaft behind the other, and
make it appear to the spectator from the nave as if the apse were
sustained by single shafts, of inordinate slenderness. The attempt is
ill-judged, and the result unsatisfactory.
[Illustration: Fig. XVII.]
§ XXVIII. 2. When these pairs of shafts come near each other, as
frequently at the turnings of angles (Fig. XVII.), the quadruple group
results, _b_ 2, Fig. XIV., of which the Lombardic sculptors were
excessively fond, usually tying the shafts together in their centre, in
a lover's knot. They thus occur in Plate V., from the Broletto of Como;
at the angle of St. Michele of Lucca, Plate XXI.; and in the balustrade
of St. Mark's. This is a group, however, which I have never seen used on
a large scale.[44]
§ XXIX. 3. Such groups, consolidated by a small square in their centre,
form the shafts of St. Zeno, just spoken of, and figured in Plate XVII.,
which are among the most interesting pieces of work I know in Italy. I
give their entire arrangement in Fig. XVIII.: both shafts have the same
section, but one receives a half turn as it ascends, giving it an
exquisite spiral contour: the plan of their bases, with their plinth, is
given at 2, Plate II.; and note it carefully, for it is an epitome of
all that we observed above, respecting the oblique and even square. It
was asserted that the oblique belonged to the north, the even to the
south: we have here the northern Lombardic nation naturalised in Italy,
and, behold, the oblique and even quatrefoil linked together; not
confused, but actually linked by a bar of stone, as seen in Plate XVII.,
under the capitals.
[Illustration: Fig. XVIII.]
4. Next to these, observe the two groups of five shafts each, 5 and 6,
Plate II., one oblique, the other even. Both are from upper stories; the
oblique one from the triforium of Salisbury; the even one from the upper
range of shafts in the façade of St. Mark's at Venice.[45]
§ XXX. Around these central types are grouped, in Plate II., four simple
examples of the satellitic cluster, all of the Northern Gothic: 4, from
the Cathedral of Amiens; 7, from that of Lyons (nave pier); 8, the same
from Salisbury; 10, from the porch of Notre Dame, Dijon, having
satellites of three magnitudes: 9 is one of the piers between the doors
of the same church, with shafts of four magnitudes, and is an instance
of the confusion of mind of the Northern architects between piers proper
and jamb mouldings (noticed farther in the next chapter, § XXXI.): for
this fig. 9, which is an angle at the meeting of two jambs, is treated
like a rich independent shaft, and the figure below, 12, which is half
of a true shaft, is treated like a meeting of jambs.
All these four examples belonging to the oblique or Northern system, the
curious trefoil plan, 3, lies _between_ the two, as the double
quatrefoil next it _unites_ the two. The trefoil is from the Frari,
Venice, and has a richly worked capital in the Byzantine manner,--an
imitation, I think, of the Byzantine work by the Gothic builders: 1 is
to be compared with it, being one of the earliest conditions of the
cross shaft, from the atrium of St. Ambrogio at Milan. 13 is the nave
pier of St. Michele at Pavia, showing the same condition more fully
developed: and 11 another nave pier from Vienne, on the Rhone, of far
more distinct Roman derivation, for the flat pilaster is set to the
nave, and is fluted like an antique one. 12 is the grandest development
I have ever seen of the cross shaft, with satellite shafts in the nooks
of it: it is half of one of the great western piers of the cathedral of
Bourges, measuring eight feet each side, thirty-two round.[46] Then the
one below (15) is half of a nave pier of Rouen Cathedral, showing the
mode in which such conditions as that of Dijon (9) and that of Bourges
(12) were fused together into forms of inextricable complexity
(inextricable I mean in the irregularity of proportion and projection,
for all of them are easily resolvable into simple systems in connexion
with the roof ribs). This pier of Rouen is a type of the last condition
of the good Gothic; from this point the small shafts begin to lose
shape, and run into narrow fillets and ridges, projecting at the same
time farther and farther in weak tongue-like sections, as described in
the "Seven Lamps." I have only here given one example of this family, an
unimportant but sufficiently characteristic one (16) from St. Gervais of
Falaise. One side of the nave of that church is Norman, the other
Flamboyant, and the two piers 14 and 16 stand opposite each other. It
would be useless to endeavor to trace farther the fantasticism of the
later Gothic shafts; they become mere aggregations of mouldings very
sharply and finely cut, their bases at the same time running together in
strange complexity and their capitals diminishing and disappearing. Some
of their conditions, which, in their rich striation, resemble crystals
of beryl, are very massy and grand; others, meagre, harsh, or effeminate
in themselves, are redeemed by richness and boldness of decoration; and
I have long had it in my mind to reason out the entire harmony of this
French Flamboyant system, and fix its types and possible power. But
this inquiry is foreign altogether to our present purpose, and we shall
therefore turn back from the Flamboyant to the Norman side of the
Falaise aisle, resolute for the future that all shafts of which we may
have the ordering, shall be permitted, as with wisdom we may also permit
men or cities, to gather themselves into companies, or constellate
themselves into clusters, but not to fuse themselves into mere masses of
nebulous aggregation.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] In saying this, it is assumed that the interval is one which is
to be traversed by men; and that a certain relation of the shafts
and intervals to the size of the human figure is therefore
necessary. When shafts are used in the upper stories of buildings,
or on a scale which ignores all relation to the human figure, no
such relative limits exist either to slenderness or solidity.
[39] Vide the interesting discussion of this point in Mr.
Fergusson's account of the Temple of Karnak, "Principles of Beauty
in Art," p. 219.
[40] I have assumed that the strength of similar shafts of equal
height is as the squares of their diameters; which, though not
actually a correct expression, is sufficiently so for all our
present purposes.
[41] How far this condition limits the system of shaft grouping we
shall see presently. The reader must remember, that we at present
reason respecting shafts in the abstract only.
[42] The capitals being formed by the flowers, or by a
representation of the bulging out of the reeds at the top, under the
weight of the architrave.
[43] I have not been at the pains to draw the complicated piers in
this plate with absolute exactitude to the scale of each: they are
accurate enough for their purpose: those of them respecting which we
shall have farther question will be given on a much larger scale.
[44] The largest I remember support a monument in St. Zeno of
Verona; they are of red marble, some ten or twelve feet high.
[45] The effect of this last is given in Plate VI. of the folio
series.
[46] The entire development of this cross system in connexion with
the vaulting ribs, has been most clearly explained by Professor
Willis (Architecture of Mid. Ages, Chap. IV.); and I strongly
recommend every reader who is inclined to take pains in the matter,
to read that chapter. I have been contented, in my own text, to
pursue the abstract idea of shaft form.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CAPITAL.
§ I. The reader will remember that in Chap. VII. § V. it was said that
the cornice of the wall, being cut to pieces and gathered together,
formed the capital of the column. We have now to follow it in its
transformation.
We must, of course, take our simplest form or root of cornices (_a_, in
Fig. V., above). We will take X and Y there, and we must necessarily
gather them together as we did Xb and Yb in Chap. VII. Look back to the
tenth paragraph of Chap. VII., read or glance it over again, substitute
X and Y for Xb and Yb, read capital for base, and, as we said that the
capital was the hand of the pillar, while the base was its foot, read
also fingers for toes; and as you look to the plate, Fig. XII., turn it
upside down. Then _h_, in Fig. XII., becomes now your best general form
of block capital, as before of block base.
§ II. You will thus have a perfect idea of the analogies between base
and capital; our farther inquiry is into their differences. You cannot
but have noticed that when Fig. XII. is turned upside down, the square
stone (Y) looks too heavy for the supporting stone (X); and that in the
profile of cornice (_a_ of Fig. V.) the proportions are altogether
different. You will feel the fitness of this in an instant when you
consider that the principal function of the sloping part in Fig. XII. is
as a prop to the pillar to keep it from _slipping aside_; but the
function of the sloping stone in the cornice and capital is to _carry
weight above_. The thrust of the slope in the one case should therefore
be lateral, in the other upwards.
§ III. We will, therefore, take the two figures, _e_ and _h_ of Fig.
XII., and make this change in them as we reverse them, using now the
exact profile of the cornice _a_,--the father of cornices; and we shall
thus have _a_ and _b_, Fig. XIX.
[Illustration: Fig. XIX.]
Both of these are sufficiently ugly, the reader thinks; so do I; but we
will mend them before we have done with them: that at _a_ is assuredly
the ugliest,--like a tile on a flower-pot. It is, nevertheless, the
father of capitals; being the simplest condition of the gathered father
of cornices. But it is to be observed that the diameter of the shaft
here is arbitrarily assumed to be small, in order more clearly to show
the general relations of the sloping stone to the shaft and upper stone;
and this smallness of the shaft diameter is inconsistent with the
serviceableness and beauty of the arrangement at _a_, if it were to be
realised (as we shall see presently); but it is not inconsistent with
its central character, as the representative of every species of
possible capital; nor is its tile and flower-pot look to be regretted,
as it may remind the reader of the reported origin of the Corinthian
capital. The stones of the cornice, hitherto called X and Y, receive,
now that they form the capital, each a separate name; the sloping stone
is called the Bell of the capital, and that laid above it, the Abacus.
Abacus means a board or tile: I wish there were an English word for it,
but I fear there is no substitution possible, the term having been long
fixed, and the reader will find it convenient to familiarise himself
with the Latin one.
§ IV. The form of base, _e_ of Fig. XII., which corresponds to this
first form of capital, _a_, was said to be objectionable only because it
_looked_ insecure; and the spurs were added as a kind of pledge of
stability to the eye. But evidently the projecting corners of the abacus
at _a_, Fig. XIX., are _actually_ insecure; they may break off, if great
weight be laid upon them. This is the chief reason of the ugliness of
the form; and the spurs in _b_ are now no mere pledges of apparent
stability, but have very serious practical use in supporting the angle
of the abacus. If, even with the added spur, the support seems
insufficient, we may fill up the crannies between the spurs and the
bell, and we have the form _c_.
Thus _a_, though the germ and type of capitals, is itself (except under
some peculiar conditions) both ugly and insecure; _b_ is the first type
of capitals which carry light weight; _c_, of capitals which carry
excessive weight.
§ V. I fear, however, the reader may think he is going slightly too
fast, and may not like having the capital forced upon him out of the
cornice; but would prefer inventing a capital for the shaft itself,
without reference to the cornice at all. We will do so then; though we
shall come to the same result.
The shaft, it will be remembered, has to sustain the same weight as the
long piece of wall which was concentrated into the shaft; it is enabled
to do this both by its better form and better knit materials; and it can
carry a greater weight than the space at the top of it is adapted to
receive. The first point, therefore, is to expand this space as far as
possible, and that in a form more convenient than the circle for the
adjustment of the stones above. In general the square is a more
convenient form than any other; but the hexagon or octagon is sometimes
better fitted for masses of work which divide in six or eight
directions. Then our first impulse would be to put a square or hexagonal
stone on the top of the shaft, projecting as far beyond it as might be
safely ventured; as at _a_, Fig. XX. This is the abacus. Our next idea
would be to put a conical shaped stone beneath this abacus, to support
its outer edge, as at _b_. This is the bell.
[Illustration: Fig. XX.]
§ VI. Now the entire treatment of the capital depends simply on the
manner in which this bell-stone is prepared for fitting the shaft below
and the abacus above. Placed as at _a_, in Fig. XIX., it gives us the
simplest of possible forms; with the spurs added, as at _b_, it gives
the germ of the richest and most elaborate forms: but there are two
modes of treatment more dexterous than the one, and less elaborate than
the other, which are of the highest possible importance,--modes in which
the bell is brought to its proper form by truncation.
§ VII. Let _d_ and _f_, Fig. XIX., be two bell-stones; _d_ is part of a
cone (a sugar-loaf upside down, with its point cut off); _f_ part of a
four-sided pyramid. Then, assuming the abacus to be square, _d_ will
already fit the shaft, but has to be chiselled to fit the abacus; _f_
will already fit the abacus, but has to be chiselled to fit the shaft.
From the broad end of _d_ chop or chisel off, in four vertical planes,
as much as will leave its head an exact square. The vertical cuttings
will form curves on the sides of the cone (curves of a curious kind,
which the reader need not be troubled to examine), and we shall have the
form at _e_, which is the root of the greater number of Norman capitals.
From _f_ cut off the angles, beginning at the corners of the square and
widening the truncation downwards, so as to give the form at _g_, where
the base of the bell is an octagon, and its top remains a square. A
very slight rounding away of the angles of the octagon at the base of
_g_ will enable it to fit the circular shaft closely enough for all
practical purposes, and this form, at _g_, is the root of nearly all
Lombardic capitals.
If, instead of a square, the head of the bell were hexagonal or
octagonal, the operation of cutting would be the same on each angle; but
there would be produced, of course, six or eight curves on the sides of
_e_, and twelve or sixteen sides to the base of _g_.
[Illustration: Fig. XXI.]
§ VIII. The truncations in _e_ and _g_ may of course be executed on
concave or convex forms of _d_ and _f_; but _e_ is usually worked on a
straight-sided bell, and the truncation of _g_ often becomes concave
while the bell remains straight; for this simple reason,--that the sharp
points at the angles of _g_, being somewhat difficult to cut, and easily
broken off, are usually avoided by beginning the truncation a little way
down the side of the bell, and then recovering the lost ground by a
deeper cut inwards, as here, Fig. XXI. This is the actual form of the
capitals of the balustrades of St. Mark's: it is the root of all the
Byzantine Arab capitals, and of all the most beautiful capitals in the
world, whose function is to express lightness.
§ IX. We have hitherto proceeded entirely on the assumption that the
form of cornice which was gathered together to produce the capital was
the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V. But this, it will be remembered,
was said in § VI. of Chap. VI. to be especially characteristic of
southern work, and that in northern and wet climates it took the form of
a dripstone.
Accordingly, in the northern climates, the dripstone gathered together
forms a peculiar northern capital, commonly called the Early
English,[47] owing to its especial use in that style.
There would have been no absurdity in this if shafts were always to be
exposed to the weather; but in Gothic constructions the most important
shafts are in the inside of the building. The dripstone sections of
their capitals are therefore unnecessary and ridiculous.
§ X. They are, however, much worse than unnecessary.
[Illustration: Fig. XXII.]
The edge of the dripstone, being undercut, has no bearing power, and the
capital fails, therefore, in its own principal function; and besides
this, the undercut contour admits of no distinctly visible decoration;
it is, therefore, left utterly barren, and the capital looks as if it
had been turned in a lathe. The Early English capital has, therefore,
the three greatest faults that any design can have: (1) it fails in its
own proper purpose, that of support; (2) it is adapted to a purpose to
which it can never be put, that of keeping off rain; (3) it cannot be
decorated.
The Early English capital is, therefore, a barbarism of triple
grossness, and degrades the style in which it is found, otherwise very
noble, to one of second-rate order.
§ XI. Dismissing, therefore, the Early English capital, as deserving no
place in our system, let us reassemble in one view the forms which have
been legitimately developed, and which are to become hereafter subjects
of decoration. To the forms _a_, _b_, and _c_, Fig. XIX., we must add
the two simplest truncated forms _e_ and _g_, Fig. XIX., putting their
abaci on them (as we considered their contours in the bells only), and
we shall have the five forms now given in parallel perspective in Fig.
XXII., which are the roots of all good capitals existing, or capable of
existence, and whose variations, infinite and a thousand times infinite,
are all produced by introduction of various curvatures into their
contours, and the endless methods of decoration superinduced on such
curvatures.
§ XII. There is, however, a kind of variation, also infinite, which
takes place in these radical forms, before they receive either curvature
or decoration. This is the variety of proportion borne by the different
lines of the capital to each other, and to the shafts. This is a
structural question, at present to be considered as far as is possible.
[Illustration: Fig. XXIII.]
§ XIII. All the five capitals (which are indeed five orders with
legitimate distinction; very different, however, from the five orders as
commonly understood) may be represented by the same profile, a section
through the sides of _a_, _b_, _d_, and _e_, or through the angles of
_c_, Fig. XXII. This profile we will put on the top of a shaft, as at A,
Fig. XXIII., which shaft we will suppose of equal diameter above and
below for the sake of greater simplicity: in this simplest condition,
however, relations of proportion exist between five quantities, any one
or any two, or any three, or any four of which may change, irrespective
of the others. These five quantities are:
1. The height of the shaft, _a b_;
2. Its diameter, _b c_;
3. The length of slope of bell, _b d_;
4. The inclination of this slope, or angle _c b d_;
5. The depth of abacus, _d e_.
For every change in any one of these quantities we have a new proportion
of capital: five infinities, supposing change only in one quantity at a
time: infinity of infinities in the sum of possible changes.
It is, therefore, only possible to note the general laws of change;
every scale of pillar, and every weight laid upon it admitting, within
certain limits, a variety out of which the architect has his choice; but
yet fixing limits which the proportion becomes ugly when it approaches,
and dangerous when it exceeds. But the inquiry into this subject is too
difficult for the general reader, and I shall content myself with
proving four laws, easily understood and generally applicable; for proof
of which if the said reader care not, he may miss the next four
paragraphs without harm.
§ XIV. 1. _The more slender the shaft, the greater, proportionally, may
be the projection of the abacus._ For, looking back to Fig. XXIII., let
the height _a b_ be fixed, the length _d b_, the angle _d b c_, and the
depth _d e_. Let the single quantity _b c_ be variable, let B be a
capital and shaft which are found to be perfectly safe in proportion to
the weight they bear, and let the weight be equally distributed over the
whole of the abacus. Then this weight may be represented by any number
of equal divisions, suppose four, as _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, of brickwork
above, of which each division is one fourth of the whole weight; and let
this weight be placed in the most trying way on the abacus, that is to
say, let the masses _l_ and _r_ be detached from _m_ and _n_, and bear
with their full weight on the outside of the capital. We assume, in B,
that the width of abacus _e f_ is twice as great as that of the shaft,
_b c_, and on these conditions we assume the capital to be safe.
But _b c_ is allowed to be variable. Let it become _b2 c2_ at C, which
is a length representing about the diameter of a shaft containing half
the substance of the shaft B, and, therefore, able to sustain not more
than half the weight sustained by B. But the slope _b d_ and depth _d
e_ remaining unchanged, we have the capital of C, which we are to load
with only half the weight of _l_, _m_, _n_, _r_, i.e., with _l_ and _r_
alone. Therefore the weight of _l_ and _r_, now represented by the
masses _l2_, _r2_, is distributed over the whole of the capital. But the
weight _r_ was adequately supported by the projecting piece of the first
capital _h f c_: much more is it now adequately supported by _i h_, _f2
c2_. Therefore, if the capital of B was safe, that of C is more than
safe. Now in B the length _e f_ was only twice _b c_; but in C, _e2 f2_
will be found more than twice that of _b2_ _c2_. Therefore, the more
slender the shaft, the greater may be the proportional excess of the
abacus over its diameter.
[Illustration: Fig. XXIV.]
§ XV. 2. _The smaller the scale of the building, the greater may be the
excess of the abacus over the diameter of the shaft._ This principle
requires, I think, no very lengthy proof: the reader can understand at
once that the cohesion and strength of stone which can sustain a small
projecting mass, will not sustain a vast one overhanging in the same
proportion. A bank even of loose earth, six feet high, will sometimes
overhang its base a foot or two, as you may see any day in the gravelly
banks of the lanes of Hampstead: but make the bank of gravel, equally
loose, six hundred feet high, and see if you can get it to overhang a
hundred or two! much more if there be weight above it increased in the
same proportion. Hence, let any capital be given, whose projection is
just safe, and no more, on its existing scale; increase its proportions
every way equally, though ever so little, and it is unsafe; diminish
them equally, and it becomes safe in the exact degree of the diminution.
Let, then, the quantity _e d_, and angle _d b c_, at A of Fig. XXIII.,
be invariable, and let the length _d b_ vary: then we shall have such a
series of forms as may be represented by _a_, _b_, _c_, Fig. XXIV., of
which _a_ is a proportion for a colossal building, _b_ for a moderately
sized building, while _c_ could only be admitted on a very small scale
indeed.
§ XVI. 3. _The greater the excess of abacus, the steeper must be the
slope of the bell, the shaft diameter being constant._
This will evidently follow from the considerations in the last
paragraph; supposing only that, instead of the scale of shaft and
capital varying together, the scale of the capital varies alone. For it
will then still be true, that, if the projection of the capital be just
safe on a given scale, as its excess over the shaft diameter increases,
the projection will be unsafe, if the slope of the bell remain constant.
But it may be rendered safe by making this slope steeper, and so
increasing its supporting power.
[Illustration: Fig. XXV.]
Thus let the capital _a_, Fig. XXV., be just safe. Then the capital _b_,
in which the slope is the same but the excess greater, is unsafe. But
the capital _c_, in which, though the excess equals that of _b_, the
steepness of the supporting slope is increased, will be as safe as _b_,
and probably as strong as _a_.[48]
§ XVII. 4. _The steeper the slope of the bell, the thinner may be the
abacus._
The use of the abacus is eminently to equalise the pressure over the
surface of the bell, so that the weight may not by any accident be
directed exclusively upon its edges. In proportion to the strength of
these edges, this function of the abacus is superseded, and these edges
are strong in proportion to the steepness of the slope. Thus in Fig.
XXVI., the bell at _a_ would carry weight safely enough without any
abacus, but that at _c_ would not: it would probably have its edges
broken off. The abacus superimposed might be on _a_ very thin, little
more than formal, as at _b_; but on _c_ must be thick, as at _d_.
[Illustration: Fig. XXVI.]
§ XVIII. These four rules are all that are necessary for general
criticism; and observe that these are only semi-imperative,--rules of
permission, not of compulsion. Thus Law 1 asserts that the slender shaft
_may_ have greater excess of capital than the thick shaft; but it need
not, unless the architect chooses; his thick shafts _must_ have small
excess, but his slender ones need not have large. So Law 2 says, that as
the building is smaller, the excess _may_ be greater; but it need not,
for the excess which is safe in the large is still safer in the small.
So Law 3 says that capitals of great excess must have steep slopes; but
it does not say that capitals of small excess may not have steep slopes
also, if we choose. And lastly, Law 4 asserts the necessity of the thick
abacus for the shallow bell; but the steep bell may have a thick abacus
also.
§ XIX. It will be found, however, that in practice some confession of
these laws will always be useful, and especially of the two first. The
eye always requires, on a slender shaft, a more spreading capital than
it does on a massy one, and a bolder mass of capital on a small scale
than on a large. And, in the application of the first rule, it is to be
noted that a shaft becomes slender either by diminution of diameter or
increase of height; that either mode of change presupposes the weight
above it diminished, and requires an expansion of abacus. I know no mode
of spoiling a noble building more frequent in actual practice than the
imposition of flat and slightly expanded capitals on tall shafts.
§ XX. The reader must observe, also, that, in the demonstration of the
four laws, I always assumed the weight above to be given. By the
alteration of this weight, therefore, the architect has it in his power
to relieve, and therefore alter, the forms of his capitals. By its
various distribution on their centres or edges, the slope of their bells
and thickness of abaci will be affected also; so that he has countless
expedients at his command for the various treatment of his design. He
can divide his weights among more shafts; he can throw them in different
places and different directions on the abaci; he can alter slope of
bells or diameter of shafts; he can use spurred or plain bells, thin or
thick abaci; and all these changes admitting of infinity in their
degrees, and infinity a thousand times told in their relations: and all
this without reference to decoration, merely with the five forms of
block capital!
§ XXI. In the harmony of these arrangements, in their fitness, unity,
and accuracy, lies the true proportion of every building,--proportion
utterly endless in its infinities of change, with unchanged beauty. And
yet this connexion of the frame of their building into one harmony has,
I believe, never been so much as dreamed of by architects. It has been
instinctively done in some degree by many, empirically in some degree by
many more; thoughtfully and thoroughly, I believe, by none.
§ XXII. We have hitherto considered the abacus as necessarily a separate
stone from the bell: evidently, however, the strength of the capital
will be undiminished if both are cut out of one block. This is actually
the case in many capitals, especially those on a small scale; and in
others the detached upper stone is a mere representative of the abacus,
and is much thinner than the form of the capital requires, while the
true abacus is united with the bell, and concealed by its decoration, or
made part of it.
§ XXIII. Farther. We have hitherto considered bell and abacus as both
derived from the concentration of the cornice. But it must at once occur
to the reader, that the projection of the under stone and the thickness
of the upper, which are quite enough for the work of the continuous
cornice, may not be enough always, or rather are seldom likely to be so,
for the harder work of the capital. Both may have to be deepened and
expanded: but as this would cause a want of harmony in the parts, when
they occur on the same level, it is better in such case to let the
_entire_ cornice form the abacus of the capital, and put a deep capital
bell beneath it.
§ XXIV. The reader will understand both arrangements instantly by two
examples. Fig. XXVII. represents two windows, more than usually
beautiful examples of a very frequent Venetian form. Here the deep
cornice or string course which runs along the wall of the house is quite
strong enough for the work of the capitals of the slender shafts: its
own upper stone is therefore also theirs; its own lower stone, by its
revolution or concentration, forms their bells: but to mark the
increased importance of its function in so doing, it receives
decoration, as the bell of the capital, which it did not receive as the
under stone of the cornice.
[Illustration: Fig. XXVII.]
In Fig. XXVIII., a little bit of the church of Santa Fosca at Torcello,
the cornice or string course, which goes round every part of the church,
is not strong enough to form the capitals of the shafts. It therefore
forms their abaci only; and in order to mark the diminished importance
of its function, it ceases to receive, as the abacus of the capital, the
decoration which it received as the string course of the wall.
This last arrangement is of great frequency in Venice, occurring most
characteristically in St. Mark's: and in the Gothic of St. John and Paul
we find the two arrangements beautifully united, though in great
simplicity; the string courses of the walls form the capitals of the
shafts of the traceries; and the abaci of the vaulting shafts of the
apse.
[Illustration: Fig. XXVIII.]
§ XXV. We have hitherto spoken of capitals of circular shafts only:
those of square piers are more frequently formed by the cornice only;
otherwise they are like those of circular piers, without the difficulty
of reconciling the base of the bell with its head.
§ XXVI. When two or more shafts are grouped together, their capitals are
usually treated as separate, until they come into actual contact. If
there be any awkwardness in the junction, it is concealed by the
decoration, and one abacus serves, in most cases, for all. The double
group, Fig. XXVII., is the simplest possible type of the arrangement. In
the richer Northern Gothic groups of eighteen or twenty shafts cluster
together, and sometimes the smaller shafts crouch under the capitals of
the larger, and hide their heads in the crannies, with small nominal
abaci of their own, while the larger shafts carry the serviceable abacus
of the whole pier, as in the nave of Rouen. There is, however, evident
sacrifice of sound principle in this system, the smaller abaci being of
no use. They are the exact contrary of the rude early abacus at Milan,
given in Plate XVII. There one poor abacus stretched itself out to do
all the work: here there are idle abaci getting up into corners and
doing none.
§ XXVII. Finally, we have considered the capital hitherto entirely as an
expansion of the bearing power of the shaft, supposing the shaft
composed of a single stone. But, evidently, the capital has a function,
if possible, yet more important, when the shaft is composed of small
masonry. It enables all that masonry to act together, and to receive the
pressure from above collectively and with a single strength. And thus,
considered merely as a large stone set on the top of the shaft, it is a
feature of the highest architectural importance, irrespective of its
expansion, which indeed is, in some very noble capitals, exceedingly
small. And thus every large stone set at any important point to
reassemble the force of smaller masonry and prepare it for the
sustaining of weight, is a capital or "head" stone (the true meaning of
the word) whether it project or not. Thus at 6, in Plate IV., the stones
which support the thrust of the brickwork are capitals, which have no
projection at all; and the large stones in the window above are capitals
projecting in one direction only.
§ XXVIII. The reader is now master of all he need know respecting
construction of capitals; and from what has been laid before him, must
assuredly feel that there can never be any new system of architectural
forms invented; but that all vertical support must be, to the end of
time, best obtained by shafts and capitals. It has been so obtained by
nearly every nation of builders, with more or less refinement in the
management of the details; and the later Gothic builders of the North
stand almost alone in their effort to dispense with the natural
development of the shaft, and banish the capital from their
compositions.
They were gradually led into this error through a series of steps which
it is not here our business to trace. But they may be generalised in a
few words.
§ XXIX. All classical architecture, and the Romanesque which is
legitimately descended from it, is composed of bold independent shafts,
plain or fluted, with bold detached capitals, forming arcades or
colonnades where they are needed; and of walls whose apertures are
surrounded by courses of parallel lines called mouldings, which are
continuous round the apertures, and have neither shafts nor capitals.
The shaft system and moulding system are entirely separate.
The Gothic architects confounded the two. They clustered the shafts till
they looked like a group of mouldings. They shod and capitaled the
mouldings till they looked like a group of shafts. So that a pier became
merely the side of a door or window rolled up, and the side of the
window a pier unrolled (vide last Chapter, § XXX.), both being composed
of a series of small shafts, each with base and capital. The architect
seemed to have whole mats of shafts at his disposal, like the rush mats
which one puts under cream cheese. If he wanted a great pier he rolled
up the mat; if he wanted the side of a door he spread out the mat: and
now the reader has to add to the other distinctions between the Egyptian
and the Gothic shaft, already noted in § XXVI. of Chap. VIII., this one
more--the most important of all--that while the Egyptian rush cluster
has only one massive capital altogether, the Gothic rush mat has a
separate tiny capital to every several rush.
§ XXX. The mats were gradually made of finer rushes, until it became
troublesome to give each rush its capital. In fact, when the groups of
shafts became excessively complicated, the expansion of their small
abaci was of no use: it was dispensed with altogether, and the mouldings
of pier and jamb ran up continuously into the arches.
This condition, though in many respects faulty and false, is yet the
eminently characteristic state of Gothic: it is the definite formation
of it as a distinct style, owing no farther aid to classical models; and
its lightness and complexity render it, when well treated, and enriched
with Flamboyant decoration, a very glorious means of picturesque effect.
It is, in fact, this form of Gothic which commends itself most easily to
the general mind, and which has suggested the innumerable foolish
theories about the derivation of Gothic from tree trunks and avenues,
which have from time to time been brought forward by persons ignorant of
the history of architecture.
§ XXXI. When the sense of picturesqueness, as well as that of justness
and dignity, had been lost, the spring of the continuous mouldings was
replaced by what Professor Willis calls the Discontinuous impost; which,
being a barbarism of the basest and most painful kind, and being to
architecture what the setting of a saw is to music, I shall not trouble
the reader to examine. For it is not in my plan to note for him all the
various conditions of error, but only to guide him to the appreciation
of the right; and I only note even the true Continuous or Flamboyant
Gothic because this is redeemed by its beautiful decoration, afterwards
to be considered. For, as far as structure is concerned, the moment the
capital vanishes from the shaft, that moment we are in error: all good
Gothic has true capitals to the shafts of its jambs and traceries, and
all Gothic is debased the instant the shaft vanishes. It matters not how
slender, or how small, or how low, the shaft may be: wherever there is
indication of concentrated vertical support, then the capital is a
necessary termination. I know how much Gothic, otherwise beautiful, this
sweeping principle condemns; but it condemns not altogether. We may
still take delight in its lovely proportions, its rich decoration, or
its elastic and reedy moulding; but be assured, wherever shafts, or any
approximations to the forms of shafts, are employed, for whatever
office, or on whatever scale, be it in jambs or piers, or balustrades,
or traceries, without capitals, there is a defiance of the natural laws
of construction; and that, wherever such examples are found in ancient
buildings, they are either the experiments of barbarism, or the
commencements of decline.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] Appendix 19, "Early English Capitals."
[48] In this case the weight borne is supposed to increase as the
abacus widens; the illustration would have been clearer if I had
assumed the breadth of abacus to be constant, and that of the shaft
to vary.
CHAPTER X.
THE ARCH LINE.
§ I. We have seen in the last section how our means of vertical support
may, for the sake of economy both of space and material, be gathered
into piers or shafts, and directed to the sustaining of particular
points. The next question is how to connect these points or tops of
shafts with each other, so as to be able to lay on them a continuous
roof. This the reader, as before, is to favor me by finding out for
himself, under these following conditions.
Let _s_, _s_, Fig. XXIX. opposite, be two shafts, with their capitals
ready prepared for their work; and _a_, _b_, _b_, and _c_, _c_, _c_, be
six stones of different sizes, one very long and large, and two smaller,
and three smaller still, of which the reader is to choose which he likes
best, in order to connect the tops of the shafts.
I suppose he will first try if he can lift the great stone _a_, and if he
can, he will put it very simply on the tops of the two pillars, as at A.
Very well indeed: he has done already what a number of Greek architects
have been thought very clever for having done. But suppose he _cannot_
lift the great stone _a_, or suppose I will not give it to him, but only
the two smaller stones at _b_, _b_; he will doubtless try to put them
up, tilted against each other, as at _d_. Very awkward this; worse than
card-house building. But if he cuts off the corners of the stones, so as
to make each of them of the form _e_, they will stand up very securely,
as at B.
But suppose he cannot lift even these less stones, but can raise those
at _c_, _c_, _c_. Then, cutting each of them into the form at _e_, he
will doubtless set them up as at _f_.
[Illustration: Fig. XXIX.]
§ II. This last arrangement looks a little dangerous. Is there not a
chance of the stone in the middle pushing the others out, or tilting
them up and aside, and slipping down itself between them? There is such
a chance: and if by somewhat altering the form of the stones, we can
diminish this chance, all the better. I must say "we" now, for perhaps I
may have to help the reader a little.
The danger is, observe, that the midmost stone at _f_ pushes out the
side ones: then if we can give the side ones such a shape as that, left
to themselves, they would fall heavily forward, they will resist this
push _out_ by their weight, exactly in proportion to their own
particular inclination or desire to tumble _in_. Take one of them
separately, standing up as at _g_; it is just possible it may stand up
as it is, like the Tower of Pisa: but we want it to fall forward.
Suppose we cut away the parts that are shaded at _h_ and leave it as at
_i_, it is very certain it cannot stand alone now, but will fall forward
to our entire satisfaction.
Farther: the midmost stone at _f_ is likely to be troublesome chiefly by
its weight, pushing down between the others; the more we lighten it the
better: so we will cut it into exactly the same shape as the side ones,
chiselling away the shaded parts, as at _h_. We shall then have all the
three stones _k_, _l_, _m_, of the same shape; and now putting them
together, we have, at C, what the reader, I doubt not, will perceive at
once to be a much more satisfactory arrangement than that at _f_.
§ III. We have now got three arrangements; in one using only one piece
of stone, in the second two, and in the third three. The first
arrangement has no particular name, except the "horizontal:" but the
single stone (or beam, it may be,) is called a lintel; the second
arrangement is called a "Gable;" the third an "Arch."
We might have used pieces of wood instead of stone in all these
arrangements, with no difference in plan, so long as the beams were kept
loose, like the stones; but as beams can be securely nailed together at
the ends, we need not trouble ourselves so much about their shape or
balance, and therefore the plan at _f_ is a peculiarly wooden
construction (the reader will doubtless recognise in it the profile of
many a farm-house roof): and again, because beams are tough, and light,
and long, as compared with stones, they are admirably adapted for the
constructions at A and B, the plain lintel and gable, while that at C
is, for the most part, left to brick and stone.
§ IV. But farther. The constructions, A, B, and C, though very
conveniently to be first considered as composed of one, two, and three
pieces, are by no means necessarily so. When we have once cut the stones
of the arch into a shape like that of _k_, _l_, and _m_, they will hold
together, whatever their number, place, or size, as at _n_; and the
great value of the arch is, that it permits small stones to be used with
safety instead of large ones, which are not always to be had. Stones cut
into the shape of _k_, _l_, and _m_, whether they be short or long (I
have drawn them all sizes at _n_ on purpose), are called Voussoirs; this
is a hard, ugly French name; but the reader will perhaps be kind enough
to recollect it; it will save us both some trouble: and to make amends
for this infliction, I will relieve him of the term _keystone_. One
voussoir is as much a keystone as another; only people usually call the
stone which is last put in the keystone; and that one happens generally
to be at the top or middle of the arch.
§ V. Not only the arch, but even the lintel, may be built of many stones
or bricks. The reader may see lintels built in this way over most of the
windows of our brick London houses, and so also the gable: there are,
therefore, two distinct questions respecting each arrangement;--First,
what is the line or direction of it, which gives it its strength? and,
secondly, what is the manner of masonry of it, which gives it its
consistence? The first of these I shall consider in this Chapter under
the head of the Arch Line, using the term arch as including all manner
of construction (though we shall have no trouble except about curves);
and in the next Chapter I shall consider the second, under the head,
Arch Masonry.
§ VI. Now the arch line is the ghost or skeleton of the arch; or rather
it is the spinal marrow of the arch, and the voussoirs are the vertebræ,
which keep it safe and sound, and clothe it. This arch line the
architect has first to conceive and shape in his mind, as opposed to, or
having to bear, certain forces which will try to distort it this way and
that; and against which he is first to direct and bend the line itself
into as strong resistance as he may, and then, with his voussoirs and
what else he can, to guard it, and help it, and keep it to its duty and
in its shape. So the arch line is the moral character of the arch, and
the adverse forces are its temptations; and the voussoirs, and what else
we may help it with, are its armor and its motives to good conduct.
§ VII. This moral character of the arch is called by architects its
"Line of Resistance." There is a great deal of nicety in calculating it
with precision, just as there is sometimes in finding out very precisely
what is a man's true line of moral conduct; but this, in arch morality
and in man morality, is a very simple and easily to be understood
principle,--that if either arch or man expose themselves to their
special temptations or adverse forces, _outside_ of the voussoirs or
proper and appointed armor, both will fall. An arch whose line of
resistance is in the middle of its voussoirs is perfectly safe: in
proportion as the said line runs near the edge of its voussoirs, the
arch is in danger, as the man is who nears temptation; and the moment
the line of resistance emerges out of the voussoirs the arch falls.
§ VIII. There are, therefore, properly speaking, two arch lines. One is
the visible direction or curve of the arch, which may generally be
considered as the under edge of its voussoirs, and which has often no
more to do with the real stability of the arch, than a man's apparent
conduct has with his heart. The other line, which is the line of
resistance, or line of good behavior, may or may not be consistent with
the outward and apparent curves of the arch; but if not, then the
security of the arch depends simply upon this, whether the voussoirs
which assume or pretend to the one line are wide enough to include the
other.
§ IX. Now when the reader is told that the line of resistance varies
with every change either in place or quantity of the weight above the
arch, he will see at once that we have no chance of arranging arches by
their moral characters: we can only take the apparent arch line, or
visible direction, as a ground of arrangement. We shall consider the
possible or probable forms or contours of arches in the present Chapter,
and in the succeeding one the forms of voussoir and other help which
may best fortify these visible lines against every temptation to lose
their consistency.
[Illustration: Fig. XXX.]
§ X. Look back to Fig. XXIX. Evidently the abstract or ghost line of the
arrangement at A is a plain horizontal line, as here at _a_, Fig. XXX.
The abstract line of the arrangement at B, Fig. XXIX., is composed of
two straight lines, set against each other, as here at _b_. The abstract
line of C, Fig. XXIX., is a curve of some kind, not at present
determined, suppose _c_, Fig. XXX. Then, as _b_ is two of the straight
lines at _a_, set up against each other, we may conceive an arrangement,
_d_, made up of two of the curved lines at _c_, set against each other.
This is called a pointed arch, which is a contradiction in terms: it
ought to be called a curved gable; but it must keep the name it has got.
Now _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, Fig. XXX., are the ghosts of the lintel, the
gable, the arch, and the pointed arch. With the poor lintel ghost we
need trouble ourselves no farther; there are no changes in him: but
there is much variety in the other three, and the method of their
variety will be best discerned by studying _b_ and _d_, as subordinate
to and connected with the simple arch at _c_.
§ XI. Many architects, especially the worst, have been very curious in
designing out of the way arches,--elliptical arches, and four-centred
arches, so called, and other singularities. The good architects have
generally been content, and we for the present will be so, with God's
arch, the arch of the rainbow and of the apparent heaven, and which the
sun shapes for us as it sets and rises. Let us watch the sun for a
moment as it climbs: when it is a quarter up, it will give us the arch
_a_, Fig. XXXI.; when it is half up, _b_, and when three quarters up,
_c_. There will be an infinite number of arches between these, but we
will take these as sufficient representatives of all. Then _a_ is the
low arch, _b_ the central or pure arch, _c_ the high arch, and the rays
of the sun would have drawn for us their voussoirs.
§ XII. We will take these several arches successively, and fixing the
top of each accurately, draw two right lines thence to its base, _d_,
_e_, _f_, Fig. XXXI. Then these lines give us the relative gables of
each of the arches; _d_ is the Italian or southern gable, _e_ the
central gable, _f_ the Gothic gable.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXI.]
§ XIII. We will again take the three arches with their gables in
succession, and on each of the sides of the gable, between it and the
arch, we will describe another arch, as at _g_, _h_, _i_. Then the
curves so described give the pointed arches belonging to each of the
round arches; _g_, the flat pointed arch, _h_, the central pointed arch,
and _i_, the lancet pointed arch.
§ XIV. If the radius with which these intermediate curves are drawn be
the base of _f_, the last is the equilateral pointed arch, one of great
importance in Gothic work. But between the gable and circle, in all the
three figures, there are an infinite number of pointed arches,
describable with different radii; and the three round arches, be it
remembered, are themselves representatives of an infinite number,
passing from the flattest conceivable curve, through the semicircle and
horseshoe, up to the full circle.
The central and the last group are the most important. The central
round, or semicircle, is the Roman, the Byzantine, and Norman arch; and
its relative pointed includes one wide branch of Gothic. The horseshoe
round is the Arabic and Moorish arch, and its relative pointed includes
the whole range of Arabic and lancet, or Early English and French
Gothics. I mean of course by the relative pointed, the entire group of
which the equilateral arch is the representative. Between it and the
outer horseshoe, as this latter rises higher, the reader will find, on
experiment, the great families of what may be called the horseshoe
pointed,--curves of the highest importance, but which are all included,
with English lancet, under the term, relative pointed of the horseshoe
arch.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXII.]
§ XV. The groups above described are all formed of circular arcs, and
include all truly useful and beautiful arches for ordinary work. I
believe that singular and complicated curves are made use of in modern
engineering, but with these the general reader can have no concern: the
Ponte della Trinita at Florence is the most graceful instance I know of
such structure; the arch made use of being very subtle, and
approximating to the low ellipse; for which, in common work, a barbarous
pointed arch, called four-centred, and composed of bits of circles, is
substituted by the English builders. The high ellipse, I believe, exists
in eastern architecture. I have never myself met with it on a large
scale; but it occurs in the niches of the later portions of the Ducal
palace at Venice, together with a singular hyperbolic arch, _a_ in Fig.
XXXIII., to be described hereafter: with such caprices we are not here
concerned.
§ XVI. We are, however, concerned to notice the absurdity of another
form of arch, which, with the four-centred, belongs to the English
perpendicular Gothic.
Taking the gable of any of the groups in Fig. XXXI. (suppose the
equilateral), here at _b_, in Fig. XXXIII., the dotted line representing
the relative pointed arch, we may evidently conceive an arch formed by
reversed curves on the inside of the gable, as here shown by the inner
curved lines. I imagine the reader by this time knows enough of the
nature of arches to understand that, whatever strength or stability was
gained by the curve on the _outside_ of the gable, exactly so much is
lost by curves on the _inside_. The natural tendency of such an arch to
dissolution by its own mere weight renders it a feature of detestable
ugliness, wherever it occurs on a large scale. It is eminently
characteristic of Tudor work, and it is the profile of the Chinese roof
(I say on a large scale, because this as well as all other capricious
arches, may be made secure by their masonry when small, but not
otherwise). Some allowable modifications of it will be noticed in the
chapter on Roofs.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXIII.]
§ XVII. There is only one more form of arch which we have to notice.
When the last described arch is used, not as the principal arrangement,
but as a mere heading to a common pointed arch, we have the form _c_,
Fig. XXXIII. Now this is better than the entirely reversed arch for two
reasons; first, less of the line is weakened by reversing; secondly, the
double curve has a very high æsthetic value, not existing in the mere
segments of circles. For these reasons arches of this kind are not only
admissible, but even of great desirableness, when their scale and
masonry render them secure, but above a certain scale they are
altogether barbarous; and, with the reversed Tudor arch, wantonly
employed, are the characteristics of the worst and meanest schools of
architecture, past or present.
This double curve is called the Ogee; it is the profile of many German
leaden roofs, of many Turkish domes (there more excusable, because
associated and in sympathy with exquisitely managed arches of the same
line in the walls below), of Tudor turrets, as in Henry the Seventh's
Chapel, and it is at the bottom or top of sundry other blunders all over
the world.
§ XVIII. The varieties of the ogee curve are infinite, as the reversed
portion of it may be engrafted on every other form of arch, horseshoe,
round, or pointed. Whatever is generally worthy of note in these
varieties, and in other arches of caprice, we shall best discover by
examining their masonry; for it is by their good masonry only that they
are rendered either stable or beautiful. To this question, then, let us
address ourselves.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ARCH MASONRY.
§ I. On the subject of the stability of arches, volumes have been
written and volumes more are required. The reader will not, therefore,
expect from me any very complete explanation of its conditions within
the limits of a single chapter. But that which is necessary for him to
know is very simple and very easy; and yet, I believe, some part of it
is very little known, or noticed.
We must first have a clear idea of what is meant by an arch. It is a
curved _shell_ of firm materials, on whose back a burden is to be laid
of _loose_ materials. So far as the materials above it are _not loose_,
but themselves hold together, the opening below is not an arch, but an
_excavation_. Note this difference very carefully. If the King of
Sardinia tunnels through the Mont Cenis, as he proposes, he will not
require to build a brick arch under his tunnel to carry the weight of
the Mont Cenis: that would need scientific masonry indeed. The Mont
Cenis will carry itself, by its own cohesion, and a succession of
invisible granite arches, rather larger than the tunnel. But when Mr.
Brunel tunnelled the Thames bottom, he needed to build a brick arch to
carry the six or seven feet of mud and the weight of water above. That
is a type of all arches proper.
§ II. Now arches, in practice, partake of the nature of the two. So far
as their masonry above is Mont-Cenisian, that is to say, colossal in
comparison of them, and granitic, so that the arch is a mere hole in the
rock substance of it, the form of the arch is of no consequence
whatever: it may be rounded, or lozenged, or ogee'd, or anything else;
and in the noblest architecture there is always _some_ character of this
kind given to the masonry. It is independent enough not to care about
the holes cut in it, and does not subside into them like sand. But the
theory of arches does not presume on any such condition of things; it
allows itself only the shell of the arch proper; the vertebræ, carrying
their marrow of resistance; and, above this shell, it assumes the wall
to be in a state of flux, bearing down on the arch, like water or sand,
with its whole weight. And farther, the problem which is to be solved by
the arch builder is not merely to carry this weight, but to carry it
with the least thickness of shell. It is easy to carry it by continually
thickening your voussoirs: if you have six feet depth of sand or gravel
to carry, and you choose to employ granite voussoirs six feet thick, no
question but your arch is safe enough. But it is perhaps somewhat too
costly: the thing to be done is to carry the sand or gravel with brick
voussoirs, six inches thick, or, at any rate, with the least thickness
of voussoir which will be safe; and to do this requires peculiar
arrangement of the lines of the arch. There are many arrangements,
useful all in their way, but we have only to do, in the best
architecture, with the simplest and most easily understood. We have
first to note those which regard the actual shell of the arch, and then
we shall give a few examples of the superseding of such expedients by
Mont-Cenisian masonry.
§ III. What we have to say will apply to all arches, but the central
pointed arch is the best for general illustration. Let _a_, Plate III.,
be the shell of a pointed arch with loose loading above; and suppose you
find that shell not quite thick enough; and that the weight bears too
heavily on the top of the arch, and is likely to break it in: you
proceed to thicken your shell, but need you thicken it all equally? Not
so; you would only waste your good voussoirs. If you have any common
sense you will thicken it at the top, where a Mylodon's skull is
thickened for the same purpose (and some human skulls, I fancy), as at
_b_. The pebbles and gravel above will now shoot off it right and left,
as the bullets do off a cuirassier's breastplate, and will have no
chance of beating it in.
If still it be not strong enough, a farther addition may be made, as at
_c_, now thickening the voussoirs a little at the base also. But as this
may perhaps throw the arch inconveniently high, or occasion a waste of
voussoirs at the top, we may employ another expedient.
§ IV. I imagine the reader's common sense, if not his previous
knowledge, will enable him to understand that if the arch at _a_, Plate
III., burst _in_ at the top, it must burst _out_ at the sides. Set up
two pieces of pasteboard, edge to edge, and press them down with your
hand, and you will see them bend out at the sides. Therefore, if you can
keep the arch from starting out at the points _p_, _p_, it _cannot_
curve in at the top, put what weight on it you will, unless by sheer
crushing of the stones to fragments.
§ V. Now you may keep the arch from starting out at _p_ by loading it at
_p_, putting more weight upon it and against it at that point; and this,
in practice, is the way it is usually done. But we assume at present
that the weight above is sand or water, quite unmanageable, not to be
directed to the points we choose; and in practice, it may sometimes
happen that we cannot put weight upon the arch at _p_. We may perhaps
want an opening above it, or it may be at the side of the building, and
many other circumstances may occur to hinder us.
§ VI. But if we are not sure that we can put weight above it, we are
perfectly sure that we can hang weight under it. You may always thicken
your shell inside, and put the weight upon it as at _x x_, in _d_, Plate
III. Not much chance of its bursting out at _p_, now, is there?
§ VII. Whenever, therefore, an arch has to bear vertical pressure, it
will bear it better when its shell is shaped as at _b_ or _d_, than as
at _a_: _b_ and _d_ are, therefore, the types of arches built to resist
vertical pressure, all over the world, and from the beginning of
architecture to its end. None others can be compared with them: all are
imperfect except these.
[Illustration: Plate III.
ARCH MASONRY.]
The added projections at _x x_, in _d_, are called CUSPS, and they are
the very soul and life of the best northern Gothic; yet never thoroughly
understood nor found in perfection, except in Italy, the northern
builders working often, even in the best times, with the vulgar form at
_a_.
The form at _b_ is rarely found in the north: its perfection is in the
Lombardic Gothic; and branches of it, good and bad according to their
use, occur in Saracenic work.
§ VIII. The true and perfect cusp is single only. But it was probably
invented (by the Arabs?) not as a constructive, but a decorative
feature, in pure fantasy; and in early northern work it is only the
application to the arch of the foliation, so called, of penetrated
spaces in stone surfaces, already enough explained in the "Seven Lamps,"
Chap. III., p. 85 _et seq._ It is degraded in dignity, and loses its
usefulness, exactly in proportion to its multiplication on the arch. In
later architecture, especially English Tudor, it is sunk into dotage,
and becomes a simple excrescence, a bit of stone pinched up out of the
arch, as a cook pinches the paste at the edge of a pie.
§ IX. The depth and place of the cusp, that is to say, its exact
application to the shoulder of the curve of the arch, varies with the
direction of the weight to be sustained. I have spent more than a month,
and that in hard work too, in merely trying to get the forms of cusps
into perfect order: whereby the reader may guess that I have not space
to go into the subject now; but I shall hereafter give a few of the
leading and most perfect examples, with their measures and masonry.
§ X. The reader now understands all that he need about the shell of the
arch, considered as an united piece of stone.
He has next to consider the shape of the voussoirs. This, as much as is
required, he will be able best to comprehend by a few examples; by which
I shall be able also to illustrate, or rather which will force me to
illustrate, some of the methods of Mont-Cenisian masonry, which were to
be the second part of our subject.
§ XI. 1 and 2, Plate IV., are two cornices; 1 from St. Antonio, Padua;
2, from the Cathedral of Sens. I want them for cornices; but I have put
them in this plate because, though their arches are filled up behind,
and are in fact mere blocks of stone with arches cut into their faces,
they illustrate the constant masonry of small arches, both in Italian
and Northern Romanesque, but especially Italian, each arch being cut out
of its own proper block of stone: this is Mont-Cenisian enough, on a
small scale.
3 is a window from Carnarvon Castle, and very primitive and interesting
in manner,--one of its arches being of one stone, the other of two. And
here we have an instance of a form of arch which would be barbarous
enough on a large scale, and of many pieces; but quaint and agreeable
thus massively built.
4 is from a little belfry in a Swiss village above Vevay; one fancies
the window of an absurd form, seen in the distance, but one is pleased
with it on seeing its masonry. It could hardly be stronger.
§ XII. These then are arches cut of one block. The next step is to form
them of two pieces, set together at the head of the arch. 6, from the
Eremitani, Padua, is very quaint and primitive in manner: it is a
curious church altogether, and has some strange traceries cut out of
single blocks. One is given in the "Seven Lamps," Plate VII., in the
left-hand corner at the bottom.
7, from the Frari, Venice, very firm and fine, and admirably decorated,
as we shall see hereafter. 5, the simple two-pieced construction,
wrought with the most exquisite proportion and precision of workmanship,
as is everything else in the glorious church to which it belongs, San
Fermo of Verona. The addition of the top piece, which completes the
circle, does not affect the plan of the beautiful arches, with their
simple and perfect cusps; but it is highly curious, and serves to show
how the idea of the cusp rose out of mere foliation. The whole of the
architecture of this church may be characterised as exhibiting the
maxima of simplicity in construction, and perfection in workmanship,--a
rare unison: for, in general, simple designs are rudely worked, and as
the builder perfects his execution, he complicates his plan. Nearly
all the arches of San Fermo are two-pieced.
[Illustration: Plate IV.
ARCH MASONRY.]
§ XIII. We have seen the construction with one and two pieces: _a_ and
_b_, Fig. 8, Plate IV., are the general types of the construction with
three pieces, uncusped and cusped; _c_ and _d_ with five pieces,
uncusped and cusped. Of these the three-pieced construction is of
enormous importance, and must detain us some time. The five-pieced is
the three-pieced with a joint added on each side, and is also of great
importance. The four-pieced, which is the two-pieced with added joints,
rarely occurs, and need not detain us.
§ XIV. It will be remembered that in first working out the principle of
the arch, we composed the arch of three pieces. Three is the smallest
number which can exhibit the real _principle_ of arch masonry, and it
may be considered as representative of all arches built on that
principle; the one and two-pieced arches being microscopic
Mont-Cenisian, mere caves in blocks of stone, or gaps between two rocks
leaning together.
But the three-pieced arch is properly representative of all; and the
larger and more complicated constructions are merely produced by keeping
the central piece for what is called a keystone, and putting additional
joints at the sides. Now so long as an arch is pure circular or pointed,
it does not matter how many joints or voussoirs you have, nor where the
joints are; nay, you may joint your keystone itself, and make it
two-pieced. But if the arch be of any bizarre form, especially ogee, the
joints must be in particular places, and the masonry simple, or it will
not be thoroughly good and secure; and the fine schools of the ogee arch
have only arisen in countries where it was the custom to build arches of
few pieces.
§ XV. The typical pure pointed arch of Venice is a five-pieced arch,
with its stones in three orders of magnitude, the longest being the
lowest, as at _b2_, Plate III. If the arch be very large, a fourth order
of magnitude is added, as at _a2_. The portals of the palaces of Venice
have one or other of these masonries, almost without exception. Now, as
one piece is added to make a larger door, one piece is taken away to
make a smaller one, or a window, and the masonry type of the Venetian
Gothic window is consequently three-pieced, _c2_.
§ XVI. The reader knows already where a cusp is useful. It is wanted, he
will remember, to give weight to those side stones, and draw them
inwards against the thrust of the top stone. Take one of the side stones
of _c2_ out for a moment, as at _d_. Now the _proper_ place of the cusp
upon it varies with the weight which it bears or requires; but in
practice this nicety is rarely observed; the place of the cusp is almost
always determined by æsthetic considerations, and it is evident that the
variations in its place may be infinite. Consider the cusp as a wave
passing up the side stone from its bottom to its top; then you will have
the succession of forms from _e_ to _g_ (Plate III.), with infinite
degrees of transition from each to each; but of which you may take _e_,
_f_, and _g_, as representing three great families of cusped arches. Use
_e_ for your side stones, and you have an arch as that at _h_ below,
which may be called a down-cusped arch. Use _f_ for the side stone, and
you have _i_, which may be called a mid-cusped arch. Use _g_, and you
have _k_, an up-cusped arch.
§ XVII. The reader will observe that I call the arch mid-cusped, not
when the cusped point is in the middle of the curve of the arch, but
when it is in the middle of the _side piece_, and also that where the
side pieces join the keystone there will be a change, perhaps somewhat
abrupt, in the curvature.
I have preferred to call the arch mid-cusped with respect to its side
piece than with respect to its own curve, because the most beautiful
Gothic arches in the world, those of the Lombard Gothic, have, in all
the instances I have examined, a form more or less approximating to this
mid-cusped one at _i_ (Plate III.), but having the curvature of the cusp
carried up into the keystone, as we shall see presently: where, however,
the arch is built of many voussoirs, a mid-cusped arch will mean one
which has the point of the cusp midway between its own base and apex.
The Gothic arch of Venice is almost invariably up-cusped, as at _k_.
The reader may note that, in both down-cusped and up-cusped arches, the
piece of stone, added to form the cusp, is of the shape of a scymitar,
held down in the one case and up in the other.
§ XVIII. Now, in the arches _h_, _i_, _k_, a slight modification has
been made in the form of the central piece, in order that it may
continue the curve of the cusp. This modification is not to be given to
it in practice without considerable nicety of workmanship; and some
curious results took place in Venice from this difficulty.
At _l_ (Plate III.) is the shape of the Venetian side stone, with its
cusp detached from the arch. Nothing can possibly be better or more
graceful, or have the weight better disposed in order to cause it to nod
forwards against the keystone, as above explained, Ch. X. § II., where I
developed the whole system of the arch from three pieces, in order that
the reader might now clearly see the use of the weight of the cusp.
Now a Venetian Gothic palace has usually at least three stories; with
perhaps ten or twelve windows in each story, and this on two or three of
its sides, requiring altogether some hundred to a hundred and fifty side
pieces.
I have no doubt, from observation of the way the windows are set
together, that the side pieces were carved in pairs, like hooks, of
which the keystones were to be the eyes; that these side pieces were
ordered by the architect in the gross, and were used by him sometimes
for wider, sometimes for narrower windows; bevelling the two ends as
required, fitting in keystones as he best could, and now and then
varying the arrangement by turning the side pieces _upside down_.
There were various conveniences in this way of working, one of the
principal being that the side pieces with their cusps were always cut to
their complete form, and that no part of the cusp was carried out into
the keystone, which followed the curve of the outer arch itself. The
ornaments of the cusp might thus be worked without any troublesome
reference to the rest of the arch.
§ XIX. Now let us take a pair of side pieces, made to order, like that
at _l_, and see what we can make of them. We will try to fit them first
with a keystone which continues the curve of the outer arch, as at _m_.
This the reader assuredly thinks an ugly arch. There are a great many of
them in Venice, the ugliest things there, and the Venetian builders
quickly began to feel them so. What could they do to better them? The
arch at _m_ has a central piece of the form _r_. Substitute for it a
piece of the form _s_, and we have the arch at _n_.
§ XX. This arch at _n_ is not so strong as that at _m_; but, built of
good marble, and with its pieces of proper thickness, it is quite strong
enough for all practical purposes on a small scale. I have examined at
least two thousand windows of this kind and of the other Venetian ogees,
of which that at _y_ (in which the plain side-piece _d_ is used instead
of the cusped one) is the simplest; and I never found _one_, even in the
most ruinous palaces (in which they had had to sustain the distorted
weight of falling walls) in which the central piece was fissured; and
this is the only danger to which the window is exposed; in other
respects it is as strong an arch as can be built.
It is not to be supposed that the change from the _r_ keystone to the
_s_ keystone was instantaneous. It was a change wrought out by many
curious experiments, which we shall have to trace hereafter, and to
throw the resultant varieties of form into their proper groups.
§ XXI. One step more: I take a mid-cusped side piece in its block form
at _t_, with the bricks which load the back of it. Now, as these bricks
support it behind, and since, as far as the use of the cusp is
concerned, it matters not whether its weight be in marble or bricks,
there is nothing to hinder us from cutting out some of the marble, as at
_u_, and filling up the space with bricks. (_Why_ we should take a fancy
to do this, I do not pretend to guess at present; all I have to assert
is, that, if the fancy should strike us, there would be no harm in it).
Substituting this side piece for the other in the window _n_, we have
that at _w_, which may, perhaps, be of some service to us afterwards;
here we have nothing more to do with it than to note that, thus built,
and properly backed by brickwork, it is just as strong and safe a
form as that at _n_; but that this, as well as every variety of ogee
arch, depends entirely for its safety, fitness, and beauty, on the
masonry which we have just analysed; and that, built on a large scale,
and with many voussoirs, all such arches would be unsafe and absurd in
general architecture. Yet they may be used occasionally for the sake of
the exquisite beauty of which their rich and fantastic varieties admit,
and sometimes for the sake of another merit, exactly the opposite of the
constructional ones we are at present examining, that they seem to stand
by enchantment.
[Illustration: Plate V.
Arch Masonry.
BRULETTO OF COMO.]
§ XXII. In the above reasonings, the inclination of the joints of the
voussoirs to the curves of the arch has not been considered. It is a
question of much nicety, and which I have not been able as yet fully to
investigate: but the natural idea of the arrangement of these lines
(which in round arches are of course perpendicular to the curve) would
be that every voussoir should have the lengths of its outer and inner
arched surface in the same proportion to each other. Either this actual
law, or a close approximation to it, is assuredly enforced in the best
Gothic buildings.
§ XXIII. I may sum up all that it is necessary for the reader to keep in
mind of the general laws connected with this subject, by giving him an
example of each of the two forms of the perfect Gothic arch, uncusped
and cusped, treated with the most simple and magnificent masonry, and
partly, in both cases, Mont-Cenisian.
The first, Plate V., is a window from the Broletto of Como. It shows, in
its filling, first, the single-pieced arch, carried on groups of four
shafts, and a single slab of marble filling the space above, and pierced
with a quatrefoil (Mont-Cenisian, this), while the mouldings above are
each constructed with a separate system of voussoirs, all of them
shaped, I think, on the principle above stated, § XXII., in alternate
serpentine and marble; the outer arch being a noble example of the pure
uncusped Gothic construction, _b_ of Plate III.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXIV.]
§ XXIV. Fig. XXXIV. is the masonry of the side arch of, as far as I know
or am able to judge, the most perfect Gothic sepulchral monument in the
world, the foursquare canopy of the (nameless?)[49] tomb standing over
the small cemetery gate of the Church of St. Anastasia at Verona. I
shall have frequent occasion to recur to this monument, and, I believe,
shall be able sufficiently to justify the terms in which I speak of it:
meanwhile, I desire only that the reader should observe the severity
and simplicity of the arch lines, the exquisitely delicate suggestion of
the ogee curve in the apex, and chiefly the use of the cusp in giving
_inward_ weight to the great pieces of stone on the flanks of the arch,
and preventing their thrust outwards from being severely thrown on the
lowermost stones. The effect of this arrangement is, that the whole
massy canopy is sustained safely by four slender pillars (as will be
seen hereafter in the careful plate I hope to give of it), these pillars
being rather steadied than materially assisted against the thrust, by
iron bars, about an inch thick, connecting them at the heads of the
abaci; a feature of peculiar importance in this monument, inasmuch as we
know it to be part of the original construction, by a beautiful little
Gothic wreathed pattern, like one of the hems of garments of Fra
Angelico, running along the iron bar itself. So carefully, and so far,
is the system of decoration carried out in this pure and lovely
monument, my most beloved throughout all the length and breadth of
Italy;--chief, as I think, among all the sepulchral marbles of a land of
mourning.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] At least I cannot find any account of it in Maffei's "Verona,"
nor anywhere else, to be depended upon. It is, I doubt not, a work
of the beginning of the thirteenth century. Vide Appendix 19, "Tombs
at St. Anastasia."
CHAPTER XII.
THE ARCH LOAD.
§ I. In the preceding enquiry we have always supposed either that the
load upon the arch was perfectly loose, as of gravel or sand, or that it
was Mont-Cenisian, and formed one mass with the arch voussoirs, of more
or less compactness.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXV.]
In practice, the state is usually something between the two. Over
bridges and tunnels it sometimes approaches to the condition of mere
dust or yielding earth; but in architecture it is mostly firm masonry,
not altogether acting with the voussoirs, yet by no means bearing on
them with perfectly dead weight, but locking itself together above them,
and capable of being thrown into forms which relieve them, in some
degree, from its pressure.
§ II. It is evident that if we are to place a continuous roof above the
line of arches, we must fill up the intervals between them on the tops
of the columns. We have at present nothing granted us but the bare
masonry, as here at _a_, Fig. XXXV., and we must fill up the intervals
between the semicircle so as to obtain a level line of support. We may
first do this simply as at _b_, with plain mass of wall; so laying the
roof on the top, which is the method of the pure Byzantine and Italian
Romanesque. But if we find too much stress is thus laid on the arches,
we may introduce small second shafts on the top of the great shaft, _a_,
Fig. XXXVI., which may assist in carrying the roof, conveying great part
of its weight at once to the heads of the main shafts, and relieving
from its pressure the centres of the arches.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXVI.]
§ III. The new shaft thus introduced may either remain lifted on the
head of the great shaft, or may be carried to the ground in front of it,
or through it, _b_, Fig. XXXVI.; in which latter case the main shaft
divides into two or more minor shafts, and forms a group with the shaft
brought down from above.
§ IV. When this shaft, brought from roof to ground, is subordinate to
the main pier, and either is carried down the face of it, or forms no
large part of the group, the principle is Romanesque or Gothic, _b_,
Fig. XXXVI. When it becomes a bold central shaft, and the main pier
splits into two minor shafts on its sides, the principle is Classical or
Palladian, _c_, Fig. XXXVI. Which latter arrangement becomes absurd or
unsatisfactory in proportion to the sufficiency of the main shaft to
carry the roof without the help of the minor shafts or arch, which in
many instances of Palladian work look as if they might be removed
without danger to the building.
§ V. The form _a_ is a more pure Northern Gothic type than even _b_,
which is the connecting link between it and the classical type. It is
found chiefly in English and other northern Gothic, and in early
Lombardic, and is, I doubt not, derived as above explained, Chap. I. §
XXVII. _b_ is a general French Gothic and French Romanesque form, as in
great purity at Valence.
The small shafts of the form _a_ and _b_, as being northern, are
generally connected with steep vaulted roofs, and receive for that
reason the name of vaulting shafts.
§ VI. Of these forms _b_, Fig. XXXV., is the purest and most sublime,
expressing the power of the arch most distinctly. All the others have
some appearance of dovetailing and morticing of timber rather than
stonework; nor have I ever yet seen a single instance, quite
satisfactory, of the management of the capital of the main shaft, when
it had either to sustain the base of the vaulting shaft, as in _a_, or
to suffer it to pass through it, as in _b_, Fig. XXXVI. Nor is the
bracket which frequently carries the vaulting shaft in English work a
fitting support for a portion of the fabric which is at all events
presumed to carry a considerable part of the weight of the roof.
§ VII. The triangular spaces on the flanks of the arch are called
Spandrils, and if the masonry of these should be found, in any of its
forms, too heavy for the arch, their weight may be diminished, while
their strength remains the same, by piercing them with circular holes or
lights. This is rarely necessary in ordinary architecture, though
sometimes of great use in bridges and iron roofs (a succession of such
circles may be seen, for instance, in the spandrils at the Euston Square
station); but, from its constructional value, it becomes the best form
in which to arrange spandril decorations, as we shall see hereafter.
§ VIII. The height of the load above the arch is determined by the needs
of the building and possible length of the shaft; but with this we have
at present nothing to do, for we have performed the task which was set
us. We have ascertained, as it was required that we should in § VI. of
Chap. III. (A), the construction of walls; (B), that of piers; (C), that
of piers with lintels or arches prepared for roofing. We have next,
therefore, to examine (D) the structure of the roof.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ROOF.
§ I. Hitherto our enquiry has been unembarrassed by any considerations
relating exclusively either to the exterior or interior of buildings.
But it can remain so no longer. As far as the architect is concerned,
one side of a wall is generally the same as another; but in the roof
there are usually two distinct divisions of the structure; one, a shell,
vault, or flat ceiling, internally visible, the other, an upper
structure, built of timber, to protect the lower; or of some different
form, to support it. Sometimes, indeed, the internally visible structure
is the real roof, and sometimes there are more than two divisions, as in
St. Paul's, where we have a central shell with a mask below and above.
Still it will be convenient to remember the distinction between the part
of the roof which is usually visible from within, and whose only
business is to stand strongly, and not fall in, which I shall call the
Roof Proper; and, secondly, the upper roof, which, being often partly
supported by the lower, is not so much concerned with its own stability
as with the weather, and is appointed to throw off snow, and get rid of
rain, as fast as possible, which I shall call the Roof Mask.
§ II. It is, however, needless for me to engage the reader in the
discussion of the various methods of construction of Roofs Proper, for
this simple reason, that no person without long experience can tell
whether a roof be wisely constructed or not; nor tell at all, even with
help of any amount of experience, without examination of the several
parts and bearings of it, very different from any observation possible
to the general critic: and more than this, the enquiry would be useless
to us in our Venetian studies, where the roofs are either not
contemporary with the buildings, or flat, or else vaults of the simplest
possible constructions, which have been admirably explained by Willis in
his "Architecture of the Middle Ages," Chap. VII., to which I may refer
the reader for all that it would be well for him to know respecting the
connexion of the different parts of the vault with the shafts. He would
also do well to read the passages on Tudor vaulting, pp. 185-193, in Mr.
Garbett's rudimentary Treatise on Design, before alluded to.[50] I shall
content myself therefore with noting one or two points on which neither
writer has had occasion to touch, respecting the Roof Mask.
§ III. It was said in § V. of Chapter III. that we should not have
occasion, in speaking of roof construction, to add materially to the
forms then suggested. The forms which we have to add are only those
resulting from the other curves of the arch developed in the last
chapter; that is to say, the various eastern domes and cupolas arising
out of the revolution of the horseshoe and ogee curves, together with
the well-known Chinese concave roof. All these forms are of course
purely decorative, the bulging outline, or concave surface, being of no
more use, or rather of less, in throwing off snow or rain, than the
ordinary spire and gable; and it is rather curious, therefore, that all
of them, on a small scale, should have obtained so extensive use in
Germany and Switzerland, their native climate being that of the east,
where their purpose seems rather to concentrate light upon their orbed
surfaces. I much doubt their applicability, on a large scale, to
architecture of any admirable dignity; their chief charm is, to the
European eye, that of strangeness; and it seems to me possible that in
the east the bulging form may be also delightful, from the idea of its
enclosing a volume of cool air. I enjoy them in St. Mark's, chiefly
because they increase the fantastic and unreal character of St. Mark's
Place; and because they appear to sympathise with an expression,
common, I think, to all the buildings of that group, of a natural
buoyancy, as if they floated in the air or on the surface of the sea.
But, assuredly, they are not features to be recommended for
imitation.[51]
§ IV. One form, closely connected with the Chinese concave, is, however,
often constructively right,--the gable with an inward angle, occurring
with exquisitely picturesque effect throughout the domestic architecture
of the north, especially Germany and Switzerland; the lower slope being
either an attached external penthouse roof, for protection of the wall,
as in Fig. XXXVII., or else a kind of buttress set on the angle of the
tower; and in either case the roof itself being a simple gable,
continuous beneath it.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXVII.]
§ V. The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, so I esteem
it the grandest of roofs; whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a grey
slope of slaty mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern
cathedrals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and
square-set groups of the southern architecture. But this difference
between its slope in the northern and southern structure is a matter of
far greater importance than is commonly supposed, and it is this to
which I would especially direct the reader's attention.
§ VI. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off snow in the
north, has been a thousand times alluded to: another I do not remember
having seen noticed, namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably
habitable in the north, which are painful _sotto piombi_ in Italy; and
that there is in wet climates a natural tendency in all men to live as
high as possible, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together
with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a
general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or squared above a
tower, becomes a spire or turret; and this feature, worked out with
elaborate decoration, is the key-note of the whole system of aspiration,
so called, which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely
ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading the Northern Gothic: I
entirely and boldly deny the whole theory; our cathedrals were for the
most part built by worldly people, who loved the world, and would have
gladly staid in it for ever; whose best hope was the escaping hell,
which they thought to do by building cathedrals, but who had very vague
conceptions of Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting
their entrance therein; and the form of the spired cathedral has no more
intentional reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened
slope of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has,
as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. We may now, with
ingenious pleasure, trace such symbolic characters in the form; we may
now use it with such definite meaning; but we only prevent ourselves
from all right understanding of history, by attributing much influence
to these poetical symbolisms in the formation of a national style. The
human race are, for the most part, not to be moved by such silken cords;
and the chances of damp in the cellar, or of loose tiles in the roof,
have, unhappily, much more to do with the fashions of a man's house
building than his ideas of celestial happiness or angelic virtue.
Associations of affection have far higher power, and forms which can be
no otherwise accounted for may often be explained by reference to the
natural features of the country, or to anything which habit must have
rendered familiar, and therefore delightful; but the direct
symbolisation of a sentiment is a weak motive with all men, and far
more so in the practical minds of the north than among the early
Christians, who were assuredly quite as heavenly-minded, when they built
basilicas, or cut conchas out of the catacombs, as were ever the Norman
barons or monks.
§ VII. There is, however, in the north an animal activity which
materially aided the system of building begun in mere utility,--an
animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the
south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the
action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the
inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and
fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies
which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remembering
always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death.
§ VIII. And to the force of this vital instinct we have farther to add
the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and
wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or
palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been
habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the
multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the
repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of
flat or massive outlines. Add to the influence of the pine, that of the
poplar, more especially in the valleys of France; but think of the
spruce chiefly, and meditate on the difference of feeling with which the
Northman would be inspired by the frostwork wreathed upon its glittering
point, and the Italian by the dark green depth of sunshine on the broad
table of the stone-pine[52] (and consider by the way whether the spruce
fir be a more heavenly-minded tree than those dark canopies of the
Mediterranean isles).
§ IX. Circumstance and sentiment, therefore, aiding each other, the
steep roof becomes generally adopted, and delighted in, throughout the
north; and then, with the gradual exaggeration with which every pleasant
idea is pursued by the human mind, it is raised into all manner of
peaks, and points, and ridges; and pinnacle after pinnacle is added on
its flanks, and the walls increased in height, in proportion, until we
get indeed a very sublime mass, but one which has no more principle of
religious aspiration in it than a child's tower of cards. What is more,
the desire to build high is complicated with the peculiar love of the
grotesque[53] which is characteristic of the north, together with
especial delight in multiplication of small forms, as well as in
exaggerated points of shade and energy, and a certain degree of
consequent insensibility to perfect grace and quiet truthfulness; so
that a northern architect could not feel the beauty of the Elgin
marbles, and there will always be (in those who have devoted themselves
to this particular school) a certain incapacity to taste the finer
characters of Greek art, or to understand Titian, Tintoret, or Raphael:
whereas among the Italian Gothic workmen, this capacity was never lost,
and Nino Pisano and Orcagna could have understood the Theseus in an
instant, and would have received from it new life. There can be no
question that theirs was the greatest school, and carried out by the
greatest men; and that while those who began with this school could
perfectly well feel Rouen Cathedral, those who study the Northern Gothic
remain in a narrowed field--one of small pinnacles, and dots, and
crockets, and twitched faces--and cannot comprehend the meaning of a
broad surface or a grand line. Nevertheless the northern school is an
admirable and delightful thing, but a lower thing than the southern. The
Gothic of the Ducal Palace of Venice is in harmony with all that is
grand in all the world: that of the north is in harmony with the
grotesque northern spirit only.
§ X. We are, however, beginning to lose sight of our roof structure in
its spirit, and must return to our text. As the height of the walls
increased, in sympathy with the rise of the roof, while their thickness
remained the same, it became more and more necessary to support them by
buttresses; but--and this is another point that the reader must
specially note--it is not the steep roof mask which requires the
buttress, but the vaulting beneath it; the roof mask being a mere wooden
frame tied together by cross timbers, and in small buildings often put
together on the ground, raised afterwards, and set on the walls like a
hat, bearing vertically upon them; and farther, I believe in most cases
the northern vaulting requires its great array of external buttress, not
so much from any peculiar boldness in its own forms, as from the greater
comparative thinness and height of the walls, and more determined
throwing of the whole weight of the roof on particular points. Now the
connexion of the interior frame-work (or true roof) with the buttress,
at such points, is not visible to the spectators from without; but the
relation of the roof mask to the top of the wall which it protects, or
from which it springs, is perfectly visible; and it is a point of so
great importance in the effect of the building, that it will be well to
make it a subject of distinct consideration in the following Chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[50] Appendix 17
[51] I do not speak of the true dome, because I have not studied its
construction enough to know at what largeness of scale it begins to
be rather a _tour de force_ than a convenient or natural form of
roof, and because the ordinary spectator's choice among its various
outlines must always be dependent on æsthetic considerations only,
and can in no wise be grounded on any conception of its infinitely
complicated structural principles.
[52] I shall not be thought to have overrated the effect of forest
scenery on the _northern_ mind; but I was glad to hear a Spanish
gentleman, the other day, describing, together with his own, the
regret which the peasants in his neighborhood had testified for the
loss of a noble stone-pine, one of the grandest in Spain, which its
proprietor had suffered to be cut down for small gain. He said that
the mere spot where it had grown was still popularly known as "El
Pino."
[53] Appendix 8.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE ROOF CORNICE.
§ I. It will be remembered that in the Sixth Chapter we paused (§ X.) at
the point where the addition of brackets to the ordinary wall cornice
would have converted it into a structure proper for sustaining a roof.
Now the wall cornice was treated throughout our enquiry (compare Chapter
VII. § V.) as the capital of the wall, and as forming, by its
concentration, the capital of the shaft. But we must not reason _back_
from the capital to the cornice, and suppose that an extension of the
principles of the capital to the whole length of the wall, will serve
for the roof cornice; for all our conclusions respecting the capital
were based on the supposition of its being adapted to carry considerable
weight condensed on its abacus: but the roof cornice is, in most cases,
required rather to project boldly than to carry weight; and arrangements
are therefore to be adopted for it which will secure the projection of
large surfaces without being calculated to resist extraordinary
pressure. This object is obtained by the use of brackets at intervals,
which are the peculiar distinction of the roof cornice.
§ II. Roof cornices are generally to be divided into two great families:
the first and simplest, those which are composed merely by the
projection of the edge of the roof mask over the wall, sustained by such
brackets or spurs as may be necessary; the second, those which provide a
walk round the edge of the roof, and which require, therefore, some
stronger support, as well as a considerable mass of building above or
beside the roof mask, and a parapet. These two families we shall
consider in succession.
§ III. 1. The Eaved Cornice. We may give it this name, as represented in
the simplest form by cottage eaves. It is used, however, in bold
projection, both in north, and south, and east; its use being, in the
north, to throw the rain well away from the wall of the building; in the
south to give it shade; and it is ordinarily constructed of the ends of
the timbers of the roof mask (with their tiles or shingles continued to
the edge of the cornice), and sustained by spurs of timber. This is its
most picturesque and natural form; not inconsistent with great splendor
of architecture in the mediæval Italian domestic buildings, superb in
its mass of cast shadow, and giving rich effect to the streets of Swiss
towns, even when they have no other claim to interest. A farther value
is given to it by its waterspouts, for in order to avoid loading it with
weight of water in the gutter at the edge, where it would be a strain on
the fastenings of the pipe, it has spouts of discharge at intervals of
three or four feet,--rows of magnificent leaden or iron dragons' heads,
full of delightful character, except to any person passing along the
middle of the street in a heavy shower. I have had my share of their
kindness in my time, but owe them no grudge; on the contrary, much
gratitude for the delight of their fantastic outline on the calm blue
sky, when they had no work to do but to open their iron mouths and pant
in the sunshine.
§ IV. When, however, light is more valuable than shadow, or when the
architecture of the wall is too fair to be concealed, it becomes
necessary to draw the cornice into narrower limits; a change of
considerable importance, in that it permits the gutter, instead of being
of lead and hung to the edge of the cornice, to be of stone, and
supported by brackets in the wall, these brackets becoming proper
recipients of after decoration (and sometimes associated with the stone
channels of discharge, called gargoyles, which belong, however, more
properly to the other family of cornices). The most perfect and
beautiful example of this kind of cornice is the Venetian, in which the
rain from the tiles is received in a stone gutter supported by small
brackets, delicately moulded, and having its outer lower edge decorated
with the English dogtooth moulding, whose sharp zigzag mingles richly
with the curved edges of the tiling. I know no cornice more beautiful in
its extreme simplicity and serviceableness.
§ V. The cornice of the Greek Doric is a condition of the same kind, in
which, however, there are no brackets, but useless appendages hung to
the bottom of the gutter (giving, however, some impression of support as
seen from a distance), and decorated with stone symbolisms of raindrops.
The brackets are not allowed, because they would interfere with the
sculpture, which in this architecture is put beneath the cornice; and
the overhanging form of the gutter is nothing more than a vast dripstone
moulding, to keep the rain from such sculpture: its decoration of guttæ,
seen in silver points against the shadow, is pretty in feeling, with a
kind of continual refreshment and remembrance of rain in it; but the
whole arrangement is awkward and meagre, and is only endurable when the
eye is quickly drawn away from it to sculpture.
§ VI. In later cornices, invented for the Greek orders, and farther
developed by the Romans, the bracket appears in true importance, though
of barbarous and effeminate outline: and gorgeous decorations are
applied to it, and to the various horizontal mouldings which it carries,
some of them of great beauty, and of the highest value to the mediæval
architects who imitated them. But a singularly gross mistake was made in
the distribution of decoration on these rich cornices (I do not know
when first, nor does it matter to me or to the reader), namely, the
charging with ornament the under surface of the cornice between the
brackets, that is to say, the exact piece of the whole edifice, from top
to bottom, where ornament is least visible. I need hardly say much
respecting the wisdom of this procedure, excusable only if the whole
building were covered with ornament; but it is curious to see the way in
which modern architects have copied it, even when they had little enough
ornament to spare. For instance, I suppose few persons look at the
Athenæum Club-house without feeling vexed at the meagreness and
meanness of the windows of the ground floor: if, however, they look up
under the cornice, and have good eyes, they will perceive that the
architect has reserved his decorations to put between the brackets; and
by going up to the first floor, and out on the gallery, they may succeed
in obtaining some glimpses of the designs of the said decorations.
§ VII. Such as they are, or were, these cornices were soon considered
essential parts of the "order" to which they belonged; and the same
wisdom which endeavored to fix the proportions of the orders, appointed
also that no order should go without its cornice. The reader has
probably heard of the architectural division of superstructure into
architrave, frieze, and cornice; parts which have been appointed by
great architects to all their work, in the same spirit in which great
rhetoricians have ordained that every speech shall have an exordium, and
narration, and peroration. The reader will do well to consider that it
may be sometimes just as possible to carry a roof, and get rid of rain,
without such an arrangement, as it is to tell a plain fact without an
exordium or peroration; but he must very absolutely consider that the
architectural peroration or cornice is strictly and sternly limited to
the end of the wall's speech,--that is, to the edge of the roof; and
that it has nothing whatever to do with shafts nor the orders of them.
And he will then be able fully to enjoy the farther ordinance of the
late Roman and Renaissance architects, who, attaching it to the shaft as
if it were part of its shadow, and having to employ their shafts often
in places where they came not near the roof, forthwith cut the
roof-cornice to pieces and attached a bit of it to every column;
thenceforward to be carried by the unhappy shaft wherever it went, in
addition to any other work on which it might happen to be employed. I do
not recollect among any living beings, except Renaissance architects,
any instance of a parallel or comparable stupidity: but one can imagine
a savage getting hold of a piece of one of our iron wire ropes, with its
rings upon it at intervals to bind it together, and pulling the wires
asunder to apply them to separate purposes; but imagining there was
magic in the ring that bound them, and so cutting that to pieces also,
and fastening a little bit of it to every wire.
§ VIII. Thus much may serve us to know respecting the first family of
wall cornices. The second is immeasurably more important, and includes
the cornices of all the best buildings in the world. It has derived its
best form from mediæval military architecture, which imperatively
required two things; first, a parapet which should permit sight and
offence, and afford defence at the same time; and secondly, a projection
bold enough to enable the defenders to rake the bottom of the wall with
falling bodies; projection which, if the wall happened to slope inwards,
required not to be small. The thoroughly magnificent forms of cornice
thus developed by necessity in military buildings, were adopted, with
more or less of boldness or distinctness, in domestic architecture,
according to the temper of the times and the circumstances of the
individual--decisively in the baron's house, imperfectly in the
burgher's: gradually they found their way into ecclesiastical
architecture, under wise modifications in the early cathedrals, with
infinite absurdity in the imitations of them; diminishing in size as
their original purpose sank into a decorative one, until we find
battlements, two-and-a-quarter inches square, decorating the gates of
the Philanthropic Society.
§ IX. There are, therefore, two distinct features in all cornices of
this kind; first, the bracket, now become of enormous importance and of
most serious practical service; the second, the parapet: and these two
features we shall consider in succession, and in so doing, shall learn
all that is needful for us to know, not only respecting cornices, but
respecting brackets in general, and balconies.
§ X. 1. The Bracket. In the simplest form of military cornice, the
brackets are composed of two or more long stones, supporting each other
in gradually increasing projection, with roughly rounded ends, Fig.
XXXVIII., and the parapet is simply a low wall carried on the ends of
these, leaving, of course, behind, or within it, a hole between each
bracket for the convenient dejection of hot sand and lead. This form is
best seen, I think, in the old Scotch castles; it is very grand, but has
a giddy look, and one is afraid of the whole thing toppling off the
wall. The next step was to deepen the brackets, so as to get them
propped against a great depth of the main rampart, and to have the inner
ends of the stones held by a greater weight of that main wall above;
while small arches were thrown from bracket to bracket to carry the
parapet wall more securely. This is the most perfect form of cornice,
completely satisfying the eye of its security, giving full protection to
the wall, and applicable to all architecture, the interstices between
the brackets being filled up, when one does not want to throw boiling
lead on any body below, and the projection being always delightful, as
giving greater command and view of the building, from its angles, to
those walking on the rampart. And as, in military buildings, there were
usually towers at the angles (round which the battlements swept) in
order to flank the walls, so often in the translation into civil or
ecclesiastical architecture, a small turret remained at the angle, or a
more bold projection of balcony, to give larger prospect to those upon
the rampart. This cornice, perfect in all its parts, as arranged for
ecclesiastical architecture, and exquisitely decorated, is the one
employed in the duomo of Florence and campanile of Giotto, of which I
have already spoken as, I suppose, the most perfect architecture in the
world.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXVIII.]
§ XI. In less important positions and on smaller edifices, this cornice
diminishes in size, while it retains its arrangement, and at last we
find nothing but the spirit and form of it left; the real practical
purpose having ceased, and arch, brackets and all, being cut out of a
single stone. Thus we find it used in early buildings throughout the
whole of the north and south of Europe, in forms sufficiently
represented by the two examples in Plate IV.: 1, from St. Antonio,
Padua; 2, from Sens in France.
[Illustration: Fig. XXXIX.]
§ XII. I wish, however, at present to fix the reader's attention on the
form of the bracket itself; a most important feature in modern as well
as ancient architecture. The first idea of a bracket is that of a long
stone or piece of timber projecting from the wall, as _a_, Fig. XXXIX.,
of which the strength depends on the toughness of the stone or wood, and
the stability on the weight of wall above it (unless it be the end of a
main beam). But let it be supposed that the structure at _a_, being of
the required projection, is found too weak: then we may strengthen it in
one of three ways; (1) by putting a second or third stone beneath it, as
at _b_; (2) by giving it a spur, as at _c_; (3) by giving it a shaft and
another bracket below, _d_; the great use of this arrangement being that
the lowermost bracket has the help of the weight of the shaft-length of
wall above its insertion, which is, of course, greater than the weight
of the small shaft: and then the lower bracket may be farther helped by
the structure at _b_ or _c_.
[Illustration: Fig. XL.]
§ XIII. Of these structures, _a_ and _c_ are evidently adapted
especially for wooden buildings; _b_ and _d_ for stone ones; the last,
of course, susceptible of the richest decoration, and superbly employed
in the cornice of the cathedral of Monza: but all are beautiful in their
way, and are the means of, I think, nearly half the picturesqueness and
power of mediæval building; the forms _b_ and _c_ being, of course, the
most frequent; _a_, when it occurs, being usually rounded off, as at
_a_, Fig. XL.; _b_, also, as in Fig. XXXVIII., or else itself composed
of a single stone cut into the form of the group _b_ here, Fig. XL., or
plain, as at _c_, which is also the proper form of the brick bracket,
when stone is not to be had. The reader will at once perceive that the
form _d_ is a barbarism (unless when the scale is small and the weight
to be carried exceedingly light): it is of course, therefore, a
favorite form with the Renaissance architects; and its introduction is
one of the first corruptions of the Venetian architecture.
§ XIV. There is one point necessary to be noticed, though bearing on
decoration more than construction, before we leave the subject of the
bracket. The whole power of the construction depends upon the stones
being well _let into_ the wall; and the first function of the decoration
should be to give the idea of this insertion, if possible; at all
events, not to contradict this idea. If the reader will glance at any of
the brackets used in the ordinary architecture of London, he will find
them of some such character as Fig. XLI.; not a bad form in itself, but
exquisitely absurd in its curling lines, which give the idea of some
writhing suspended tendril, instead of a stiff support, and by their
careful avoidance of the wall make the bracket look pinned on, and in
constant danger of sliding down. This is, also, a Classical and
Renaissance decoration.
[Illustration: Fig. XLI.]
§ XV. 2. The Parapet. Its forms are fixed in military architecture by
the necessities of the art of war at the time of building, and are
always beautiful wherever they have been really thus fixed; delightful
in the variety of their setting, and in the quaint darkness of their
shot-holes, and fantastic changes of elevation and outline. Nothing is
more remarkable than the swiftly discerned difference between the
masculine irregularity of such true battlements, and the formal
pitifulness of those which are set on modern buildings to give them a
military air,--as on the jail at Edinburgh.
§ XVI. Respecting the Parapet for mere safeguard upon buildings not
military, there are just two fixed laws. It should be pierced, otherwise
it is not recognised from below for a parapet at all, and it should not
be in the form of a battlement, especially in church architecture.
The most comfortable heading of a true parapet is a plain level on which
the arm can be rested, and along which it can glide. Any jags or
elevations are disagreeable; the latter, as interrupting the view and
disturbing the eye, if they are higher than the arm, the former, as
opening some aspect of danger if they are much lower; and the
inconvenience, therefore, of the battlemented form, as well as the worse
than absurdity, the bad feeling, of the appliance of a military feature
to a church, ought long ago to have determined its rejection. Still (for
the question of its picturesque value is here so closely connected with
that of its practical use, that it is vain to endeavor to discuss it
separately) there is a certain agreeableness in the way in which the
jagged outline dovetails the shadow of the slated or leaded roof into
the top of the wall, which may make the use of the battlement excusable
where there is a difficulty in managing some unvaried line, and where
the expense of a pierced parapet cannot be encountered: but remember
always, that the value of the battlement consists in its letting shadow
into the light of the wall, or _vice versâ_, when it comes against light
sky, letting the light of the sky into the shade of the wall; but that
the actual outline of the parapet itself, if the eye be arrested upon
this, instead of upon the alternation of shadow, is as _ugly_ a
succession of line as can by any possibility be invented. Therefore, the
battlemented parapet may only be used where this alternation of shade is
certain to be shown, under nearly all conditions of effect; and where
the lines to be dealt with are on a scale which may admit battlements of
bold and manly size. The idea that a battlement is an ornament anywhere,
and that a miserable and diminutive imitation of castellated outline
will always serve to fill up blanks and Gothicise unmanageable spaces,
is one of the great idiocies of the present day. A battlement is in its
origin a piece of wall large enough to cover a man's body, and however
it may be decorated, or pierced, or finessed away into traceries, as
long as so much of its outline is retained as to suggest its origin, so
long its size must remain undiminished. To crown a turret six feet high
with chopped battlements three inches wide, is children's Gothic: it is
one of the paltry falsehoods for which there is no excuse, and part of
the system of using models of architecture to decorate architecture,
which we shall hereafter note as one of the chief and most destructive
follies of the Renaissance;[54] and in the present day the practice may
be classed as one which distinguishes the architects of whom there is no
hope, who have neither eye nor head for their work, and who must pass
their lives in vain struggles against the refractory lines of their own
buildings.
§ XVII. As the only excuse for the battlemented parapet is its
alternation of shadow, so the only fault of the natural or level parapet
is its monotony of line. This is, however, in practice, almost always
broken by the pinnacles of the buttresses, and if not, may be varied by
the tracery of its penetrations. The forms of these evidently admit
every kind of change; for a stone parapet, however pierced, is sure to
be strong enough for its purpose of protection, and, as regards the
strength of the building in general, the lighter it is the better. More
fantastic forms may, therefore, be admitted in a parapet than in any
other architectural feature, and for most services, the Flamboyant
parapets seem to me preferable to all others; especially when the leaden
roofs set off by points of darkness the lace-like intricacy of
penetration. These, however, as well as the forms usually given to
Renaissance balustrades (of which, by the bye, the best piece of
criticism I know is the sketch in "David Copperfield" of the personal
appearance of the man who stole Jip), and the other and finer forms
invented by Paul Veronese in his architectural backgrounds, together
with the pure columnar balustrade of Venice, must be considered as
altogether decorative features.
§ XVIII. So also are, of course, the jagged or crown-like finishings of
walls employed where no real parapet of protection is desired;
originating in the defences of outworks and single walls: these are used
much in the east on walls surrounding unroofed courts. The richest
examples of such decoration are Arabian; and from Cairo they seem to
have been brought to Venice. It is probable that few of my readers,
however familiar the general form of the Ducal Palace may have been
rendered to them by innumerable drawings, have any distinct idea of its
roof, owing to the staying of the eye on its superb parapet, of which we
shall give account hereafter. In most of the Venetian cases the parapets
which surround roofing are very sufficient for protection, except that
the stones of which they are composed appear loose and infirm: but their
purpose is entirely decorative; every wall, whether detached or roofed,
being indiscriminately fringed with Arabic forms of parapet, more or
less Gothicised, according to the lateness of their date.
I think there is no other point of importance requiring illustration
respecting the roof itself, or its cornice: but this Venetian form of
ornamental parapet connects itself curiously, at the angles of nearly
all the buildings on which it occurs, with the pinnacled system of the
north, founded on the structure of the buttress. This, it will be
remembered, is to be the subject of the fifth division of our inquiry.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] Not of Renaissance alone: the practice of modelling buildings
on a minute scale for niches and tabernacle-work has always been
more or less admitted, and I suppose _authority_ for diminutive
battlements might be gathered from the Gothic of almost every
period, as well as for many other faults and mistakes: no Gothic
school having ever been thoroughly systematised or perfected, even
in its best times. But that a mistaken decoration sometimes occurs
among a crowd of noble ones, is no more an excuse for the
habitual--far less, the exclusive--use of such a decoration, than
the accidental or seeming misconstructions of a Greek chorus are an
excuse for a school boy's ungrammatical exercise.
CHAPTER XV.
THE BUTTRESS.
§ I. We have hitherto supposed ourselves concerned with the support of
vertical pressure only; and the arch and roof have been considered as
forms of abstract strength, without reference to the means by which
their lateral pressure was to be resisted. Few readers will need now to
be reminded, that every arch or gable not tied at its base by beams or
bars, exercises a lateral pressure upon the walls which sustain
it,--pressure which may, indeed, be met and sustained by increasing the
thickness of the wall or vertical piers, and which is in reality thus
met in most Italian buildings, but may, with less expenditure of
material, and with (perhaps) more graceful effect, be met by some
particular application of the provisions against lateral pressure called
Buttresses. These, therefore, we are next to examine.
§ II. Buttresses are of many kinds, according to the character and
direction of the lateral forces they are intended to resist. But their
first broad division is into buttresses which meet and break the force
before it arrives at the wall, and buttresses which stand on the lee
side of the wall, and prop it against the force.
The lateral forces which walls have to sustain are of three distinct
kinds: dead weight, as of masonry or still water; moving weight, as of
wind or running water; and sudden concussion, as of earthquakes,
explosions, &c.
Clearly, dead weight can only be resisted by the buttress acting as a
prop; for a buttress on the side of, or towards the weight, would only
add to its effect. This, then, forms the first great class of buttressed
architecture; lateral thrusts, of roofing or arches, being met by props
of masonry outside--the thrust from within, the prop without; or the
crushing force of water on a ship's side met by its cross timbers--the
thrust here from without the wall, the prop within.
Moving weight may, of course, be resisted by the prop on the lee side of
the wall, but is often more effectually met, on the side which is
attacked, by buttresses of peculiar forms, cunning buttresses, which do
not attempt to sustain the weight, but _parry_ it, and throw it off in
directions clear of the wall.
Thirdly: concussions and vibratory motion, though in reality only
supported by the prop buttress, must be provided for by buttresses on
both sides of the wall, as their direction cannot be foreseen, and is
continually changing.
We shall briefly glance at these three systems of buttressing; but the
two latter being of small importance to our present purpose, may as well
be dismissed first.
§ III. 1. Buttresses for guard against moving weight and set towards the
weight they resist.
The most familiar instance of this kind of buttress we have in the sharp
piers of a bridge, in the centre of a powerful stream, which divide the
current on their edges, and throw it to each side under the arches. A
ship's bow is a buttress of the same kind, and so also the ridge of a
breastplate, both adding to the strength of it in resisting a cross
blow, and giving a better chance of a bullet glancing aside. In
Switzerland, projecting buttresses of this kind are often built round
churches, heading up hill, to divide and throw off the avalanches. The
various forms given to piers and harbor quays, and to the bases of
light-houses, in order to meet the force of the waves, are all
conditions of this kind of buttress. But in works of ornamental
architecture such buttresses are of rare occurrence; and I merely name
them in order to mark their place in our architectural system, since in
the investigation of our present subject we shall not meet with a single
example of them, unless sometimes the angle of the foundation of a
palace set against the sweep of the tide, or the wooden piers of some
canal bridge quivering in its current.
§ IV. 2. Buttresses for guard against vibratory motion.
The whole formation of this kind of buttress resolves itself into mere
expansion of the base of the wall, so as to make it stand steadier, as a
man stands with his feet apart when he is likely to lose his balance.
This approach to a pyramidal form is also of great use as a guard
against the action of artillery; that if a stone or tier of stones be
battered out of the lower portions of the wall, the whole upper part may
not topple over or crumble down at once. Various forms of this buttress,
sometimes applied to particular points of the wall, sometimes forming a
great sloping rampart along its base, are frequent in buildings of
countries exposed to earthquake. They give a peculiarly heavy outline to
much of the architecture of the kingdom of Naples, and they are of the
form in which strength and solidity are first naturally sought, in the
slope of the Egyptian wall. The base of Guy's Tower at Warwick is a
singularly bold example of their military use; and so, in general,
bastion and rampart profiles, where, however, the object of stability
against a shock is complicated with that of sustaining weight of earth
in the rampart behind.
§ V. 3. Prop buttresses against dead weight.
This is the group with which we have principally to do; and a buttress
of this kind acts in two ways, partly by its weight and partly by its
strength. It acts by its weight when its mass is so great that the
weight it sustains cannot stir it, but is lost upon it, buried in it,
and annihilated: neither the shape of such a buttress nor the cohesion
of its materials are of much consequence; a heap of stones or sandbags,
laid up against the wall, will answer as well as a built and cemented
mass.
But a buttress acting by its strength is not of mass sufficient to
resist the weight by mere inertia; but it conveys the weight through its
body to something else which is so capable; as, for instance, a man
leaning against a door with his hands, and propping himself against the
ground, conveys the force which would open or close the door against him
through his body to the ground. A buttress acting in this way must be of
perfectly coherent materials, and so strong that though the weight to
be borne could easily move it, it cannot break it: this kind of buttress
may be called a conducting buttress. Practically, however, the two modes
of action are always in some sort united. Again, the weight to be borne
may either act generally on the whole wall surface, or with excessive
energy on particular points: when it acts on the whole wall surface, the
whole wall is generally supported; and the arrangement becomes a
continuous rampart, as a dyke, or bank of reservoir.
§ VI. It is, however, very seldom that lateral force in architecture is
equally distributed. In most cases the weight of the roof, or the force
of any lateral thrust, are more or less confined to certain points and
directions. In an early state of architectural science this definiteness
of direction is not yet clear, and it is met by uncertain application of
mass or strength in the buttress, sometimes by mere thickening of the
wall into square piers, which are partly piers, partly buttresses, as in
Norman keeps and towers. But as science advances, the weight to be borne
is designedly and decisively thrown upon certain points; the direction
and degree of the forces which are then received are exactly calculated,
and met by conducting buttresses of the smallest possible dimensions;
themselves, in their turn, supported by vertical buttresses acting by
weight, and these perhaps, in their turn, by another set of conducting
buttresses: so that, in the best examples of such arrangements, the
weight to be borne may be considered as the shock of an electric fluid,
which, by a hundred different rods and channels, is divided and carried
away into the ground.
§ VII. In order to give greater weight to the vertical buttress piers
which sustain the conducting buttresses, they are loaded with pinnacles,
which, however, are, I believe, in all the buildings in which they
become very prominent, merely decorative: they are of some use, indeed,
by their weight; but if this were all for which they were put there, a
few cubic feet of lead would much more securely answer the purpose,
without any danger from exposure to wind. If the reader likes to ask any
Gothic architect with whom he may happen to be acquainted, to
substitute a lump of lead for his pinnacles, he will see by the
expression of his face how far he considers the pinnacles decorative
members. In the work which seems to me the great type of simple and
masculine buttress structure, the apse of Beauvais, the pinnacles are
altogether insignificant, and are evidently added just as exclusively to
entertain the eye and lighten the aspect of the buttress, as the slight
shafts which are set on its angles; while in other very noble Gothic
buildings the pinnacles are introduced as niches for statues, without
any reference to construction at all: and sometimes even, as in the tomb
of Can Signoria at Verona, on small piers detached from the main
building.
§ VIII. I believe, therefore, that the development of the pinnacle is
merely a part of the general erectness and picturesqueness of northern
work above alluded to: and that, if there had been no other place for
the pinnacles, the Gothic builders would have put them on the tops of
their arches (they often _did_ on the tops of gables and pediments),
rather than not have had them; but the natural position of the pinnacle
is, of course, where it adds to, rather than diminishes, the stability
of the building; that is to say, on its main wall piers and the vertical
piers at the buttresses. And thus the edifice is surrounded at last by a
complete company of detached piers and pinnacles, each sustaining an
inclined prop against the central wall, and looking something like a
band of giants holding it up with the butts of their lances. This
arrangement would imply the loss of an enormous space of ground, but the
intervals of the buttresses are usually walled in below, and form minor
chapels.
[Illustration: Fig. XLII.]
§ IX. The science of this arrangement has made it the subject of much
enthusiastic declamation among the Gothic architects, almost as
unreasonable, in some respects, as the declamation of the Renaissance
architects respecting Greek structure. The fact is, that the whole
northern buttress system is based on the grand requirement of tall
windows and vast masses of light at the end of the apse. In order to
gain this quantity of light, the piers between the windows are
diminished in thickness until they are far too weak to bear the roof,
and then sustained by external buttresses. In the Italian method the
light is rather dreaded than desired, and the wall is made wide enough
between the windows to bear the roof, and so left. In fact, the simplest
expression of the difference in the systems is, that a northern apse is
a southern one with its inter-fenestrial piers set edgeways. Thus, _a_,
Fig. XLII., is the general idea of the southern apse; take it to pieces,
and set all its piers edgeways, as at _b_, and you have the northern
one. You gain much light for the interior, but you cut the exterior to
pieces, and instead of a bold rounded or polygonal surface, ready for
any kind of decoration, you have a series of dark and damp cells, which
no device that I have yet seen has succeeded in decorating in a
perfectly satisfactory manner. If the system be farther carried, and a
second or third order of buttresses be added, the real fact is that we
have a building standing on two or three rows of concentric piers, with
the _roof off_ the whole of it except the central circle, and only ribs
left, to carry the weight of the bit of remaining roof in the middle;
and after the eye has been accustomed to the bold and simple rounding of
the Italian apse, the skeleton character of the disposition is painfully
felt. After spending some months in Venice, I thought Bourges Cathedral
looked exactly like a half-built ship on its shores. It is useless,
however, to dispute respecting the merits of the two systems: both are
noble in their place; the Northern decidedly the most scientific, or at
least involving the greatest display of science, the Italian the
calmest and purest, this having in it the sublimity of a calm heaven or
a windless noon, the other that of a mountain flank tormented by the
north wind, and withering into grisly furrows of alternate chasm and
crag.
§ X. If I have succeeded in making the reader understand the veritable
action of the buttress, he will have no difficulty in determining its
fittest form. He has to deal with two distinct kinds; one, a narrow
vertical pier, acting principally by its weight, and crowned by a
pinnacle; the other, commonly called a Flying buttress, a cross bar set
from such a pier (when detached from the building) against the main
wall. This latter, then, is to be considered as a mere prop or shore,
and its use by the Gothic architects might be illustrated by the
supposition that we were to build all our houses with walls too thin to
stand without wooden props outside, and then to substitute stone props
for wooden ones. I have some doubts of the real dignity of such a
proceeding, but at all events the merit of the form of the flying
buttress depends on its faithfully and visibly performing this somewhat
humble office; it is, therefore, in its purity, a mere sloping bar of
stone, with an arch beneath it to carry its weight, that is to say, to
prevent the action of gravity from in any wise deflecting it, or causing
it to break downwards under the lateral thrust; it is thus formed quite
simple in Notre Dame of Paris, and in the Cathedral of Beauvais, while
at Cologne the sloping bars are pierced with quatrefoils, and at Amiens
with traceried arches. Both seem to me effeminate and false in
principle; not, of course, that there is any occasion to make the flying
buttress heavy, if a light one will answer the purpose; but it seems as
if some security were sacrificed to ornament. At Amiens the arrangement
is now seen to great disadvantage, for the early traceries have been
replaced by base flamboyant ones, utterly weak and despicable. Of the
degradations of the original form which took place in after times, I
have spoken at p. 35 of the "Seven Lamps."
§ XI. The form of the common buttress must be familiar to the eye of
every reader, sloping if low, and thrown into successive steps if they
are to be carried to any considerable height. There is much dignity in
them when they are of essential service; but even in their best
examples, their awkward angles are among the least manageable features
of the Northern Gothic, and the whole organisation of its system was
destroyed by their unnecessary and lavish application on a diminished
scale; until the buttress became actually confused with the shaft, and
we find strangely crystallised masses of diminutive buttress applied,
for merely vertical support, in the northern tabernacle work; while in
some recent copies of it the principle has been so far distorted that
the tiny buttressings look as if they carried the superstructure on the
points of their pinnacles, as in the Cranmer memorial at Oxford. Indeed,
in most modern Gothic, the architects evidently consider buttresses as
convenient breaks of blank surface, and general apologies for deadness
of wall. They stand in the place of ideas, and I think are supposed also
to have something of the odor of sanctity about them; otherwise, one
hardly sees why a warehouse seventy feet high should have nothing of the
kind, and a chapel, which one can just get into with one's hat off,
should have a bunch of them at every corner; and worse than this, they
are even thought ornamental when they can be of no possible use; and
these stupid penthouse outlines are forced upon the eye in every species
of decoration: in St. Margaret's Chapel, West Street, there are actually
a couple of buttresses at the end of every pew.
§ XII. It is almost impossible, in consequence of these unwise
repetitions of it, to contemplate the buttress without some degree of
prejudice; and I look upon it as one of the most justifiable causes of
the unfortunate aversion with which many of our best architects regard
the whole Gothic school. It may, however, always be regarded with
respect when its form is simple and its service clear; but no treason to
Gothic can be greater than the use of it in indolence or vanity, to
enhance the intricacies of structure, or occupy the vacuities of design.
CHAPTER XVI.
FORM OF APERTURE.
§ I. We have now, in order, examined the means of raising walls and
sustaining roofs, and we have finally to consider the structure of the
necessary apertures in the wall veil, the door and window; respecting
which there are three main points to be considered.
1. The form of the aperture, _i.e._, its outline, its size, and the
forms of its sides.
2. The filling of the aperture, _i.e._, valves and glass, and their
holdings.
3. The protection of the aperture, and its appliances, _i.e._, canopies,
porches, and balconies. We shall examine these in succession.
§ II. 1. The form of the aperture: and first of doors. We will, for the
present, leave out of the question doors and gates in unroofed walls,
the forms of these being very arbitrary, and confine ourselves to the
consideration of doors of entrance into roofed buildings. Such doors
will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building;
except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border
towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit
access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for
convenience or magnificence. But in most cases, whether high or low, a
door may be assumed to be considerably lower than the apartments or
buildings into which it gives admission, and therefore to have some
height of wall above it, whose weight must be carried by the heading of
the door. It is clear, therefore, that the best heading must be an
arch, because the strongest, and that a square-headed door must be
wrong, unless under Mont-Cenisian masonry; or else, unless the top of
the door be the roof of the building, as in low cottages. And a
square-headed door is just so much more wrong and ugly than a connexion
of main shafts by lintels, as the weight of wall above the door is
likely to be greater than that above the main shafts. Thus, while I
admit the Greek general forms of temple to be admirable in their kind, I
think the Greek door always offensive and unmanageable.
§ III. We have it also determined by necessity, that the apertures shall
be at least above a man's height, with perpendicular sides (for sloping
sides are evidently unnecessary, and even inconvenient, therefore
absurd) and level threshold; and this aperture we at present suppose
simply cut through the wall without any bevelling of the jambs. Such a
door, wide enough for two persons to pass each other easily, and with
such fillings or valves as we may hereafter find expedient, may be fit
enough for any building into which entrance is required neither often,
nor by many persons at a time. But when entrance and egress are
constant, or required by crowds, certain further modifications must take
place.
[Illustration: Fig. XLIII.]
§ IV. When entrance and egress are constant, it may be supposed that the
valves will be absent or unfastened,--that people will be passing more
quickly than when the entrance and egress are unfrequent, and that the
square angles of the wall will be inconvenient to such quick passers
through. It is evident, therefore, that what would be done in time, for
themselves, by the passing multitude, should be done for them at once by
the architect; and that these angles, which would be worn away by
friction, should at once be bevelled off, or, as it is called, splayed,
and the most contracted part of the aperture made as short as possible,
so that the plan of the entrance should become as at _a_, Fig. XLIII.
§ V. Farther. As persons on the outside may often approach the door or
depart from it, _beside_ the building, so as to turn aside as they enter
or leave the door, and therefore touch its jamb, but, on the inside,
will in almost every case approach the door, or depart from it in the
direct line of the entrance (people generally walking _forward_ when
they enter a hall, court, or chamber of any kind, and being forced to do
so when they enter a passage), it is evident that the bevelling may be
very slight on the inside, but should be large on the outside, so that
the plan of the aperture should become as at _b_, Fig. XLIII. Farther,
as the bevelled wall cannot conveniently carry an unbevelled arch, the
door arch must be bevelled also, and the aperture, seen from the
outside, will have somewhat the aspect of a small cavern diminishing
towards the interior.
§ VI. If, however, beside frequent entrance, entrance is required for
multitudes at the same time, the size of the aperture either must be
increased, or other apertures must be introduced. It may, in some
buildings, be optional with the architect whether he shall give many
small doors, or few large ones; and in some, as theatres, amphitheatres,
and other places where the crowd are apt to be impatient, many doors are
by far the best arrangement of the two. Often, however, the purposes of
the building, as when it is to be entered by processions, or where the
crowd most usually enter in one direction, require the large single
entrance; and (for here again the æsthetic and structural laws cannot be
separated) the expression and harmony of the building require, in nearly
every case, an entrance of largeness proportioned to the multitude which
is to meet within. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multitude
should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps do, through holes; and
nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English
cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress,
but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation. Besides,
the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to
desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man
of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship
in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance;
partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the
building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the
worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at
once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over
minor doors.
In practice the matter has been, I suppose, regulated almost altogether
by convenience, the western doors being single in small churches, while
in the larger the entrances become three or five, the central door
remaining always principal, in consequence of the fine sense of
composition which the mediæval builders never lost. These arrangements
have formed the noblest buildings in the world. Yet it is worth
observing[55] how perfect in its simplicity the single entrance may
become, when it is treated as in the Duomo and St. Zeno of Verona, and
other such early Lombard churches, having noble porches, and rich
sculptures grouped around the entrance.
§ VII. However, whether the entrances be single, triple, or manifold, it
is a constant law that one shall be principal, and all shall be of size
in some degree proportioned to that of the building. And this size is,
of course, chiefly to be expressed in width, that being the only useful
dimension in a door (except for pageantry, chairing of bishops and
waving of banners, and other such vanities, not, I hope, after this
century, much to be regarded in the building of Christian temples); but
though the width is the only necessary dimension, it is well to increase
the height also in some proportion to it, in order that there may be
less weight of wall above, resting on the increased span of the arch.
This is, however, so much the necessary result of the broad curve of the
arch itself, that there is no structural necessity of elevating the
jamb; and I believe that beautiful entrances might be made of every span
of arch, retaining the jamb at a little more than a man's height, until
the sweep of the curves became so vast that the small vertical line
became a part of them, and one entered into the temple as under a great
rainbow.
§ VIII. On the other hand, the jamb _may_ be elevated indefinitely, so
that the increasing entrance retains _at least_ the proportion of width
it had originally; say 4 ft. by 7 ft. 5 in. But a less proportion of
width than this has always a meagre, inhospitable, and ungainly look
except in military architecture, where the narrowness of the entrance is
necessary, and its height adds to its grandeur, as between the entrance
towers of our British castles. This law however, observe, applies only
to true doors, not to the arches of porches, which may be of any
proportion, as of any number, being in fact intercolumniations, not
doors; as in the noble example of the west front of Peterborough, which,
in spite of the destructive absurdity of its central arch being the
narrowest, would still, if the paltry porter's lodge, or gatehouse, or
turnpike, or whatever it is, were knocked out of the middle of it, be
the noblest west front in England.
§ IX. Further, and finally. In proportion to the height and size of the
building, and therefore to the size of its doors, will be the thickness
of its walls, especially at the foundation, that is to say, beside the
doors; and also in proportion to the numbers of a crowd will be the
unruliness and pressure of it. Hence, partly in necessity and partly in
prudence, the splaying or chamfering of the jamb of the larger door will
be deepened, and, if possible, made at a larger angle for the large door
than for the small one; so that the large door will always be
encompassed by a visible breadth of jamb proportioned to its own
magnitude. The decorative value of this feature we shall see hereafter.
§ X. The second kind of apertures we have to examine are those of
windows.
Window apertures are mainly of two kinds; those for outlook, and those
for inlet of light, many being for both purposes, and either purpose, or
both, combined in military architecture with those of offence and
defence. But all window apertures, as compared with door apertures, have
almost infinite licence of form and size: they may be of any shape, from
the slit or cross slit to the circle;[56] of any size, from the loophole
of the castle to the pillars of light of the cathedral apse. Yet,
according to their place and purpose, one or two laws of fitness hold
respecting them, which let us examine in the two classes of windows
successively, but without reference to military architecture, which
here, as before, we may dismiss as a subject of separate science, only
noticing that windows, like all other features, are always delightful,
if not beautiful, when their position and shape have indeed been thus
necessarily determined, and that many of their most picturesque forms
have resulted from the requirements of war. We should also find in
military architecture the typical forms of the two classes of outlet and
inlet windows in their utmost development; the greatest sweep of sight
and range of shot on the one hand, and the fullest entry of light and
air on the other, being constantly required at the smallest possible
apertures. Our business, however, is to reason out the laws for
ourselves, not to take the examples as we find them.
§ XI. 1. Outlook apertures. For these no general outline is determinable
by the necessities or inconveniences of outlooking, except only that the
bottom or sill of the windows, at whatever height, should be horizontal,
for the convenience of leaning on it, or standing on it if the window
be to the ground. The form of the upper part of the window is quite
immaterial, for all windows allow a greater range of sight when they are
_approached_ than that of the eye itself: it is the approachability of
the window, that is to say, the annihilation of the thickness of the
wall, which is the real point to be attended to. If, therefore, the
aperture be inaccessible, or so small that the thickness of the wall
cannot be entered, the wall is to be bevelled[57] on the outside, so as
to increase the range of sight as far as possible; if the aperture can
be entered, then bevelled from the point to which entrance is possible.
The bevelling will, if possible, be in every direction, that is to say,
upwards at the top, outwards at the sides, and downwards at the bottom,
but essentially _downwards_; the earth and the doings upon it being the
chief object in outlook windows, except of observatories; and where the
object is a distinct and special view downwards, it will be of advantage
to shelter the eye as far as possible from the rays of light coming from
above, and the head of the window may be left horizontal, or even the
whole aperture sloped outwards, as the slit in a letter-box is inwards.
The best windows for outlook are, of course, oriels and bow windows, but
these are not to be considered under the head of apertures merely; they
are either balconies roofed and glazed, and to be considered under the
head of external appliances, or they are each a story of an external
semi-tower, having true aperture windows on each side of it.
§ XII. 2. Inlet windows. These windows may, of course, be of any shape and
size whatever, according to the other necessities of the building, and
the quantity and direction of light desired, their purpose being now to
throw it in streams on particular lines or spots; now to diffuse it
everywhere; sometimes to introduce it in broad masses, tempered in
strength, as in the cathedral colored window; sometimes in starry
showers of scattered brilliancy, like the apertures in the roof of an
Arabian bath; perhaps the most beautiful of all forms being the rose,
which has in it the unity of both characters, and sympathy with that of
the source of light itself. It is noticeable, however, that while both
the circle and pointed oval are beautiful window forms, it would be very
painful to cut either of them in half and connect them by vertical
lines, as in Fig. XLIV. The reason is, I believe, that so treated, the
upper arch is not considered as connected with the lower, and forming an
entire figure, but as the ordinary arch roof of the aperture, and the
lower arch as an arch _floor_, equally unnecessary and unnatural. Also,
the elliptical oval is generally an unsatisfactory form, because it
gives the idea of useless trouble in building it, though it occurs
quaintly and pleasantly in the former windows of France: I believe it is
also objectionable because it has an indeterminate, slippery look, like
that of a bubble rising through a fluid. It, and all elongated forms,
are still more objectionable placed horizontally, because this is the
weakest position they can structurally have; that is to say, less light
is admitted, with greater loss of strength to the building, than by any
other form. If admissible anywhere, it is for the sake of variety at the
top of the building, as the flat parallelogram sometimes not
ungracefully in Italian Renaissance.
[Illustration: Fig. XLIV.]
§ XIII. The question of bevelling becomes a little more complicated in
the inlet than the outlook window, because the mass or quantity of light
admitted is often of more consequence than its direction, and often
_vice versâ_; and the outlook window is supposed to be approachable,
which is far from being always the case with windows for light, so that
the bevelling which in the outlook window is chiefly to open range of
sight, is in the inlet a means not only of admitting the light in
greater quantity, but of directing it to the spot on which it is to
fall. But, in general, the bevelling of the one window will reverse that
of the other; for, first, no natural light will strike on the inlet
window from beneath, unless reflected light, which is (I believe)
injurious to the health and the sight; and thus, while in the outlook
window the outside bevel downwards is essential, in the inlet it would
be useless: and the sill is to be flat, if the window be on a level with
the spot it is to light; and sloped downwards within, if above it.
Again, as the brightest rays of light are the steepest, the outside
bevel upwards is as essential in the roof of the inlet as it was of
small importance in that of the outlook window.
§ XIV. On the horizontal section the aperture will expand internally, a
somewhat larger number of rays being thus reflected from the jambs; and
the aperture being thus the smallest possible outside, this is the
favorite military form of inlet window, always found in magnificent
development in the thick walls of mediæval castles and convents. Its
effect is tranquil, but cheerless and dungeon-like in its fullest
development, owing to the limitation of the range of sight in the
outlook, which, if the window be unapproachable, reduces it to a mere
point of light. A modified condition of it, with some combination of the
outlook form, is probably the best for domestic buildings in general
(which, however, in modern architecture, are unhappily so thin walled,
that the outline of the jambs becomes a matter almost of indifference),
it being generally noticeable that the depth of recess which I have
observed to be essential to nobility of external effect has also a
certain dignity of expression, as appearing to be intended rather to
admit light to persons quietly occupied in their homes, than to
stimulate or favor the curiosity of idleness.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] And worth questioning, also, whether the triple porch has not
been associated with Romanist views of mediatorship; the Redeemer
being represented as presiding over the central door only, and the
lateral entrances being under the protection of saints, while the
Madonna almost always has one or both of the transepts. But it would
be wrong to press this, for, in nine cases out of ten, the architect
has been merely influenced in his placing of the statues by an
artist's desire of variety in their forms and dress; and very
naturally prefers putting a canonisation over one door, a martyrdom
over another, and an assumption over a third, to repeating a
crucifixion or a judgment above all. The architect's doctrine is
only, therefore, to be noted with indisputable reprobation when the
Madonna gets possession of the main door.
[56] The arch heading is indeed the best where there is much
incumbent weight, but a window frequently has very little weight
above it, especially when placed high, and the arched form loses
light in a low room: therefore the square-headed window is
admissible where the square-headed door is not.
[57] I do not like the sound of the word "splayed;" I always shall
use "bevelled" instead.
CHAPTER XVII.
FILLING OF APERTURE.
§ I. Thus far we have been concerned with the outline only of the
aperture: we were next, it will be remembered, to consider the necessary
modes of filling it with valves in the case of the door, or with glass
or tracery in that of the window.
1. Fillings of doors. We concluded, in the previous Chapter, that doors
in buildings of any importance or size should have headings in the form
of an arch. This is, however, the most inconvenient form we could
choose, as respects the fitting of the valves of the doorway; for the
arch-shaped head of the valves not only requires considerable nicety in
fitting to the arch, but adds largely to the weight of the door,--a
double disadvantage, straining the hinges and making it cumbersome in
opening. And this inconvenience is so much perceived by the eye, that a
door valve with a pointed head is always a disagreeable object. It
becomes, therefore, a matter of true necessity so to arrange the doorway
as to admit of its being fitted with rectangular valves.
§ II. Now, in determining the form of the aperture, we supposed the jamb
of the door to be of the utmost height required for entrance. The extra
height of the arch is unnecessary as an opening, the arch being required
for its strength only, not for its elevation. There is, therefore, no
reason why it should not be barred across by a horizontal lintel, into
which the valves may be fitted, and the triangular or semicircular
arched space above the lintel may then be permanently closed, as we
choose, either with bars, or glass, or stone.
This is the form of all good doors, without exception, over the whole
world and in all ages, and no other can ever be invented.
§ III. In the simplest doors the cross lintel is of wood only, and glass
or bars occupy the space above, a very frequent form in Venice. In more
elaborate doors the cross lintel is of stone, and the filling sometimes
of brick, sometimes of stone, very often a grand single stone being used
to close the entire space: the space thus filled is called the Tympanum.
In large doors the cross lintel is too long to bear the great incumbent
weight of this stone filling without support; it is, therefore, carried
by a pier in the centre; and two valves are used, fitted to the
rectangular spaces on each side of the pier. In the most elaborate
examples of this condition, each of these secondary doorways has an arch
heading, a cross lintel, and a triangular filling or tympanum of its
own, all subordinated to the main arch above.
§ IV. 2. Fillings of windows.
When windows are large, and to be filled with glass, the sheet of glass,
however constructed, whether of large panes or small fragments, requires
the support of bars of some kind, either of wood, metal, or stone. Wood
is inapplicable on a large scale, owing to its destructibility; very fit
for door-valves, which can be easily refitted, and in which weight would
be an inconvenience, but very unfit for window-bars, which, if they
decayed, might let the whole window be blown in before their decay was
observed, and in which weight would be an advantage, as offering more
resistance to the wind.
Iron is, however, fit for window-bars, and there seems no constructive
reason why we should not have iron traceries, as well as iron pillars,
iron churches, and iron steeples. But I have, in the "Seven Lamps,"
given reasons for not considering such structures as architecture at
all.
The window-bars must, therefore, be of stone, and of stone only.
§ V. The purpose of the window being always to let in as much light, and
command as much view, as possible, these bars of stone are to be made
as slender and as few as they can be, consistently with their due
strength.
[Illustration: Fig. XLV.]
Let it be required to support the breadth of glass, _a_, _b_, Fig. XLV.
The tendency of the glass sustaining any force, as of wind from without,
is to bend into an arch inwards, in the dotted line, and break in the
centre. It is to be supported, therefore, by the bar put in its centre,
_c_.
But this central bar, _c_, may not be enough, and the spaces _a c_, _c
b_, may still need support. The next step will be to put two bars
instead of one, and divide the window into three spaces as at _d_.
But this may still not be enough, and the window may need three bars.
Now the greatest stress is always on the centre of the window. If the
three bars are equal in strength, as at _e_, the central bar is either
too slight for its work, or the lateral bars too thick for theirs.
Therefore, we must slightly increase the thickness of the central bar,
and diminish that of the lateral ones, so as to obtain the arrangement
at _f h_. If the window enlarge farther, each of the spaces _f g_, _g
h_, is treated as the original space _a b_, and we have the groups of
bars _k_ and _l_.
So that, whatever the shape of the window, whatever the direction and
number of the bars, there are to be central or main bars; second bars
subordinated to them; third bars subordinated to the second, and so on
to the number required. This is called the subordination of tracery, a
system delightful to the eye and mind, owing to its anatomical framing
and unity, and to its expression of the laws of good government in all
fragile and unstable things. All tracery, therefore, which is not
subordinated, is barbarous, in so far as this part of its structure is
concerned.
§ VI. The next question will be the direction of the bars. The reader
will understand at once, without any laborious proof, that a given area
of glass, supported by its edges, is stronger in its resistance to
violence when it is arranged in a long strip or band than in a square;
and that, therefore, glass is generally to be arranged, especially in
windows on a large scale, in oblong areas: and if the bars so dividing
it be placed horizontally, they will have less power of supporting
themselves, and will need to be thicker in consequence, than if placed
vertically. As far, therefore, as the form of the window permits, they
are to be vertical.
§ VII. But even when so placed, they cannot be trusted to support
themselves beyond a certain height, but will need cross bars to steady
them. Cross bars of stone are, therefore, to be introduced at necessary
intervals, not to divide the glass, but to support the upright stone
bars. The glass is always to be divided longitudinally as far as
possible, and the upright bars which divide it supported at proper
intervals. However high the window, it is almost impossible that it
should require more than two cross bars.
§ VIII. It may sometimes happen that when tall windows are placed very
close to each other for the sake of more light, the masonry between them
may stand in need, or at least be the better of, some additional
support. The cross bars of the windows may then be thickened, in order
to bond the intermediate piers more strongly together, and if this
thickness appear ungainly, it may be modified by decoration.
§ IX. We have thus arrived at the idea of a vertical frame work of
subordinated bars, supported by cross bars at the necessary intervals,
and the only remaining question is the method of insertion into the
aperture. Whatever its form, if we merely let the ends of the bars into
the voussoirs of its heading, the least settlement of the masonry would
distort the arch, or push up some of its voussoirs, or break the window
bars, or push them aside. Evidently our object should be to connect the
window bars among themselves, so framing them together that they may
give the utmost possible degree of support to the whole window head in
case of any settlement. But we know how to do this already: our window
bars are nothing but small shafts. Capital them; throw small arches
across between the smaller bars, large arches over them between the
larger bars, one comprehensive arch over the whole, or else a horizontal
lintel, if the window have a flat head; and we have a complete system of
mutual support, independent of the aperture head, and yet assisting to
sustain it, if need be. But we want the spandrils of this arch system to
be themselves as light, and to let as much light through them, as
possible: and we know already how to pierce them (Chap. XII. § VII.). We
pierce them with circles; and we have, if the circles are small and the
stonework strong, the traceries of Giotto and the Pisan school; if the
circles are as large as possible and the bars slender, those which I
have already figured and described as the only perfect traceries of the
Northern Gothic.[58] The varieties of their design arise partly from the
different size of window and consequent number of bars; partly from the
different heights of their pointed arches, as well as the various
positions of the window head in relation to the roof, rendering one or
another arrangement better for dividing the light, and partly from
æsthetic and expressional requirements, which, within certain limits,
may be allowed a very important influence: for the strength of the bars
is ordinarily so much greater than is absolutely necessary, that some
portion of it may be gracefully sacrificed to the attainment of variety
in the plans of tracery--a variety which, even within its severest
limits, is perfectly endless; more especially in the pointed arch, the
proportion of the tracery being in the round arch necessarily more
fixed.
§ X. The circular window furnishes an exception to the common law, that
the bars shall be vertical through the greater part of their length: for
if they were so, they could neither have secure perpendicular footing,
nor secure heading, their thrust being perpendicular to the curve of the
voussoirs only in the centre of the window; therefore, a small circle,
like the axle of a wheel, is put into the centre of the window, large
enough to give footing to the necessary number of radiating bars; and
the bars are arranged as spokes, being all of course properly capitaled
and arch-headed. This is the best form of tracery for circular windows,
naturally enough called wheel windows when so filled.
§ XI. Now, I wish the reader especially to observe that we have arrived
at these forms of perfect Gothic tracery without the smallest reference
to any practice of any school, or to any law of authority whatever. They
are forms having essentially nothing whatever to do either with Goths or
Greeks. They are eternal forms, based on laws of gravity and cohesion;
and no better, nor any others so good, will ever be invented, so long as
the present laws of gravity and cohesion subsist.
§ XII. It does not at all follow that this group of forms owes its
origin to any such course of reasoning as that which has now led us to
it. On the contrary, there is not the smallest doubt that tracery began,
partly, in the grouping of windows together (subsequently enclosed
within a large arch[59]), and partly in the fantastic penetrations of a
single slab of stones under the arch, as the circle in Plate V. above.
The perfect form seems to have been accidentally struck in passing from
experiment on the one side, to affectation on the other; and it was so
far from ever becoming systematised, that I am aware of no type of
tracery for which a _less_ decided preference is shown in the buildings
in which it exists. The early pierced traceries are multitudinous and
perfect in their kind,--the late Flamboyant, luxuriant in detail, and
lavish in quantity,--but the perfect forms exist in comparatively few
churches, generally in portions of the church only, and are always
connected, and that closely, either with the massy forms out of which
they have emerged, or with the enervated types into which they are
instantly to degenerate.
§ XIII. Nor indeed are we to look upon them as in all points superior to
the more ancient examples. We have above conducted our reasoning
entirely on the supposition that a single aperture is given, which it is
the object to fill with glass, diminishing the power of the light as
little as possible. But there are many cases, as in triforium and
cloister lights, in which glazing is not required; in which, therefore,
the bars, if there be any, must have some more important function than
that of merely holding glass, and in which their actual use is to give
steadiness and _tone_, as it were, to the arches and walls above and
beside them; or to give the idea of protection to those who pass along
the triforium, and of seclusion to those who walk in the cloister. Much
thicker shafts, and more massy arches, may be properly employed in work
of this kind; and many groups of such tracery will be found resolvable
into true colonnades, with the arches in pairs, or in triple or
quadruple groups, and with small rosettes pierced above them for light.
All this is just as _right_ in its place, as the glass tracery is in its
own function, and often much more grand. But the same indulgence is not
to be shown to the affectations which succeeded the developed forms. Of
these there are three principal conditions: the Flamboyant of France,
the Stump tracery of Germany, and the Perpendicular of England.
§ XIV. Of these the first arose, by the most delicate and natural
transitions, out of the perfect school. It was an endeavor to introduce
more grace into its lines, and more change into its combinations; and
the æsthetic results are so beautiful, that for some time after the
right road had been left, the aberration was more to be admired than
regretted. The final conditions became fantastic and effeminate, but, in
the country where they had been invented, never lost their peculiar
grace until they were replaced by the Renaissance. The copies of the
school in England and Italy have all its faults and none of its
beauties; in France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained
in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into
the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel
that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of
Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between
the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations
of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with
the clouds of every morning sky that brightens above the valley of the
Seine.
§ XV. The second group of traceries, the intersectional or German group,
may be considered as including the entire range of the absurd forms
which were invented in order to display dexterity in stone-cutting and
ingenuity in construction. They express the peculiar character of the
German mind, which cuts the frame of every truth joint from joint, in
order to prove the edge of its instruments; and, in all cases, prefers a
new or a strange thought to a good one, and a subtle thought to a useful
one. The point and value of the German tracery consists principally in
turning the features of good traceries upside down, and cutting them in
two where they are properly continuous. To destroy at once foundation
and membership, and suspend everything in the air, keeping out of sight,
as far as possible, the evidences of a beginning and the probabilities
of an end, are the main objects of German architecture, as of modern
German divinity.
§ XVI. This school has, however, at least the merit of ingenuity. Not so
the English Perpendicular, though a very curious school also in _its_
way. In the course of the reasoning which led us to the determination of
the perfect Gothic tracery, we were induced successively to reject
certain methods of arrangement as weak, dangerous, or disagreeable.
Collect all these together, and practise them at once, and you have the
English Perpendicular.
[Illustration: Fig. XLVI.]
As thus. You find, in the first place (§ V.), that your tracery bars are
to be subordinated, less to greater; so you take a group of, suppose,
eight, which you make all exactly equal, giving you nine equal spaces in
the window, as at A, Fig. XLVI. You found, in the second place (§ VII.),
that there was no occasion for more than two cross bars; so you take at
least four or five (also represented at A, Fig. XLVI.), also carefully
equalised, and set at equal spaces. You found, in the third place (§
VIII.), that these bars were to be strengthened, in order to support the
main piers; you will therefore cut the ends off the uppermost, and the
fourth into three pieces (as also at A). In the fourth place, you found
(§ IX.) that you were never to run a vertical bar into the arch head; so
you run them all into it (as at B, Fig. XLVI.); and this last
arrangement will be useful in two ways, for it will not only expose both
the bars and the archivolt to an apparent probability of every species
of dislocation at any moment, but it will provide you with two pleasing
interstices at the flanks, in the shape of carving-knives, _a_, _b_,
which, by throwing across the curves _c_, _d_, you may easily multiply
into four; and these, as you can put nothing into their sharp tops, will
afford you a more than usually rational excuse for a little bit of
Germanism, in filling them with arches upside down, _e_, _f_. You will
now have left at your disposal two and forty similar interstices, which,
for the sake of variety, you will proceed to fill with two and forty
similar arches: and, as you were told that the moment a bar received an
arch heading, it was to be treated as a shaft and capitalled, you will
take care to give your bars no capitals nor bases, but to run bars,
foliations and all, well into each other after the fashion of cast-iron,
as at C. You have still two triangular spaces occurring in an important
part of your window, _g g_, which, as they are very conspicuous, and you
cannot make them uglier than they are, you will do wisely to let
alone;--and you will now have the west window of the cathedral of
Winchester, a very perfect example of English Perpendicular. Nor do I
think that you can, on the whole, better the arrangement, unless,
perhaps, by adding buttresses to some of the bars, as is done in the
cathedral at Gloucester; these buttresses having the double advantage of
darkening the window when seen from within, and suggesting, when it is
seen from without, the idea of its being divided by two stout party
walls, with a heavy thrust against the glass.
§ XVII. Thus far we have considered the plan of the tracery only: we
have lastly to note the conditions under which the glass is to be
attached to the bars; and the sections of the bars themselves.
[Illustration: Fig. XLVII.]
These bars we have seen, in the perfect form, are to become shafts; but,
supposing the object to be the admission of as much light as possible,
it is clear that the thickness of the bar ought to be chiefly in the
depth of the window, and that by increasing the depth of the bar we may
diminish its breadth: clearly, therefore, we should employ the double
group of shafts, _b_, of Fig. XIV., setting it edgeways in the window:
but as the glass would then come between the two shafts, we must add a
member into which it is to be fitted, as at _a_, Fig. XLVII., and
uniting these three members together in the simplest way, with a curved
instead of a sharp recess behind the shafts, we have the section _b_,
the perfect, but simplest type of the main tracery bars in good Gothic.
In triforium and cloister tracery, which has no glass to hold, the
central member is omitted, and we have either the pure double shaft,
always the most graceful, or a single and more massy shaft, which is the
simpler and more usual form.
§ XVIII. Finally: there is an intermediate arrangement between the
glazed and the open tracery, that of the domestic traceries of Venice.
Peculiar conditions, hereafter to be described, require the shafts of
these traceries to become the main vertical supports of the floors and
walls. Their thickness is therefore enormous; and yet free egress is
required between them (into balconies) which is obtained by doors in
their lattice glazing. To prevent the inconvenience and ugliness of
driving the hinges and fastenings of them into the shafts, and having
the play of the doors in the intervals, the entire glazing is thrown
behind the pillars, and attached to their abaci and bases with iron. It
is thus securely sustained by their massy bulk, and leaves their
symmetry and shade undisturbed.
§ XIX. The depth at which the glass should be placed, in windows without
traceries, will generally be fixed by the forms of their bevelling, the
glass occupying the narrowest interval; but when its position is not
thus fixed, as in many London houses, it is to be remembered that the
deeper the glass is set (the wall being of given thickness), the more
light will enter, and the clearer the prospect will be to a person
sitting quietly in the centre of the room; on the contrary, the farther
out the glass is set, the more convenient the window will be for a
person rising and looking out of it. The one, therefore, is an
arrangement for the idle and curious, who care only about what is going
on upon the earth: the other for those who are willing to remain at
rest, so that they have free admission of the light of Heaven. This
might be noted as a curious expressional reason for the necessity (of
which no man of ordinary feeling would doubt for a moment) of a deep
recess in the window, on the outside, to all good or architectural
effect: still, as there is no reason why people should be made idle by
having it in their power to look out of window, and as the slight
increase of light or clearness of view in the centre of a room is more
than balanced by the loss of space, and the greater chill of the nearer
glass and outside air, we can, I fear, allege no other structural reason
for the picturesque external recess, than the expediency of a certain
degree of protection, for the glass, from the brightest glare of
sunshine, and heaviest rush of rain.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] "Seven Lamps," p. 53.
[59] On the north side of the nave of the cathedral of Lyons, there
is an early French window, presenting one of the usual groups of
foliated arches and circles, left, as it were, loose, without any
enclosing curve. The effect is very painful. This remarkable window
is associated with others of the common form.
CHAPTER XVIII.
PROTECTION OF APERTURE.
§ I. We have hitherto considered the aperture as merely pierced in the
thickness of the walls; and when its masonry is simple and the fillings
of the aperture are unimportant, it may well remain so. But when the
fillings are delicate and of value, as in the case of colored glass,
finely wrought tracery, or sculpture, such as we shall often find
occupying the tympanum of doorways, some protection becomes necessary
against the run of the rain down the walls, and back by the bevel of the
aperture to the joints or surface of the fillings.
§ II. The first and simplest mode of obtaining this is by channelling
the jambs and arch head; and this is the chief practical service of
aperture mouldings, which are otherwise entirely decorative. But as this
very decorative character renders them unfit to be made channels for
rain water, it is well to add some external roofing to the aperture,
which may protect it from the run of all the rain, except that which
necessarily beats into its own area. This protection, in its most usual
form, is a mere dripstone moulding carried over or round the head of the
aperture. But this is, in reality, only a contracted form of a true
_roof_, projecting from the wall over the aperture; and all protections
of apertures whatsoever are to be conceived as portions of small roofs,
attached to the wall behind; and supported by it, so long as their scale
admits of their being so with safety, and afterwards in such manner as
may be most expedient. The proper forms of these, and modes of their
support, are to be the subject of our final enquiry.
[Illustration: Fig. XLVIII.]
§ III. Respecting their proper form we need not stay long in doubt. A
deep gable is evidently the best for throwing off rain; even a low gable
being better than a high arch. Flat roofs, therefore, may only be used
when the nature of the building renders the gable unsightly; as when
there is not room for it between the stories; or when the object is
rather shade than protection from rain, as often in verandahs and
balconies. But for general service the gable is the proper and natural
form, and may be taken as representative of the rest. Then this gable
may either project unsupported from the wall, _a_, Fig. XLVIII., or be
carried by brackets or spurs, _b_, or by walls or shafts, _c_, which
shafts or walls may themselves be, in windows, carried on a sill; and
this, in its turn, supported by brackets or spurs. We shall glance at
the applications of each of these forms in order.
§ IV. There is not much variety in the case of the first, _a_, Fig.
XLVIII. In the Cumberland and border cottages the door is generally
protected by two pieces of slate arranged in a gable, giving the purest
possible type of the first form. In elaborate architecture such a
projection hardly ever occurs, and in large architecture cannot with
safety occur, without brackets; but by cutting away the greater part of
the projection, we shall arrive at the idea of a plain gabled cornice,
of which a perfect example will be found in Plate VII. of the folio
series. With this first complete form we may associate the rude, single,
projecting, penthouse roof; imperfect, because either it must be level
and the water lodge lazily upon it, or throw off the drip upon the
persons entering.
§ V. 2. _b_, Fig. XLVIII. This is a most beautiful and natural type, and
is found in all good architecture, from the highest to the most humble:
it is a frequent form of cottage door, more especially when carried on
spurs, being of peculiarly easy construction in wood: as applied to
large architecture, it can evidently be built, in its boldest and
simplest form, either of wood only, or on a scale which will admit of
its sides being each a single slab of stone. If so large as to require
jointed masonry, the gabled sides will evidently require support, and an
arch must be thrown across under them, as in Fig. XLIX., from Fiesole.
[Illustration: Fig. XLIX.]
If we cut the projection gradually down, we arrive at the common Gothic
gable dripstone carried on small brackets, carved into bosses, heads, or
some other ornamental form; the sub-arch in such case being useless, is
removed or coincides with the arch head of the aperture.
§ VI. 3. _c_, Fig. XLVIII. Substituting walls or pillars for the
brackets, we may carry the projection as far out as we choose, and form
the perfect porch, either of the cottage or village church, or of the
cathedral. As we enlarge the structure, however, certain modifications
of form become necessary, owing to the increased boldness of the
required supporting arch. For, as the lower end of the gabled roof and
of the arch cannot coincide, we have necessarily above the shafts one of
the two forms _a_ or _b_, in Fig. L., of which the latter is clearly the
best, requiring less masonry and shorter roofing; and when the arch
becomes so large as to cause a heavy lateral thrust, it may become
necessary to provide for its farther safety by pinnacles, _c_.
This last is the perfect type of aperture protection. None other can
ever be invented so good. It is that once employed by Giotto in the
cathedral of Florence, and torn down by the proveditore, Benedetto
Uguccione, to erect a Renaissance front instead; and another such has
been destroyed, not long since, in Venice, the porch of the church of
St. Apollinare, also to put up some Renaissance upholstery: for
Renaissance, as if it were not nuisance enough in the mere fact of its
own existence, appears invariably as a beast of prey, and founds itself
on the ruin of all that is best and noblest. Many such porches, however,
happily still exist in Italy, and are among its principal glories.
[Illustration: Fig. L.]
§ VII. When porches of this kind, carried by walls, are placed close
together, as in cases where there are many and large entrances to a
cathedral front, they would, in their general form, leave deep and
uncomfortable intervals, in which damp would lodge and grass grow; and
there would be a painful feeling in approaching the door in the midst of
a crowd, as if some of them might miss the real doors, and be driven
into the intervals, and embayed there. Clearly it will be a natural and
right expedient, in such cases, to open the walls of the porch wider, so
that they may correspond in slope, or nearly so, with the bevel of the
doorway, and either meet each other in the intervals, or have the said
intervals closed up with an intermediate wall, so that nobody may get
embayed in them. The porches will thus be united, and form one range of
great open gulphs or caverns, ready to receive all comers, and direct
the current of the crowd into the narrower entrances. As the lateral
thrust of the arches is now met by each other, the pinnacles, if there
were any, must be removed, and waterspouts placed between each arch to
discharge the double drainage of the gables. This is the form of all the
noble northern porches, without exception, best represented by that of
Rheims.
§ VIII. Contracted conditions of the pinnacle porch are beautifully used
in the doors of the cathedral of Florence; and the entire arrangement,
in its most perfect form, as adapted to window protection and
decoration, is applied by Giotto with inconceivable exquisiteness in the
windows of the campanile; those of the cathedral itself being all of the
same type. Various singular and delightful conditions of it are applied
in Italian domestic architecture (in the Broletto of Monza very
quaintly), being associated with balconies for speaking to the people,
and passing into pulpits. In the north we glaze the sides of such
projections, and they become bow-windows, the shape of roofing being
then nearly immaterial and very fantastic, often a conical cap. All
these conditions of window protection, being for real service, are
endlessly delightful (and I believe the beauty of the balcony, protected
by an open canopy supported by light shafts, never yet to have been
properly worked out). But the Renaissance architects destroyed all of
them, and introduced the magnificent and witty Roman invention of a
model of a Greek pediment, with its cornices of monstrous thickness,
bracketed up above the window. The horizontal cornice of the pediment is
thus useless, and of course, therefore, retained; the protection to the
head of the window being constructed on the principle of a hat with its
crown sewn up. But the deep and dark triangular cavity thus obtained
affords farther opportunity for putting ornament out of sight, of which
the Renaissance architects are not slow to avail themselves.
A more rational condition is the complete pediment with a couple of
shafts, or pilasters, carried on a bracketed sill; and the windows of
this kind, which have been well designed, are perhaps the best things
which the Renaissance schools have produced: those of Whitehall are, in
their way, exceedingly beautiful; and those of the Palazzo Ricardi at
Florence, in their simplicity and sublimity, are scarcely unworthy of
their reputed designer, Michael Angelo.
CHAPTER XIX.
SUPERIMPOSITION.
§ I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible
architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted
to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else
than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large
stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily
resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto
considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small
shafts and roofs; its supporting members into shafts and arches, or
walls penetrated by apertures of various shape, and supported by various
kinds of buttresses. Respecting each of these several features I am
certain that the reader feels himself prepared, by understanding their
plain function, to form something like a reasonable and definite
judgment, whether they be good or bad; and this right judgment of parts
will, in most cases, lead him to just reverence or condemnation of the
whole.
§ II. The various modes in which these parts are capable of combination,
and the merits of buildings of different form and expression, are
evidently not reducible into lists, nor to be estimated by general laws.
The nobility of each building depends on its special fitness for its own
purposes; and these purposes vary with every climate, every soil, and
every national custom: nay, there were never, probably, two edifices
erected in which some accidental difference of condition did not require
some difference of plan or of structure; so that, respecting plan and
distribution of parts, I do not hope to collect any universal law of
right; but there are a few points necessary to be noticed respecting the
means by which height is attained in buildings of various plans, and
the expediency and methods of superimposition of one story or tier of
architecture above another.
§ III. For, in the preceding inquiry, I have always supposed either that
a single shaft would reach to the top of the building, or that the
farther height required might be added in plain wall above the heads of
the arches; whereas it may often be rather expedient to complete the
entire lower series of arches, or finish the lower wall, with a bold
string course or cornice, and build another series of shafts, or another
wall, on the top of it.
§ IV. This superimposition is seen in its simplest form in the interior
shafts of a Greek temple; and it has been largely used in nearly all
countries where buildings have been meant for real service. Outcry has
often been raised against it, but the thing is so sternly necessary that
it has always forced itself into acceptance; and it would, therefore, be
merely losing time to refute the arguments of those who have attempted
its disparagement. Thus far, however, they have reason on their side,
that if a building can be kept in one grand mass, without sacrificing
either its visible or real adaptation to its objects, it is not well to
divide it into stories until it has reached proportions too large to be
justly measured by the eye. It ought then to be divided in order to mark
its bulk; and decorative divisions are often possible, which rather
increase than destroy the expression of general unity.
§ V. Superimposition, wisely practised, is of two kinds, directly
contrary to each other, of weight on lightness, and of lightness on
weight; while the superimposition of weight on weight, or lightness on
lightness, is nearly always wrong.
1. Weight on lightness: I do not say weight on _weakness_. The
superimposition of the human body on its limbs I call weight on
lightness: the superimposition of the branches on a tree trunk I call
lightness on weight: in both cases the support is fully adequate to the
work, the form of support being regulated by the differences of
requirement. Nothing in architecture is half so painful as the apparent
want of sufficient support when the weight above is visibly passive:
for all buildings are not passive; some seem to rise by their own
strength, or float by their own buoyancy; a dome requires no visibility
of support, one fancies it supported by the air. But passive
architecture without help for its passiveness is unendurable. In a
lately built house, No. 86, in Oxford Street, three huge stone pillars
in the second story are carried apparently by the edges of three sheets
of plate glass in the first. I hardly know anything to match the
painfulness of this and some other of our shop structures, in which the
iron-work is concealed; nor, even when it is apparent, can the eye ever
feel satisfied of their security, when built, as at present, with fifty
or sixty feet of wall above a rod of iron not the width of this page.
§ VI. The proper forms of this superimposition of weight on lightness
have arisen, for the most part, from the necessity or desirableness, in
many situations, of elevating the inhabited portions of buildings
considerably above the ground level, especially those exposed to damp or
inundation, and the consequent abandonment of the ground story as
unserviceable, or else the surrender of it to public purposes. Thus, in
many market and town houses, the ground story is left open as a general
place of sheltered resort, and the enclosed apartments raised on
pillars. In almost all warm countries the luxury, almost the necessity,
of arcades to protect the passengers from the sun, and the desirableness
of large space in the rooms above, lead to the same construction.
Throughout the Venetian islet group, the houses seem to have been thus,
in the first instance, universally built, all the older palaces
appearing to have had the rez de chaussée perfectly open, the upper
parts of the palace being sustained on magnificent arches, and the
smaller houses sustained in the same manner on wooden piers, still
retained in many of the cortiles, and exhibited characteristically
throughout the main street of Murano. As ground became more valuable and
house-room more scarce, these ground-floors were enclosed with wall
veils between the original shafts, and so remain; but the type of the
structure of the entire city is given in the Ducal Palace.
§ VII. To this kind of superimposition we owe the most picturesque
street effects throughout the world, and the most graceful, as well as
the most grotesque, buildings, from the many-shafted fantasy of the
Alhambra (a building as beautiful in disposition as it is base in
ornamentation) to the four-legged stolidity of the Swiss Chalet:[60] nor
these only, but great part of the effect of our cathedrals, in which,
necessarily, the close triforium and clerestory walls are superimposed
on the nave piers; perhaps with most majesty where with greatest
simplicity, as in the old basilican types, and the noble cathedral of
Pisa.
§ VIII. In order to the delightfulness and security of all such
arrangements, this law must be observed:--that in proportion to the
height of wall above them, the shafts are to be short. You may take your
given height of wall, and turn any quantity of that wall into shaft that
you like; but you must not turn it all into tall shafts, and then put
more wall above. Thus, having a house five stories high, you may turn
the lower story into shafts, and leave the four stories in wall; or the
two lower stories into shafts, and leave three in wall; but, whatever
you add to the shaft, you must take from the wall. Then also, of course,
the shorter the shaft the thicker will be its _proportionate_, if not
its actual, diameter. In the Ducal Palace of Venice the shortest shafts
are always the thickest.[61]
§ IX. The second kind of superimposition, lightness on weight, is, in
its most necessary use, of stories of houses one upon another, where, of
course, wall veil is required in the lower ones, and has to support wall
veil above, aided by as much of shaft structure as is attainable within
the given limits. The greatest, if not the only, merit of the Roman and
Renaissance Venetian architects is their graceful management of this
kind of superimposition; sometimes of complete courses of external
arches and shafts one above the other; sometimes of apertures with
intermediate cornices at the levels of the floors, and large shafts from
top to bottom of the building; always observing that the upper stories
shall be at once lighter and richer than the lower ones. The entire
value of such buildings depends upon the perfect and easy expression of
the relative strength of the stories, and the unity obtained by the
varieties of their proportions, while yet the fact of superimposition
and separation by floors is frankly told.
§ X. In churches and other buildings in which there is no separation by
floors, another kind of pure shaft superimposition is often used, in
order to enable the builder to avail himself of short and slender
shafts. It has been noted that these are often easily attainable, and of
precious materials, when shafts large enough and strong enough to do the
work at once, could not be obtained except at unjustifiable expense, and
of coarse stone. The architect has then no choice but to arrange his
work in successive stories; either frankly completing the arch work and
cornice of each, and beginning a new story above it, which is the
honester and nobler way, or else tying the stories together by
supplementary shafts from floor to roof,--the general practice of the
Northern Gothic, and one which, unless most gracefully managed, gives
the look of a scaffolding, with cross-poles tied to its uprights, to the
whole clerestory wall. The best method is that which avoids all chance
of the upright shafts being supposed continuous, by increasing their
number and changing their places in the upper stories, so that the whole
work branches from the ground like a tree. This is the superimposition
of the Byzantine and the Pisan Romanesque; the most beautiful examples
of it being, I think, the Southern portico of St. Mark's, the church of
S. Giovanni at Pistoja, and the apse of the cathedral of Pisa. In
Renaissance work the two principles are equally distinct, though the
shafts are (I think) always one above the other. The reader may see one
of the best examples of the separately superimposed story in Whitehall
(and another far inferior in St. Paul's), and by turning himself round
at Whitehall may compare with it the system of connecting shafts in the
Treasury; though this is a singularly bad example, the window cornices
of the first floor being like shelves in a cupboard, and cutting the
mass of the building in two, in spite of the pillars.
§ XI. But this superimposition of lightness on weight is still more
distinctly the system of many buildings of the kind which I have above
called Architecture of Position, that is to say, architecture of which
the greater part is intended merely to keep something in a peculiar
position; as in light-houses, and many towers and belfries. The subject
of spire and tower architecture, however, is so interesting and
extensive, that I have thoughts of writing a detached essay upon it,
and, at all events, cannot enter upon it here: but this much is enough
for the reader to note for our present purpose, that, although many
towers do in reality stand on piers or shafts, as the central towers of
cathedrals, yet the expression of all of them, and the real structure of
the best and strongest, are the elevation of gradually diminishing
weight on massy or even solid foundation. Nevertheless, since the tower
is in its origin a building for strength of defence, and faithfulness of
watch, rather than splendor of aspect, its true expression is of just so
much diminution of weight upwards as may be necessary to its fully
balanced strength, not a jot more. There must be no light-headedness in
your noble tower: impregnable foundation, wrathful crest, with the vizor
down, and the dark vigilance seen through the clefts of it; not the
filigree crown or embroidered cap. No towers are so grand as the
square-browed ones, with massy cornices and rent battlements: next to
these come the fantastic towers, with their various forms of steep roof;
the best, not the cone, but the plain gable thrown very high; last of
all in my mind (of good towers), those with spires or crowns, though
these, of course, are fittest for ecclesiastical purposes, and capable
of the richest ornament. The paltry four or eight pinnacled things we
call towers in England (as in York Minster), are mere confectioner's
Gothic, and not worth classing.
§ XII. But, in all of them, this I believe to be a point of chief
necessity,--that they shall seem to stand, and shall verily stand, in
their own strength; not by help of buttresses nor artful balancings on
this side and on that. Your noble tower must need no help, must be
sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of
decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings,
or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to
do this; it is to be itself a bulwark, not to be sustained by other
bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh
toward Damascus," like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its
nurse's arms. A tower may, indeed, have a kind of buttress, a
projection, or subordinate tower at each of its angles; but these are to
its main body like the satellites to a shaft, joined with its strength,
and associated in its uprightness, part of the tower itself: exactly in
the proportion in which they lose their massive unity with its body and
assume the form of true buttress walls set on its angles, the tower
loses its dignity.
§ XIII. These two characters, then, are common to all noble towers,
however otherwise different in purpose or feature,--the first, that they
rise from massy foundation to lighter summits, frowning with battlements
perhaps, but yet evidently more pierced and thinner in wall than
beneath, and, in most ecclesiastical examples, divided into rich open
work: the second, that whatever the form of the tower, it shall not
appear to stand by help of buttresses. It follows from the first
condition, as indeed it would have followed from ordinary æsthetic
requirements, that we shall have continual variation in the arrangements
of the stories, and the larger number of apertures towards the top,--a
condition exquisitely carried out in the old Lombardic towers, in which,
however small they may be, the number of apertures is always regularly
increased towards the summit; generally one window in the lowest
stories, two in the second, then three, five, and six; often, also,
one, two, four, and six, with beautiful symmetries of placing, not at
present to our purpose. We may sufficiently exemplify the general laws
of tower building by placing side by side, drawn to the same scale, a
mediæval tower, in which most of them are simply and unaffectedly
observed, and one of our own modern towers, in which every one of them
is violated, in small space, convenient for comparison. (Plate VI.)
[Illustration: Plate VI.
TYPES OF TOWERS.
BRITISH VENETIAN.]
§ XIV. The old tower is that of St. Mark's at Venice, not a very perfect
example, for its top is Renaissance, but as good Renaissance as there is
in Venice; and it is fit for our present purpose, because it owes none
of its effect to ornament. It is built as simply as it well can be to
answer its purpose: no buttresses; no external features whatever, except
some huts at the base, and the loggia, afterwards built, which, on
purpose, I have not drawn; one bold square mass of brickwork; double
walls, with an ascending inclined plane between them, with apertures as
small as possible, and these only in necessary places, giving just the
light required for ascending the stair or slope, not a ray more; and the
weight of the whole relieved only by the double pilasters on the sides,
sustaining small arches at the top of the mass, each decorated with the
scallop or cockle shell, presently to be noticed as frequent in
Renaissance ornament, and here, for once, thoroughly well applied. Then,
when the necessary height is reached, the belfry is left open, as in the
ordinary Romanesque campanile, only the shafts more slender, but severe
and simple, and the whole crowned by as much spire as the tower would
carry, to render it more serviceable as a landmark. The arrangement is
repeated in numberless campaniles throughout Italy.
§ XV. The one beside it is one of those of the lately built college at
Edinburgh. I have not taken it as worse than many others (just as I have
not taken the St. Mark's tower as better than many others); but it
happens to compress our British system of tower building into small
space. The Venetian tower rises 350 feet,[62] and has no buttresses,
though built of brick; the British tower rises 121 feet, and is built
of stone, but is supposed to be incapable of standing without two huge
buttresses on each angle. The St. Mark's tower has a high sloping roof,
but carries it simply, requiring no pinnacles at its angles; the British
tower has no visible roof, but has four pinnacles for mere ornament. The
Venetian tower has its lightest part at the top, and is massy at the
base; the British tower has its lightest part at the base, and shuts up
its windows into a mere arrowslit at the top. What the tower was built
for at all must therefore, it seems to me, remain a mystery to every
beholder; for surely no studious inhabitant of its upper chambers will
be conceived to be pursuing his employments by the light of the single
chink on each side; and, had it been intended for a belfry, the sound of
its bells would have been as effectually prevented from getting out as
the light from getting in.
§ XVI. In connexion with the subject of towers and of superimposition,
one other feature, not conveniently to be omitted from our
house-building, requires a moment's notice,--the staircase.
In modern houses it can hardly be considered an architectural feature,
and is nearly always an ugly one, from its being apparently without
support. And here I may not unfitly note the important distinction,
which perhaps ought to have been dwelt upon in some places before now,
between the _marvellous_ and the _perilous_ in apparent construction.
There are many edifices which are awful or admirable in their height,
and lightness, and boldness of form, respecting which, nevertheless, we
have no fear that they should fall. Many a mighty dome and aërial aisle
and arch may seem to stand, as I said, by miracle, but by steadfast
miracle notwithstanding; there is no fear that the miracle should cease.
We have a sense of inherent power in them, or, at all events, of
concealed and mysterious provision for their safety. But in leaning
towers, as of Pisa or Bologna, and in much minor architecture, passive
architecture, of modern times, we feel that there is but a chance
between the building and destruction; that there is no miraculous life
in it, which animates it into security, but an obstinate, perhaps vain,
resistance to immediate danger. The appearance of this is often as
strong in small things as in large; in the sounding-boards of pulpits,
for instance, when sustained by a single pillar behind them, so that one
is in dread, during the whole sermon, of the preacher being crushed if a
single nail should give way; and again, the modern geometrical
unsupported staircase. There is great disadvantage, also, in the
arrangement of this latter, when room is of value; and excessive
ungracefulness in its awkward divisions of the passage walls, or
windows. In mediæval architecture, where there was need of room, the
staircase was spiral, and enclosed generally in an exterior tower, which
added infinitely to the picturesque effect of the building; nor was the
stair itself steeper nor less commodious than the ordinary compressed
straight staircase of a modern dwelling-house. Many of the richest
towers of domestic architecture owe their origin to this arrangement. In
Italy the staircase is often in the open air, surrounding the interior
court of the house, and giving access to its various galleries or
loggias: in this case it is almost always supported by bold shafts and
arches, and forms a most interesting additional feature of the cortile,
but presents no peculiarity of construction requiring our present
examination.
We may here, therefore, close our inquiries into the subject of
construction; nor must the reader be dissatisfied with the simplicity or
apparent barrenness of their present results. He will find, when he
begins to apply them, that they are of more value than they now seem;
but I have studiously avoided letting myself be drawn into any intricate
question, because I wished to ask from the reader only so much attention
as it seemed that even the most indifferent would not be unwilling to
pay to a subject which is hourly becoming of greater practical interest.
Evidently it would have been altogether beside the purpose of this essay
to have entered deeply into the abstract science, or closely into the
mechanical detail, of construction: both have been illustrated by
writers far more capable of doing so than I, and may be studied at the
reader's discretion; all that has been here endeavored was the leading
him to appeal to something like definite principle, and refer to the
easily intelligible laws of convenience and necessity, whenever he found
his judgment likely to be overborne by authority on the one hand, or
dazzled by novelty on the other. If he has time to do more, and to
follow out in all their brilliancy the mechanical inventions of the
great engineers and architects of the day, I, in some sort, envy him,
but must part company with him: for my way lies not along the viaduct,
but down the quiet valley which its arches cross, nor through the
tunnel, but up the hill-side which its cavern darkens, to see what gifts
Nature will give us, and with what imagery she will fill our thoughts,
that the stones we have ranged in rude order may now be touched with
life; nor lose for ever, in their hewn nakedness, the voices they had of
old, when the valley streamlet eddied round them in palpitating light,
and the winds of the hill-side shook over them the shadows of the fern.
FOOTNOTES:
[60] I have spent much of my life among the Alps; but I never pass,
without some feeling of new surprise, the Chalet, standing on its
four pegs (each topped with a flat stone), balanced in the fury of
Alpine winds. It is not, perhaps, generally known that the chief use
of the arrangement is not so much to raise the building above the
snow, as to get a draught of wind beneath it, which may prevent the
drift from rising against its sides.
[61] Appendix 20, "Shafts of the Ducal Palace."
[62] I have taken Professor Willis's estimate; there being discrepancy
among various statements. I did not take the trouble to measure the
height myself, the building being one which does not come within the
range of our future inquiries; and its exact dimensions, even here,
are of no importance as respects the question at issue.
CHAPTER XX.
THE MATERIAL OF ORNAMENT.
§ I. We enter now on the second division of our subject. We have no more
to do with heavy stones and hard lines; we are going to be happy: to
look round in the world and discover (in a serious manner always,
however, and under a sense of responsibility) what we like best in it,
and to enjoy the same at our leisure: to gather it, examine it, fasten
all we can of it into imperishable forms, and put it where we may see it
for ever.
This is to decorate architecture.
§ II. There are, therefore, three steps in the process: first, to find
out in a grave manner what we like best; secondly, to put as much of
this as we can (which is little enough) into form; thirdly, to put this
formed abstraction into a proper place.
And we have now, therefore, to make these three inquiries in succession:
first, what we like, or what is the right material of ornament; then how
we are to present it, or its right treatment; then, where we are to put
it, or its right place. I think I can answer that first inquiry in this
Chapter, the second inquiry in the next Chapter, and the third I shall
answer in a more diffusive manner, by taking up in succession the
several parts of architecture above distinguished, and rapidly noting
the kind of ornament fittest for each.
§ III. I said in chapter II. § XIV., that all noble ornamentation was
the expression of man's delight in God's work. This implied that there
was an _ig_noble ornamentation, which was the expression of man's
delight in his _own_. There is such a school, chiefly degraded classic
and Renaissance, in which the ornament is composed of imitations of
tilings made by man. I think, before inquiring what we like best of
God's work, we had better get rid of all this imitation of man's, and be
quite sure we do not like _that_.
§ IV. We shall rapidly glance, then, at the material of decoration hence
derived. And now I cannot, as I before have done respecting
construction, _convince_ the reader of one thing being wrong, and
another right. I have confessed as much again and again; I am now only
to make appeal to him, and cross-question him, whether he really does
like things or not. If he likes the ornament on the base of the column
of the Place Vendôme, composed of Wellington boots and laced frock
coats, I cannot help it; I can only say I differ from him, and don't
like it. And if, therefore, I speak dictatorially, and say this is base,
or degraded, or ugly, I mean, only that I believe men of the longest
experience in the matter would either think it so, or would be prevented
from thinking it so only by some morbid condition of their minds; and I
believe that the reader, if he examine himself candidly, will usually
agree in my statements.
§ V. The subjects of ornament found in man's work may properly fall into
four heads: 1. Instruments of art, agriculture, and war; armor, and
dress; 2. Drapery; 3. Shipping; 4. Architecture itself.
1. Instruments, armor, and dress.
The custom of raising trophies on pillars, and of dedicating arms in
temples, appears to have first suggested the idea of employing them as
the subjects of sculptural ornament: thenceforward, this abuse has been
chiefly characteristic of classical architecture, whether true or
Renaissance. Armor is a noble thing in its proper service and
subordination to the body; so is an animal's hide on its back; but a
heap of cast skins, or of shed armor, is alike unworthy of all regard or
imitation. We owe much true sublimity, and more of delightful
picturesqueness, to the introduction of armor both in painting and
sculpture: in poetry it is better still,--Homer's undressed Achilles is
less grand than his crested and shielded Achilles, though Phidias would
rather have had him naked; in all mediæval painting, arms, like all
other parts of costume, are treated with exquisite care and delight; in
the designs of Leonardo, Raffaelle, and Perugino, the armor sometimes
becomes almost too conspicuous from the rich and endless invention
bestowed upon it; while Titian and Rubens seek in its flash what the
Milanese and Perugian sought in its form, sometimes subordinating
heroism to the light of the steel, while the great designers wearied
themselves in its elaborate fancy.
But all this labor was given to the living, not the dead armor; to the
shell with its animal in it, not the cast shell of the beach; and even
so, it was introduced more sparingly by the good sculptors than the good
painters; for the former felt, and with justice, that the painter had
the power of conquering the over prominence of costume by the expression
and color of the countenance, and that by the darkness of the eye, and
glow of the cheek, he could always conquer the gloom and the flash of
the mail; but they could hardly, by any boldness or energy of the marble
features, conquer the forwardness and conspicuousness of the sharp
armorial forms. Their armed figures were therefore almost always
subordinate, their principal figures draped or naked, and their choice
of subject was much influenced by this feeling of necessity. But the
Renaissance sculptors displayed the love of a Camilla for the mere crest
and plume. Paltry and false alike in every feeling of their narrowed
minds, they attached themselves, not only to costume without the person,
but to the pettiest details of the costume itself. They could not
describe Achilles, but they could describe his shield; a shield like
those of dedicated spoil, without a handle, never to be waved in the
face of war. And then we have helmets and lances, banners and swords,
sometimes with men to hold them, sometimes without; but always chiselled
with a tailor-like love of the chasing or the embroidery,--show helmets
of the stage, no Vulcan work on them, no heavy hammer strokes, no Etna
fire in the metal of them, nothing but pasteboard crests and high
feathers. And these, cast together in disorderly heaps, or grinning
vacantly over keystones, form one of the leading decorations of
Renaissance architecture, and that one of the best; for helmets and
lances, however loosely laid, are better than violins, and pipes, and
books of music, which were another of the Palladian and Sansovinian
sources of ornament. Supported by ancient authority, the abuse soon
became a matter of pride, and since it was easy to copy a heap of cast
clothes, but difficult to manage an arranged design of human figures,
the indolence of architects came to the aid of their affectation, until
by the moderns we find the practice carried out to its most interesting
results, and, as above noted, a large pair of boots occupying the
principal place in the bas-reliefs on the base of the Colonne Vendôme.
§ VI. A less offensive, because singularly grotesque, example of the
abuse at its height, occurs in the Hôtel des Invalides, where the dormer
windows are suits of armor down to the bottom of the corselet, crowned
by the helmet, and with the window in the middle of the breast.
Instruments of agriculture and the arts are of less frequent occurrence,
except in hieroglyphics, and other work, where they are not employed as
ornaments, but represented for the sake of accurate knowledge, or as
symbols. Wherever they have purpose of this kind, they are of course
perfectly right; but they are then part of the building's conversation,
not conducive to its beauty. The French have managed, with great
dexterity, the representation of the machinery for the elevation of
their Luxor obelisk, now sculptured on its base.
§ VII. 2. Drapery. I have already spoken of the error of introducing
drapery, as such, for ornament, in the "Seven Lamps." I may here note a
curious instance of the abuse in the church of the Jesuiti at Venice
(Renaissance). On first entering you suppose that the church, being in a
poor quarter of the city, has been somewhat meanly decorated by heavy
green and white curtains of an ordinary upholsterer's pattern: on
looking closer, they are discovered to be of marble, with the green
pattern inlaid. Another remarkable instance is in a piece of not
altogether unworthy architecture at Paris (Rue Rivoli), where the
columns are supposed to be decorated with images of handkerchiefs tied
in a stout knot round the middle of them. This shrewd invention bids
fair to become a new order. Multitudes of massy curtains and various
upholstery, more or less in imitation of that of the drawing-room, are
carved and gilt, in wood or stone, about the altars and other theatrical
portions of Romanist churches; but from these coarse and senseless
vulgarities we may well turn, in all haste, to note, with respect as
well as regret, one of the errors of the great school of Niccolo
Pisano,--an error so full of feeling as to be sometimes all but
redeemed, and altogether forgiven,--the sculpture, namely, of curtains
around the recumbent statues upon tombs, curtains which angels are
represented as withdrawing, to gaze upon the faces of those who are at
rest. For some time the idea was simply and slightly expressed, and
though there was always a painfulness in finding the shafts of stone,
which were felt to be the real supporters of the canopy, represented as
of yielding drapery, yet the beauty of the angelic figures, and the
tenderness of the thought, disarmed all animadversion. But the scholars
of the Pisani, as usual, caricatured when they were unable to invent;
and the quiet curtained canopy became a huge marble tent, with a pole in
the centre of it. Thus vulgarised, the idea itself soon disappeared, to
make room for urns, torches, and weepers, and the other modern
paraphernalia of the churchyard.
§ VIII. 3. Shipping. I have allowed this kind of subject to form a
separate head, owing to the importance of rostra in Roman decoration,
and to the continual occurrence of naval subjects in modern monumental
bas-relief. Mr. Fergusson says, somewhat doubtfully, that he perceives a
"_kind_ of beauty" in a ship: I say, without any manner of doubt, that a
ship is one of the loveliest things man ever made, and one of the
noblest; nor do I know any lines, out of divine work, so lovely as those
of the head of a ship, or even as the sweep of the timbers of a small
boat, not a race boat, a mere floating chisel, but a broad, strong, sea
boat, able to breast a wave and break it: and yet, with all this beauty,
ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in particular
delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty; nor does scenery of
shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it:
witness the base of the Nelson pillar. It may be, and must be sometimes,
introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just
enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the
background; never with any attempt at realisation, never with any
equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the
subject be picturesque. I shall explain this exception presently, in
speaking of imitative architecture.
§ IX. There is one piece of a ship's fittings, however, which may be
thought to have obtained acceptance as a constant element of
architectural ornament,--the cable: it is not, however, the cable
itself, but its abstract form, a group of twisted lines (which a cable
only exhibits in common with many natural objects), which is indeed
beautiful as an ornament. Make the resemblance complete, give to the
stone the threads and character of the cable, and you may, perhaps,
regard the sculpture with curiosity, but never more with admiration.
Consider the effect of the base of the statue of King William IV. at the
end of London Bridge.
§ X. 4. Architecture itself. The erroneous use of armor, or dress, or
instruments, or shipping, as decorative subject, is almost exclusively
confined to bad architecture--Roman or Renaissance. But the false use of
architecture itself, as an ornament of architecture, is conspicuous even
in the mediæval work of the best times, and is a grievous fault in some
of its noblest examples.
It is, therefore, of great importance to note exactly at what point this
abuse begins, and in what it consists.
§ XI. In all bas-relief, architecture may be introduced as an
explanation of the scene in which the figures act; but with more or less
prominence in the _inverse ratio of the importance of the figures_.
The metaphysical reason of this is, that where the figures are of great
value and beauty, the mind is supposed to be engaged wholly with them;
and it is an impertinence to disturb its contemplation of them by any
minor features whatever. As the figures become of less value, and are
regarded with less intensity, accessory subjects may be introduced, such
as the thoughts may have leisure for.
Thus, if the figures be as large as life, and complete statues, it is
gross vulgarity to carve a temple above them, or distribute them over
sculptured rocks, or lead them up steps into pyramids: I need hardly
instance Canova's works,[63] and the Dutch pulpit groups, with
fishermen, boats, and nets, in the midst of church naves.
If the figures be in bas-relief, though as large as life, the scene may
be explained by lightly traced outlines: this is admirably done in the
Ninevite marbles.
If the figures be in bas-relief, or even alto-relievo, but less than
life, and if their purpose is rather to enrich a space and produce
picturesque shadows, than to draw the thoughts entirely to themselves,
the scenery in which they act may become prominent. The most exquisite
examples of this treatment are the gates of Ghiberti. What would that
Madonna of the Annunciation be, without the little shrine into which she
shrinks back? But all mediæval work is full of delightful examples of
the same kind of treatment: the gates of hell and of paradise are
important pieces, both of explanation and effect, in all early
representations of the last judgment, or of the descent into Hades. The
keys of St. Peter, and the crushing flat of the devil under his own
door, when it is beaten in, would hardly be understood without the
respective gate-ways above. The best of all the later capitals of the
Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the
richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small
emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa
Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese."
§ XII. Shipping may be introduced, or rich fancy of vestments, crowns,
and ornaments, exactly on the same conditions as architecture; and if
the reader will look back to my definition of the picturesque in the
"Seven Lamps," he will see why I said, above, that they might only be
prominent when the purpose of the subject was partly picturesque; that
is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment
from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the
heart of the thing itself.
And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson
in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a
storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the
church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is
most fancifully complicated by the undercut cordage of the vessel.
§ XIII. In all these instances, however, observe that the permission to
represent the human work as an ornament, is conditional on its being
necessary to the representation of a scene, or explanation of an action.
On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible.
Observe, therefore, the use of manufacture as ornament is--
1. With heroic figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
2. With picturesque figure sculpture, admissible in the degree of its
picturesqueness.
3. Without figure sculpture, not admissible at all.
So also in painting: Michael Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel, would not
have willingly painted a dress of figured damask or of watered satin;
his was heroic painting, not admitting accessories.
Tintoret, Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Vandyck, would be very sorry to
part with their figured stuffs and lustrous silks; and sorry, observe,
exactly in the degree of their picturesque feeling. Should not _we_ also
be sorry to have Bishop Ambrose without his vest, in that picture of the
National Gallery?
But I think Vandyck would not have liked, on the other hand, the vest
without the bishop. I much doubt if Titian or Veronese would have
enjoyed going into Waterloo House, and making studies of dresses upon
the counter.
§ XIV. So, therefore, finally, neither architecture nor any other human
work is admissible as an ornament, except in subordination to figure
subject. And this law is grossly and painfully violated by those curious
examples of Gothic, both early and late, in the north, (but late, I
think, exclusively, in Italy,) in which the minor features of the
architecture were composed of _small models_ of the larger: examples
which led the way to a series of abuses materially affecting the life,
strength, and nobleness of the Northern Gothic,--abuses which no
Ninevite, nor Egyptian, nor Greek, nor Byzantine, nor Italian of the
earlier ages would have endured for an instant, and which strike me with
renewed surprise whenever I pass beneath a portal of thirteenth century
Northern Gothic, associated as they are with manifestations of exquisite
feeling and power in other directions. The porches of Bourges, Amiens,
Notre Dame of Paris, and Notre Dame of Dijon, may be noted as
conspicuous in error: small models of feudal towers with diminutive
windows and battlements, of cathedral spires with scaly pinnacles, mixed
with temple pediments and nondescript edifices of every kind, are
crowded together over the recess of the niche into a confused fool's cap
for the saint below. Italian Gothic is almost entirely free from the
taint of this barbarism until the Renaissance period, when it becomes
rampant in the cathedral of Como and Certosa of Pavia; and at Venice we
find the Renaissance churches decorated with models of fortifications
like those in the Repository at Woolwich, or inlaid with mock arcades in
pseudo-perspective, copied from gardeners' paintings at the ends of
conservatories.
§ XV. I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all ornament is
base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly
base,--painful to every rightly-toned mind, without perhaps immediate
sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we _do_ think
of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for admiration, is a
miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings,
when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament
is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's delight in
God's work.
§ XVI. For observe, the function of ornament is to make you happy. Now
in what are you rightly happy? Not in thinking of what you have done
yourself; not in your own pride, not your own birth; not in your own
being, or your own will, but in looking at God; watching what He does,
what He is; and obeying His law, and yielding yourself to His will.
You are to be made happy by ornaments; therefore they must be the
expression of all this. Not copies of your own handiwork; not boastings
of your own grandeur; not heraldries; not king's arms, nor any
creature's arms, but God's arm, seen in His work. Not manifestation of
your delight in your own laws, or your own liberties, or your own
inventions; but in divine laws, constant, daily, common laws;--not
Composite laws, nor Doric laws, nor laws of the five orders, but of the
Ten Commandments.
§ XVII. Then the proper material of ornament will be whatever God has
created; and its proper treatment, that which seems in accordance with
or symbolical of His laws. And, for material, we shall therefore have,
first, the abstract lines which are most frequent in nature; and then,
from lower to higher, the whole range of systematised inorganic and
organic forms. We shall rapidly glance in order at their kinds; and,
however absurd the elemental division of inorganic matter by the
ancients may seem to the modern chemist, it is one so grand and simple
for arrangements of external appearances, that I shall here follow it;
noticing first, after abstract lines, the imitable forms of the four
elements, of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air, and then those of animal
organisms. It may be convenient to the reader to have the order stated
in a clear succession at first, thus:--
1. Abstract lines.
2. Forms of Earth (Crystals).
3. Forms of Water (Waves).
4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays).
5. Forms of Air (Clouds).
6. (Organic forms.) Shells.
7. Fish.
8. Reptiles and insects.
9. Vegetation (A.) Stems and Trunks.
10. Vegetation (B.) Foliage.
11. Birds.
12. Mammalian animals and Man.
It may be objected that clouds are a form of moisture, not of air. They
are, however, a perfect expression of aërial states and currents, and
may sufficiently well stand for the element they move in. And I have put
vegetation apparently somewhat out of its place, owing to its vast
importance as a means of decoration, and its constant association with
birds and men.
§ XVIII. 1. Abstract lines. I have not with lines named also shades and
colors, for this evident reason, that there are no such things as
abstract shadows, irrespective of the forms which exhibit them, and
distinguished in their own nature from each other; and that the
arrangement of shadows, in greater or less quantity, or in certain
harmonical successions, is an affair of treatment, not of selection. And
when we use abstract colors, we are in fact using a part of nature
herself,--using a quality of her light, correspondent with that of the
air, to carry sound; and the arrangement of color in harmonious masses
is again a matter of treatment, not selection. Yet even in this separate
art of coloring, as referred to architecture, it is very notable that
the best tints are always those of natural stones. These can hardly be
wrong; I think I never yet saw an offensive introduction of the natural
colors of marble and precious stones, unless in small mosaics, and in
one or two glaring instances of the resolute determination to produce
something ugly at any cost. On the other hand, I have most assuredly
never yet seen a painted building, ancient or modern, which seemed to me
quite right.
§ XIX. Our first constituents of ornament will therefore be abstract
lines, that is to say, the most frequent contours of natural objects,
transferred to architectural forms when it is not right or possible to
render such forms distinctly imitative. For instance, the line or curve
of the edge of a leaf may be accurately given to the edge of a stone,
without rendering the stone in the least _like_ a leaf, or suggestive of
a leaf; and this the more fully, because the lines of nature are alike
in all her works; simpler or richer in combination, but the same in
character; and when they are taken out of their combinations it is
impossible to say from which of her works they have been borrowed, their
universal property being that of ever-varying curvature in the most
subtle and subdued transitions, with peculiar expressions of motion,
elasticity, or dependence, which I have already insisted upon at some
length in the chapters on typical beauty in "Modern Painters." But, that
the reader may here be able to compare them for himself as deduced from
different sources, I have drawn, as accurately as I can, on the opposite
plate, some ten or eleven lines from natural forms of very different
substances and scale: the first, _a b_, is in the original, I think, the
most beautiful simple curve I have ever seen in my life; it is a curve
about three quarters of a mile long, formed by the surface of a small
glacier of the second order, on a spur of the Aiguille de Blaitière
(Chamouni). I have merely outlined the crags on the right of it, to show
their sympathy and united action with the curve of the glacier, which is
of course entirely dependent on their opposition to its descent;
softened, however, into unity by the snow, which rarely melts on this
high glacier surface.
The line _d c_ is some mile and a half or two miles long; it is part of
the flank of the chain of the Dent d'Oche above the lake of Geneva, one
or two of the lines of the higher and more distant ranges being given in
combination with it.
[Illustration: Plate VII.
ABSTRACT LINES.]
_h_ is a line about four feet long, a branch of spruce fir. I have taken
this tree because it is commonly supposed to be stiff and ungraceful;
its outer sprays are, however, more noble in their sweep than almost any
that I know: but this fragment is seen at great disadvantage, because
placed upside down, in order that the reader may compare its curvatures
with _c d_, _e g_, and _i k_, which are all mountain lines; _e g_, about
five hundred feet of the southern edge of the Matterhorn; _i k_, the
entire slope of the Aiguille Bouchard, from its summit into the valley
of Chamouni, a line some three miles long; _l m_ is the line of the side
of a willow leaf traced by laying the leaf on the paper; _n o_, one of
the innumerable groups of curves at the lip of a paper Nautilus; _p_, a
spiral, traced on the paper round a Serpula; _q r_, the leaf of the
Alisma Plantago with its interior ribs, real size; _s t_, the side of a
bay-leaf; _u w_, of a salvia leaf; and it is to be carefully noted that
these last curves, being never intended by nature to be seen singly, are
more heavy and less agreeable than any of the others which would be seen
as independent lines. But all agree in their character of changeful
curvature, the mountain and glacier lines only excelling the rest in
delicacy and richness of transition.
§ XX. Why lines of this kind are beautiful, I endeavored to show in the
"Modern Painters;" but one point, there omitted, may be mentioned
here,--that almost all these lines are expressive of action of _force_
of some kind, while the circle is a line of limitation or support. In
leafage they mark the forces of its growth and expansion, but some among
the most beautiful of them are described by bodies variously in motion,
or subjected to force; as by projectiles in the air, by the particles of
water in a gentle current, by planets in motion in an orbit, by their
satellites, if the actual path of the satellite in space be considered
instead of its relation to the planet; by boats, or birds, turning in
the water or air, by clouds in various action upon the wind, by sails in
the curvatures they assume under its force, and by thousands of other
objects moving or bearing force. In the Alisma leaf, _q r_, the lines
through its body, which are of peculiar beauty, mark the different
expansions of its fibres, and are, I think, exactly the same as those
which would be traced by the currents of a river entering a lake of the
shape of the leaf, at the end where the stalk is, and passing out at its
point. Circular curves, on the contrary, are always, I think, curves of
limitation or support; that is to say, curves of perfect rest. The
cylindrical curve round the stem of a plant binds its fibres together;
while the _ascent_ of the stem is in lines of various curvature: so the
curve of the horizon and of the apparent heaven, of the rainbow, etc.:
and though the reader might imagine that the circular orbit of any
moving body, or the curve described by a sling, was a curve of motion,
he should observe that the circular character is given to the curve not
by the motion, but by the confinement: the circle is the consequence not
of the energy of the body, but of its being forbidden to leave the
centre; and whenever the whirling or circular motion can be fully
impressed on it we obtain instant balance and rest with respect to the
centre of the circle.
Hence the peculiar fitness of the circular curve as a sign of rest, and
security of support, in arches; while the other curves, belonging
especially to action, are to be used in the more active architectural
features--the hand and foot (the capital and base), and in all minor
ornaments; more freely in proportion to their independence of structural
conditions.
§ XXI. We need not, however, hope to be able to imitate, in general
work, any of the subtly combined curvatures of nature's highest
designing: on the contrary, their extreme refinement renders them unfit
for coarse service or material. Lines which are lovely in the pearly
film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and
those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the
substance of incumbent marble. Of all the graceful lines assembled on
Plate VII., we shall do well to be content with two of the simplest. We
shall take one mountain line (_e g_) and one leaf line (_u w_), or
rather fragments of them, for we shall perhaps not want them all. I will
mark off from _u w_ the little bit _x y_, and from _e g_ the piece _e
f_; both which appear to me likely to be serviceable: and if hereafter
we need the help of any abstract lines, we will see what we can do with
these only.
§ XXII. 2. Forms of Earth (Crystals). It may be asked why I do not say
rocks or mountains? Simply, because the nobility of these depends,
first, on their scale, and, secondly, on accident. Their scale cannot be
represented, nor their accident systematised. No sculptor can in the
least imitate the peculiar character of accidental fracture: he can obey
or exhibit the laws of nature, but he cannot copy the felicity of her
fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain
is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which
are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of
catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate
recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not
her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not
what she has violently suffered, or strangely permitted. The only uses,
therefore, of rock form which are wise in the architect, are its actual
introduction (by leaving untouched such blocks as are meant for rough
service), and that noble use of the general examples of mountain
structure of which I have often heretofore spoken. Imitations of rock
form have, for the most part, been confined to periods of degraded
feeling and to architectural toys or pieces of dramatic effect,--the
Calvaries and holy sepulchres of Romanism, or the grottoes and fountains
of English gardens. They were, however, not unfrequent in mediæval
bas-reliefs; very curiously and elaborately treated by Ghiberti on the
doors of Florence, and in religious sculpture necessarily introduced
wherever the life of the anchorite was to be expressed. They were rarely
introduced as of ornamental character, but for particular service and
expression; we shall see an interesting example in the Ducal Palace at
Venice.
§ XXIII. But against crystalline form, which is the completely
systematised natural structure of the earth, none of these objections
hold good, and, accordingly, it is an endless element of decoration,
where higher conditions of structure cannot be represented. The
four-sided pyramid, perhaps the most frequent of all natural crystals,
is called in architecture a dogtooth; its use is quite limitless, and
always beautiful: the cube and rhomb are almost equally frequent in
chequers and dentils: and all mouldings of the middle Gothic are little
more than representations of the canaliculated crystals of the beryl,
and such other minerals:
§ XXIV. Not knowingly. I do not suppose a single hint was ever actually
taken from mineral form; not even by the Arabs in their stalactite
pendants and vaults: all that I mean to allege is, that beautiful
ornament, wherever found, or however invented, is always either an
intentional or unintentional copy of some constant natural form; and
that in this particular instance, the pleasure we have in these
geometrical figures of our own invention, is dependent for all its
acuteness on the natural tendency impressed on us by our Creator to love
the forms into which the earth He gave us to tread, and out of which He
formed our bodies, knit itself as it was separated from the deep.
§ XXV. 3. Forms of Water (Waves).
The reasons which prevent rocks from being used for ornament repress
still more forcibly the portraiture of the sea. Yet the constant
necessity of introducing some representation of water in order to
explain the scene of events, or as a sacred symbol, has forced the
sculptors of all ages to the invention of some type or letter for it, if
not an actual imitation. We find every degree of conventionalism or of
naturalism in these types, the earlier being, for the most part,
thoughtful symbols; the latter, awkward attempts at portraiture.[65] The
most conventional of all types is the Egyptian zigzag, preserved in the
astronomical sign of Aquarius; but every nation, with any capacities of
thought, has given, in some of its work, the same great definition of
open water, as "an undulatory thing with fish in it." I say _open_
water, because inland nations have a totally different conception of the
element. Imagine for an instant the different feelings of an husbandman
whose hut is built by the Rhine or the Po, and who sees, day by day,
the same giddy succession of silent power, the same opaque, thick,
whirling, irresistible labyrinth of rushing lines and twisted eddies,
coiling themselves into serpentine race by the reedy banks, in omne
volubilis ævum,--and the image of the sea in the mind of the fisher upon
the rocks of Ithaca, or by the Straits of Sicily, who sees how, day by
day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them
with a green wave rearing before it; clear, crisp, ringing, merry-minded
waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as
they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of
crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. Fancy the difference of the
image of water in those two minds, and then compare the sculpture of the
coiling eddies of the Tigris and its reedy branches in those slabs of
Nineveh, with the crested curls of the Greek sea on the coins of
Camerina or Tarentum. But both agree in the undulatory lines, either of
the currents or the surface, and in the introduction of fish as
explanatory of the meaning of those lines (so also the Egyptians in
their frescoes, with most elaborate realisation of the fish). There is a
very curious instance on a Greek mirror in the British Museum,
representing Orion on the Sea; and multitudes of examples with dolphins
on the Greek vases: the type is preserved without alteration in mediæval
painting and sculpture. The sea in that Greek mirror (at least 400
B.C.), in the mosaics of Torcello and St. Mark's, on the font of St.
Frediano at Lucca, on the gate of the fortress of St. Michael's Mount in
Normandy, on the Bayeux tapestry, and on the capitals of the Ducal
Palace at Venice (under Arion on his Dolphin), is represented in a
manner absolutely identical. Giotto, in the frescoes of Avignon, has,
with his usual strong feeling for naturalism, given the best example I
remember, in painting, of the unity of the conventional system with
direct imitation, and that both in sea and river; giving in pure blue
color the coiling whirlpool of the stream, and the curled crest of the
breaker. But in all early sculptural examples, both imitation and
decorative effect are subordinate to easily understood symbolical
language; the undulatory lines are often valuable as an enrichment of
surface, but are rarely of any studied gracefulness. One of the best
examples I know of their expressive arrangement is around some figures
in a spandril at Bourges, representing figures sinking in deep sea (the
deluge): the waved lines yield beneath the bodies and wildly lave the
edge of the moulding, two birds, as if to mark the reverse of all order
of nature, lowest of all sunk in the depth of them. In later times of
debasement, water began to be represented with its waves, foam, etc., as
on the Vendramin tomb at Venice, above cited; but even there, without
any definite ornamental purpose, the sculptor meant partly to explain a
story, partly to display dexterity of chiselling, but not to produce
beautiful forms pleasant to the eye. The imitation is vapid and joyless,
and it has often been matter of surprise to me that sculptors, so fond
of exhibiting their skill, should have suffered this imitation to fall
so short, and remain so cold,--should not have taken more pains to curl
the waves clearly, to edge them sharply, and to express, by drill-holes
or other artifices, the character of foam. I think in one of the Antwerp
churches something of this kind is done in wood, but in general it is
rare.
§ XXVI. 4. Forms of Fire (Flames and Rays). If neither the sea nor the
rock can be imagined, still less the devouring fire. It has been
symbolised by radiation both in painting and sculpture, for the most
part in the latter very unsuccessfully. It was suggested to me, not long
ago,[66] that zigzag decorations of Norman architects were typical of
light springing from the half-set orb of the sun; the resemblance to the
ordinary sun type is indeed remarkable, but I believe accidental. I
shall give you, in my large plates, two curious instances of radiation
in brick ornament above arches, but I think these also without any very
luminous intention. The imitations of fire in the torches of Cupids and
genii, and burning in tops of urns, which attest and represent the
mephitic inspirations of the seventeenth century in most London
churches, and in monuments all over civilised Europe, together with the
gilded rays of Romanist altars, may be left to such mercy as the reader
is inclined to show them.
§ XXVII. 5. Forms of Air (Clouds). Hardly more manageable than flames,
and of no ornamental use, their majesty being in scale and color, and
inimitable in marble. They are lightly traced in much of the cinque
cento sculpture; very boldly and grandly in the strange Last Judgment in
the porch of St. Maclou at Rouen, described in the "Seven Lamps." But
the most elaborate imitations are altogether of recent date, arranged in
concretions like flattened sacks, forty or fifty feet above the altars
of continental churches, mixed with the gilded truncheons intended for
sunbeams above alluded to.
§ XXVIII. 6. Shells. I place these lowest in the scale (after inorganic
forms) as being moulds or coats of organism; not themselves organic. The
sense of this, and of their being mere emptiness and deserted houses,
must always prevent them, however beautiful in their lines, from being
largely used in ornamentation. It is better to take the line and leave
the shell. One form, indeed, that of the cockle, has been in all ages
used as the decoration of half domes, which were named conchas from
their shell form: and I believe the wrinkled lip of the cockle, so used,
to have been the origin, in some parts of Europe at least, of the
exuberant foliation of the round arch. The scallop also is a pretty
radiant form, and mingles well with other symbols when it is needed. The
crab is always as delightful as a grotesque, for here we suppose the
beast inside the shell; and he sustains his part in a lively manner
among the other signs of the zodiac, with the scorpion; or scattered
upon sculptured shores, as beside the Bronze Boar of Florence. We shall
find him in a basket at Venice, at the base of one of the Piazzetta
shafts.
§ XXIX. 7. Fish. These, as beautiful in their forms as they are familiar
to our sight, while their interest is increased by their symbolic
meaning, are of great value as material of ornament. Love of the
picturesque has generally induced a choice of some supple form with
scaly body and lashing tail, but the simplest fish form is largely
employed in mediæval work. We shall find the plain oval body and sharp
head of the Thunny constantly at Venice; and the fish used in the
expression of sea-water, or water generally, are always plain bodied
creatures in the best mediæval sculpture. The Greek type of the dolphin,
however, sometimes but slightly exaggerated from the real outline of the
Delphinus Delphis,[67] is one of the most picturesque of animal forms;
and the action of its slow revolving plunge is admirably caught upon the
surface sea represented in Greek vases.
§ XXX. 8. Reptiles and Insects. The forms of the serpent and lizard
exhibit almost every element of beauty and horror in strange
combination; the horror, which in an imitation is felt only as a
pleasurable excitement, has rendered them favorite subjects in all
periods of art; and the unity of both lizard and serpent in the ideal
dragon, the most picturesque and powerful of all animal forms, and of
peculiar symbolical interest to the Christian mind, is perhaps the
principal of all the materials of mediæval picturesque sculpture. By the
best sculptors it is always used with this symbolic meaning, by the
cinque cento sculptors as an ornament merely. The best and most natural
representations of mere viper or snake are to be found interlaced among
their confused groups of meaningless objects. The real power and horror
of the snake-head has, however, been rarely reached. I shall give one
example from Verona of the twelfth century.
Other less powerful reptile forms are not unfrequent. Small frogs,
lizards, and snails almost always enliven the foregrounds and leafage of
good sculpture. The tortoise is less usually employed in groups. Beetles
are chiefly mystic and colossal. Various insects, like everything else
in the world, occur in cinque cento work; grasshoppers most frequently.
We shall see on the Ducal Palace at Venice an interesting use of the
bee.
§ XXXI. 9. Branches and stems of Trees. I arrange these under a separate
head; because, while the forms of leafage belong to all architecture,
and ought to be employed in it always, those of the branch and stem
belong to a peculiar imitative and luxuriant architecture, and are only
applicable at times. Pagan sculptors seem to have perceived little
beauty in the stems of trees; they were little else than timber to them;
and they preferred the rigid and monstrous triglyph, or the fluted
column, to a broken bough or gnarled trunk. But with Christian knowledge
came a peculiar regard for the forms of vegetation, from the root
upwards. The actual representation of the entire trees required in many
scripture subjects,--as in the most frequent of Old Testament subjects,
the Fall; and again in the Drunkenness of Noah, the Garden Agony, and
many others, familiarised the sculptors of bas-relief to the beauty of
forms before unknown; while the symbolical name given to Christ by the
Prophets, "the Branch," and the frequent expressions referring to this
image throughout every scriptural description of conversion, gave an
especial interest to the Christian mind to this portion of vegetative
structure. For some time, nevertheless, the sculpture of trees was
confined to bas-relief; but it at last affected even the treatment of
the main shafts in Lombard Gothic buildings,--as in the western façade
of Genoa, where two of the shafts are represented as gnarled trunks: and
as bas-relief itself became more boldly introduced, so did tree
sculpture, until we find the writhed and knotted stems of the vine and
fig used for angle shafts on the Doge's Palace, and entire oaks and
appletrees forming, roots and all, the principal decorative sculptures
of the Scala tombs at Verona. It was then discovered to be more easy to
carve branches than leaves and, much helped by the frequent employment
in later Gothic of the "Tree of Jesse," for traceries and other
purposes, the system reached full developement in a perfect thicket of
twigs, which form the richest portion of the decoration of the porches
of Beauvais. It had now been carried to its richest extreme: men
wearied of it and abandoned it, and like all other natural and beautiful
things, it was ostracised by the mob of Renaissance architects. But it
is interesting to observe how the human mind, in its acceptance of this
feature of ornament, proceeded from the ground, and followed, as it
were, the natural growth of the tree. It began with the rude and solid
trunk, as at Genoa; then the branches shot out, and became loaded
leaves; autumn came, the leaves were shed, and the eye was directed to
the extremities of the delicate branches;--the Renaissance frosts came,
and all perished.
§ XXXII. 10. Foliage, Flowers, and Fruit. It is necessary to consider
these as separated from the stems; not only, as above noted, because
their separate use marks another school of architecture, but because
they are the only organic structures which are capable of being so
treated, and intended to be so, without strong effort of imagination. To
pull animals to pieces, and use their paws for feet of furniture, or
their heads for terminations of rods and shafts, is _usually_ the
characteristic of feelingless schools; the greatest men like their
animals whole. The head may, indeed, be so managed as to look emergent
from the stone, rather than fastened to it; and wherever there is
throughout the architecture any expression of sternness or severity
(severity in its literal sense, as in Romans, XI. 22), such divisions of
the living form may be permitted; still, you cannot cut an animal to
pieces as you can gather a flower or a leaf. These were intended for our
gathering, and for our constant delight: wherever men exist in a
perfectly civilised and healthy state, they have vegetation around them;
wherever their state approaches that of innocence or perfectness, it
approaches that of Paradise,--it is a dressing of garden. And,
therefore, where nothing else can be used for ornament, vegetation may;
vegetation in any form, however fragmentary, however abstracted. A
single leaf laid upon the angle of a stone, or the mere form or
frame-work of the leaf drawn upon it, or the mere shadow and ghost of
the leaf,--the hollow "foil" cut out of it,--possesses a charm which
nothing else can replace; a charm not exciting, nor demanding laborious
thought or sympathy, but perfectly simple, peaceful, and satisfying.
§ XXXIII. The full recognition of leaf forms, as the general source of
subordinate decoration, is one of the chief characteristics of Christian
architecture; but the two _roots_ of leaf ornament are the Greek
acanthus, and the Egyptian lotus.[68] The dry land and the river thus
each contributed their part; and all the florid capitals of the richest
Northern Gothic on the one hand, and the arrowy lines of the severe
Lombardic capitals on the other, are founded on these two gifts of the
dust of Greece and the waves of the Nile. The leaf which is, I believe,
called the Persepolitan water-leaf, is to be associated with the lotus
flower and stem, as the origin of our noblest types of simple capital;
and it is to be noted that the florid leaves of the dry land are used
most by the Northern architects, while the water leaves are gathered for
their ornaments by the parched builders of the Desert.
§ XXXIV. Fruit is, for the most part, more valuable in color than form;
nothing is more beautiful as a subject of sculpture on a tree; but,
gathered and put in baskets, it is quite possible to have too much of
it. We shall find it so used very dextrously on the Ducal Palace of
Venice, there with a meaning which rendered it right necessary; but the
Renaissance architects address themselves to spectators who care for
nothing but feasting, and suppose that clusters of pears and pineapples
are visions of which their imagination can never weary, and above which
it will never care to rise. I am no advocate for image worship, as I
believe the reader will elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am very sure
that the Protestantism of London would have found itself quite as secure
in a cathedral decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round
with bunches of ribston pippins.
§ XXXV. 11. Birds. The perfect and simple grace of bird form, in
general, has rendered it a favorite subject with early sculptors, and
with those schools which loved form more than action; but the difficulty
of expressing action, where the muscular markings are concealed, has
limited the use of it in later art. Half the ornament, at least, in
Byzantine architecture, and a third of that of Lombardic, is composed of
birds, either pecking at fruit or flowers, or standing on either side of
a flower or vase, or alone, as generally the symbolical peacock. But how
much of our general sense of grace or power of motion, of serenity,
peacefulness, and spirituality, we owe to these creatures, it is
impossible to conceive; their wings supplying us with almost the only
means of representation of spiritual motion which we possess, and with
an ornamental form of which the eye is never weary, however
meaninglessly or endlessly repeated; whether in utter isolation, or
associated with the bodies of the lizard, the horse, the lion, or the
man. The heads of the birds of prey are always beautiful, and used as
the richest ornaments in all ages.
§ XXXVI. 12. Quadrupeds and Men. Of quadrupeds the horse has received an
elevation into the primal rank of sculptural subject, owing to his
association with men. The full value of other quadruped forms has hardly
been perceived, or worked for, in late sculpture; and the want of
science is more felt in these subjects than in any other branches of
early work. The greatest richness of quadruped ornament is found in the
hunting sculpture of the Lombards; but rudely treated (the most noble
examples of treatment being the lions of Egypt, the Ninevite bulls, and
the mediæval griffins). Quadrupeds of course form the noblest subjects
of ornament next to the human form; this latter, the chief subject of
sculpture, being sometimes the end of architecture rather than its
decoration.
We have thus completed the list of the materials of architectural
decoration, and the reader may be assured that no effort has ever been
successful to draw elements of beauty from any other sources than
these. Such an effort was once resolutely made. It was contrary to the
religion of the Arab to introduce any animal form into his ornament; but
although all the radiance of color, all the refinements of proportion,
and all the intricacies of geometrical design were open to him, he could
not produce any noble work without an _abstraction_ of the forms of
leafage, to be used in his capitals, and made the ground plan of his
chased ornament. But I have above noted that coloring is an entirely
distinct and independent art; and in the "Seven Lamps" we saw that this
art had most power when practised in arrangements of simple geometrical
form: the Arab, therefore, lay under no disadvantage in coloring, and he
had all the noble elements of constructive and proportional beauty at
his command: he might not imitate the sea-shell, but he could build the
dome. The imitation of radiance by the variegated voussoir, the
expression of the sweep of the desert by the barred red lines upon the
wall, the starred inshedding of light through his vaulted roof, and all
the endless fantasy of abstract line,[69] were still in the power of his
ardent and fantastic spirit. Much he achieved; and yet in the effort of
his overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his
architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and
left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose
beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but
must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn over its evanescence.
FOOTNOTES:
[63] The admiration of Canova I hold to be one of the most deadly
symptoms in the civilisation of the upper classes in the present
century.
[64] Thus above, I adduced for the architect's imitation the
appointed stories and beds of the Matterhorn, not its irregular
forms of crag or fissure.
[65] Appendix 21, "Ancient Representations of Water."
[66] By the friend to whom I owe Appendix 21.
[67] One is glad to hear from Cuvier, that though dolphins in general
are "les plus carnassiers, et proportion gardée avec leur taille,
les plus cruels de l'ordre;" yet that in the Delphinus Delphis,
"tout l'organisation de son cerveau annonce _qu'il ne doit pas être
dépourvu de la docilité_ qu'ils (les anciens) lui attribuaient."
[68] Vide Wilkinson, vol. v., woodcut No. 478, fig. 8. The tamarisk
appears afterwards to have given the idea of a subdivision of leaf
more pure and quaint than that of the acanthus. Of late our
botanists have discovered, in the "Victoria regia" (supposing its
blossom reversed), another strangely beautiful type of what we may
perhaps hereafter find it convenient to call _Lily_ capitals.
[69] Appendix 22, "Arabian Ornamentation."
CHAPTER XXI.
TREATMENT OF ORNAMENT.
§ I. We now know where we are to look for subjects of decoration. The
next question is, as the reader must remember, how to treat or express
these subjects.
There are evidently two branches of treatment: the first being the
expression, or rendering to the eye and mind, of the thing itself; and
the second, the arrangement of the thing so expressed: both of these
being quite distinct from the placing of the ornament in proper parts of
the building. For instance, suppose we take a vine-leaf for our subject.
The first question is, how to cut the vine-leaf? Shall we cut its ribs
and notches on the edge, or only its general outline? and so on. Then,
how to arrange the vine-leaves when we have them; whether symmetrically,
or at random; or unsymmetrically, yet within certain limits? All these I
call questions of treatment. Then, whether the vine-leaves so arranged
are to be set on the capital of a pillar or on its shaft, I call a
question of place.
§ II. So, then, the questions of mere treatment are twofold, how to
express, and how to arrange. And expression is to the mind or the sight.
Therefore, the inquiry becomes really threefold:--
1. How ornament is to be expressed with reference to the mind.
2. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to the sight.
3. How ornament is to be arranged with reference to both.
§ III. (1.) How is ornament to be treated with reference to the mind?
If, to produce a good or beautiful ornament, it were only necessary to
produce a perfect piece of sculpture, and if a well cut group of flowers
or animals were indeed an ornament wherever it might be placed, the work
of the architect would be comparatively easy. Sculpture and architecture
would become separate arts; and the architect would order so many pieces
of such subject and size as he needed, without troubling himself with
any questions but those of disposition and proportion. But this is not
so. _No perfect piece either of painting or sculpture is an
architectural ornament at all_, except in that vague sense in which any
beautiful thing is said to ornament the place it is in. Thus we say that
pictures ornament a room; but we should not thank an architect who told
us that his design, to be complete, required a Titian to be put in one
corner of it, and a Velasquez in the other; and it is just as
unreasonable to call perfect sculpture, niched in, or encrusted on a
building, a portion of the ornament of that building, as it would be to
hang pictures by the way of ornament on the outside of it. It is very
possible that the sculptured work may be harmoniously associated with
the building, or the building executed with reference to it; but in this
latter case the architecture is subordinate to the sculpture, as in the
Medicean chapel, and I believe also in the Parthenon. And so far from
the perfection of the work conducing to its ornamental purpose, we may
say, with entire security, that its perfection, in some degree, unfits
it for its purpose, and that no absolutely complete sculpture can be
decoratively right. We have a familiar instance in the flower-work of
St. Paul's, which is probably, in the abstract, as perfect flower
sculpture as could be produced at the time; and which is just as
rational an ornament of the building as so many valuable Van Huysums,
framed and glazed and hung up over each window.
§ IV. The especial condition of true ornament is, that it be beautiful
in its place, and nowhere else, and that it aid the effect of every
portion of the building over which it has influence; that it does not,
by its richness, make other parts bald, or, by its delicacy, make other
parts coarse. Every one of its qualities has reference to its place and
use: _and it is fitted for its service by what would be faults and
deficiencies if it had no especial duty_. Ornament, the servant, is
often formal, where sculpture, the master, would have been free; the
servant is often silent where the master would have been eloquent; or
hurried, where the master would have been serene.
§ V. How far this subordination is in different situations to be
expressed, or how far it may be surrendered, and ornament, the servant,
be permitted to have independent will; and by what means the
subordination is best to be expressed when it is required, are by far
the most difficult questions I have ever tried to work out respecting
any branch of art; for, in many of the examples to which I look as
authoritative in their majesty of effect, it is almost impossible to say
whether the abstraction or imperfection of the sculpture was owing to
the choice, or the incapacity of the workman; and, if to the latter, how
far the result of fortunate incapacity can be imitated by prudent
self-restraint. The reader, I think, will understand this at once by
considering the effect of the illuminations of an old missal. In their
bold rejection of all principles of perspective, light and shade, and
drawing, they are infinitely more ornamental to the page, owing to the
vivid opposition of their bright colors and quaint lines, than if they
had been drawn by Da Vinci himself: and so the Arena chapel is far more
brightly _decorated_ by the archaic frescoes of Giotti, than the Stanze
of the Vatican are by those of Raffaelle. But how far it is possible to
recur to such archaicism, or to make up for it by any voluntary
abandonment of power, I cannot as yet venture in any wise to determine.
§ VI. So, on the other hand, in many instances of finished work in which
I find most to regret or to reprobate, I can hardly distinguish what is
erroneous in principle from what is vulgar in execution. For instance,
in most Romanesque churches of Italy, the porches are guarded by
gigantic animals, lions or griffins, of admirable severity of design;
yet, in many cases, of so rude workmanship, that it can hardly be
determined how much of this severity was intentional,--how much
involuntary: in the cathedral of Genoa two modern lions have, in
imitation of this ancient custom, been placed on the steps of its west
front; and the Italian sculptor, thinking himself a marvellous great man
because he knew what lions were really like, has copied them, in the
menagerie, with great success, and produced two hairy and well-whiskered
beasts, as like to real lions as he could possibly cut them. One wishes
them back in the menagerie for his pains; but it is impossible to say
how far the offence of their presence is owing to the mere stupidity and
vulgarity of the sculpture, and how far we might have been delighted
with a realisation, carried to nearly the same length by Ghiberti or
Michael Angelo. (I say _nearly_, because neither Ghiberti nor Michael
Angelo would ever have attempted, or permitted, entire realisation, even
in independent sculpture.)
§ VII. In spite of these embarrassments, however, some few certainties
may be marked in the treatment of past architecture, and secure
conclusions deduced for future practice. There is first, for instance,
the assuredly intended and resolute abstraction of the Ninevite and
Egyptian sculptors. The men who cut those granite lions in the Egyptian
room of the British Museum, and who carved the calm faces of those
Ninevite kings, knew much more, both of lions and kings, than they chose
to express. Then there is the Greek system, in which the human sculpture
is perfect, the architecture and animal sculpture is subordinate to it,
and the architectural ornament severely subordinated to this again, so
as to be composed of little more than abstract lines: and, finally,
there is the peculiarly mediæval system, in which the inferior details
are carried to as great or greater imitative perfection as the higher
sculpture; and the subordination is chiefly effected by symmetries of
arrangement, and quaintnesses of treatment, respecting which it is
difficult to say how far they resulted from intention, and how far from
incapacity.
§ VIII. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian are altogether
opposed to modern habits of thought and action; they are sculptures
evidently executed under absolute authorities, physical and mental, such
as cannot at present exist. The Greek system presupposes the possession
of a Phidias; it is ridiculous to talk of building in the Greek manner;
you may build a Greek shell or box, such as the Greek intended to
contain sculpture, but you have not the sculpture to put in it. Find
your Phidias first, and your new Phidias will very soon settle all your
architectural difficulties in very unexpected ways indeed; but until you
find him, do not think yourselves architects while you go on copying
those poor subordinations, and secondary and tertiary orders of
ornament, which the Greek put on the shell of his sculpture. Some of
them, beads, and dentils, and such like, are as good as they can be for
their work, and you may use them for subordinate work still; but they
are nothing to be proud of, especially when you did not invent them: and
others of them are mistakes and impertinences in the Greek himself, such
as his so-called honeysuckle ornaments and others, in which there is a
starched and dull suggestion of vegetable form, and yet no real
resemblance nor life, for the conditions of them result from his own
conceit of himself, and ignorance of the physical sciences, and want of
relish for common nature, and vain fancy that he could improve
everything he touched, and that he honored it by taking it into his
service: by freedom from which conceits the true Christian architecture
is distinguished--not by points to its arches.
§ IX. There remains, therefore, only the mediæval system, in which I
think, generally, more completion is permitted (though this often
because more was possible) in the inferior than in the higher portions
of ornamental subject. Leaves, and birds, and lizards are realised, or
nearly so; men and quadrupeds formalised. For observe, the smaller and
inferior subject remains subordinate, however richly finished; but the
human sculpture can only be subordinate by being imperfect. The
realisation is, however, in all cases, dangerous except under most
skilful management, and the abstraction, if true and noble, is almost
always more delightful.[70]
[Illustration: Plate VIII.
DECORATION BY DISKS.
PALAZZO DEI BADOARI PARTECIPAZZI.]
§ X. What, then, is noble abstraction? It is taking first the essential
elements of the thing to be represented, then the rest in the order of
importance (so that wherever we pause we shall always have obtained more
than we leave behind), and using any expedient to impress what we want
upon the mind, without caring about the mere literal accuracy of such
expedient. Suppose, for instance, we have to represent a peacock: now a
peacock has a graceful neck, so has a swan; it has a high crest, so has
a cockatoo; it has a long tail, so has a bird of Paradise. But the whole
spirit and power of peacock is in those eyes of the tail. It is true,
the argus pheasant, and one or two more birds, have something like them,
but nothing for a moment comparable to them in brilliancy: express the
gleaming of the blue eyes through the plumage, and you have nearly all
you want of peacock, but without this, nothing; and yet those eyes are
not in relief; a rigidly _true_ sculpture of a peacock's form could have
no eyes,--nothing but feathers. Here, then, enters the stratagem of
sculpture; you _must_ cut the eyes in relief, somehow or another; see
how it is done in the peacock on the opposite page; it is so done by
nearly all the Byzantine sculptors: this particular peacock is meant to
be seen at some distance (how far off I know not, for it is an
interpolation in the building where it occurs, of which more hereafter),
but at all events at a distance of thirty or forty feet; I have put it
close to you that you may see plainly the rude rings and rods which
stand for the eyes and quills, but at the just distance their effect is
perfect.
§ XI. And the simplicity of the means here employed may help us, both to
some clear understanding of the spirit of Ninevite and Egyptian work,
and to some perception of the kind of enfantillage or archaicism to
which it may be possible, even in days of advanced science, legitimately
to return. The architect has no right, as we said before, to require of
us a picture of Titian's in order to complete his design; neither has he
the right to calculate on the co-operation of perfect sculptors, in
subordinate capacities. Far from this; his business is to dispense with
such aid altogether, and to devise such a system of ornament as shall be
capable of execution by uninventive and even unintelligent workmen; for
supposing that he required noble sculpture for his ornament, how far
would this at once limit the number and the scale of possible buildings?
Architecture is the work of nations; but we cannot have nations of great
sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good
architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or Thorwaldsen at work upon it:
nor, even if we chose only to devote ourselves to our public buildings,
could the mass and majesty of them be great, if we required all to be
executed by great men; greatness is not to be had in the required
quantity. Giotto may design a campanile, but he cannot carve it; he can
only carve one or two of the bas-reliefs at the base of it. And with
every increase of your fastidiousness in the execution of your ornament,
you diminish the possible number and grandeur of your buildings. Do not
think you can educate your workmen, or that the demand for perfection
will increase the supply: educated imbecility and finessed foolishness
are the worst of all imbecilities and foolishnesses; and there is no
free-trade measure, which will ever lower the price of brains,--there is
no California of common sense. Exactly in the degree in which you
require your decoration to be wrought by thoughtful men, you diminish
the extent and number of architectural works. Your business as an
architect, is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men, to
think for them, and to indicate for them such expressions of your
thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the feeblest hand
can execute. This is the definition of the purest architectural
abstractions. They are the deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest
men, put into such easy letters that they can be written by the
simplest. _They are expressions of the mind of manhood by the hands of
childhood._
§ XII. And now suppose one of those old Ninevite or Egyptian builders,
with a couple of thousand men--mud-bred, onion-eating creatures--under
him, to be set to work, like so many ants, on his temple sculptures.
What is he to do with them? He can put them through a granitic exercise
of current hand; he can teach them all how to curl hair thoroughly into
croche-coeurs, as you teach a bench of school-boys how to shape
pothooks; he can teach them all how to draw long eyes and straight
noses, and how to copy accurately certain well-defined lines. Then he
fits his own great design to their capacities; he takes out of king, or
lion, or god, as much as was expressible by croche-coeurs and granitic
pothooks; he throws this into noble forms of his own imagining, and
having mapped out their lines so that there can be no possibility of
error, sets his two thousand men to work upon them, with a will, and so
many onions a day.
§ XIII. I said those times cannot now return. We have, with
Christianity, recognised the individual value of every soul; and there
is no intelligence so feeble but that its single ray may in some sort
contribute to the general light. This is the glory of Gothic
architecture, that every jot and tittle, every point and niche of it,
affords room, fuel, and focus for individual fire. But you cease to
acknowledge this, and you refuse to accept the help of the lesser mind,
if you require the work to be all executed in a great manner. Your
business is to think out all of it nobly, to dictate the expression of
it as far as your dictation can assist the less elevated intelligence:
then to leave this, aided and taught as far as may be, to its own simple
act and effort; and to rejoice in its simplicity if not in its power,
and in its vitality if not in its science.
§ XIV. We have, then, three orders of ornament, classed according to the
degrees of correspondence of the executive and conceptive minds. We have
the servile ornament, in which the executive is absolutely subjected to
the inventive,--the ornament of the great Eastern nations, more
especially Hamite, and all pre-Christian, yet thoroughly noble in its
submissiveness. Then we have the mediæval system, in which the mind of
the inferior workman is recognised, and has full room for action, but is
guided and ennobled by the ruling mind. This is the truly Christian and
only perfect system. Finally, we have ornaments expressing the endeavor
to equalise the executive and inventive,--endeavor which is Renaissance
and revolutionary, and destructive of all noble architecture.
§ XV. Thus far, then, of the incompleteness or simplicity of execution
necessary in architectural ornament, as referred to the mind. Next we
have to consider that which is required when it is referred to the
sight, and the various modifications of treatment which are rendered
necessary by the variation of its distance from the eye. I say
necessary: not merely expedient or economical. It is foolish to carve
what is to be seen forty feet off with the delicacy which the eye
demands within two yards; not merely because such delicacy is lost in
the distance, but because it is a great deal worse than lost:--the
delicate work has actually worse effect in the distance than rough work.
This is a fact well known to painters, and, for the most part,
acknowledged by the critics of painters, namely, that there is a certain
distance for which a picture is painted; and that the finish, which is
delightful if that distance be small, is actually injurious if the
distance be great: and, moreover, that there is a particular method of
handling which none but consummate artists reach, which has its effects
at the intended distance, and is altogether hieroglyphical and
unintelligible at any other. This, I say, is acknowledged in painting,
but it is not practically acknowledged in architecture; nor until my
attention was especially directed to it, had I myself any idea of the
care with which this great question was studied by the mediæval
architects. On my first careful examination of the capitals of the upper
arcade of the Ducal Palace at Venice, I was induced, by their singular
inferiority of workmanship, to suppose them posterior to those of the
lower arcade. It was not till I discovered that some of those which I
thought the worst above, were the best when seen from below, that I
obtained the key to this marvellous system of adaptation; a system
which I afterwards found carried out in every building of the great
times which I had opportunity of examining.
§ XVI. There are two distinct modes in which this adaptation is
effected. In the first, the same designs which are delicately worked
when near the eye, are rudely cut, and have far fewer details when they
are removed from it. In this method it is not always easy to distinguish
economy from skill, or slovenliness from science. But, in the second
method, a different design is adopted, composed of fewer parts and of
simpler lines, and this is cut with exquisite precision. This is of
course the higher method, and the more satisfactory proof of purpose;
but an equal degree of imperfection is found in both kinds when they are
seen close; in the first, a bald execution of a perfect design; the
second, a baldness of design with perfect execution. And in these very
imperfections lies the admirableness of the ornament.
§ XVII. It may be asked whether, in advocating this adaptation to the
distance of the eye, I obey my adopted rule of observance of natural
law. Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far
away? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture
of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent
rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away; they were shaped for
their place, high above your head; approach them, and they fuse into
vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look
at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light
is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The
child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and
heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is
to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon; dyed with the
depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it
set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and
bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the
far-off sky; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away
about its foundations, and the tide of human life, shallowed upon the
vast aërial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves
be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its
purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened
into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes
of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment.
Nor in such instances as these alone, though strangely enough, the
discrepancy between apparent and actual beauty is greater in proportion
to the unapproachableness of the object, is the law observed. For every
distance from the eye there is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different
system of lines of form; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that
distance, and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of
beauty is lost, and another succeeds, to be disorganised and reduced to
strange and incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn. If you
desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain,
you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident,
or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither;
ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen
fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire
from it, and, as your eye commands it more and more, as you see the
ruined mountain world with a wider glance, behold! dim sympathies begin
to busy themselves in the disjointed mass; line binds itself into
stealthy fellowship with line; group by group, the helpless fragments
gather themselves into ordered companies; new captains of hosts and
masses of battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers of
foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen
risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap
could now be spared from the mystic whole.
§ XVIII. Now it is indeed true that where nature loses one kind of
beauty, as you approach it, she substitutes another; this is worthy of
her infinite power: and, as we shall see, art can sometimes follow her
even in doing this; but all I insist upon at present is, that the
several effects of nature are each worked with means referred to a
particular distance, and producing their effect at that distance only.
Take a singular and marked instance: When the sun rises behind a ridge
of pines, and those pines are seen from a distance of a mile or two,
against his light, the whole form of the tree, trunk, branches, and all,
becomes one frostwork of intensely brilliant silver, which is relieved
against the clear sky like a burning fringe, for some distance on either
side of the sun.[71] Now suppose that a person who had never seen pines
were, for the first time in his life, to see them under this strange
aspect, and, reasoning as to the means by which such effect could be
produced, laboriously to approach the eastern ridge, how would he be
amazed to find that the fiery spectres had been produced by trees with
swarthy and grey trunks, and dark green leaves! We, in our simplicity,
if we had been required to produce such an appearance, should have built
up trees of chased silver, with trunks of glass, and then been
grievously amazed to find that, at two miles off, neither silver nor
glass were any more visible; but nature knew better, and prepared for
her fairy work with the strong branches and dark leaves, in her own
mysterious way.
§ XIX. Now this is exactly what you have to do with your good ornament.
It may be that it is capable of being approached, as well as likely to
be seen far away, and then it ought to have microscopic qualities, as
the pine leaves have, which will bear approach. But your calculation of
its purpose is for a glory to be produced at a given distance; it may be
here, or may be there, but it is a _given_ distance; and the excellence
of the ornament depends upon its fitting that distance, and being seen
better there than anywhere else, and having a particular function and
form which it can only discharge and assume there. You are never to say
that ornament has great merit because "you cannot see the beauty of it
here;" but, it has great merit because "you _can_ see its beauty _here
only_." And to give it this merit is just about as difficult a task as I
could well set you. I have above noted the two ways in which it is done:
the one, being merely rough cutting, may be passed over; the other,
which is scientific alteration of design, falls, itself, into two great
branches, Simplification and Emphasis.
A word or two is necessary on each of these heads.
§ XX. When an ornamental work is intended to be seen near, if its
composition be indeed fine, the subdued and delicate portions of the
design lead to, and unite, the energetic parts, and those energetic
parts form with the rest a whole, in which their own immediate relations
to each other are not perceived. Remove this design to a distance, and
the connecting delicacies vanish, the energies alone remain, now either
disconnected altogether, or assuming with each other new relations,
which, not having been intended by the designer, will probably be
painful. There is a like, and a more palpable, effect, in the retirement
of a band of music in which the instruments are of very unequal powers;
the fluting and fifeing expire, the drumming remains, and that in a
painful arrangement, as demanding something which is unheard. In like
manner, as the designer at arm's length removes or elevates his work,
fine gradations, and roundings, and incidents, vanish, and a totally
unexpected arrangement is established between the remainder of the
markings, certainly confused, and in all probability painful.
§ XXI. The art of architectural design is therefore, first, the
preparation for this beforehand, the rejection of all the delicate
passages as worse than useless, and the fixing the thought upon the
arrangement of the features which will remain visible far away. Nor does
this always imply a diminution of resource; for, while it may be assumed
as a law that fine modulation of surface in light becomes quickly
invisible as the object retires, there are a softness and mystery given
to the harder markings, which enable them to be safely used as media of
expression. There is an exquisite example of this use, in the head of
the Adam of the Ducal Palace. It is only at the height of 17 or 18 feet
above the eye; nevertheless, the sculptor felt it was no use to trouble
himself about drawing the corners of the mouth, or the lines of the
lips, delicately, at that distance; his object has been to mark them
clearly, and to prevent accidental shadows from concealing them, or
altering their expression. The lips are cut thin and sharp, so that
their line cannot be mistaken, and a good deep drill-hole struck into
the angle of the mouth; the eye is anxious and questioning, and one is
surprised, from below, to perceive a kind of darkness in the iris of it,
neither like color, nor like a circular furrow. The expedient can only
be discovered by ascending to the level of the head; it is one which
would have been quite inadmissible except in distant work, six
drill-holes cut into the iris, round a central one for the pupil.
§ XXII. By just calculation, like this, of the means at our disposal, by
beautiful arrangement of the prominent features, and by choice of
different subjects for different places, choosing the broadest forms for
the farthest distance, it is possible to give the impression, not only
of perfection, but of an exquisite delicacy, to the most distant
ornament. And this is the true sign of the right having been done, and
the utmost possible power attained:--The spectator should be satisfied
to stay in his place, feeling the decoration, wherever it may be,
equally rich, full, and lovely: not desiring to climb the steeples in
order to examine it, but sure that he has it all, where he is. Perhaps
the capitals of the cathedral of Genoa are the best instances of
absolute perfection in this kind: seen from below, they appear as rich
as the frosted silver of the Strada degli Orefici; and the nearer you
approach them, the less delicate they seem.
§ XXIII. This is, however, not the only mode, though the best, in which
ornament is adapted for distance. The other is emphasis,--the unnatural
insisting upon explanatory lines, where the subject would otherwise
become unintelligible. It is to be remembered that, by a deep and narrow
incision, an architect has the power, at least in sunshine, of drawing a
black line on stone, just as vigorously as it can be drawn with chalk on
grey paper; and that he may thus, wherever and in the degree that he
chooses, substitute _chalk sketching_ for sculpture. They are curiously
mingled by the Romans. The bas-reliefs of the Arc d'Orange are small,
and would be confused, though in bold relief, if they depended for
intelligibility on the relief only; but each figure is outlined by a
strong _incision_ at its edge into the background, and all the ornaments
on the armor are simply drawn with incised lines, and not cut out at
all. A similar use of lines is made by the Gothic nations in all their
early sculpture, and with delicious effect. Now, to draw a mere
pattern--as, for instance, the bearings of a shield--with these simple
incisions, would, I suppose, occupy an able sculptor twenty minutes or
half an hour; and the pattern is then clearly seen, under all
circumstances of light and shade; there can be no mistake about it, and
no missing it. To carve out the bearings in due and finished relief
would occupy a long summer's day, and the results would be feeble and
indecipherable in the best lights, and in some lights totally and
hopelessly invisible, ignored, non-existant. Now the Renaissance
architects, and our modern ones, despise the simple expedient of the
rough Roman or barbarian. They do not care to be understood. They care
only to speak finely, and be thought great orators, if one could only
hear them. So I leave you to choose between the old men, who took
minutes to tell things plainly, and the modern men, who take days to
tell them unintelligibly.
§ XXIV. All expedients of this kind, both of simplification and energy,
for the expression of details at a distance where their actual forms
would have been invisible, but more especially this linear method, I
shall call Proutism; for the greatest master of the art in modern times
has been Samuel Prout. He actually takes up buildings of the later times
in which the ornament has been too refined for its place, and
translates it into the energised linear ornament of earlier art: and to
this power of taking the life and essence of decoration, and putting it
into a perfectly intelligible form, when its own fulness would have been
confused, is owing the especial power of his drawings. Nothing can be
more closely analogous than the method with which an old Lombard uses
his chisel, and that with which Prout uses the reed-pen; and we shall
see presently farther correspondence in their feeling about the
enrichment of luminous surfaces.
§ XXV. Now, all that has been hitherto said refers to ornament whose
distance is fixed, or nearly so; as when it is at any considerable
height from the ground, supposing the spectator to desire to see it, and
to get as near it as he can. But the distance of ornament is never fixed
to the _general_ spectator. The tower of a cathedral is bound to look
well, ten miles off, or five miles, or half a mile, or within fifty
yards. The ornaments of its top have fixed distances, compared with
those of its base; but quite unfixed distances in their relation to the
great world: and the ornaments of the base have no fixed distance at
all. They are bound to look well from the other side of the cathedral
close, and to look equally well, or better, as we enter the cathedral
door. How are we to manage this?
§ XXVI. As nature manages it. I said above, § XVII., that for every
distance from the eye there was a different system of form in all
natural objects: this is to be so then in architecture. The lesser
ornament is to be grafted on the greater, and third or fourth orders of
ornaments upon this again, as need may be, until we reach the limits of
possible sight; each order of ornament being adapted for a different
distance: first, for example, the great masses,--the buttresses and
stories and black windows and broad cornices of the tower, which give it
make, and organism, as it rises over the horizon, half a score of miles
away: then the traceries and shafts and pinnacles, which give it
richness as we approach: then the niches and statues and knobs and
flowers, which we can only see when we stand beneath it. At this third
order of ornament, we may pause, in the upper portions; but on the
roofs of the niches, and the robes of the statues, and the rolls of the
mouldings, comes a fourth order of ornament, as delicate as the eye can
follow, when any of these features may be approached.
§ XXVII. All good ornamentation is thus arborescent, as it were, one
class of it branching out of another and sustained by it; and its
nobility consists in this, that whatever order or class of it we may be
contemplating, we shall find it subordinated to a greater, simpler, and
more powerful; and if we then contemplate the greater order, we shall
find it again subordinated to a greater still; until the greatest can
only be quite grasped by retiring to the limits of distance commanding
it.
And if this subordination be not complete, the ornament is bad: if the
figurings and chasings and borderings of a dress be not subordinated to
the folds of it,--if the folds are not subordinate to the action and
mass of the figure,--if this action and mass not to the divisions of the
recesses and shafts among which it stands,--if these not to the shadows
of the great arches and buttresses of the whole building, in each case
there is error; much more if all be contending with each other and
striving for attention at the same time.
§ XXVIII. It is nevertheless evident, that, however perfect this
distribution, there cannot be orders adapted to _every_ distance of the
spectator. Between the ranks of ornament there must always be a bold
separation; and there must be many intermediate distances, where we are
too far off to see the lesser rank clearly, and yet too near to grasp
the next higher rank wholly: and at all these distances the spectator
will feel himself ill-placed, and will desire to go nearer or farther
away. This must be the case in all noble work, natural or artificial. It
is exactly the same with respect to Rouen cathedral or the Mont Blanc.
We like to see them from the other side of the Seine, or of the lake of
Geneva; from the Marché aux Fleurs, or the Valley of Chamouni; from the
parapets of the apse, or the crags of the Montagne de la Côte: but there
are intermediate distances which dissatisfy us in either case, and from
which one is in haste either to advance or to retire.
§ XXIX. Directly opposed to this ordered, disciplined, well officered
and variously ranked ornament, this type of divine, and therefore of all
good human government, is the democratic ornament, in which all is
equally influential, and has equal office and authority; that is to say,
none of it any office nor authority, but a life of continual struggle
for independence and notoriety, or of gambling for chance regards. The
English perpendicular work is by far the worst of this kind that I know;
its main idea, or decimal fraction of an idea, being to cover its walls
with dull, successive, eternity of reticulation, to fill with equal
foils the equal interstices between the equal bars, and charge the
interminable blanks with statues and rosettes, invisible at a distance,
and uninteresting near.
The early Lombardic, Veronese, and Norman work is the exact reverse of
this; being divided first into large masses, and these masses covered
with minute chasing and surface work, which fill them with interest, and
yet do not disturb nor divide their greatness. The lights are kept broad
and bright, and yet are found on near approach to be charged with
intricate design. This, again, is a part of the great system of
treatment which I shall hereafter call "Proutism;" much of what is
thought mannerism and imperfection in Prout's work, being the result of
his determined resolution that minor details shall never break up his
large masses of light.
§ XXX. Such are the main principles to be observed in the adaptation of
ornament to the sight. We have lastly to inquire by what method, and in
what quantities, the ornament, thus adapted to mental contemplation, and
prepared for its physical position, may most wisely be arranged. I think
the method ought first to be considered, and the quantity last; for the
advisable quantity depends upon the method.
§ XXXI. It was said above, that the proper treatment or arrangement of
ornament was that which expressed the laws and ways of Deity. Now, the
subordination of visible orders to each other, just noted, is one
expression of these. But there may also--must also--be a subordination
and obedience of the parts of each order to some visible law, out of
itself, but having reference to itself only (not to any upper order):
some law which shall not oppress, but guide, limit, and sustain.
In the tenth chapter of the second volume of "Modern Painters," the
reader will find that I traced one part of the beauty of God's creation
to the expression of a _self_-restrained liberty: that is to say, the
image of that perfection of _divine_ action, which, though free to work
in arbitrary methods, works always in consistent methods, called by us
Laws.
Now, correspondingly, we find that when these natural objects are to
become subjects of the art of man, their perfect treatment is an image
of the perfection of _human_ action: a voluntary submission to divine
law.
It was suggested to me but lately by the friend to whose originality of
thought I have before expressed my obligations, Mr. Newton, that the
Greek pediment, with its enclosed sculptures, represented to the Greek
mind the law of Fate, confining human action within limits not to be
overpassed. I do not believe the Greeks ever distinctly thought of this;
but the instinct of all the human race, since the world began, agrees in
some expression of such limitation as one of the first necessities of
good ornament.[72] And this expression is heightened, rather than
diminished, when some portion of the design slightly breaks the law to
which the rest is subjected; it is like expressing the use of miracles
in the divine government; or, perhaps, in slighter degrees, the relaxing
of a law, generally imperative, in compliance with some more imperative
need--the hungering of David. How eagerly this special infringement of a
general law was sometimes sought by the mediæval workmen, I shall be
frequently able to point out to the reader; but I remember just now a
most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer
close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of
flower-work--a constant Byzantine design--with an animal in each coil;
the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating,
scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and
between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail,
overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some five-and-twenty
or thirty animals; until, on a sudden, and by mutual consent, two little
beasts (not looking, for the rest, more rampant than the others), one on
each side, lay their small paws across the enclosing fillet at exactly
the same point of its course, and thus break the continuity of its line.
Two ears of corn, or leaves, do the same thing in the mouldings round
the northern door of the Baptistery at Florence.
§ XXXII. Observe, however, and this is of the utmost possible
importance, that the value of this type does not consist in the mere
shutting of the ornament into a certain space, but in the acknowledgment
_by_ the ornament of the fitness of the limitation--of its own perfect
willingness to submit to it; nay, of a predisposition in itself to fall
into the ordained form, without any direct expression of the command to
do so; an anticipation of the authority, and an instant and willing
submission to it, in every fibre and spray: not merely _willing_, but
_happy_ submission, as being pleased rather than vexed to have so
beautiful a law suggested to it, and one which to follow is so justly in
accordance with its own nature. You must not cut out a branch of
hawthorn as it grows, and rule a triangle round it, and suppose that it
is then submitted to law. Not a bit of it. It is only put in a cage, and
will look as if it must get out, for its life, or wither in the
confinement. But the spirit of triangle must be put into the hawthorn.
It must suck in isoscelesism with its sap. Thorn and blossom, leaf and
spray, must grow with an awful sense of triangular necessity upon them,
for the guidance of which they are to be thankful, and to grow all the
stronger and more gloriously. And though there may be a transgression
here and there, and an adaptation to some other need, or a reaching
forth to some other end greater even than the triangle, yet this liberty
is to be always accepted under a solemn sense of special permission; and
when the full form is reached and the entire submission expressed, and
every blossom has a thrilling sense of its responsibility down into its
tiniest stamen, you may take your terminal line away if you will. No
need for it any more. The commandment is written on the heart of the
thing.
§ XXXIII. Then, besides this obedience to external law, there is the
obedience to internal headship, which constitutes the unity of ornament,
of which I think enough has been said for my present purpose in the
chapter on Unity in the second vol. of "Modern Painters." But I hardly
know whether to arrange as an expression of a divine law, or a
representation of a physical fact, the alternation of shade with light
which, in equal succession, forms one of the chief elements of
_continuous_ ornament, and in some peculiar ones, such as dentils and
billet mouldings, is the source of their only charm. The opposition of
good and evil, the antagonism of the entire human system (so ably worked
out by Lord Lindsay), the alternation of labor with rest, the mingling
of life with death, or the actual physical fact of the division of light
from darkness, and of the falling and rising of night and day, are all
typified or represented by these chains of shade and light of which the
eye never wearies, though their true meaning may never occur to the
thoughts.
§ XXXIV. The next question respecting the arrangement of ornament is one
closely connected also with its quantity. The system of creation is one
in which "God's creatures leap not, but express a feast, where all the
guests sit close, and nothing wants." It is also a feast, where there is
nothing redundant. So, then, in distributing our ornament, there must
never be any sense of gap or blank, neither any sense of there being a
single member, or fragment of a member, which could be spared. Whatever
has nothing to do, whatever could go without being missed, is not
ornament; it is deformity and encumbrance. Away with it. And, on the
other hand, care must be taken either to diffuse the ornament which we
permit, in due relation over the whole building, or so to concentrate
it, as never to leave a sense of its having got into knots, and curdled
upon some points, and left the rest of the building whey. It is very
difficult to give the rules, or analyse the feelings, which should
direct us in this matter: for some shafts may be carved and others left
unfinished, and that with advantage; some windows may be jewelled like
Aladdin's, and one left plain, and still with advantage; the door or
doors, or a single turret, or the whole western façade of a church, or
the apse or transept, may be made special subjects of decoration, and
the rest left plain, and still sometimes with advantage. But in all such
cases there is either sign of that feeling which I advocated in the
First Chapter of the "Seven Lamps," the desire of rather doing some
portion of the building as we would have it, and leaving the rest plain,
than doing the whole imperfectly; or else there is choice made of some
important feature, to which, as more honorable than the rest, the
decoration is confined. The evil is when, without system, and without
preference of the nobler members, the ornament alternates between sickly
luxuriance and sudden blankness. In many of our Scotch and English
abbeys, especially Melrose, this is painfully felt; but the worst
instance I have ever seen is the window in the side of the arch under
the Wellington statue, next St. George's Hospital. In the first place, a
window has no business there at all; in the second, the bars of the
window are not the proper place for decoration, especially _wavy_
decoration, which one instantly fancies of cast iron; in the third, the
richness of the ornament is a mere patch and eruption upon the wall, and
one hardly knows whether to be most irritated at the affectation of
severity in the rest, or at the vain luxuriance of the dissolute
parallelogram.
§ XXXV. Finally, as regards quantity of ornament I have already said,
again and again, you cannot have too much if it be good; that is, if it
be thoroughly united and harmonised by the laws hitherto insisted upon.
But you may easily have too much if you have more than you have sense to
manage. For with every added order of ornament increases the difficulty
of discipline. It is exactly the same as in war: you cannot, as an
abstract law, have too many soldiers, but you may easily have more than
the country is able to sustain, or than your generalship is competent
to command. And every regiment which you cannot manage will, on the day
of battle, be in your way, and encumber the movements it is not in
disposition to sustain.
§ XXXVI. As an architect, therefore, you are modestly to measure your
capacity of governing ornament. Remember, its essence,--its being
ornament at all, consists in its being governed. Lose your authority
over it, let it command you, or lead you, or dictate to you in any wise,
and it is an offence, an incumbrance, and a dishonor. And it is always
ready to do this; wild to get the bit in its teeth, and rush forth on
its own devices. Measure, therefore, your strength; and as long as there
is no chance of mutiny, add soldier to soldier, battalion to battalion;
but be assured that all are heartily in the cause, and that there is not
one of whose position you are ignorant, or whose service you could
spare.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Vide "Seven Lamps," Chap. IV. § 34.
[71] Shakspeare 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 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."
[72] Some 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.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ANGLE.
§ I. We have 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) the cornice 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.
[Illustration: Fig. LI.]
§ 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, the _corner_. 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 different conditions 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 to Fig. LI., above.
There are distinguished in it six forms of moulding. Of these, _c_ is
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 member _a_, which is called a fillet; while _e_, 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 it
better 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.
[Illustration: 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 get rid of the corner altogether, and
substitutes a soft curve in its place.
[Illustration: Fig. LIII.]
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 the _Voluntariness_
of 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
section _a_, 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 forms _b_, _c_, _d_; and by describing a small equal
arc on each of the sloping lines of these figures, we get _e_, _f_, _g_,
_h_.
§ X. I do not know whether these mouldings are called by architects
chamfers or beads; but I think _bead_ a bad word for a continuous
moulding, and the proper sense of the word chamfer 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."
So I shall call the above mouldings beaded chamfers, when there is any
chance of confusion with the plain chamfer, _a_, or _b_, of Fig. LII.:
and when there is no such chance, I shall use the word chamfer only.
§ XI. Of those above given, _b_ is the constant chamfer of Venice, and
_a_ of Verona: _a_ being 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 at _a_ and _b_, Fig. LIV., _a_ being from
the angle of a house on the Rio San Zulian, and _b_ from the windows of
the church of San Stefano.
[Illustration: Fig. LIV.]
§ XII. There is, however, evidently another variety of the chamfers, _f_
and _g_, Fig. LIII., formed by an unbroken curve instead of two curves,
as _c_, Fig. LIV.; and when this, or the chamfer _d_, 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 at _e_, Fig. LIV.,
or in the hollow of the curved chamfer, as _d_, Fig. LIV. In general,
however, the shallow chamfers, _a_, _b_, _e_, and _f_, Fig. LIII., are
peculiar to southern work; and may be assumed to have been derived from
the incised 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
condition _f_, Fig. LIV., which is the favorite chamfer at Bourges and
Bayeux, and in other good French work.
I have placed in the Appendix[73] a 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_, of Fig. LII., on a large
scale, as at _a_, 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 chamfer _a_ of Fig. LII., with an incision on each edge; but the
part here shaded is often worked into ornamental forms, not being
entirely cut away.
[Illustration: Fig. LV.]
§ 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 in
_b_, 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: _f_ and _g_, 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 alternate quoins 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] Appendix 23: "Varieties of Chamfer."
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE EDGE AND FILLET.
§ I. The decoration 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,
like _c_ in Fig. 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 to hack 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
on Plate IX. at a glance.
[Illustration: Plate IX.
EDGE DECORATION.]
§ 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 profile _a_, 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 at _b_); or with
one side horizontal (5, and profile _c_). 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 this
tomb 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 in Plate 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 likeness[74] in 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 always
rich 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.[75] It 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, the _cuts_ being
taken up and decorated instead of the _points_. 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 given here 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.
[Illustration: Fig. LVI.]
§ 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 with nacre; 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.
[Illustration: Fig. LVII.]
§ XII. In Fig. 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, in Fig. 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 in Plate 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 dogtooth cannot 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 can not
otherwise describe than as being to the eye, exactly what untempered
acid is to the tongue. The mere dogtooth is an _acid_ moulding, 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?
[Illustration: Fig. LVIII.]
§ 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 the
_universality_ of this ornament was by no means the reason of its
_invention_. 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 the Greeks, 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 of Plate 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. 13[76] is 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 the _gabled_ dentil. 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 in Plate 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 seldom more 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.[77] The 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 in Plate 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] I 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.
[75] Vide the "Seven Lamps," p. 122.
[76] The 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.
[77] As, 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.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE ROLL AND RECESS.
§ I. I have classed 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 ordinary Greek
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. In Plate 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
mere entanglement 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 of the 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; such bosses 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 the _spotted_ character 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.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE BASE.
§ I. We know 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, for play 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 (or _must_ have 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 member _b_,
which in St. Mark's is subordinate, and _c_, 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 member
_e_ is 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
course _e_, above the slope of the base, than abruptly to begin the
common masonry of the wall.
§ III. It is, however, with the member _d_, 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
member _d_ itself. 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 numerous classical 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.
[Illustration: Plate X.
PROFILES OF BASES.]
§ 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;[78] the 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. | 14. Ca' Giustiniani, Venice.
2. North transept, St. Mark's, | 15. Byzantine fragment, Venice.
Venice. | 16. St. Mark's, upper Colonnade.
3. Nave, Torcello. | 17. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
4. Nave, Torcello. | 18. Ca' Falier, Venice.
5. South transept, St. Mark's. | 19. St. Zeno, Verona.
6. Northern portico, upper shafts, | 20. San Stefano, Venice.
St. Mark's. | 21. Ducal Palace, Venice (windows.)
7. Another of the same group. | 22. Nave, Salisbury.
8. Cortile of St. Ambrogio, Milan. | 23. Santa Fosca, Torcello.
9. Nave shafts, St. Michele, Pavia.| 24. Nave, Lyons Cathedral.
10. Outside wall base, St. Mark's, | 25. Notre Dame, Dijon.
Venice. | 26. Nave, Bourges Cathedral.
11. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. | 27. Nave, Mortain (Normandy).
12. Nave, Vienne, France. | 28. Nave, Rouen Cathedral.
13. Fondaco de' Turchi, Venice. |
§ 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 in general 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
in Plate VII.
The five best profiles in Plate 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.
[Illustration: Fig. LIX.]
§ 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, in Fig. 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., and _c_ the angle of the square
plinth projecting beneath it. Then the spur, applied as we saw in Chap.
VII., will be of some such form as the triangle _c 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 at p.
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 the above 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 leaf _x y_,
and try how he can best substitute it for the awkward lines _c 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 at _c 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 quadrant _a b_, or the upper edge of the
lower roll, is 2 feet 1-3/8 inches round, and the base of the spur _d
e_, is 10 inches; the line _d e_ being therefore to _a b_ as 10 to
25-3/8. In Fig. 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.
[Illustration: Fig. LX.]
§ XIII. Now, the reader is to remember, there is nothing magical 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. On Plate 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 in Plate X.; 14 is 24 in the same plate; and 15
is 28.
[Illustration: Plate XI.
PLANS OF BASES.]
§ 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 in Plate 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 inches in 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.
[Illustration: Plate XII.
DECORATION OF BASES.]
§ 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 in Plate XII. The three upper examples
are the Romanesque types, which occur as parallels with the Byzantine
types, 1 to 3 of Plate 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 of Plate XI., in
perspective). The two other bases, 10 and 12 of Plate 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, in which 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, the _centre_ of
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.
§ XVII. When the main contours of the base are once determined, its
decoration is as easy as it is infinite. I have merely given, in Plate
XII., three examples to which I shall need to refer, hereafter. No. 9 is
a very early and curious one; the decoration of the base 6 in Plate XI.,
representing a leaf turned over and flattened down; or, rather, the idea
of the turned leaf, worked as well as could be imagined on the flat
contour of the spur. Then 10 is the perfect, but simplest possible
development of the same idea, from the earliest bases of the upper
colonnade of the Ducal Palace, that is to say, the bases of the sea
façade; and 7 and 8 are its lateral profile and transverse section.
Finally, 11 and 12 are two of the spurs of the later shafts of the same
colonnade on the Piazzetta side (No. 12 of Plate XI.). No. 11 occurs on
one of these shafts only, and is singularly beautiful. I suspect it to
be earlier than the other, which is the characteristic base of the rest
of the series, and already shows the loose, sensual, ungoverned
character of fifteenth century ornament in the dissoluteness of its
rolling.
§ XVIII. I merely give these as examples ready to my hand, and necessary
for future reference; not as in anywise representative of the variety of
the Italian treatment of the general contour, far less of the endless
caprices of the North. The most beautiful base I ever saw, on the whole,
is a Byzantine one in the Baptistery of St. Mark's, in which the spur
profile approximates to that of No. 10 in Plate XI.; but it is formed by
a cherub, who sweeps downwards on the wing. His two wings, as they half
close, form the upper part of the spur, and the rise of it in the front
is formed by exactly the action of Alichino, swooping on the pitch lake:
"quei drizzo, volando, suso il petto." But it requires noble management
to confine such a fancy within such limits. The greater number of the
best bases are formed of leaves; and the reader may amuse himself as he
will by endless inventions of them, from types which he may gather among
the weeds at the nearest roadside. The value of the vegetable form is
especially here, as above noted, Chap. XX., § XXXII., its capability of
unity with the mass of the base, and of being suggested by few lines;
none but the Northern Gothic architects are able to introduce entire
animal forms in this position with perfect success. There is a beautiful
instance at the north door of the west front of Rouen; a lizard pausing
and curling himself round a little in the angle; one expects him the
next instant to lash round the shaft and vanish: and we may with
advantage compare this base with those of Renaissance Scuola di San
Rocca[79] at Venice, in which the architect, imitating the mediæval
bases, which he did not understand, has put an elephant, four inches
higher, in the same position.
§ XIX. I have not in this chapter spoken at all of the profiles which
are given in Northern architecture to the projections of the lower
members of the base, _b_ and _c_ in Fig. II., nor of the methods in
which both these, and the rolls of the mouldings in Plate X., are
decorated, especially in Roman architecture, with superadded chain work
or chasing of various patterns. Of the first I have not spoken, because
I shall have no occasion to allude to them in the following essay; nor
of the second, because I consider them barbarisms. Decorated rolls and
decorated ogee profiles, such, for instance, as the base of the Arc de
l'Etoile at Paris, are among the richest and farthest refinements of
decorative appliances; and they ought always to be reserved for jambs,
cornices, and archivolts: if you begin with them in the base, you have
no power of refining your decorations as you ascend, and, which is still
worse, you put your most delicate work on the jutting portions of the
foundation,--the very portions which are most exposed to abrasion. The
best expression of a base is that of stern endurance,--the look of being
able to bear roughing; or, if the whole building is so delicate that no
one can be expected to treat even its base with unkindness,[80] then at
least the expression of quiet, prefatory simplicity. The angle spur may
receive such decoration as we have seen, because it is one of the most
important features in the whole building; and the eye is always so
attracted to it that it cannot be in rich architecture left altogether
blank; the eye is stayed upon it by its position, but glides, and ought
to glide, along the basic rolls to take measurement of their length: and
even with all this added fitness, the ornament of the basic spur is
best, in the long run, when it is boldest and simplest. The base above
described, § XVIII., as the most beautiful I ever saw, was not for that
reason the best I ever saw: beautiful in its place, in a quiet corner of
a Baptistery sheeted with jasper and alabaster, it would have been
utterly wrong, nay, even offensive, if used in sterner work, or repeated
along a whole colonnade. The base No. 10 of Plate XII. is the richest
with which I was ever perfectly satisfied for general service; and the
basic spurs of the building which I have named as the best Gothic
monument in the world (p. 141), have no ornament upon them whatever. The
adaptation, therefore, of rich cornice and roll mouldings to the level
and ordinary lines of bases, whether of walls or shafts, I hold to be
one of the worst barbarisms which the Roman and Renaissance architects
ever committed; and that nothing can afterwards redeem the effeminacy
and vulgarity of the buildings in which it prominently takes place.
§ XX. I have also passed over, without present notice, the fantastic
bases formed by couchant animals, which sustain many Lombardic shafts.
The pillars they support have independent bases of the ordinary kind;
and the animal form beneath is less to be considered as a true base
(though often exquisitely combined with it, as in the shaft on the
south-west angle of the cathedral of Genoa) than as a piece of
sculpture, otherwise necessary to the nobility of the building, and
deriving its value from its special positive fulfilment of expressional
purposes, with which we have here no concern. As the embodiment of a
wild superstition, and the representation of supernatural powers, their
appeal to the imagination sets at utter defiance all judgment based on
ordinary canons of law; and the magnificence of their treatment atones,
in nearly every case, for the extravagance of their conception. I should
not admit this appeal to the imagination, if it had been made by a
nation in whom the powers of body and mind had been languid; but by the
Lombard, strong in all the realities of human life, we need not fear
being led astray: the visions of a distempered fancy are not indeed
permitted to replace the truth, or set aside the laws of science: but
the imagination which is thoroughly under the command of the intelligent
will,[81] has a dominion indiscernible by science, and illimitable by
law; and we may acknowledge the authority of the Lombardic gryphons in
the mere splendor of their presence, without thinking idolatry an excuse
for mechanical misconstruction, or dreading to be called upon, in other
cases, to admire a systemless architecture, because it may happen to
have sprung from an irrational religion.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] Another most important reason for the peculiar sufficiency and
value of this base, especially as opposed to the bulging forms of
the single or double roll, without the cavetto, has been suggested
by the writer of the Essay on the Æsthetics of Gothic Architecture
in the British Quarterly for August, 1849:--"The Attic base
_recedes_ at the point where, if it suffered from superincumbent
weight, it would bulge out."
[79] I have put in Appendix 24, "Renaissance Bases," my memorandum
written respecting this building on the spot. But the reader had
better delay referring to it, until we have completed our
examination of ornaments in shafts and capitals.
[80] Appendix 25, "Romanist Decoration of Bases."
[81] In all the wildness of the Lombardic fancy (described in
Appendix 8), this command of the will over its action is as distinct
as it is stern. The fancy is, in the early work of the nation,
visibly diseased; but never the will, nor the reason.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WALL VEIL AND SHAFT.
§ I. No subject has been more open ground of dispute among architects
than the decoration of the wall veil, because no decoration appeared
naturally to grow out of its construction; nor could any curvatures be
given to its surface large enough to produce much impression on the eye.
It has become, therefore, a kind of general field for experiments of
various effects of surface ornament, or has been altogether abandoned to
the mosaicist and fresco painter. But we may perhaps conclude, from what
was advanced in the Fifth Chapter, that there is one kind of decoration
which will, indeed, naturally follow on its construction. For it is
perfectly natural that the different kinds of stone used in its
successive courses should be of different colors; and there are many
associations and analogies which metaphysically justify the introduction
of horizontal bands of color, or of light and shade. They are, in the
first place, a kind of expression of the growth or age of the wall, like
the rings in the wood of a tree; then they are a farther symbol of the
alternation of light and darkness, which was above noted as the source
of the charm of many inferior mouldings: again, they are valuable as an
expression of horizontal space to the imagination, space of which the
conception is opposed, and gives more effect by its opposition, to the
enclosing power of the wall itself (this I spoke of as probably the
great charm of these horizontal bars to the Arabian mind): and again
they are valuable in their suggestion of the natural courses of rocks,
and beds of the earth itself. And to all these powerful imaginative
reasons we have to add the merely ocular charm of interlineal opposition
of color; a charm so great, that all the best colorists, without a
single exception, depend upon it for the most piquant of their pictorial
effects, some vigorous mass of alternate stripes or bars of color being
made central in all their richest arrangements. The whole system of
Tintoret's great picture of the Miracle of St. Mark is poised on the
bars of blue, which cross the white turban of the executioner.
[Illustration: Plate XIII.
WALL VEIL DECORATIONS.]
§ II. There are, therefore, no ornaments more deeply suggestive in their
simplicity than these alternate bars of horizontal colors; nor do I know
any buildings more noble than those of the Pisan Romanesque, in which
they are habitually employed; and certainly none so graceful, so
attractive, so enduringly delightful in their nobleness. Yet, of this
pure and graceful ornamentation, Professor Willis says, "a practice more
destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived:" and
modern architects have substituted for it the ingenious ornament of
which the reader has had one specimen above, Fig. III., p. 61, and with
which half the large buildings in London are disfigured, or else
traversed by mere straight lines, as, for instance, the back of the
Bank. The lines on the Bank may, perhaps, be considered typical of
accounts; but in general the walls, if left destitute of them, would
have been as much fairer than the walls charged with them, as a sheet of
white paper is than the leaf of a ledger. But that the reader may have
free liberty of judgment in this matter, I place two examples of the old
and the Renaissance ornament side by side on the opposite page. That on
the right is Romanesque, from St. Pietro of Pistoja; that on the left,
modern English, from the Arthur Club-house, St. James's Street.
§ III. But why, it will be asked, should the lines which mark the
division of the stones be wrong when they are chiselled, and right when
they are marked by color? First, because the color separation is a
natural one. You build with different kinds of stone, of which,
probably, one is more costly than another; which latter, as you cannot
construct your building of it entirely, you arrange in conspicuous bars.
But the chiselling of the stones is a wilful throwing away of time and
labor in defacing the building: it costs much to hew one of those
monstrous blocks into shape; and, when it is done, the building is
_weaker_ than it was before, by just as much stone as has been cut away
from its joints. And, secondly, because, as I have repeatedly urged,
straight lines are ugly things as _lines_, but admirable as limits of
colored spaces; and the joints of the stones, which are painful in
proportion to their regularity, if drawn as lines, are perfectly
agreeable when marked by variations of hue.
§ IV. What is true of the divisions of stone by chiselling, is equally
true of divisions of bricks by pointing. Nor, of course, is the mere
horizontal bar the only arrangement in which the colors of brickwork or
masonry can be gracefully disposed. It is rather one which can only be
employed with advantage when the courses of stone are deep and bold.
When the masonry is small, it is better to throw its colors into
chequered patterns. We shall have several interesting examples to study
in Venice besides the well-known one of the Ducal Palace. The town of
Moulins, in France, is one of the most remarkable on this side the Alps
for its chequered patterns in bricks. The church of Christchurch,
Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors (the
iron work in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the
inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the
variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.
§ V. We have yet to notice another effort of the Renaissance architects
to adorn the blank spaces of their walls by what is called Rustication.
There is sometimes an obscure trace of the remains of the imitation of
something organic in this kind of work. In some of the better French
eighteenth century buildings it has a distinctly floral character, like
a final degradation of Flamboyant leafage; and some of our modern
English architects appear to have taken the decayed teeth of elephants
for their type; but, for the most part, it resembles nothing so much as
worm casts; nor these with any precision. If it did, it would not bring
it within the sphere of our properly imitative ornamentation. I thought
it unnecessary to warn the reader that he was not to copy forms of
refuse or corruption; and that, while he might legitimately take the
worm or the reptile for a subject of imitation, he was not to study the
worm cast or coprolite.
§ VI. It is, however, I believe, sometimes supposed that rustication
gives an appearance of solidity to foundation stones. Not so; at least
to any one who knows the look of a hard stone. You may, by rustication,
make your good marble or granite look like wet slime, honeycombed by
sand-eels, or like half-baked tufo covered with slow exudation of
stalactite, or like rotten claystone coated with concretions of its own
mud; but not like the stones of which the hard world is built. Do not
think that nature rusticates her foundations. Smooth sheets of rock,
glistening like sea waves, and that ring under the hammer like a brazen
bell,--that is her preparation for first stories. She does rusticate
sometimes: crumbly sand-stones, with their ripple-marks filled with red
mud; dusty lime-stones, which the rains wash into labyrinthine cavities;
spongy lavas, which the volcano blast drags hither and thither into ropy
coils and bubbling hollows;--these she rusticates, indeed, when she
wants to make oyster-shells and magnesia of them; but not when she needs
to lay foundations with them. Then she seeks the polished surface and
iron heart, not rough looks and incoherent substance.
§ VII. Of the richer modes of wall decoration it is impossible to
institute any general comparison; they are quite infinite, from mere
inlaid geometrical figures up to incrustations of elaborate bas-relief.
The architect has perhaps more license in them, and more power of
producing good effect with rude design than in any other features of the
building; the chequer and hatchet work of the Normans and the rude
bas-reliefs of the Lombards being almost as satisfactory as the delicate
panelling and mosaic of the Duomo of Florence. But this is to be noted
of all good wall ornament, that it retains the expression of firm and
massive substance, and of broad surface, and that architecture instantly
declined when linear design was substituted for massive, and the sense
of weight of wall was lost in a wilderness of upright or undulating
rods. Of the richest and most delicate wall veil decoration by inlaid
work, as practised in Italy from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, I
have given the reader two characteristic examples in Plates XX. and XXI.
[Illustration: Fig. LXI.]
§ VIII. There are, however, three spaces in which the wall veil,
peculiarly limited in shape, was always felt to be fitted for surface
decoration of the most elaborate kind; and in these spaces are found the
most majestic instances of its treatment, even to late periods. One of
these is the spandril space, or the filling between any two arches,
commonly of the shape _a_, Fig. LXI.; the half of which, or the flank
filling of any arch, is called a spandril. In Chapter XVII., on Filling
of Apertures, the reader will find another of these spaces noted, called
the tympanum, and commonly of the form _b_, Fig. LXI.: and finally, in
Chapter XVIII., he will find the third space described, that between an
arch and its protecting gable, approximating generally to the form _c_,
Fig. LXI.
§ IX. The methods of treating these spaces might alone furnish subject
for three very interesting essays; but I shall only note the most
essential points respecting them.
(1.) The Spandril. It was observed in Chapter XII., that this portion of
the arch load might frequently be lightened with great advantage by
piercing it with a circle, or with a group of circles; and the roof of
the Euston Square railroad station was adduced as an example. One of the
spandril decorations of Bayeux Cathedral is given in the "Seven Lamps,"
Plate VII. fig. 4. It is little more than one of these Euston Square
spandrils, with its circles foliated.
[Illustration: Plate XIV.
SPANDRIL DECORATION
THE DUCAL PALACE.]
Sometimes the circle is entirely pierced; at other times it is merely
suggested by a mosaic or light tracery on the wall surface, as in the
plate opposite, which is one of the spandrils of the Ducal Palace at
Venice. It was evidently intended that all the spandrils of this
building should be decorated in this manner, but only two of them seem
to have been completed.[82]
§ X. The other modes of spandril filling may be broadly reduced to four
heads. 1. Free figure sculpture, as in the Chapter-house of Salisbury,
and very superbly along the west front of Bourges, the best Gothic
spandrils I know. 2. Radiated foliage, more or less referred to the
centre, or to the bottom of the spandril for its origin; single figures
with expanded wings often answering the same purpose. 3. Trefoils; and
4, ordinary wall decoration continued into the spandril space, as in
Plate XIII., above, from St. Pietro at Pistoja, and in Westminster
Abbey. The Renaissance architects introduced spandril fillings composed
of colossal human figures reclining on the sides of the arch, in
precarious lassitude; but these cannot come under the head of wall veil
decoration.
§ XI. (2.) The Tympanum. It was noted that, in Gothic architecture, this
is for the most part a detached slab of stone, having no constructional
relation to the rest of the building. The plan of its sculpture is
therefore quite arbitrary; and, as it is generally in a conspicuous
position, near the eye, and above the entrance, it is almost always
charged with a series of rich figure sculptures, solemn in feeling and
consecutive in subject. It occupies in Christian sacred edifices very
nearly the position of the pediment in Greek sculpture. This latter is
itself a kind of tympanum, and charged with sculpture in the same
manner.
§ XII. (3.) The Gable. The same principles apply to it which have been
noted respecting the spandril, with one more of some importance. The
chief difficulty in treating a gable lies in the excessive sharpness of
its upper point. It may, indeed, on its outside apex, receive a finial;
but the meeting of the inside lines of its terminal mouldings is
necessarily both harsh and conspicuous, unless artificially concealed.
The most beautiful victory I have ever seen obtained over this
difficulty was by placing a sharp shield, its point, as usual,
downwards, at the apex of the gable, which exactly reversed the
offensive lines, yet without actually breaking them; the gable being
completed behind the shield. The same thing is done in the Northern and
Southern Gothic: in the porches of Abbeville and the tombs of Verona.
§ XIII. I believe there is little else to be noted of general laws of
ornament respecting the wall veil. We have next to consider its
concentration in the shaft.
Now the principal beauty of a shaft is its perfect proportion to its
work,--its exact expression of necessary strength. If this has been
truly attained, it will hardly need, in some cases hardly bear, more
decoration than is given to it by its own rounding and taper curvatures;
for, if we cut ornaments in intaglio on its surface, we weaken it; if we
leave them in relief, we overcharge it, and the sweep of the line from
its base to its summit, though deduced in Chapter VIII., from
necessities of construction, is already one of gradated curvature, and
of high decorative value.
§ XIV. It is, however, carefully to be noted, that decorations are
admissible on colossal and on diminutive shafts, which are wrong upon
those of middle size. For, when the shaft is enormous, incisions or
sculpture on its sides (unless colossal also), do not materially
interfere with the sweep of its curve, nor diminish the efficiency of
its sustaining mass. And if it be diminutive, its sustaining function is
comparatively of so small importance, the injurious results of failure
so much less, and the relative strength and cohesion of its mass so much
greater, that it may be suffered in the extravagance of ornament or
outline which would be unendurable in a shaft of middle size, and
impossible in one of colossal. Thus, the shafts drawn in Plate XIII., of
the "Seven Lamps," though given as examples of extravagance, are yet
pleasing in the general effect of the arcade they support; being each
some six or seven feet high. But they would have been monstrous, as
well as unsafe, if they had been sixty or seventy.
§ XV. Therefore, to determine the general rule for shaft decoration, we
must ascertain the proportions representative of the mean bulk of
shafts: they might easily be calculated from a sufficient number of
examples, but it may perhaps be assumed, for our present general
purpose, that the mean standard would be of some twenty feet in height,
by eight or nine in circumference: then this will be the size on which
decoration is most difficult and dangerous: and shafts become more and
more fit subjects for decoration, as they rise farther above, or fall
farther beneath it, until very small and very vast shafts will both be
found to look blank unless they receive some chasing or imagery; blank,
whether they support a chair or table on the one side, or sustain a
village on the ridge of an Egyptian architrave on the other.
§ XVI. Of the various ornamentation of colossal shafts, there are no
examples so noble as the Egyptian; these the reader can study in Mr.
Roberts' work on Egypt nearly as well, I imagine, as if he were beneath
their shadow, one of their chief merits, as examples of method, being
the perfect decision and visibility of their designs at the necessary
distance: contrast with these the incrustations of bas-relief on the
Trajan pillar, much interfering with the smooth lines of the shaft, and
yet themselves untraceable, if not invisible.
§ XVII. On shafts of middle size, the only ornament which has ever been
accepted as right, is the Doric fluting, which, indeed, gave the effect
of a succession of unequal lines of shade, but lost much of the repose
of the cylindrical gradation. The Corinthian fluting, which is a mean
multiplication and deepening of the Doric, with a square instead of a
sharp ridge between each hollow, destroyed the serenity of the shaft
altogether, and is always rigid and meagre. Both are, in fact, wrong in
principle; they are an elaborate weakening[83] of the shaft, exactly
opposed (as above shown) to the ribbed form, which is the result of a
group of shafts bound together, and which is especially beautiful when
special service is given to each member.
[Illustration: Fig. LXII.]
§ XVIII. On shafts of inferior size, every species of decoration may be
wisely lavished, and in any quantity, so only that the form of the shaft
be clearly visible. This I hold to be absolutely essential, and that
barbarism begins wherever the sculpture is either so bossy, or so deeply
cut, as to break the contour of the shaft, or compromise its solidity.
Thus, in Plate XXI. (Appendix 8), the richly sculptured shaft of the
lower story has lost its dignity and definite function, and become a
shapeless mass, injurious to the symmetry of the building, though of
some value as adding to its imaginative and fantastic character. Had all
the shafts been like it, the façade would have been entirely spoiled;
the inlaid pattern, on the contrary, which is used on the shortest shaft
of the upper story, adds to its preciousness without interfering with
its purpose, and is every way delightful, as are all the inlaid shaft
ornaments of this noble church (another example of them is given in
Plate XII. of the "Seven Lamps"). The same rule would condemn the
Caryatid; which I entirely agree with Mr. Fergusson in thinking (both
for this and other reasons) one of the chief errors of the Greek
schools; and, more decisively still, the Renaissance inventions of shaft
ornament, almost too absurd and too monstrous to be seriously noticed,
which consist in leaving square blocks between the cylinder joints, as
in the portico of No. 1, Regent Street, and many other buildings in
London; or in rusticating portions of the shafts, or wrapping fleeces
about them, as at the entrance of Burlington House, in Piccadilly; or
tying drapery round them in knots, as in the new buildings above noticed
(Chap. 20, § VII.), at Paris. But, within the limits thus defined, there
is no feature capable of richer decoration than the shaft; the most
beautiful examples of all I have seen, are the slender pillars,
encrusted with arabesques, which flank the portals of the Baptistery and
Duomo at Pisa, and some others of the Pisan and Lucchese churches; but
the varieties of sculpture and inlaying, with which the small
Romanesque shafts, whether Italian or Northern, are adorned when they
occupy important positions, are quite endless, and nearly all admirable.
Mr. Digby Wyatt has given a beautiful example of inlaid work so
employed, from the cloisters of the Lateran, in his work on early
mosaic; an example which unites the surface decoration of the shaft with
the adoption of the spiral contour. This latter is often all the
decoration which is needed, and none can be more beautiful; it has been
spoken against, like many other good and lovely things, because it has
been too often used in extravagant degrees, like the well-known twisting
of the pillars in Raffaelle's "Beautiful gate." But that extravagant
condition was a Renaissance barbarism: the old Romanesque builders kept
their spirals slight and pure; often, as in the example from St. Zeno,
in Plate XVII. below, giving only half a turn from the base of the shaft
to its head, and nearly always observing what I hold to be an imperative
law, that no twisted shaft shall be single, but composed of at least two
distinct members, twined with each other. I suppose they followed their
own right feeling in doing this, and had never studied natural shafts;
but the type they _might_ have followed was caught by one of the few
great painters who were not affected by the evil influence of the
fifteenth century, Benozzo Gozzoli, who, in the frescoes of the Ricardi
Palace, among stems of trees for the most part as vertical as stone
shafts, has suddenly introduced one of the shape given in Fig. LXII.
Many forest trees present, in their accidental contortions, types of
most complicated spiral shafts, the plan being originally of a grouped
shaft rising from several roots; nor, indeed, will the reader ever find
models for every kind of shaft decoration, so graceful or so gorgeous,
as he will find in the great forest aisle, where the strength of the
earth itself seems to rise from the roots into the vaulting; but the
shaft surface, barred as it expands with rings of ebony and silver, is
fretted with traceries of ivy, marbled with purple moss, veined with
grey lichen, and tesselated, by the rays of the rolling heaven, with
flitting fancies of blue shadow and burning gold.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Vide end of Appendix 20.
[83] Vide, however, their defence in the Essay above quoted, p. 251.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CORNICE AND CAPITAL.
§ I. There are no features to which the attention of architects has been
more laboriously directed, in all ages, than these crowning members of
the wall and shaft; and it would be vain to endeavor, within any
moderate limits, to give the reader any idea of the various kinds of
admirable decoration which have been invented for them. But, in
proportion to the effort and straining of the fancy, have been the
extravagances into which it has occasionally fallen; and while it is
utterly impossible severally to enumerate the instances either of its
success or its error, it is very possible to note the limits of the one
and the causes of the other. This is all that we shall attempt in the
present chapter, tracing first for ourselves, as in previous instances,
the natural channels by which invention is here to be directed or
confined, and afterwards remarking the places where, in real practice,
it has broken bounds.
§ II. The reader remembers, I hope, the main points respecting the
cornice and capital, established above in the Chapters on Construction.
Of these I must, however, recapitulate thus much:--
1. That both the cornice and capital are, with reference to the _slope_
of their profile or bell, to be divided into two great orders; in one of
which the ornament is convex, and in the other concave. (Ch. VI., § V.)
2. That the capital, with reference to the method of twisting the
cornice round to construct it, and to unite the circular shaft with the
square abacus, falls into five general forms, represented in Fig. XXII.,
p. 119.
3. That the most elaborate capitals were formed by true or simple
capitals with a common cornice added above their abacus. (Ch. IX., §
XXIV.)
We have then, in considering decoration, first to observe the treatment
of the two great orders of the cornice; then their gathering into the
five of the capital; then the addition of the secondary cornice to the
capital when formed.
§ III. The two great orders or families of cornice were above
distinguished in Fig. V., p. 69.; and it was mentioned in the same place
that a third family arose from their combination. We must deal with the
two great opposed groups first.
They were distinguished in Fig. V. by circular curves drawn on opposite
sides of the same line. But we now know that in these smaller features
the circle is usually the least interesting curve that we can use; and
that it will be well, since the capital and cornice are both active in
their expression, to use some of the more abstract natural lines. We
will go back, therefore, to our old friend the salvia leaf; and taking
the same piece of it we had before, _x y_, Plate VII., we will apply it
to the cornice line; first within it, giving the concave cornice, then
without, giving the convex cornice. In all the figures, _a_, _b_, _c_,
_d_, Plate XV., the dotted line is at the same slope, and represents an
average profile of the root of cornices (_a_, Fig. V., p. 69); the curve
of the salvia leaf is applied to it in each case, first with its
roundest curvature up, then with its roundest curvature down; and we
have thus the two varieties, _a_ and _b_, of the concave family, and _c_
and _d_, of the convex family.
[Illustration: Plate XV.
CORNICE PROFILES.]
§ IV. These four profiles will represent all the simple cornices in the
world; represent them, I mean, as central types: for in any of the
profiles an infinite number of slopes may be given to the dotted line of
the root (which in these four figures is always at the same angle); and
on each of these innumerable slopes an innumerable variety of curves may
be fitted, from every leaf in the forest, and every shell on the shore,
and every movement of the human fingers and fancy; therefore, if the
reader wishes to obtain something like a numerical representation of the
number of possible and beautiful cornices which may be based upon these
four types or roots, and among which the architect has leave to
choose according to the circumstances of his building and the method of
its composition, let him set down a figure 1 to begin with, and write
ciphers after it as fast as he can, without stopping, for an hour.
§ V. None of the types are, however, found in perfection of curvature,
except in the best work. Very often cornices are worked with circular
segments (with a noble, massive effect, for instance, in St. Michele of
Lucca), or with rude approximation to finer curvature, especially _a_,
Plate XV., which occurs often so small as to render it useless to take
much pains upon its curve. It occurs perfectly pure in the condition
represented by 1 of the series 1-6, in Plate XV., on many of the
Byzantine and early Gothic buildings of Venice; in more developed form
it becomes the profile of the bell of the capital in the later Venetian
Gothic, and in much of the best Northern Gothic. It also represents the
Corinthian capital, in which the curvature is taken from the bell to be
added in some excess to the nodding leaves. It is the most graceful of
all simple profiles of cornice and capital.
§ VI. _b_ is a much rarer and less manageable type: for this evident
reason, that while _a_ is the natural condition of a line rooted and
strong beneath, but bent out by superincumbent weight, or nodding over
in freedom, _b_ is yielding at the base and rigid at the summit. It has,
however, some exquisite uses, especially in combination, as the reader
may see by glancing in advance at the inner line of the profile 14 in
Plate XV.
§ VII. _c_ is the leading convex or Doric type, as _a_ is the leading
concave or Corinthian. Its relation to the best Greek Doric is exactly
what the relation of _a_ is to the Corinthian; that is to say, the
curvature must be taken from the straighter limb of the curve and added
to the bolder bend, giving it a sudden turn inwards (as in the
Corinthian a nod outwards), as the reader may see in the capital of the
Parthenon in the British Museum, where the lower limb of the curve is
_all but_ a right line.[84] But these Doric and Corinthian lines are
mere varieties of the great families which are represented by the
central lines _a_ and _c_, including not only the Doric capital, but all
the small cornices formed by a slight increase of the curve of _c_,
which are of so frequent occurrence in Greek ornaments.
§ VIII. _d_ is the Christian Doric, which I said (Chap. I., § XX.) was
invented to replace the antique: it is the representative of the great
Byzantine and Norman families of convex cornice and capital, and, next
to the profile _a_, the most important of the four, being the best
profile for the convex capital, as _a_ is for the concave; _a_ being the
best expression of an elastic line inserted vertically in the shaft, and
_d_ of an elastic line inserted horizontally and rising to meet vertical
pressure.
If the reader will glance at the arrangements of boughs of trees, he
will find them commonly dividing into these two families, _a_ and _d_:
they rise out of the trunk and nod from it as _a_, or they spring with
sudden curvature out from it, and rise into sympathy with it, as at _d_;
but they only accidentally display tendencies to the lines _b_ or _c_.
Boughs which fall as they spring from the tree also describe the curve
_d_ in the plurality of instances, but reversed in arrangement; their
junction with the stem being at the top of it, their sprays bending out
into rounder curvature.
§ IX. These then being the two primal groups, we have next to note the
combined group, formed by the concave and convex lines joined in various
proportions of curvature, so as to form together the reversed or ogee
curve, represented in one of its most beautiful states by the glacier
line _a_, on Plate VII. I would rather have taken this line than any
other to have formed my third group of cornices by, but as it is too
large, and almost too delicate, we will take instead that of the
Matterhorn side, _e f_, Plate VII. For uniformity's sake I keep the
slope of the dotted line the same as in the primal forms; and applying
this Matterhorn curve in its four relative positions to that line, I
have the types of the four cornices or capitals of the third family,
_e_, _f_, _g_, _h_, on Plate XV.
These are, however, general types only thus far, that their line is
composed of one short and one long curve, and that they represent the
four conditions of treatment of every such line; namely, the longest
curve concave in _e_ and _f_, and convex in _g_ and _h_; and the point
of contrary flexure set high in _e_ and _g_, and low in _f_ and _h_. The
relative depth of the arcs, or nature of their curvature, cannot be
taken into consideration without a complexity of system which my space
does not admit.
Of the four types thus constituted, _e_ and _f_ are of great importance;
the other two are rarely used, having an appearance of weakness in
consequence of the shortest curve being concave: the profiles _e_ and
_f_, when used for cornices, have usually a fuller sweep and somewhat
greater equality between the branches of the curve; but those here given
are better representatives of the structure applicable to capitals and
cornices indifferently.
§ X. Very often, in the farther treatment of the profiles _e_ or _f_,
another limb is added to their curve in order to join it to the upper or
lower members of the cornice or capital. I do not consider this addition
as forming another family of cornices, because the leading and effective
part of the curve is in these, as in the others, the single ogee; and
the added bend is merely a less abrupt termination of it above or below:
still this group is of so great importance in the richer kinds of
ornamentation that we must have it sufficiently represented. We shall
obtain a type of it by merely continuing the line of the Matterhorn
side, of which before we took only a fragment. The entire line _e_ to
_g_ on Plate VII., is evidently composed of three curves of unequal
lengths, which if we call the shortest 1, the intermediate one 2, and
the longest 3, are there arranged in the order 1, 3, 2, counting
upwards. But evidently we might also have had the arrangements 1, 2, 3,
and 2, 1, 3, giving us three distinct lines, altogether independent of
position, which being applied to one general dotted slope will each give
four cornices, or twelve altogether. Of these the six most important are
those which have the shortest curve convex: they are given in light
relief from _k_ to _p_, Plate XV., and, by turning the page upside down,
the other six will be seen in dark relief, only the little upright bits
of shadow at the bottom are not to be considered as parts of them, being
only admitted in order to give the complete profile of the more
important cornices in light.
§ XI. In these types, as in _e_ and _f_, the only general condition is,
that their line shall be composed of three curves of different lengths
and different arrangements (the depth of arcs and radius of curvatures
being unconsidered). They are arranged in three couples, each couple
being two positions of the same entire line; so that numbering the
component curves in order of magnitude and counting upwards, they will
read--
_k_ 1, 2, 3,
_l_ 3, 2, 1,
_m_ 1, 3, 2,
_n_ 2, 3, 1,
_o_ 2, 1, 3,
_p_ 3, 1, 2.
_m_ and _n_, which are the _Matterhorn line_, are the most beautiful and
important of all the twelve; _k_ and _l_ the next; _o_ and _p_ are used
only for certain conditions of flower carving on the surface. The
reverses (dark) of _k_ and _l_ are also of considerable service; the
other four hardly ever used in good work.
§ XII. If we were to add a fourth curve to the component series, we
should have forty-eight more cornices: but there is no use in pursuing
the system further, as such arrangements are very rare and easily
resolved into the simpler types with certain arbitrary additions fitted
to their special place; and, in most cases, distinctly separate from the
main curve, as in the inner line of No. 14, which is a form of the type
_e_, the longest curve, _i.e._, the lowest, having deepest curvature,
and each limb opposed by a short contrary curve at its extremities, the
convex limb by a concave, the concave by a convex.
§ XIII. Such, then, are the great families of profile lines into
which all cornices and capitals may be divided; but their best examples
unite two such profiles in a mode which we cannot understand till we
consider the further ornament with which the profiles are charged. And
in doing this we must, for the sake of clearness, consider, first the
nature of the designs themselves, and next the mode of cutting them.
[Illustration: Plate XVI.
CORNICE DECORATION.]
§ XIV. In Plate XVI., opposite, I have thrown together a few of the most
characteristic mediæval examples of the treatment of the simplest
cornice profiles: the uppermost, _a_, is the pure root of cornices from
St. Mark's. The second, _d_, is the Christian Doric cornice, here
lettered _d_ in order to avoid confusion, its profile being _d_ of Plate
XV. in bold development, and here seen on the left-hand side, truly
drawn, though filled up with the ornament to show the mode in which the
angle is turned. This is also from St. Mark's. The third, _b_, is _b_ of
Plate XV., the pattern being inlaid in black because its office was in
the interior of St. Mark's, where it was too dark to see sculptured
ornament at the required distance. (The other two simple profiles, _a_
and _c_ of Plate XV., would be decorated in the same manner, but require
no example here, for the profile _a_ is of so frequent occurrence that
it will have a page to itself alone in the next volume; and c may be
seen over nearly every shop in London, being that of the common Greek
egg cornice.) The fourth, _e_ in Plate XVI., is a transitional cornice,
passing from Byzantine into Venetian Gothic: _f_ is a fully developed
Venetian Gothic cornice founded on Byzantine traditions; and _g_ the
perfect Lombardic-Gothic cornice, founded on the Pisan Romanesque
traditions, and strongly marked with the noblest Northern element, the
Lombardic vitality restrained by classical models. I consider it a
perfect cornice, and of the highest order.
§ XV. Now in the design of this series of ornaments there are two main
points to be noted; the first, that they all, except _b_, are distinctly
rooted in the lower part of the cornice, and spring to the top. This
arrangement is constant in all the best cornices and capitals; and it is
essential to the expression of the supporting power of both. It is
exactly opposed to the system of _running_ cornices and _banded_[85]
capitals, in which the ornament flows along them horizontally, or is
twined round them, as the mouldings are in the early English capital,
and the foliage in many decorated ones. Such cornices have arisen from a
mistaken appliance of the running ornaments, which are proper to
archivolts, jambs, &c., to the features which have definite functions of
support. A tendril may nobly follow the outline of an arch, but must not
creep along a cornice, nor swathe or bandage a capital; it is essential
to the expression of these features that their ornament should have an
elastic and upward spring; and as the proper profile for the curve is
that of a tree bough, as we saw above, so the proper arrangement of its
farther ornament is that which best expresses rooted and ascendant
strength like that of foliage.
There are certain very interesting exceptions to the rule (we shall see
a curious one presently); and in the carrying out of the rule itself, we
may see constant licenses taken by the great designers, and momentary
violations of it, like those above spoken of, respecting other
ornamental laws--violations which are for our refreshment, and for
increase of delight in the general observance; and this is one of the
peculiar beauties of the cornice _g_, which, rooting itself in strong
central clusters, suffers some of its leaves to fall languidly aside, as
the drooping outer leaves of a natural cluster do so often; but at the
very instant that it does this, in order that it may not lose any of its
expression of strength, a fruit-stalk is thrown up above the languid
leaves, absolutely vertical, as much stiffer and stronger than the rest
of the plant as the falling leaves are weaker. Cover this with your
finger, and the cornice falls to pieces, like a bouquet which has been
untied.
§ XVI. There are some instances in which, though the real arrangement is
that of a running stem, throwing off leaves up and down, the positions
of the leaves give nearly as much elasticity and organisation to the
cornice, as if they had been rightly rooted; and others, like _b_, where
the reversed portion of the ornament is lost in the shade, and the
general expression of strength is got by the lower member. This cornice
will, nevertheless, be felt at once to be inferior to the rest; and
though we may often be called upon to admire designs of these kinds,
which would have been exquisite if not thus misplaced, the reader will
find that they are both of rare occurrence, and significative of
declining style; while the greater mass of the banded capitals are heavy
and valueless, mere aggregations of confused sculpture, swathed round
the extremity of the shaft, as if she had dipped it into a mass of
melted ornament, as the glass-blower does his blow-pipe into the metal,
and brought up a quantity adhering glutinously to its extremity. We have
many capitals of this kind in England: some of the worst and heaviest in
the choir of York. The later capitals of the Italian Gothic have the
same kind of effect, but owing to another cause: for their structure is
quite pure, and based on the Corinthian type: and it is the branching
form of the heads of the leaves which destroys the effect of their
organisation. On the other hand, some of the Italian cornices which are
actually composed by running tendrils, throwing off leaves into oval
interstices, are so massive in their treatment, and so marked and firm
in their vertical and arched lines, that they are nearly as suggestive
of support as if they had been arranged on the rooted system. A cornice
of this kind is used in St. Michele of Lucca (Plate VI. in the "Seven
Lamps," and XXI. here), and with exquisite propriety; for that cornice
is at once a crown to the story beneath it and a foundation to that
which is above it, and therefore unites the strength and elasticity of
the lines proper to the cornice with the submission and prostration of
those proper to the foundation.
§ XVII. This, then, is the first point needing general notice in the
designs in Plate XVI. The second is the difference between the freedom
of the Northern and the sophistication of the classical cornices, in
connection with what has been advanced in Appendix 8. The cornices, _a_,
_d_, and _b_, are of the same date, but they show a singular difference
in the workman's temper: that at _b_ is a single copy of a classical
mosaic; and many carved cornices occur, associated with it, which are,
in like manner, mere copies of the Greek and Roman egg and arrow
mouldings. But the cornices _a_ and _d_ are copies of nothing of the
kind: the idea of them has indeed been taken from the Greek honeysuckle
ornament, but the chiselling of them is in no wise either Greek, or
Byzantine, in temper. The Byzantines were languid copyists: this work is
as energetic as its original; energetic, not in the quantity of work,
but in the spirit of it: an indolent man, forced into toil, may cover
large spaces with evidence of his feeble action, or accumulate his
dulness into rich aggregation of trouble, but it is gathered weariness
still. The man who cut those two uppermost cornices had no time to
spare: did as much cornice as he could in half an hour; but would not
endure the slightest trace of error in a curve, or of bluntness in an
edge. His work is absolutely unreproveable; keen, and true, as Nature's
own; his entire force is in it, and fixed on seeing that every line of
it shall be sharp and right: the faithful energy is in him: we shall see
something come of that cornice: The fellow who inlaid the other (_b_),
will stay where he is for ever; and when he has inlaid one leaf up, will
inlay another down,--and so undulate up and down to all eternity: but
the man of _a_ and _d_ will cut his way forward, or there is no truth in
handicrafts, nor stubbornness in stone.
§ XVIII. But there is something else noticeable in those two cornices,
besides the energy of them: as opposed either to _b_, or the Greek
honeysuckle or egg patterns, they are _natural_ designs. The Greek egg
and arrow cornice is a nonsense cornice, very noble in its lines, but
utterly absurd in meaning. Arrows have had nothing to do with eggs (at
least since Leda's time), neither are the so-called arrows like arrows,
nor the eggs like eggs, nor the honeysuckles like honeysuckles; they are
all conventionalised into a monotonous successiveness of
nothing,--pleasant to the eye, useless to the thought. But those
Christian cornices are, as far as may be, suggestive; there is not the
tenth of the work in them that there is in the Greek arrows, but, as far
as that work will go, it has consistent intention; with the fewest
possible incisions, and those of the easiest shape, they suggest the
true image, of clusters of leaves, each leaf with its central depression
from root to point, and that distinctly visible at almost any distance
from the eye, and in almost any light.
§ XIX. Here, then, are two great new elements visible; energy and
naturalism:--Life, with submission to the laws of God, and love of his
works; this is Christianity, dealing with her classical models. Now look
back to what I said in Chap. 1. § XX. of this dealing of hers, and
invention of the new Doric line; then to what is above stated (§ VIII.)
respecting that new Doric, and the boughs of trees; and now to the
evidence in the cutting of the leaves on the same Doric section, and see
how the whole is beginning to come together.
§ XX. We said that something would come of these two cornices, _a_ and
_d_. In _e_ and _f_ we see that something _has_ come of them: _e_ is
also from St. Mark's, and one of the earliest examples in Venice of the
transition from the Byzantine to the Gothic cornice. It is already
singularly developed; flowers have been added between the clusters of
leaves, and the leaves themselves curled over: and observe the
well-directed thought of the sculptor in this curling;--the old
incisions are retained below, and their excessive rigidity is one of the
proofs of the earliness of the cornice; but those incisions now stand
for the _under_ surface of the leaf; and behold, when it turns over, on
the top of it you see true _ribs_. Look at the upper and under surface
of a cabbage-leaf, and see what quick steps we are making.
§ XXI. The fifth example (_f_) was cut in 1347; it is from the tomb of
Marco Giustiniani, in the church of St. John and Paul, and it exhibits
the character of the central Venetian Gothic fully developed. The lines
are all now soft and undulatory, though elastic; the sharp incisions
have become deeply-gathered folds; the hollow of the leaf is expressed
completely beneath, and its edges are touched with light, and incised
into several lobes, and their ribs delicately drawn above. (The flower
between is only accidentally absent; it occurs in most cornices of the
time.)
But in both these cornices the reader will notice that while the
naturalism of the sculpture is steadily on the increase, the classical
formalism is still retained. The leaves are accurately numbered, and
sternly set in their places; they are leaves in office, and dare not
stir nor wave. They have the shapes of leaves, but not the functions,
"having the form of knowledge, but denying the power thereof." What is
the meaning of this?
§ XXII. Look back to the XXXIIIrd paragraph of the first chapter, and
you will see the meaning of it. These cornices are the Venetian
Ecclesiastical Gothic; the Christian element struggling with the
Formalism of the Papacy,--the Papacy being entirely heathen in all its
principles. That officialism of the leaves and their ribs means
Apostolic succession, and I don't know how much more, and is already
preparing for the transition to old Heathenism again, and the
Renaissance.[86]
§ XXIII. Now look to the last cornice (_g_). That is Protestantism,--a
slight touch of Dissent, hardly amounting to schism, in those falling
leaves, but true life in the whole of it. The forms all broken through,
and sent heaven knows where, but the root held fast; and the strong sap
in the branches; and, best of all, good fruit ripening and opening
straight towards heaven, and in the face of it, even though some of the
leaves lie in the dust.
Now, observe. The cornice _f_ represents Heathenism and Papistry,
animated by the mingling of Christianity and nature. The good in it, the
life of it, the veracity and liberty of it, such as it has, are
Protestantism in its heart; the rigidity and saplessness are the
Romanism of it. It is the mind of Fra Angelico in the monk's
dress,--Christianity before the Reformation. The cornice _g_ has the
Lombardic life element in its fulness, with only some color and shape of
Classicalism mingled with it--the good of classicalism; as much method
and Formalism as are consistent with life, and fitting for it: The
continence within certain border lines, the unity at the root, the
simplicity of the great profile,--all these are the healthy classical
elements retained: the rest is reformation, new strength, and recovered
liberty.
§ XXIV. There is one more point about it especially noticeable. The
leaves are thoroughly natural in their general character, but they are
of no particular species: and after being something like cabbage-leaves
in the beginning, one of them suddenly becomes an ivy-leaf in the end.
Now I don't know what to say of this. I know it, indeed, to be a
classical character;--it is eminently characteristic of Southern work;
and markedly distinctive of it from the Northern ornament, which would
have been oak, or ivy, or apple, but not anything, nor two things in
one. It is, I repeat, a clearly classical element; but whether a good or
bad element, I am not sure;--whether it is the last trace of Centaurism
and other monstrosity dying away; or whether it has a figurative
purpose, legitimate in architecture (though never in painting), and has
been rightly retained by the Christian sculptor, to express the working
of that spirit which grafts one nature upon another, and discerns a law
in its members warring against the law of its mind.
§ XXV. These, then, being the points most noticeable in the spirit both
of the designs and the chiselling, we have now to return to the question
proposed in § XIII., and observe the modifications of form of profile
which resulted from the changing contours of the leafage; for up to §
XIII., we had, as usual, considered the possible conditions of form in
the abstract;--the modes in which they have been derived from each other
in actual practice require to be followed in their turn. How the Greek
Doric or Greek ogee cornices were invented is not easy to determine,
and, fortunately, is little to our present purpose; for the mediæval
ogee cornices have an independent development of their own, from the
first type of the concave cornice _a_ in Plate XV.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIII.]
§ XXVI. That cornice occurs, in the simplest work, perfectly pure, but
in finished work it was quickly felt that there was a meagreness in its
junction with the wall beneath it, where it was set as here at _a_, Fig.
LXIII., which could only be conquered by concealing such junction in a
bar of shadow. There were two ways of getting this bar: one by a
projecting roll at the foot of the cornice (_b_, Fig. LXIII.), the other
by slipping the whole cornice a little forward (_c_. Fig. LXIII.). From
these two methods arise two groups of cornices and capitals, which we
shall pursue in succession.
§ XXVII. First group. With the roll at the base (_b_, Fig. LXIII.). The
chain of its succession is represented from 1 to 6, in Plate XV.: 1 and
2 are the steps already gained, as in Fig. LXIII.; and in them the
profile of cornice used is _a_ of Plate XV., or a refined condition of
_b_ of Fig. V., p. 69, above. Now, keeping the same refined profile,
substitute the condition of it, _f_ of Fig. V. (and there accounted
for), above the roll here, and you have 3, Plate XV. This superadded
abacus was instantly felt to be harsh in its projecting angle; but you
know what to do with an angle when it is harsh. Use your simplest
chamfer on it (_a_ or _b_, Fig. LIII., page 287, above), but on the
visible side only, and you have fig. 4, Plate XV. (the top stone being
made deeper that you may have room to chamfer it). Now this fig. 4 is
the profile of Lombardic and Venetian early capitals and cornices, by
tens of thousands; and it continues into the late Venetian Gothic, with
this only difference, that as times advances, the vertical line at the
top of the original cornice begins to slope outwards, and through a
series of years rises like the hazel wand in the hand of a diviner:--but
how slowly! a stone dial which marches but 45 degrees in three
centuries, and through the intermediate condition 5 arrives at 6, and so
stays.
In tracing this chain I have kept all the profiles of the same height in
order to make the comparison more easy; the depth chosen is about
intermediate between that which is customary in cornices on the one
hand, which are often a little shorter, and capitals on the other, which
are often a little deeper.[87] And it is to be noted that the profiles 5
and 6 establish themselves in capitals chiefly, while 4 is retained in
cornices to the latest times.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIV.]
§ XXVIII. Second group (c, Fig. LXIII.). If the lower angle, which was
quickly felt to be hard, be rounded off, we have the form _a_, Fig.
LXIV. The front of the curved line is then decorated, as we have seen;
and the termination of the decorated surface marked by an incision, as
in an ordinary chamfer, as at _b_ here. This I believe to have been the
simple origin of most of the Venetian ogee cornices; but they are
farther complicated by the curves given to the leafage which flows over
them. In the ordinary Greek cornices, and in _a_ and _d_ of Plate XVI.,
the decoration is _incised_ from the outside profile, without any
suggestion of an interior surface of a different contour. But in the
leaf cornices which follow, the decoration is represented as _overlaid_
on one of the early profiles, and has another outside contour of its
own; which is, indeed, the true profile of the cornice, but beneath
which, more or less, the simpler profile is seen or suggested, which
terminates all the incisions of the chisel. This under profile will
often be found to be some condition of the type _a_ or _b_, Fig. LXIV.;
and the leaf profile to be another ogee with its fullest curve up
instead of down, lapping over the cornice edge above, so that the entire
profile might be considered as made up of two ogee curves laid, like
packed herrings, head to tail. Figures 8 and 9 of Plate XV. exemplify
this arrangement. Fig. 7 is a heavier contour, doubtless composed in the
same manner, but of which I had not marked the innermost profile, and
which I have given here only to complete the series which, from 7 to 12
inclusive, exemplifies the gradual restriction of the leaf outline, from
its boldest projection in the cornice to its most modest service in the
capital. This change, however, is not one which indicates difference of
age, but merely of office and position: the cornice 7 is from the tomb
of the Doge Andrea Dandolo (1350) in St. Mark's, 8 from a canopy over a
door of about the same period, 9 from the tomb of the Dogaressa Agnese
Venier (1411), 10 from that of Pietro Cornaro (1361),[88] and 11 from
that of Andrea Morosini (1347), all in the church of San Giov. and
Paola, all these being cornice profiles; and, finally, 12 from a capital
of the Ducal Palace, of fourteen century work.
§ XXIX. Now the reader will doubtless notice that in the three examples,
10 to 12, the leaf has a different contour from that of 7, 8, or 9. This
difference is peculiarly significant. I have always desired that the
reader should theoretically consider the capital as a concentration of
the cornice; but in practice it often happens that the cornice is, on
the contrary, an unrolled capital; and one of the richest early forms of
the Byzantine cornice (not given in Plate XV., because its separate
character and importance require examination apart) is nothing more than
an unrolled continuation of the lower range of acanthus leaves on the
Corinthian capital. From this cornice others appear to have been
derived, like _e_ in Plate XVI., in which the acanthus outline has
become confused with that of the honeysuckle, and the rosette of the
centre of the Corinthian capital introduced between them; and thus their
forms approach more and more to those derived from the cornice itself.
Now if the leaf has the contour of 10, 11, or 12, Plate XV., the profile
is either actually of a capital, or of a cornice derived from a capital;
while, if the leaf have the contour of 7 or 8, the profile is either
actually of a cornice or of a capital derived from a cornice. Where the
Byzantines use the acanthus, the Lombards use the Persepolitan
water-leaf; but the connection of the cornices and capitals is exactly
the same.
§ XXX. Thus far, however, we have considered the characters of profile
which are common to the cornice and capital both. We have now to note
what farther decorative features or peculiarities belong to the capital
itself, or result from the theoretical gathering of the one into the
other.
Look back to Fig. XXII., p. 110. The five types there given, represented
the five different methods of concentration of the root of cornices, _a_
of Fig. V. Now, as many profiles of cornices as were developed in Plate
XV. from this cornice root, there represented by the dotted slope, so
many may be applied to each of the five types in Fig. XXII.,--applied
simply in _a_ and _b_, but with farther modifications, necessitated by
their truncations or spurs, in _c_, _d_, and _e_.
Then, these cornice profiles having been so applied in such length and
slope as is proper for capitals, the farther condition comes into effect
described in Chapter IX. § XXIV., and any one of the cornices in Plate
XV. may become the _abacus_ of a capital formed out of any other, or
out of itself. The infinity of forms thus resultant cannot, as may well
be supposed, be exhibited or catalogued in the space at present
permitted to us: but the reader, once master of the principle, will
easily be able to investigate for himself the syntax of all examples
that may occur to him, and I shall only here, as a kind of exercise, put
before him a few of those which he will meet with most frequently in his
Venetian inquiries, or which illustrate points, not hitherto touched
upon, in the disposition of the abacus.
§ XXXI. In Plate XVII. the capital at the top, on the left hand, is the
rudest possible gathering of the plain Christian Doric cornice, _d_ of
Plate XV. The shaft is octagonal, and the capital is not cut to fit it,
but is square at the base; and the curve of its profile projects on two
of its sides more than on the other two, so as to make the abacus
oblong, in order to carry an oblong mass of brickwork, dividing one of
the upper lights of a Lombard campanile at Milan. The awkward stretching
of the brickwork, to do what the capital ought to have done, is very
remarkable. There is here no second superimposed abacus.
§ XXXII. The figure on the right hand, at the top, shows the simple but
perfect fulfilment of all the requirements in which the first example
fails. The mass of brickwork to be carried is exactly the same in size
and shape; but instead of being trusted to a single shaft, it has two of
smaller area (compare Chap. VIII., § XIII.), and all the expansion
necessary is now gracefully attained by their united capitals, hewn out
of one stone. Take the section of these capitals through their angle,
and nothing can be simpler or purer; it is composed of 2, in Plate XV.,
used for the capital itself, with _c_ of Fig. LXIII. used for the
abacus; the reader could hardly have a neater little bit of syntax for a
first lesson. If the section be taken through the side of the bell, the
capital profile is the root of cornices, _a_ of Fig. V., with the added
roll. This capital is somewhat remarkable in having its sides perfectly
straight, some slight curvature being usual on so bold a scale; but it
is all the better as a first example, the method of reduction being
of order _d_, in Fig. XXII., p. 110, and with a concave cut, as in
Fig. XXI., p. 109. These two capitals are from the cloister of the duomo
of Verona.
[Illustration: Plate XVII.
CAPITALS CONCAVE GROUP.]
[Illustration: Fig. LXV.]
§ XXXIII. The lowermost figure in Plate XVII. represents an exquisitely
finished example of the same type, from St. Zeno of Verona. Above, at 2,
in Plate II., the plan of the shafts was given, but I inadvertently
reversed their position: in comparing that plan with Plate XVII., Plate
II. must be held upside down. The capitals, with the band connecting
them, are all cut out of one block; their profile is an adaptation of 4
of Plate XV., with a plain headstone superimposed. This method of
reduction is that of order _d_ in Fig. XXII., but the peculiarity of
treatment of their truncation is highly interesting. Fig. LXV.
represents the plans of the capitals at the base, the shaded parts being
the bells: the open line, the roll with its connecting band. The bell of
the one, it will be seen, is the exact reverse of that of the other: the
angle truncations are, in both, curved horizontally as well as
uprightly; but their curve is convex in the one, and in the other
concave. Plate XVII. will show the effect of both, with the farther
incisions, to the same depth, on the flank of the one with the concave
truncation, which join with the rest of its singularly bold and keen
execution in giving the impression of its rather having been cloven
into its form by the sweeps of a sword, than by the dull travail of a
chisel. Its workman was proud of it, as well he might be: he has written
his name upon its front (I would that more of his fellows had been as
kindly vain), and the goodly stone proclaims for ever, ADAMINUS DE
SANCTO GIORGIO ME FECIT.
§ XXXIV. The reader will easily understand that the gracefulness of this
kind of truncation, as he sees it in Plate XVII., soon suggested the
idea of reducing it to a vegetable outline, and laying four healing
leaves, as it were, upon the wounds which the sword had made. These four
leaves, on the truncations of the capital, correspond to the four leaves
which we saw, in like manner, extend themselves over the spurs of the
base, and, as they increase in delicacy of execution, form one of the
most lovely groups of capitals which the Gothic workmen ever invented;
represented by two perfect types in the capitals of the Piazzetta
columns of Venice. But this pure group is an isolated one; it remains in
the first simplicity of its conception far into the thirteenth century,
while around it rise up a crowd of other forms, imitative of the old
Corinthian, and in which other and younger leaves spring up in luxuriant
growth among the primal four. The varieties of their grouping we shall
enumerate hereafter: one general characteristic of them all must be
noted here.
§ XXXV. The reader has been told repeatedly[89] that there are two, and
only two, real orders of capitals, originally represented by the
Corinthian and the Doric; and distinguished by the concave or convex
contours of their bells, as shown by the dotted lines at _e_, Fig. V.,
p. 65. And hitherto, respecting the capital, we have been exclusively
concerned with the methods in which these two families of simple
contours have gathered themselves together, and obtained reconciliation
to the abacus above, and the shaft below. But the last paragraph
introduces us to the surface ornament disposed upon these, in the
chiselling of which the characters described above, § XXVIII., which
are but feebly marked in the cornice, boldly distinguish and divide the
families of the capital.
§ XXXVI. Whatever the nature of the ornament be, it must clearly have
relief of some kind, and must present projecting surfaces separated by
incisions. But it is a very material question whether the contour,
hitherto broadly considered as that of the entire bell, shall be that of
the _outside_ of the projecting and relieved ornaments, or of the
_bottoms of the incisions_ which divide them; whether, that is to say,
we shall first cut out the bell of our capital quite smooth, and then
cut farther into it, with incisions, which shall leave ornamental forms
in relief, or whether, in originally cutting the contour of the bell, we
shall leave projecting bits of stone, which we may afterwards work into
the relieved ornament.
§ XXXVII. Now, look back to Fig. V., p. 65. Clearly, if to ornament the
already hollowed profile, _b_, we cut deep incisions into it, we shall
so far weaken it at the top, that it will nearly lose all its supporting
power. Clearly, also, if to ornament the already bulging profile _c_ we
were to leave projecting pieces of stone outside of it, we should nearly
destroy all its relation to the original sloping line X, and produce an
unseemly and ponderous mass, hardly recognizable as a cornice profile.
It is evident, on the other hand, that we can afford to cut into this
profile without fear of destroying its strength, and that we can afford
to leave projections outside of the other, without fear of destroying
its lightness. Such is, accordingly, the natural disposition of the
sculpture, and the two great families of capitals are therefore
distinguished, not merely by their concave and convex contours, but by
the ornamentation being left outside the bell of the one, and cut into
the bell of the other; so that, in either case, the ornamental portions
will fall _between the dotted lines_ at _e_, Fig. V., and the pointed
oval, or vesica piscis, which is traced by them, may be called the Limit
of ornamentation.
§ XXXVIII. Several distinctions in the quantity and style of the
ornament must instantly follow from this great distinction in its
position. First, in its quantity. For, observe: since in the Doric
profile, _c_ of Fig. V., the contour itself is to be composed of the
surface of the ornamentation, this ornamentation must be close and
united enough to form, or at least suggest, a continuous surface; it
must, therefore, be rich in quantity and close in aggregation; otherwise
it will destroy the massy character of the profile it adorns, and
approximate it to its opposite, the concave. On the other hand, the
ornament left projecting from the concave, must be sparing enough, and
dispersed enough, to allow the concave bell to be clearly seen beneath
it; otherwise it will choke up the concave profile, and approximate it
to its opposite, the convex.
§ XXXIX. And, secondly, in its style. For, clearly, as the sculptor of
the concave profile must leave masses of rough stone prepared for his
outer ornament, and cannot finish them at once, but must complete the
cutting of the smooth bell beneath first, and then return to the
projecting masses (for if he were to finish these latter first, they
would assuredly, if delicate or sharp, be broken as he worked on; since,
I say, he must work in this foreseeing and predetermined method, he is
sure to reduce the system of his ornaments to some definite symmetrical
order before he begins); and the habit of conceiving beforehand all that
he has to do, will probably render him not only more orderly in its
arrangement, but more skilful and accurate in its execution, than if he
could finish all as he worked on. On the other hand, the sculptor of the
convex profile has its smooth surface laid before him, as a piece of
paper on which he can sketch at his pleasure; the incisions he makes in
it are like touches of a dark pencil; and he is at liberty to roam over
the surface in perfect freedom, with light incisions or with deep;
finishing here, suggesting there, or perhaps in places leaving the
surface altogether smooth. It is ten to one, therefore, but that, if he
yield to the temptation, he becomes irregular in design, and rude in
handling; and we shall assuredly find the two families of capitals
distinguished, the one by its symmetrical, thoroughly organised, and
exquisitely executed ornament, the other by its rambling, confused, and
rudely chiselled ornament: But, on the other hand, while we shall
often have to admire the disciplined precision of the one, and as often
to regret the irregular rudeness of the other, we shall not fail to find
balancing qualities in both. The severity of the disciplinarian capital
represses the power of the imagination; it gradually degenerates into
Formalism; and the indolence which cannot escape from its stern demand
of accurate workmanship, seeks refuge in copyism of established forms,
and loses itself at last in lifeless mechanism. The license of the
other, though often abused, permits full exercise to the imagination:
the mind of the sculptor, unshackled by the niceties of chiselling,
wanders over its orbed field in endless fantasy; and, when generous as
well as powerful, repays the liberty which has been granted to it with
interest, by developing through the utmost wildness and fulness of its
thoughts, an order as much more noble than the mechanical symmetry of
the opponent school, as the domain which it regulates is vaster.
[Illustration: Plate XVIII.
CAPITALS CONVEX GROUP.]
§ XL. And now the reader shall judge whether I had not reason to cast
aside the so-called Five orders of the Renaissance architects, with
their volutes and fillets, and to tell him that there were only two real
orders, and that there could never be more.[90] For we now find that
these two great and real orders are representative of the two great
influences which must for ever divide the heart of man: the one of
Lawful Discipline, with its perfection and order, but its danger of
degeneracy into Formalism; the other of Lawful Freedom, with its vigor
and variety, but its danger of degeneracy into Licentiousness.
§ XLI. I shall not attempt to give any illustrations here of the most
elaborate developments of either order; they will be better given on a
larger scale: but the examples in Plate XVII. and XVIII. represent the
two methods of ornament in their earliest appliance. The two lower
capitals in Plate XVII. are a pure type of the concave school; the two
in the centre of Plate XVIII., of the convex. At the top of Plate XVIII.
are two Lombardic capitals; that on the left from Sta. Sofia at Padua,
that on the right from the cortile of St. Ambrogio at Milan. They both
have the concave angle truncation; but being of date prior to the time
when the idea of the concave bell was developed, they are otherwise left
square, and decorated with the surface ornament characteristic of the
convex school. The relation of the designs to each other is interesting;
the cross being prominent in the centre of each, but more richly
relieved in that from St. Ambrogio. The two beneath are from the
southern portico of St. Mark's; the shafts having been of different
lengths, and neither, in all probability, originally intended for their
present place, they have double abaci, of which the uppermost is the
cornice running round the whole façade. The zigzagged capital is highly
curious, and in its place very effective and beautiful, although one of
the exceptions which it was above noticed that we should sometimes find
to the law stated in § XV. above.
[Illustration: Fig. LXVI.]
§ XLII. The lower capital, which is also of the true convex school,
exhibits one of the conditions of the spurred type, _e_ of Fig. XXII.,
respecting which one or two points must be noticed.
If we were to take up the plan of the simple spur, represented at _e_ in
Fig. XXII., p. 110, and treat it, with the salvia leaf, as we did the
spur of the base, we should have for the head of our capital a plan like
Fig. LXVI., which is actually that of one of the capitals of the Fondaco
de' Turchi at Venice; with this only difference, that the intermediate
curves between the spurs would have been circular: the reason they are
not so, here, is that the decoration, instead of being confined to the
spur, is now spread over the whole mass, and contours are therefore
given to the intermediate curves which fit them for this ornament; the
inside shaded space being the head of the shaft, and the outer, the
abacus. The reader has in Fig. LXVI. a characteristic type of the plans
of the spurred capitals, generally preferred by the sculptors of the
convex school, but treated with infinite variety, the spurs often being
cut into animal forms, or the incisions between them multiplied, for
richer effect; and in our own Norman capital the type _c_ of Fig. XXII.
is variously subdivided by incisions on its slope, approximating in
general effect to many conditions of the real spurred type, _e_, but
totally differing from them in principle.
[Illustration: Fig. LXVII.]
[Illustration: Fig. LXVIII.]
§ XLIII. The treatment of the spur in the concave school is far more
complicated, being borrowed in nearly every case from the original
Corinthian. Its plan may be generally represented by Fig. LXVII. The
spur itself is carved into a curling tendril or concave leaf, which
supports the projecting angle of a four-sided abacus, whose hollow sides
fall back behind the bell, and have generally a rosette or other
ornament in their centres. The mediæval architects often put another
square abacus above all, as represented by the shaded portion of Fig.
LXVII., and some massy conditions of this form, elaborately ornamented,
are very beautiful; but it is apt to become rigid and effeminate, as
assuredly it is in the original Corinthian, which is thoroughly mean and
meagre in its upper tendrils and abacus.
§ XLIV. The lowest capital in Plate XVIII. is from St. Mark's, and
singular in having double spurs; it is therefore to be compared with
the doubly spurred base, also from St Mark's, in Plate XI. In other
respects it is a good example of the union of breadth of mass with
subtlety of curvature, which characterises nearly all the spurred
capitals of the convex school. Its plan is given in Fig. LXVIII.: the
inner shaded circle is the head of the shaft; the white cross, the
bottom of the capital, which expands itself into the external shaded
portions at the top. Each spur, thus formed, is cut like a ship's bow,
with the Doric profile; the surfaces so obtained are then charged with
arborescent ornament.
§ XLV. I shall not here farther exemplify the conditions of the
treatment of the spur, because I am afraid of confusing the reader's
mind, and diminishing the distinctness of his conception of the
differences between the two great orders, which it has been my principal
object to develope throughout this chapter. If all my readers lived in
London, I could at once fix this difference in their minds by a simple,
yet somewhat curious illustration. In many parts of the west end of
London, as, for instance, at the corners of Belgrave Square, and the
north side of Grosvenor Square, the Corinthian capitals of newly-built
houses are put into cages of wire. The wire cage is the exact form of
the typical capital of the convex school; the Corinthian capital,
within, is a finished and highly decorated example of the concave. The
space between the cage and capital is the limit of ornamentation.
§ XLVI. Those of my readers, however, to whom this illustration is
inaccessible, must be content with the two profiles, 13 and 14, on Plate
XV. If they will glance along the line of sections from 1 to 6, they
will see that the profile 13 is their final development, with a
superadded cornice for its abacus. It is taken from a capital in a very
important ruin of a palace, near the Rialto of Venice, and hereafter to
be described; the projection, outside of its principal curve, is the
profile of its _superadded_ leaf ornamentation; it may be taken as one
of the simplest, yet a perfect type of the concave group.
§ XLVII. The profile 14 is that of the capital of the main shaft of the
northern portico of St. Mark's, the most finished example I ever met
with of the convex family, to which, in spite of the central inward bend
of its profile, it is marked as distinctly belonging, by the bold convex
curve at its root, springing from the shaft in the line of the Christian
Doric cornice, and exactly reversing the structure of the other profile,
which rises from the shaft, like a palm leaf from its stem. Farther, in
the profile 13, the innermost line is that of the bell; but in the
profile 14, the outermost line is that of the bell, and the inner line
is the limit of the incisions of the chisel, in undercutting a
reticulated veil of ornament, surrounding a flower like a lily; most
ingeniously, and, I hope, justly, conjectured by the Marchese Selvatico
to have been intended for an imitation of the capitals of the temple of
Solomon, which Hiram made, with "nets of checker work, and wreaths of
chain work for the chapiters that were on the top of the pillars ... and
the chapiters that were upon the top of the pillars were of lily work in
the porch." (1 Kings, vii. 17, 19.)
§ XLVIII. On this exquisite capital there is imposed an abacus of the
profile with which we began our investigation long ago, the profile _a_
of Fig. V. This abacus is formed by the cornice already given, _a_, of
Plate XVI.: and therefore we have, in this lovely Venetian capital, the
summary of the results of our investigation, from its beginning to its
close: the type of the first cornice; the decoration of it, in its
emergence from the classical models; the gathering into the capital; the
superimposition of the secondary cornice, and the refinement of the bell
of the capital by triple curvature in the two limits of chiselling. I
cannot express the exquisite refinements of the curves on the small
scale of Plate XV.; I will give them more accurately in a larger
engraving; but the scale on which they are here given will not prevent
the reader from perceiving, and let him note it thoughtfully, that the
outer curve of the noble capital is the one which was our first example
of associated curves; that I have had no need, throughout the whole of
our inquiry, to refer to any other ornamental line than the three which
I at first chose, the simplest of those which Nature set by chance
before me; and that this lily, of the delicate Venetian marble, has but
been wrought, by the highest human art, into the same line which the
clouds disclose, when they break from the rough rocks of the flank of
the Matterhorn.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] In very early Doric it was an absolute right line; and that
capital is therefore derived from the pure cornice root, represented
by the dotted line.
[85] The word banded is used by Professor Willis in a different
sense; which I would respect, by applying it in his sense always to
the Impost, and in mine to the capital itself. (This note is not for
the general reader, who need not trouble himself about the matter.)
[86] The Renaissance period being one of return to formalism on the
one side, of utter licentiousness on the other, so that sometimes,
as here, I have to declare its lifelessness, at other times (Chap.
XXV., § XVII.) its lasciviousness. There is, of course, no
contradiction in this: but the reader might well ask how I knew the
change from the base 11 to the base 12, in Plate XII., to be one
from temperance to luxury; and from the cornice _f_ to the cornice
_g_, in Plate XVI., to be one from formalism to vitality. I know it,
both by certain internal evidences, on which I shall have to dwell
at length hereafter, and by the context of the works of the time.
But the outward signs might in both ornaments be the same,
distinguishable only as signs of opposite tendencies by the event of
both. The blush of shame cannot always be told from the blush of
indignation.
[87] The reader must always remember that a cornice, in becoming a
capital, must, if not originally bold and deep, have depth added to
its profile, in order to reach the just proportion of the lower
member of the shaft head; and that therefore the small Greek egg
cornices are utterly incapable of becoming capitals till they have
totally changed their form and depth. The Renaissance architects,
who never obtained hold of a right principle but they made it worse
than a wrong one by misapplication, caught the idea of turning the
cornice into a capital, but did not comprehend the necessity of the
accompanying change of depth. Hence we have pilaster heads formed of
small egg cornices, and that meanest of all mean heads of shafts,
the coarse Roman Doric profile chopped into a small egg and arrow
moulding, both which may be seen disfiguring half the buildings in
London.
[88] I have taken these dates roughly from Selvatico; their absolute
accuracy to within a year or two, is here of no importance.
[89] Chap. I. § XIX., Appendix 7: and Chap. VI. § V.
[90] Chap. I., § XIX.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE ARCHIVOLT AND APERTURE.
[Illustration: Plate XIX.
ARCHIVOLT DECORATION.
AT VERONA.]
§ I. If the windows and doors of some of our best northern Gothic
buildings were built up, and the ornament of their archivolts concealed,
there would often remain little but masses of dead wall and unsightly
buttress; the whole vitality of the building consisting in the graceful
proportions or rich mouldings of its apertures. It is not so in the
south, where, frequently, the aperture is a mere dark spot on the
variegated wall; but there the column, with its horizontal or curved
architrave, assumes an importance of another kind, equally dependent
upon the methods of lintel and archivolt decoration. These, though in
their richness of minor variety they defy all exemplification, may be
very broadly generalized.
Of the mere lintel, indeed, there is no specific decoration, nor can be;
it has no organism to direct its ornament, and therefore may receive any
kind and degree of ornament, according to its position. In a Greek
temple, it has meagre horizontal lines; in a Romanesque church, it
becomes a row of upright niches, with an apostle in each; and may become
anything else at the architect's will. But the arch head has a natural
organism, which separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly
definable.
§ II. In speaking of the arch-line and arch masonry, we considered the
arch to be cut straight through the wall; so that, if half built, it
would have the appearance at _a_, Fig. LXIX. But in the chapter on Form
of Apertures, we found that the side of the arch, or jamb of the
aperture, might often require to be bevelled, so as to give the section
_b_, Fig. LXIX. It is easily conceivable that when two ranges of
voussoirs were used, one over another, it would be easier to leave
those beneath, of a smaller diameter, than to bevel them to accurate
junction with those outside. Whether influenced by this facility, or by
decorative instinct, the early northern builders often substitute for
the bevel the third condition, _c_, of Fig. LXIX.; so that, of the three
forms in that figure, _a_ belongs principally to the south, _c_ to the
north, and _b_ indifferently to both.
[Illustration: Fig. LXIX.]
§ III. If the arch in the northern building be very deep, its depth will
probably be attained by a succession of steps, like that in _c_; and the
richest results of northern archivolt decoration are entirely based on
the aggregation of the ornament of these several steps; while those of
the south are only the complete finish and perfection of the ornament of
one. In this ornament of the single arch, the points for general note
are very few.
§ IV. It was, in the first instance, derived from the classical
architrave,[91] and the early Romanesque arches are nothing but such an
architrave, bent round. The horizontal lines of the latter become
semicircular, but their importance and value remain exactly the same;
their continuity is preserved across all the voussoirs, and the joints
and functions of the latter are studiously concealed. As the builders
get accustomed to the arch, and love it better, they cease to be ashamed
of its structure: the voussoirs begin to show themselves confidently,
and fight for precedence with the architrave lines; and there is an
entanglement of the two structures, in consequence, like the circular
and radiating lines of a cobweb, until at last the architrave lines get
worsted, and driven away outside of the voussoirs; being permitted to
stay at all only on condition of their dressing themselves in mediæval
costume, as in the plate opposite.
§ V. In other cases, however, before the entire discomfiture of the
architrave, a treaty of peace is signed between the adverse parties on
these terms: That the architrave shall entirely dismiss its inner three
meagre lines, and leave the space of them to the voussoirs, to display
themselves after their manner; but that, in return for this concession,
the architrave shall have leave to expand the small cornice which
usually terminates it (the reader had better look at the original form
in that of the Erechtheum, in the middle of the Elgin room of the
British Museum) into bolder prominence, and even to put brackets under
it, as if it were a roof cornice, and thus mark with a bold shadow the
terminal line of the voussoirs. This condition is seen in the arch from
St. Pietro of Pistoja, Plate XIII., above.
§ VI. If the Gothic spirit of the building be thoroughly determined, and
victorious, the architrave cornice is compelled to relinquish its
classical form, and take the profile of a Gothic cornice or dripstone;
while, in other cases, as in much of the Gothic of Verona, it is forced
to disappear altogether. But the voussoirs then concede, on the other
hand, so much of their dignity as to receive a running ornament of
foliage or animals, like a classical frieze, and continuous round the
arch. In fact, the contest between the adversaries may be seen running
through all the early architecture of Italy: success inclining sometimes
to the one, sometimes to the other, and various kinds of truce or
reconciliation being effected between them: sometimes merely formal,
sometimes honest and affectionate, but with no regular succession in
time. The greatest victory of the voussoir is to annihilate the cornice,
and receive an ornament of its own outline, and entirely limited by its
own joints: and yet this may be seen in the very early apse of Murano.
§ VII. The most usual condition, however, is that unity of the two
members above described, § V., and which may be generally represented by
the archivolt section _a_, Fig. LXX.; and from this descend a family of
Gothic archivolts of the highest importance. For the cornice, thus
attached to the arch, suffers exactly the same changes as the level
cornice, or capital; receives, in due time, its elaborate ogee profile
and leaf ornaments, like Fig. 8 or 9 of Plate XV.; and, when the shaft
loses its shape, and is lost in the later Gothic jamb, the archivolt has
influence enough to introduce this ogee profile in the jamb also,
through the banded impost: and we immediately find ourselves involved in
deep successions of ogee mouldings in sides of doors and windows, which
never would have been thought of, but for the obstinate resistance of
the classical architrave to the attempts of the voussoir at its
degradation or banishment.
[Illustration: Fig. LXX.]
§ VIII. This, then, will be the first great head under which we shall in
future find it convenient to arrange a large number of archivolt
decorations. It is the distinctively Southern and Byzantine form, and
typically represented by the section _a_, of Fig. LXX.; and it is
susceptible of almost every species of surface ornament, respecting
which only this general law may be asserted: that, while the outside or
vertical surface may properly be decorated, and yet the soffit or under
surface left plain, the soffit is never to be decorated, and the outer
surface left plain. Much beautiful sculpture is, in the best Byzantine
buildings, half lost by being put under soffits; but the eye is led to
discover it, and even to demand it, by the rich chasing of the outside
of the voussoirs. It would have been an hypocrisy to carve them
externally only. But there is not the smallest excuse for carving the
soffit, and not the outside; for, in that case, we approach the building
under the idea of its being perfectly plain; we do not look for the
soffit decoration, and, of course, do not see it: or, if we do, it is
merely to regret that it should not be in a better place. In the
Renaissance architects, it may, perhaps, for once, be considered a
merit, that they put their bad decoration systematically in the places
where we should least expect it, and can seldomest see it:--Approaching
the Scuola di San Rocco, you probably will regret the extreme plainness
and barrenness of the window traceries; but, if you will go very close
to the wall beneath the windows, you may, on sunny days, discover a
quantity of panel decorations which the ingenious architect has
concealed under the soffits.
The custom of decorating the arch soffit with panelling is a Roman
application of the Greek roof ornament, which, whatever its intrinsic
merit (compare Chap. XXIX. § IV.), may rationally be applied to waggon
vaults, as of St. Peter's, and to arch soffits under which one walks.
But the Renaissance architects had not wit enough to reflect that people
usually do not walk through windows.
§ IX. So far, then, of the Southern archivolt: In Fig. LXIX., above, it
will be remembered that _c_ represents the simplest form of the
Northern. In the farther development of this, which we have next to
consider, the voussoirs, in consequence of their own negligence or
over-confidence, sustain a total and irrecoverable defeat. That
archivolt is in its earliest conditions perfectly pure and
undecorated,--the simplest and rudest of Gothic forms. Necessarily, when
it falls on the pier, and meets that of the opposite arch, the entire
section of masonry is in the shape of a cross, and is carried by the
crosslet shaft, which we above stated to be distinctive of Northern
design. I am more at a loss to account for the sudden and fixed
development of this type of archivolt than for any other architectural
transition with which I am acquainted. But there it is, pure and firmly
established, as early as the building of St. Michele of Pavia; and we
have thenceforward only to observe what comes of it.
§ X. We find it first, as I said, perfectly barren; cornice and
architrave altogether ignored, the existence of such things practically
denied, and a plain, deep-cut recess with a single mighty shadow
occupying their place. The voussoirs, thinking their great adversary
utterly defeated, are at no trouble to show themselves; visible enough
in both the upper and under archivolts, they are content to wait the
time when, as might have been hoped, they should receive a new
decoration peculiar to themselves.
§ XI. In this state of paralysis, or expectation, their flank is turned
by an insidious chamfer. The edges of the two great blank archivolts are
felt to be painfully conspicuous; all the four are at once beaded or
chamfered, as at _b_, Fig. LXX.; a rich group of deep lines, running
concentrically with the arch, is the result on the instant, and the fate
of the voussoirs is sealed. They surrender at once without a struggle,
and unconditionally; the chamfers deepen and multiply themselves, cover
the soffit, ally themselves with other forms resulting from grouped
shafts or traceries, and settle into the inextricable richness of the
fully developed Gothic jamb and arch; farther complicated in the end by
the addition of niches to their recesses, as above described.
§ XII. The voussoirs, in despair, go over to the classical camp, in hope
of receiving some help or tolerance from their former enemies. They
receive it indeed: but as traitors should, to their own eternal
dishonor. They are sharply chiselled at the joints, or rusticated, or
cut into masks and satyrs' heads, and so set forth and pilloried in the
various detestable forms of which the simplest is given above in Plate
XIII. (on the left); and others may be seen in nearly every large
building in London, more especially in the bridges; and, as if in pure
spite at the treatment they had received from the archivolt, they are
now not content with vigorously showing their lateral joints, but shape
themselves into right-angled steps at their heads, cutting to pieces
their limiting line, which otherwise would have had sympathy with that
of the arch, and fitting themselves to their new friend, the Renaissance
Ruled Copy-book wall. It had been better they had died ten times over,
in their own ancient cause, than thus prolonged their existence.
§ XIII. We bid them farewell in their dishonor, to return to our
victorious chamfer. It had not, we said, obtained so easy a conquest,
unless by the help of certain forms of the grouped shaft. The chamfer
was quite enough to decorate the archivolts, if there were no more than
two; but if, as above noticed in § III., the archivolt was very deep,
and composed of a succession of such steps, the multitude of chamferings
were felt to be weak and insipid, and instead of dealing with the
outside edges of the archivolts, the group was softened by introducing
solid shafts in their dark inner angles. This, the manliest and best
condition of the early northern jamb and archivolt, is represented in
section at fig. 12 of Plate II.; and its simplest aspect in Plate V.,
from the Broletto of Como,--an interesting example, because there the
voussoirs being in the midst of their above-described southern contest
with the architrave, were better prepared for the flank attack upon them
by the shaft and chamfer, and make a noble resistance, with the help of
color, in which even the shaft itself gets slightly worsted, and cut
across in several places, like General Zach's column at Marengo.
§ XIV. The shaft, however, rapidly rallies, and brings up its own
peculiar decorations to its aid; and the intermediate archivolts receive
running or panelled ornaments, also, until we reach the exquisitely rich
conditions of our own Norman archivolts, and of the parallel Lombardic
designs, such as the entrance of the Duomo, and of San Fermo, at Verona.
This change, however, occupies little time, and takes place principally
in doorways, owing to the greater thickness of wall, and depth of
archivolt; so that we find the rich shafted succession of ornament, in
the doorway and window aperture, associated with the earliest and rudest
double archivolt, in the nave arches, at St. Michele of Pavia. The nave
arches, therefore, are most usually treated by the chamfer, and the
voussoirs are there defeated much sooner than by the shafted
arrangements, which they resist, as we saw, in the south by color; and
even in the north, though forced out of their own shape, they take that
of birds' or monsters' heads, which for some time peck and pinch the
rolls of the archivolt to their hearts' content; while the Norman zigzag
ornament allies itself with them, each zigzag often restraining itself
amicably between the joints of each voussoir in the ruder work, and even
in the highly finished arches, distinctly presenting a concentric or
sunlike arrangement of lines; so much so, as to prompt the conjecture,
above stated, Chap. XX. § XXVI., that all such ornaments were intended
to be typical of light issuing from the orb of the arch. I doubt the
intention, but acknowledge the resemblance; which perhaps goes far to
account for the never-failing delightfulness of this zigzag decoration.
The diminution of the zigzag, as it gradually shares the defeat of the
voussoir, and is at last overwhelmed by the complicated, railroad-like
fluency of the later Gothic mouldings, is to me one of the saddest
sights in the drama of architecture.
§ XV. One farther circumstance is deserving of especial note in Plate
V., the greater depth of the voussoirs at the top of the arch. This has
been above alluded to as a feature of good construction, Chap. XI., §
III.; it is to be noted now as one still more valuable in decoration:
for when we arrive at the deep succession of concentric archivolts, with
which northern portals, and many of the associated windows, are headed,
we immediately find a difficulty in reconciling the outer curve with the
inner. If, as is sometimes the case, the width of the group of
archivolts be twice or three times that of the inner aperture, the inner
arch may be distinctly pointed, and the outer one, if drawn with
concentric arcs, approximate very nearly to a round arch. This is
actually the case in the later Gothic of Verona; the outer line of the
archivolt having a hardly perceptible point, and every inner arch of
course forming the point more distinctly, till the innermost becomes a
lancet. By far the nobler method, however, is that of the pure early
Italian Gothic; to make every outer arch a _magnified fac-simile_ of the
innermost one, every arc including the same number of degrees, but
degrees of a larger circle. The result is the condition represented in
Plate V., often found in far bolder development; exquisitely springy and
elastic in its expression, and entirely free from the heaviness and
monotony of the deep northern archivolts.
§ XVI. We have not spoken of the intermediate form, _b_, of Fig. LXIX.
(which its convenience for admission of light has rendered common in
nearly all architectures), because it has no transitions peculiar to
itself: in the north it sometimes shares the fate of the outer
architrave, and is channelled into longitudinal mouldings; sometimes
remains smooth and massy, as in military architecture, or in the simpler
forms of domestic and ecclesiastical. In Italy it receives surface
decoration like the architrave, but has, perhaps, something of peculiar
expression in being placed between the tracery of the window within, and
its shafts and tabernacle work without, as in the Duomo of Florence: in
this position it is always kept smooth in surface, and inlaid (or
painted) with delicate arabesques; while the tracery and the tabernacle
work are richly sculptured. The example of its treatment by colored
voussoirs, given in Plate XIX., may be useful to the reader as a kind of
central expression of the aperture decoration of the pure Italian
Gothic;--aperture decoration proper; applying no shaft work to the
jambs, but leaving the bevelled opening unenriched; using on the outer
archivolt the voussoirs and concentric architrave in reconcilement (the
latter having, however, some connection with the Norman zigzag); and
beneath them, the pure Italian two-pieced and mid-cusped arch, with rich
cusp decoration. It is a Veronese arch, probably of the thirteenth
century, and finished with extreme care; the red portions are all in
brick, delicately cast: and the most remarkable feature of the whole is
the small piece of brick inlaid on the angle of each stone voussoir,
with a most just feeling, which every artist will at once understand,
that the color ought not to be let go all at once.
§ XVII. We have traced the various conditions of treatment in the
archivolt alone; but, except in what has been said of the peculiar
expression of the voussoirs, we might throughout have spoken in the same
terms of the jamb. Even a parallel to the expression of the voussoir may
be found in the Lombardic and Norman divisions of the shafts, by zigzags
and other transverse ornamentation, which in the end are all swept away
by the canaliculated mouldings. Then, in the recesses of these and of
the archivolts alike, the niche and statue decoration develops itself;
and the vaulted and cavernous apertures are covered with incrustations
of fretwork, and with every various application of foliage to their
fantastic mouldings.
§ XVIII. I have kept the inquiry into the proper ornament of the
archivolt wholly free from all confusion with the questions of beauty in
tracery; for, in fact, all tracery is a mere multiplication and
entanglement of small archivolts, and its cusp ornament is a minor
condition of that proper to the spandril. It does not reach its
completely defined form until the jamb and archivolt have been divided
into longitudinal mouldings; and then the tracery is formed by the
innermost group of the shafts or fillets, bent into whatever forms or
foliations the designer may choose; but this with a delicacy of
adaptation which I rather choose to illustrate by particular examples,
of which we shall meet with many in the course of our inquiry, than to
delay the reader by specifying here. As for the conditions of beauty in
the disposition of the tracery bars, I see no hope of dealing with the
subject fairly but by devoting, if I can find time, a separate essay to
it--which, in itself, need not be long, but would involve, before it
could be completed, the examination of the whole mass of materials
lately collected by the indefatigable industry of the English architects
who have devoted their special attention to this subject, and which are
of the highest value as illustrating the chronological succession or
mechanical structure of tracery, but which, in most cases, touch on
their æsthetic merits incidentally only. Of works of this kind, by far
the best I have met with is Mr. Edmund Sharpe's, on Decorated Windows,
which seems to me, as far as a cursory glance can enable me to judge, to
exhaust the subject as respects English Gothic; and which may be
recommended to the readers who are interested in the subject, as
containing a clear and masterly enunciation of the general principles by
which the design of tracery has been regulated, from its first
development to its final degradation.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] The architrave is properly the horizontal piece of stone laid
across the tops of the pillars in Greek buildings, and commonly
marked with horizontal lines, obtained by slight projections of its
surface, while it is protected above in the richer orders, by a
small cornice.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE ROOF.
§ I. The modes of decoration hitherto considered, have been common to
the exteriors and interiors of all noble buildings; and we have taken no
notice of the various kinds of ornament which require protection from
weather, and are necessarily confined to interior work. But in the case
of the roof, the exterior and interior treatments become, as we saw in
construction, so also in decoration, separated by broad and bold
distinctions. One side of a wall is, in most cases, the same as another,
and if its structure be concealed, it is mostly on the inside; but, in
the roof, the anatomical structure, out of which decoration should
naturally spring, is visible, if at all, in the interior only: so that
the subject of internal ornament becomes both wide and important, and
that of external, comparatively subordinate.
§ II. Now, so long as we were concerned principally with the outside of
buildings, we might with safety leave expressional character out of the
question for the time, because it is not to be expected that all persons
who pass the building, or see it from a distance, shall be in the temper
which the building is properly intended to induce; so that ornaments
somewhat at variance with this temper may often be employed externally
without painful effect. But these ornaments would be inadmissible in the
interior, for those who enter will for the most part either be in the
proper temper which the building requires, or desirous of acquiring it.
(The distinction is not rigidly observed by the mediæval builders, and
grotesques, or profane subjects, occur in the interior of churches, in
bosses, crockets, capitals, brackets, and such other portions of minor
ornament: but we do not find the interior wall covered with hunting and
battle pieces, as often the Lombardic exteriors.) And thus the interior
expression of the roof or ceiling becomes necessarily so various, and
the kind and degree of fitting decoration so dependent upon particular
circumstances, that it is nearly impossible to classify its methods, or
limit its application.
§ III. I have little, therefore, to say here, and that touching rather
the omission than the selection of decoration, as far as regards
interior roofing. Whether of timber or stone, roofs are necessarily
divided into surfaces, and ribs or beams;--surfaces, flat or carved;
ribs, traversing these in the directions where main strength is
required; or beams, filling the hollow of the dark gable with the
intricate roof-tree, or supporting the flat ceiling. Wherever the ribs
and beams are simply and unaffectedly arranged, there is no difficulty
about decoration; the beams may be carved, the ribs moulded, and the eye
is satisfied at once; but when the vaulting is unribbed, as in plain
waggon vaults and much excellent early Gothic, or when the ceiling is
flat, it becomes a difficult question how far their services may receive
ornamentation independent of their structure. I have never myself seen a
flat ceiling satisfactorily decorated, except by painting: there is much
good and fanciful panelling in old English domestic architecture, but it
always is in some degree meaningless and mean. The flat ceilings of
Venice, as in the Scuola di San Rocco and Ducal Palace, have in their
vast panellings some of the noblest paintings (on stretched canvas)
which the world possesses: and this is all very well for the ceiling;
but one would rather have the painting in a better place, especially
when the rain soaks through its canvas, as I have seen it doing through
many a noble Tintoret. On the whole, flat ceilings are as much to be
avoided as possible; and, when necessary, perhaps a panelled
ornamentation with rich colored patterns is the most satisfying, and
loses least of valuable labor. But I leave the question to the reader's
thought, being myself exceedingly undecided respecting it: except only
touching one point--that a blank ceiling is not to be redeemed by a
decorated ventilator.
§ IV. I have a more confirmed opinion, however, respecting the
decoration of curved surfaces. The majesty of a roof is never, I think,
so great, as when the eye can pass undisturbed over the course of all
its curvatures, and trace the dying of the shadows along its smooth and
sweeping vaults. And I would rather, myself, have a plain ridged Gothic
vault, with all its rough stones visible, to keep the sleet and wind out
of a cathedral aisle, than all the fanning and pendanting and foliation
that ever bewildered Tudor weight. But mosaic or fresco may of course be
used as far as we can afford or obtain them; for these do not break the
curvature. Perhaps the most solemn roofs in the world are the apse
conchas of the Romanesque basilicas, with their golden ground and severe
figures. Exactly opposed to these are the decorations which disturb the
serenity of the curve without giving it interest, like the vulgar
panelling of St. Peter's and the Pantheon; both, I think, in the last
degree detestable.
§ V. As roofs internally may be divided into surfaces and ribs,
externally they may be divided into surfaces, and points, or ridges;
these latter often receiving very bold and distinctive ornament. The
outside surface is of small importance in central Europe, being almost
universally low in slope, and tiled throughout Spain, South France, and
North Italy: of still less importance where it is flat, as a terrace; as
often in South Italy and the East, mingled with low domes: but the
larger Eastern and Arabian domes become elaborate in ornamentation: I
cannot speak of them with confidence; to the mind of an inhabitant of
the north, a roof is a guard against wild weather; not a surface which
is forever to bask in serene heat, and gleam across deserts like a
rising moon. I can only say, that I have never seen any drawing of a
richly decorated Eastern dome that made me desire to see the original.
§ VI. Our own northern roof decoration is necessarily simple. Colored
tiles are used in some cases with quaint effect; but I believe the
dignity of the building is always greater when the roof is kept in an
undisturbed mass, opposing itself to the variegation and richness of the
walls. The Italian round tile is itself decoration enough, a deep and
rich fluting, which all artists delight in; this, however, is fitted
exclusively for low pitch of roofs. On steep domestic roofs, there is no
ornament better than may be obtained by merely rounding, or cutting to
an angle, the lower extremities of the flat tiles or shingles, as in
Switzerland: thus the whole surface is covered with an appearance of
scales, a fish-like defence against water, at once perfectly simple,
natural, and effective at any distance; and the best decoration of
sloping stone roofs, as of spires, is a mere copy of this scale armor;
it enriches every one of the spires and pinnacles of the cathedral of
Coutances, and of many Norman and early Gothic buildings. Roofs covered
or edged with lead have often patterns designed upon the lead, gilded
and relieved with some dark color, as on the house of Jaques Coeur at
Bourges; and I imagine the effect of this must have been singularly
delicate and beautiful, but only traces of it now remain. The northern
roofs, however, generally stand in little need of surface decoration,
the eye being drawn to the fantastic ranges of their dormer windows, and
to the finials and fringes on their points and ridges.
§ VII. Whether dormer windows are legitimately to be classed as
decorative features, seems to me to admit of doubt. The northern spire
system is evidently a mere elevation and exaggeration of the domestic
turret with its look-out windows, and one can hardly part with the
grotesque lines of the projections, though nobody is to be expected to
live in the spire: but, at all events, such windows are never to be
allowed in places visibly inaccessible, or on less than a natural and
serviceable scale.
§ VIII. Under the general head of roof-ridge and point decoration, we
may include, as above noted, the entire race of fringes, finials, and
crockets. As there is no use in any of these things, and as they are
visible additions and parasitical portions of the structure, more
caution is required in their use than in any other features of ornament,
and the architect and spectator must both be in felicitous humor before
they can be well designed or thoroughly enjoyed. They are generally
most admirable where the grotesque Northern spirit has most power; and I
think there is almost always a certain spirit of playfulness in them,
adverse to the grandest architectural effects, or at least to be kept in
severe subordination to the serener character of the prevalent lines.
But as they are opposed to the seriousness of majesty on the one hand,
so they are to the weight of dulness on the other; and I know not any
features which make the contrast between continental domestic
architecture, and our own, more humiliatingly felt, or which give so
sudden a feeling of new life and delight, when we pass from the streets
of London to those of Abbeville or Rouen, as the quaint points and
pinnacles of the roof gables and turrets. The commonest and heaviest
roof may be redeemed by a spike at the end of it, if it is set on with
any spirit; but the foreign builders have (or had, at least) a peculiar
feeling in this, and gave animation to the whole roof by the fringe of
its back, and the spike on its forehead, so that all goes together, like
the dorsal fins and spines of a fish: but our spikes have a dull,
screwed on, look; a far-off relationship to the nuts of machinery; and
our roof fringes are sure to look like fenders, as if they were meant to
catch ashes out of the London smoke-clouds.
§ IX. Stone finials and crockets are, I think, to be considered in
architecture, what points and flashes of light are in the color of
painting, or of nature. There are some landscapes whose best character
is sparkling, and there is a possibility of repose in the midst of
brilliancy, or embracing it,--as on the fields of summer sea, or summer
land:
"Calm, and deep peace, on this high wold,
And on the dews that drench the furze,
And on the silvery gossamers,
_That twinkle into green and gold_."
And there are colorists who can keep their quiet in the midst of a
jewellery of light; but, for the most part, it is better to avoid
breaking up either lines or masses by too many points, and to make the
few points used exceedingly precious. So the best crockets and finials
are set, like stars, along the lines, and at the points, which they
adorn, with considerable intervals between them, and exquisite delicacy
and fancy of sculpture in their own designs; if very small, they may
become more frequent, and describe lines by a chain of points; but their
whole value is lost if they are gathered into bunches or clustered into
tassels and knots; and an over-indulgence in them always marks lowness
of school. In Venice, the addition of the finial to the arch-head is the
first sign of degradation; all her best architecture is entirely without
either crockets or finials; and her ecclesiastical architecture may be
classed, with fearless accuracy, as better or worse, in proportion to
the diminution or expansion of the crocket. The absolutely perfect use
of the crocket is found, I think, in the tower of Giotto, and in some
other buildings of the Pisan school. In the North they generally err on
one side or other, and are either florid and huge, or mean in outline,
looking as if they had been pinched out of the stonework, as throughout
the entire cathedral of Amiens; and are besides connected with the
generally spotty system which has been spoken of under the head of
archivolt decoration.
§ X. Employed, however, in moderation, they are among the most
delightful means of delicate expression; and the architect has more
liberty in their individual treatment than in any other feature of the
building. Separated entirely from the structural system, they are
subjected to no shadow of any other laws than those of grace and
chastity; and the fancy may range without rebuke, for materials of their
design, through the whole field of the visible or imaginable creation.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE VESTIBULE.
§ I. I have hardly kept my promise. The reader has decorated but little
for himself as yet; but I have not, at least, attempted to bias his
judgment. Of the simple forms of decoration which have been set before
him, he has always been left free to choose; and the stated restrictions
in the methods of applying them have been only those which followed on
the necessities of construction previously determined. These having been
now defined, I do indeed leave my reader free to build; and with what a
freedom! All the lovely forms of the universe set before him, whence to
choose, and all the lovely lines that bound their substance or guide
their motion; and of all these lines,--and there are myriads of myriads
in every bank of grass and every tuft of forest; and groups of them
divinely harmonized, in the bell of every flower, and in every several
member of bird and beast,--of all these lines, for the principal forms
of the most important members of architecture, I have used but Three!
What, therefore, must be the infinity of the treasure in them all! There
is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of
cathedrals, but suppose we were satisfied with less exhaustive
appliance, and built a score of cathedrals, each to illustrate a single
flower? that would be better than trying to invent new styles, I think.
There is quite difference of style enough, between a violet and a
harebell, for all reasonable purposes.
§ II. Perhaps, however, even more strange than the struggle of our
architects to invent new styles, is the way they commonly speak of this
treasure of natural infinity. Let us take our patience to us for an
instant, and hear one of them, not among the least intelligent:--
"It is not true that all natural forms are beautiful. We may hardly
be able to detect this in Nature herself; but when the forms are
separated from the things, and exhibited alone (by sculpture or
carving), we then see that they are not all fitted for ornamental
purposes; and indeed that very few, perhaps none, are so fitted
without correction. Yes, I say _correction_, for though it is the
highest aim of every art to imitate nature, this is not to be done by
imitating any natural form, but by _criticising_ and _correcting_
it,--criticising it by Nature's rules gathered from all her works,
but never completely carried out by her in any one work; correcting
it, by rendering it more natural, _i.e._ more conformable to the
general tendency of Nature, according to that noble maxim recorded of
Raffaelle, 'that the artist's object was to make things not as Nature
makes them, but as she WOULD make them;' as she ever tries to make
them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a
comparison of her efforts; just as if a number of archers had aimed
unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were then
removed, we could by the examination of their arrow marks point out
the most probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of
being nearer to it than any of their shots."[92]
§ III. I had thought that, by this time, we had done with that stale,
second-hand, one-sided, and misunderstood saying of Raffaelle's; or that
at least, in these days of purer Christian light, men might have begun
to get some insight into the meaning of it: Raffaelle was a painter of
humanity, and assuredly there is something the matter with humanity, a
few _dovrebbe's_, more or less, wanting in it. We have most of us heard
of original sin, and may perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that
we are not quite what God, or nature, would have us to be. Raffaelle
_had_ something to mend in Humanity: I should have liked to have seen
him mending a daisy!--or a pease-blossom, or a moth, or a mustard seed,
or any other of God's slightest works. If he had accomplished that, one
might have found for him more respectable employment,--to set the stars
in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered as they are,
and to be of all manner of shapes and sizes,--except the ideal shape,
and the proper size); or to give us a corrected view of the ocean; that,
at least, seems a very irregular and improveable thing; the very
fishermen do not know, this day, how far it will reach, driven up before
the west wind:--perhaps Some One else does, but that is not our
business. Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,--of the great
irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time.
One,--two:--here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at
the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up
as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch! Another:--Ah,
careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? it is all gone
away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there--I thought as
much--missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another:--How now, impatient
one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with,
instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go
for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder
slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave;
not so fast; not so fast; where are you coming to?--By our architectural
word, this is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you
in our face besides; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there,
broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of
foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off
it! Alas, for these unhappy arrow shots of Nature; she will never hit
her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them, into the
ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek
architect to do it for her. He comes--the great Greek architect, with
measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and
weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a
way for the lightning of the thunder? He sets himself orderly to his
work, and behold! this is the mark of nature, and this is the thing into
which the great Greek architect improves the sea--
[Illustration]
[Greek: Thalatta, thalatta]: Was it this, then, that they wept to see
from the sacred mountain--those wearied ones?
§ IV. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also the
leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be
without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be
pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our
foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?
§ V. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man's art? Have we only to
copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We
have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so
feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve,
but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable,
in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long
contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then
set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating
it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not
improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower
visible; and then the human being has to make its power upon his own
heart visible also, and to give it the honor of the good thoughts it has
raised up in him, and to write upon it the history of his own soul. And
sometimes he may be able to do more than this, and to set it in strange
lights, and display it in a thousand ways before unknown: ways specially
directed to necessary and noble purposes, for which he had to choose
instruments out of the wide armory of God. All this he may do: and in
this he is only doing what every Christian has to do with the written,
as well as the created word, "rightly _dividing_ the word of truth." Out
of the infinity of the written word, he has also to gather and set forth
things new and old, to choose them for the season and the work that are
before him, to explain and manifest them to others, with such
illustration and enforcement as may be in his power, and to crown them
with the history of what, by them, God has done for his soul. And, in
doing this, is he improving the Word of God? Just such difference as
there is between the sense in which a minister may be said to improve a
text, to the people's comfort, and the sense in which an atheist might
declare that he could improve the Book, which, if any man shall add
unto, there shall be added unto him the plagues that are written
therein; just such difference is there between that which, with respect
to Nature, man is, in his humbleness, called upon to do, and that which,
in his insolence, he imagines himself capable of doing.
§ VI. Have no fear, therefore, reader, in judging between nature and
art, so only that you love both. If you can love one only, then let it
be Nature; you are safe with her: but do not then attempt to judge the
art, to which you do not care to give thought, or time. But if you love
both, you may judge between them fearlessly; you may estimate the last,
by its making you remember the first, and giving you the same kind of
joy. If, in the square of the city, you can find a delight, finite,
indeed, but pure and intense, like that which you have in a valley among
the hills, then its art and architecture are right; but if, after fair
trial, you can find no delight in them, nor any instruction like that of
nature, I call on you fearlessly to condemn them.
We are forced, for the sake of accumulating our power and knowledge, to
live in cities; but such advantage as we have in association with each
other is in great part counterbalanced by our loss of fellowship with
nature. We cannot all have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to
meditate in at eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as
far as may be, to replace these; to tell us about nature; to possess us
with memories of her quietness; to be solemn and full of tenderness,
like her, and rich in portraitures of her; full of delicate imagery of
the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures now far
away from us in their own solitude. If ever you felt or found this in a
London Street,--if ever it furnished you with one serious thought, or
one ray of true and gentle pleasure,--if there is in your heart a true
delight in its grim railings and dark casements, and wasteful finery of
shops, and feeble coxcombry of club-houses,--it is well: promote the
building of more like them. But if they never taught you anything, and
never made you happier as you passed beneath them, do not think they
have any mysterious goodness nor occult sublimity. Have done with the
wretched affectation, the futile barbarism, of pretending to enjoy: for,
as surely as you know that the meadow grass, meshed with fairy rings, is
better than the wood pavement, cut into hexagons; and as surely as you
know the fresh winds and sunshine of the upland are better than the
choke-damp of the vault, or the gas-light of the ball-room, you may
know, as I told you that you should, that the good architecture, which
has life, and truth, and joy in it, is better than the bad architecture,
which has death, dishonesty, and vexation of heart in it, from the
beginning to the end of time.
§ VII. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your
gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of
Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the East.
It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms, and vine festoons
full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their
clusters deepened into gloomy blue; then mounts an embankment above the
Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches
to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows
slowly, but strongly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that
neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous
banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant
into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged
into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the
dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen
trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did
at first. Presently you pass one of the much vaunted "villas on the
Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with
painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with
pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the feverish
sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence sake, with
goodly posts and chains; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese
variations, painted red and green; a third composed for the greater
part of dead-wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a
pea-green blind, and a classical architrave in bad perspective; and a
fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall: some
antique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and
some of clumsy grotesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This
is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have
conducted modern Italy.
§ VIII. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls
of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary
stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, forming irregular
and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side
of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have
recognised before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and
rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what
were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted
fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and
here and there a few fragments of marble steps, which have once given
them graceful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in
broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green weed. At last the
road turns sharply to the north, and there is an open space, covered
with bent grass, on the right of it: but do not look that way.
§ IX. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn
at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (always, I
think) covered with a cloth of nominal white and perennial grey, with
plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar
white bread, made with oil, and more like knots of flour than bread. The
view from its balcony is not cheerful: a narrow street, with a solitary
brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some
coventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their
windows; and, between them and the street, a ditch with some slow
current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbor
of roses at its door, as in an English tea-garden; the air, however,
about us having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and
crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is
much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain
wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their
rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street.
§ X. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low
wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side
down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black
with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,--it is covered with the
black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be
real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at
first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat
and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any
water we have seen lately, and of a pale green; the banks only two or
three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a
stunted tree; gliding swiftly past the small casement of the gondola, as
if they were dragged by upon a painted scene.
Stroke by stroke we count the plunges of the oar, each heaving up the
side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose
patience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows
keenly by, as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In
front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank; to the west,
the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen
purple shapes, of the color of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon,
feebly defined against the afternoon sky,--the Alps of Bassano. Forward
still: the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate
angles about some low bastions, now torn to pieces and staggering in
ugly rents towards the water,--the bastions of the fort of Malghera.
Another turn, and another perspective of canal; but not interminable.
The silver beak cleaves it fast,--it widens: the rank grass of the
banks sinks lower, and lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an
expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we
might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm
southern sky bending over Malamocco to the sea. Now we can see nothing
but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to
let the tide through it;--this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above
all things. But at the end of those dismal arches, there rises, out of
the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings,
which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be
the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale,
and apparently at a greater distance, rise over the centre of the line;
but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black
smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the
belfry of a church.
It is Venice.
FOOTNOTES:
[92] Garbett on Design, p. 74.
APPENDIX.
1. FOUNDATION OF VENICE.
I find the chroniclers agree in fixing the year 421, if any: the
following sentence from De Monaci may perhaps interest the reader.
"God, who punishes the sins of men by war sorrows, and whose ways are
past finding out, willing both to save the innocent blood, and that a
great power, beneficial to the whole world, should arise in a spot
strange beyond belief, moved the chief men of the cities of the Venetian
province (which from the border of Pannonia, extended as far as the
Adda, a river of Lombardy), both in memory of past, and in dread of
future distress, to establish states upon the nearer islands of the
inner gulphs of the Adriatic, to which, in the last necessity, they
might retreat for refuge. And first Galienus de Fontana, Simon de
Glauconibus, and Antonius Calvus, or, as others have it, Adalburtus
Falerius, Thomas Candiano, Comes Daulus, Consuls of Padua, by the
command of their King and the desire of the citizens, laid the
foundations of the new commonwealth, under good auspices, on the island
of the Rialto, the highest and nearest to the mouth of the deep river
now called the Brenta, in the year of Our Lord, as many writers assure
us, four hundred and twenty-one, on the 25th day of March."[93]
It is matter also of very great satisfaction to know that Venice was
founded by good Christians: "La qual citade è stada hedificada da veri e
boni Christiani:" which information I found in the MS. copy of the
Zancarol Chronicle, in the library of St. Mark's.
Finally the conjecture as to the origin of her name, recorded by
Sansovino, will be accepted willingly by all who love Venice: "Fu
interpretato da alcuni, che questa voce VENETIA voglia dire _VENI
ETIAM_, cioè, vieni ancora, e ancora, percioche quante volte verrai,
sempre vedrai nuove cose, enuove bellezze."
2. POWER OF THE DOGES.
The best authorities agree in giving the year 697 as that of the
election of the first doge, Paul Luke Anafeste. He was elected in a
general meeting of the commonalty, tribunes, and clergy, at Heraclea,
"divinis rebus procuratis," as usual, in all serious work, in those
times. His authority is thus defined by Sabellico, who was not likely to
have exaggerated it:--"Penes quem decus omne imperii ac majestas esset:
cui jus concilium cogendi quoties de republica aliquid referri
oporteret; qui tribunos annuos in singulas insulas legeret, a quibus ad
Ducem esset provocatio. Cæterum, si quis dignitatem, ecclesiam,
sacerdotumve cleri populique suffragio esset adeptus, ita demum id ratum
haberetur si dux ipse auctor factus esset." (Lib. I.) The last clause is
very important, indicating the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the
popular and ducal (or patrician) powers, which, throughout her career,
was one of the most remarkable features in the policy of Venice. The
appeal from the tribunes to the doge is also important; and the
expression "decus omne imperii," if of somewhat doubtful force, is at
least as energetic as could have been expected from an historian under
the influence of the Council of Ten.
3. SERRAR DEL CONSIGLIO.
The date of the decree which made the right of sitting in the grand
council hereditary, is variously given; the Venetian historians
themselves saying as little as they can about it. The thing was
evidently not accomplished at once, several decrees following in
successive years: the Council of Ten was established without any doubt
in 1310, in consequence of the conspiracy of Tiepolo. The Venetian
verse, quoted by Mutinelli (Annali Urbani di Venezia, p. 153), is worth
remembering.
"Del mille tresento e diese
A mezzo el mese delle ceriese
Bagiamonte passò el ponte
E per esso fo fatto el Consegio di diese."
The reader cannot do better than take 1297 as the date of the beginning
of the change of government, and this will enable him exactly to divide
the 1100 years from the election of the first doge into 600 of monarchy
and 500 of aristocracy. The coincidence of the numbers is somewhat
curious; 697 the date of the establishment of the government, 1297 of
its change, and 1797 of its fall.
4. S. PIETRO DI CASTELLO.
It is credibly reported to have been founded in the seventh century, and
(with somewhat less of credibility) in a place where the Trojans,
conducted by Antenor, had, after the destruction of Troy, built "un
castello, chiamato prima Troja, poscia Olivolo, interpretato, luogo
pieno." It seems that St. Peter appeared in person to the Bishop of
Heraclea, and commanded him to found in his honor, a church in that spot
of the rising city on the Rialto: "ove avesse veduto una mandra di buoi
e di pecore pascolare unitamente. Questa fu la prodigiosa origine della
Chiesa di San Pietro, che poscia, o rinovata, o ristaurata, da Orso
Participazio IV Vescovo Olivolense, divenne la Cattedrale della Nuova
citta." (Notizie Storiche delle Chiese e Monasteri di Venezia. Padua,
1758.) What there was so prodigious in oxen and sheep feeding together,
we need St. Peter, I think, to tell us. The title of Bishop of Castello
was first taken in 1091: St. Mark's was not made the cathedral church
till 1807. It may be thought hardly fair to conclude the small
importance of the old St. Pietro di Castello from the appearance of the
wretched modernisations of 1620. But these modernisations are spoken of
as improvements; and I find no notice of peculiar beauties in the older
building, either in the work above quoted, or by Sansovino; who only
says that when it was destroyed by fire (as everything in Venice was, I
think, about three times in a century), in the reign of Vital Michele,
it was rebuilt "with good thick walls, maintaining, _for all that_, the
order of its arrangement taken from the Greek mode of building." This
does not seem the description of a very enthusiastic effort to rebuild a
highly ornate cathedral. The present church is among the least
interesting in Venice; a wooden bridge, something like that of Battersea
on a small scale, connects its island, now almost deserted, with a
wretched suburb of the city behind the arsenal; and a blank level of
lifeless grass, rotted away in places rather than trodden, is extended
before its mildewed façade and solitary tower.
5. PAPAL POWER IN VENICE.
I may refer the reader to the eleventh chapter of the twenty-eighth book
of Daru for some account of the restraints to which the Venetian clergy
were subjected. I have not myself been able to devote any time to the
examination of the original documents bearing on this matter, but the
following extract from a letter of a friend, who will not at present
permit me to give his name, but who is certainly better conversant
with the records of the Venetian State than any other Englishman, will
be of great value to the general reader:--
"In the year 1410, or perhaps at the close of the thirteenth century,
churchmen were excluded from the Grand Council and declared ineligible
to civil employment; and in the same year, 1410, the Council of Ten,
with the Giunta, decreed that whenever in the state's councils matters
concerning ecclesiastical affairs were being treated, all the kinsfolk
of Venetian beneficed clergymen were to be expelled; and, in the year
1434, the RELATIONS of churchmen were declared ineligible to the post of
ambassador at Rome.
"The Venetians never gave possession of any see in their territories to
bishops unless they had been proposed to the pope by the senate, which
elected the patriarch, who was supposed, at the end of the sixteenth
century, to be liable to examination by his Holiness, as an act of
confirmation of installation; but of course, everything depended on the
relative power at any given time of Rome and Venice: for instance, a few
days after the accession of Julius II., in 1503, he requests the
Signory, cap in hand, to ALLOW him to confer the archbishopric of Zara
on a dependant of his, one Cipico the Bishop of Famagosta. Six years
later, when Venice was overwhelmed by the leaguers of Cambrai, that
furious pope would assuredly have conferred Zara on Cipico WITHOUT
asking leave. In 1608, the rich Camaldolite Abbey of Vangadizza, in the
Polesine, fell vacant through the death of Lionardo Loredano, in whose
family it had been since some while. The Venetian ambassador at Rome
received the news on the night of the 28th December; and, on the morrow,
requested Paul IV. not to dispose of this preferment until he heard from
the senate. The pope talked of 'poor cardinals' and of his nephew, but
made no positive reply; and, as Francesco Contarini was withdrawing,
said to him: 'My Lord ambassador, with this opportunity we will inform
you that, to our very great regret, we understand that the chiefs of the
Ten mean to turn sacristans; for they order the parish priests to close
the church doors at the Ave Maria, and not to ring the bells at certain
hours. This is precisely the sacristan's office; we don't know why their
lordships, by printed edicts, which we have seen, choose to interfere in
this matter. This is pure and mere ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and
even, in case of any inconvenience arising, is there not the patriarch,
who is at any rate your own; why not apply to him, who could remedy
these irregularities? These are matters which cause us very notable
displeasure; we say so that they may be written and known: it is decided
by the councils and canons, and not uttered by us, that whosoever forms
any resolve against the ecclesiastical liberty, cannot do so without
incurring censure: and in order that Father Paul [Bacon's correspondent]
may not say hereafter, as he did in his past writings, that our
predecessors assented either tacitly or by permission, we declare that
we do not give our assent, nor do we approve it; nay, we blame it, and
let this be announced in Venice, so that, for the rest, every one may
take care of his own conscience. St. Thomas à Becket, whose festival is
celebrated this very day, suffered martyrdom for the ecclesiastical
liberty; it is our duty likewise to support and defend it.' Contarini
says: 'This remonstrance was delivered with some marks of anger, which
induced me to tell him how the tribunal of the most excellent the Lords
chiefs of the Ten is in our country supreme; that it does not do its
business unadvisedly, or condescend to unworthy matters; and that,
therefore, should those Lords have come to any public declaration of
their will, it must be attributed to orders anterior, and to immemorial
custom and authority, recollecting that, on former occasions likewise,
similar commissions were given to prevent divers incongruities;
wherefore an upright intention, such as this, ought not to be taken in
any other sense than its own, especially as the parishes of Venice were
in her own gift,' &c. &c. The pope persisted in bestowing the abbacy on
his nephew, but the republic would not give possession, and a compromise
was effected by its being conferred on the Venetian Matteo Priuli, who
allowed the cardinal five thousand ducats per annum out of its revenues.
A few years before this, this very same pope excommunicated the State,
because she had imprisoned two churchmen for heinous crimes; the strife
lasted for more than a year, and ended through the mediation of Henry
IV., at whose suit the prisoners were delivered to the French
ambassador, who made them over to a papal commissioner.
"In January, 1484, a tournament was in preparation on St. Mark's Square:
some murmurs had been heard about the distribution of the prizes having
been pre-arranged, without regard to the 'best man.' One of the chiefs
of the Ten was walking along Rialto on the 28th January, when a young
priest, twenty-two years old, a sword-cutlers son, and a Bolognese, and
one of Perugia, both men-at-arms under Robert Sansoverino, fell upon a
clothier with drawn weapons. The chief of the Ten desired they might be
seized, but at the moment the priest escaped; he was, however,
subsequently retaken, and in that very evening hanged by torch-light
between the columns with the two soldiers. Innocent VIII. was less
powerful than Paul IV.; Venice weaker in 1605 than in 1484.
"* * * The exclusion from the Grand Council, whether at the end of the
fourteenth or commencement of the following century, of the Venetian
ecclesiastics, (as induced either by the republic's acquisitions on the
main land then made, and which, through the rich benefices they
embraced, might have rendered an ambitious churchman as dangerous in the
Grand Council as a victorious condottiere; or from dread of their
allegiance being divided between the church and their country, it being
acknowledged that no man can serve two masters,) did not render them
hostile to their fatherland, whose interests were, with very few
exceptions, eagerly fathered by the Venetian prelates at Rome, who, in
their turn, received all honor at Venice, where state receptions given
to cardinals of the houses of Correr, Grimani, Cornaro, Pisani,
Contarini, Zeno, Delfino, and others, vouch for the good understanding
that existed between the 'Papalists' and their countrymen. The Cardinal
Grimani was instrumental in detaching Julius II. from the league of
Cambrai; the Cardinal Cornaro always aided the state to obtain anything
required of Leo X.; and, both before and after their times, all
Venetians that had a seat in the Sacred College were patriots rather
than pluralists: I mean that they cared more for Venice than for their
benefices, admitting thus the soundness of that policy which denied them
admission into the Grand Council."
To this interesting statement, I shall add, from the twenty-eighth book
of Daru, two passages, well deserving consideration by us English in
present days:
"Pour être parfaitement assurée contre les envahissements de la
puissance ecclésiastique, Venise commença par lui ôter tout prétexte
d'intervenir dans les affaires de l'Etat; elle resta invariablement
fidèle au dogme. Jamais aucune des opinions nouvelles n'y prit la
moindre faveur; jamais aucun hérésiarque ne sortit de Venise. Les
conciles, les disputes, les guerres de religion, se passèrent sans
qu'elle y prit jamais la moindre part. Inébranlable dans sa foi, elle ne
fut pas moins invariable dans son système de tolérance. Non seulement
ses sujets de la religion grecque conservèrent l'exercise de leur culte,
leurs évêques et leurs prêtres; mais les Protestantes, les Arméniens,
les Mahomitans, les Juifs, toutes les religions, toutes les sectes qui
se trouvaient dans Venise, avaient des temples, et la sépulture dans les
églises n'était point refusé aux hérétiques. Une police vigilante
s'appliquait avec le même soin à éteindre les discordes, et à empêcher
les fanatiques et les novateurs de troubler l'Etat."
* * * * *
"Si on considère que c'est dans un temps où presque toutes les nations
tremblaient devant la puissance pontificale, que les Vénitiens surent
tenir leur clergé dans la dépendance, et braver souvent les censures
ecclésiastiques et les interdits, sans encourir jamais aucun reproche
sur la pureté de leur foi, on sera forcé de reconnaître que cette
république avait dévancé de loin les autres peuples dans cette partie de
la science du gouvernement. La fameuse maxime, 'Siamo veneziani, poi
christiani,' n'était qu'une formule énergique qui ne prouvait point
quils voulussent placer l'intérêt de la religion après celui de l'Etat,
mais qui annonçait leur invariable résolution de ne pas souffrir qu'un
pouvoir étranger portât atteinte aux droits de la république.
"Dans toute la durée de son existence, an milieu des revers comme dans
la prospérité cet inébranlable gouvernement ne fit qu'une seule fois des
concessions à la cour de Borne, et ce fut pour détacher le Pape Jules
II. de la ligue de Cambrai.
"Jamais il ne se relâcha du soin de tenir le clergé dans une nullité
absolue relativement aux affaires politiques; on peut en juger par la
conduite qu'il tint avec l'ordre religieux le plus redoutable et le plus
accoutumé à s'immiscer dans les secrets de l'Etat et dans les intérêts
temporels."
The main points, next stated, respecting the Jesuits are, that the
decree which permitted their establishment in Venice required formal
renewal every three years; that no Jesuit could stay in Venice more than
three years; that the slightest disobedience to the authority of the
government was instantly punished by imprisonment; that no Venetian
could enter the order without express permission from the government;
that the notaries were forbidden to sanction any testamentary disposal
of property to the Jesuits; finally, that the heads of noble families
were forbidden to permit their children to be educated in the Jesuits'
colleges, on pain of degradation from their rank.
Now, let it be observed that the enforcement of absolute exclusion of
the clergy from the councils of the state, dates exactly from the period
which I have marked for the commencement of the decline of the Venetian
power. The Romanist is welcome to his advantage in this fact, if
advantage it be; for I do not bring forward the conduct of the senate of
Venice, as Daru does, by way of an example of the general science of
government. The Venetians accomplished therein what we ridiculously call
a separation of "Church and State" (as if the State were not, in all
Christendom, necessarily also the Church[94]), but _ought_ to call a
separation of lay and clerical officers. I do not point out this
separation as subject of praise, but as the witness borne by the
Venetians against the principles of the Papacy. If they were to blame,
in yielding to their fear of the ambitious spirit of Rome so far as to
deprive their councils of all religious element, what excuse are we to
offer for the state, which, with Lords Spiritual of her own faith
already in her senate, permits the polity of Rome to be represented by
lay members? To have sacrificed religion to mistaken policy, or
purchased security with ignominy, would have been no new thing in the
world's history; but to be at once impious and impolitic, and seek for
danger through dishonor, was reserved for the English parliament of
1829.
I am glad to have this opportunity of referring to, and farther
enforcing, the note on this subject which, not without deliberation, I
appended to the "Seven Lamps;" and of adding to it the following
passage, written by my father in the year 1839, and published in one of
the journals of that year:--a passage remarkable as much for its
intrinsic value, as for having stated, twelve years ago, truths to which
the mind of England seems but now, and that slowly, awakening.
"We hear it said, that it cannot be merely the Roman religion that
causes the difficulty [respecting Ireland], for we were once all Roman
Catholics, and nations abroad of this faith are not as the Irish. It is
totally overlooked, that when we were so, our government was despotic,
and fit to cope with this dangerous religion, as most of the Continental
governments yet are. In what Roman Catholic state, or in what age of
Roman Catholic England, did we ever hear of such agitation as now exists
in Ireland by evil men taking advantage of an anomalous state of
things--Roman Catholic ignorance in the people, Protestant toleration in
the government? We have yet to feel the tremendous difficulty in which
Roman Catholic emancipation has involved us. Too late we discover that a
Roman Catholic is wholly incapable of being safely connected with the
British constitution, as it now exists, _in any near relation_. The
present constitution is no longer fit for Catholics. It is a creature
essentially Protestant, growing with the growth, and strengthening with
the strength, of Protestantism. So entirely is Protestantism interwoven
with the whole frame of our constitution and laws, that I take my stand
on this, against all agitators in existence, that the Roman religion is
totally incompatible with the British constitution. We have, in trying
to combine them, got into a maze of difficulties; we are the worse, and
Ireland none the better. It is idle to talk of municipal reform or
popular Lords Lieutenant. The mild sway of a constitutional monarchy is
not strong enough for a Roman Catholic population. The stern soul of a
Republican would not shrink from sending half the misguided population
and all the priests into exile, and planting in their place an
industrious Protestant people. But you cannot do this, and you cannot
convert the Irish, nor by other means make them fit to wear the mild
restraints of a Protestant Government. It was, moreover, a strange logic
that begot the idea of admitting Catholics to administer any part of our
laws or constitution. It was admitted by all that, by the very act of
abandoning the Roman religion, we became a free and enlightened people.
It was only by throwing off the yoke of that slavish religion that we
attained to the freedom of thought which has advanced us in the scale of
society. We are so much advanced by adopting and adhering to a reformed
religion, that to prove our liberal and unprejudiced views, we throw
down the barriers betwixt the two religions, of which the one is the
acknowledged cause of light and knowledge, the other the cause of
darkness and ignorance. We are so much altered to the better by leaving
this people entirely, and giving them neither part nor lot amongst us,
that it becomes proper to mingle again with them. We have found so much
good in leaving them, that we deem it the best possible reason for
returning to be among them. No fear of their Church again shaking us,
with all our light and knowledge. It is true, the most enlightened
nations fell under the spell of her enchantments, fell into total
darkness and superstition; but no fear of us--we are too well informed!
What miserable reasoning! infatuated presumption! I fear me, when the
Roman religion rolled her clouds of darkness over the earlier ages, that
she quenched as much light, and knowledge, and judgment as our modern
Liberals have ever displayed. I do not expect a statesman to discuss the
point of Transubstantiation betwixt Protestant and Catholic, nor to
trace the narrow lines which divide Protestant sectarians from each
other; but can any statesman that shall have taken even a cursory
glance at the face of Europe, hesitate a moment on the choice of the
Protestant religion? If he unfortunately knew nothing of its being the
true one in regard to our eternal interests, he is at least bound to see
whether it be not the best for the worldly prosperity of a people. He
may be but moderately imbued with pious zeal for the salvation of a
kingdom, but at least he will be expected to weigh the comparative
merits of religion, as of law or government; and blind, indeed, must he
be if he does not discern that, in neglecting to cherish the Protestant
faith, or in too easily yielding to any encroachments on it, he is
foregoing the use of a state engine more powerful than all the laws
which the uninspired legislators of the earth have ever promulgated, in
promoting the happiness, the peace, prosperity, and the order, the
industry, and the wealth, of a people; in forming every quality valuable
or desirable in a subject or a citizen; in sustaining the public mind at
that point of education and information that forms the best security for
the state, and the best preservative for the freedom of a people,
whether religious or political."
[Illustration: Plate XX.
WALL VEIL DECORATION.
CA' TREVISAN.]
6. RENAISSANCE ORNAMENTS.
There having been three principal styles of architecture in Venice,--the
Greek or Byzantine, the Gothic, and the Renaissance, it will be shown,
in the sequel, that the Renaissance itself is divided into three
correspondent families: Renaissance engrafted on Byzantine, which is
earliest and best; Renaissance engrafted on Gothic, which is second, and
second best; Renaissance on Renaissance, which is double darkness, and
worst of all. The palaces in which Renaissance is engrafted on Byzantine
are those noticed by Commynes: they are characterized by an
ornamentation very closely resembling, and in some cases identical with,
early Byzantine work; namely, groups of colored marble circles inclosed
in interlacing bands. I have put on the opposite page one of these
ornaments, from the Ca' Trevisan, in which a most curious and delicate
piece of inlaid design is introduced into a band which is almost exactly
copied from the church of Theotocos at Constantinople, and correspondent
with others in St. Mark's. There is also much Byzantine feeling in the
treatment of the animals, especially in the two birds of the lower
compartment, while the peculiar curves of the cinque cento leafage are
visible in the leaves above. The dove, alighted, with the olive-branch
plucked off, is opposed to the raven with restless expanded wings.
Beneath are evidently the two sacrifices "of every clean fowl and of
every clean beast." The color is given with green and white marbles, the
dove relieved on a ground of greyish green, and all is exquisitely
finished.
In Plate I., p. 13, the upper figure is from the same palace (Ca'
Trevisan), and it is very interesting in its proportions. If we take
five circles in geometrical proportion, each diameter being two-thirds
of the diameter next above it, and arrange the circles so proportioned,
in contact with each other, in the manner shown in the plate, we shall
find that an increase quite imperceptible in the diameter of the circles
in the angles, will enable us to inscribe the whole in a square. The
lines so described will then run in the centre of the white bands. I
cannot be certain that this is the actual construction of the Trevisan
design, because it is on a high wall surface, where I could not get at
its measurements; but I found this construction exactly coincide with
the lines of my eye sketch. The lower figure in Plate I. is from the
front of the Ca' Dario, and probably struck the eye of Commynes in its
first brightness. Salvatico, indeed, considers both the Ca' Trevisan
(which once belonged to Bianca Cappello) and the Ca' Dario, as buildings
of the sixteenth century. I defer the discussion of the question at
present, but have, I believe, sufficient reason for assuming the Ca'
Dario to have been built about 1486, and the Ca' Trevisan not much
later.
7. VARIETIES OF THE ORDERS.
Of these phantasms and grotesques, one of some general importance is
that commonly called Ionic, of which the idea was taken (Vitruvius says)
from a woman's hair, curled; but its lateral processes look more like
rams' horns: be that as it may, it is a mere piece of agreeable
extravagance, and if, instead of rams' horns, you put ibex horns, or
cows' horns, or an ass's head at once, you will have ibex orders, or ass
orders, or any number of other orders, one for every head or horn. You
may have heard of another order, the Composite, which is Ionic and
Corinthian mixed, and is one of the worst of ten thousand forms
referable to the Corinthian as their head: it may be described as a
spoiled Corinthian. And you may have also heard of another order, called
Tuscan (which is no order at all, but a spoiled Doric): and of another
called Roman Doric, which is Doric more spoiled, both which are simply
among the most stupid variations ever invented upon forms already known.
I find also in a French pamphlet upon architecture,[95] as applied to
shops and dwelling houses, a sixth order, the "Ordre Français," at least
as good as any of the three last, and to be hailed with acclamation,
considering whence it comes, there being usually more tendency on the
other side of the channel to the confusion of "orders" than their
multiplication: but the reader will find in the end that there are in
very deed only two orders, of which the Greek, Doric, and Corinthian are
the first examples, and _they_ not perfect, nor in anywise sufficiently
representative of the vast families to which they belong; but being the
first and the best known, they may properly be considered as the types
of the rest. The essential distinctions of the two great orders he will
find explained in §§ XXXV. and XXXVI. of Chap. XXVII., and in the
passages there referred to; but I should rather desire that these
passages might be read in the order in which they occur.
8. THE NORTHERN ENERGY.
I have sketched above, in the First Chapter, the great events of
architectural history in the simplest and fewest words I could; but this
indraught of the Lombard energies upon the Byzantine rest, like a wild
north wind descending into a space of rarified atmosphere, and
encountered by an Arab simoom from the south, may well require from us
some farther attention; for the differences in all these schools are
more in the degrees of their impetuosity and refinement (these
qualities being, in most cases, in inverse ratio, yet much united by the
Arabs) than in the style of the ornaments they employ. The same leaves,
the same animals, the same arrangement, are used by Scandinavians,
ancient Britons, Saxons, Normans, Lombards, Romans, Byzantines, and
Arabians; all being alike descended through classic Greece from Egypt
and Assyria, and some from Phoenicia. The belts which encompass the
Assyrian bulls, in the hall of the British Museum, are the same as the
belts of the ornaments found in Scandinavian tumuli; their method of
ornamentation is the same as that of the gate of Mycenæ, and of the
Lombard pulpit of St. Ambrogio of Milan, and of the church of Theotocos
at Constantinople; the essential differences among the great schools are
their differences of temper and treatment, and science of expression; it
is absurd to talk of Norman ornaments, and Lombard ornaments, and
Byzantine ornaments, as formally distinguished; but there is
irreconcileable separation between Arab temper, and Lombard temper, and
Byzantine temper.
Now, as far as I have been able to compare the three schools, it appears
to me that the Arab and Lombard are both distinguished from the
Byzantine by their energy and love of excitement, but the Lombard stands
alone in his love of jest: Neither an Arab nor Byzantine ever jests in
his architecture; the Lombard has great difficulty in ever being
thoroughly serious; thus they represent three conditions of humanity,
one in perfect rest, the Byzantine, with exquisite perception of grace
and dignity; the Arab, with the same perception of grace, but with a
restless fever in his blood; the Lombard, equally energetic, but not
burning himself away, capable of submitting to law, and of enjoying
jest. But the Arabian feverishness infects even the Lombard in the
South, showing itself, however, in endless invention, with a refreshing
firmness and order directing the whole of it. The excitement is greatest
in the earliest times, most of all shown in St. Michele of Pavia; and I
am strongly disposed to connect much of its peculiar manifestations with
the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his
carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly
what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous
imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of
northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him
pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on
the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the
Lombardic sculptor. As civilisation increases the supply of vegetables,
and shortens that of wild beasts, the excitement diminishes; it is still
strong in the thirteenth century at Lyons and Rouen; it dies away
gradually in the later Gothic, and is quite extinct in the fifteenth
century.
I think I shall best illustrate this general idea by simply copying the
entries in my diary which were written when, after six months' close
study of Byzantine work in Venice, I came again to the Lombard work of
Verona and Pavia. There are some other points alluded to in these
entries not pertaining to the matter immediately in hand; but I have
left them, as they will be of use hereafter.
"(Verona.) Comparing the arabesque and sculpture of the Duomo here with
St. Mark's, the first thing that strikes one is the low relief, the
second, the greater motion and spirit, with infinitely less grace and
science. With the Byzantine, however rude the cutting, every line is
lovely, and the animals or men are placed in any attitudes which secure
ornamental effect, sometimes impossible ones, always severe, restrained,
or languid. With the Romanesque workmen all the figures show the effort
(often successful) to express energetic action; hunting chiefly, much
fighting, and both spirited; some of the dogs running capitally,
straining to it, and the knights hitting hard, while yet the faces and
drawing are in the last degree barbarous. At Venice all is graceful,
fixed, or languid; the eastern torpor is in every line,--the mark of a
school formed on severe traditions, and keeping to them, and never
likely or desirous to rise beyond them, but with an exquisite sense of
beauty, and much solemn religious faith.
"If the Greek outer archivolt of St. Mark's is Byzantine, the law is
somewhat broken by its busy domesticity; figures engaged in every trade,
and in the preparation of viands of all kinds; a crowded kind of London
Christmas scene, interleaved (literally) by the superb balls of leafage,
unique in sculpture; but even this is strongly opposed to the wild war
and chase passion of the Lombard. Farther, the Lombard building is as
sharp, precise, and accurate, as that of St. Mark's is careless. The
Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to put their stones together; and,
in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months
in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect _feeling_
here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface
ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more
chaste, pure, or solemn."
I have said much of the shafts of the entrance to the crypt of St.
Zeno;[96] the following note of the sculptures on the archivolt above
them is to our present purpose:
"It is covered by very light but most effective bas-reliefs of jesting
subject:--two cocks carrying on their shoulders a long staff to which a
fox (?) is tied by the legs, hanging down between them: the strut of the
foremost cock, lifting one leg at right angles to the other, is
delicious. Then a stag hunt, with a centaur horseman drawing a bow; the
arrow has gone clear through the stag's throat, and is sticking there.
Several capital hunts with dogs, with fruit trees between, and birds in
them; the leaves, considering the early time, singularly well set, with
the edges outwards, sharp, and deep cut: snails and frogs filling up the
intervals, as if suspended in the air, with some saucy puppies on their
hind legs, two or three nondescript beasts; and, finally, on the centre
of one of the arches on the south side, an elephant and castle,--a very
strange elephant, yet cut as if the carver had seen one."
Observe this elephant and castle; we shall meet with him farther north.
"These sculptures of St. Zeno are, however, quite quiet and tame
compared with those of St. Michele of Pavia, which are designed also in
a somewhat gloomier mood; significative, as I think, of indigestion.
(Note that they are much earlier than St. Zeno; of the seventh century
at latest. There is more of nightmare, and less of wit in them.) Lord
Lindsay has described them admirably, but has not said half enough; the
state of mind represented by the west front is more that of a feverish
dream, than resultant from any determined architectural purpose, or even
from any definite love and delight in the grotesque. One capital is
covered with a mass of grinning heads, other heads grow out of two
bodies, or out of and under feet; the creatures are all fighting, or
devouring, or struggling which shall be uppermost, and yet in an
ineffectual way, as if they would fight for ever, and come to no
decision. Neither sphinxes nor centaurs did I notice, nor a single
peacock (I believe peacocks to be purely Byzantine), but mermaids with
_two_ tails (the sculptor having perhaps seen double at the time),
strange, large fish, apes, stags (bulls?), dogs, wolves, and horses,
griffins, eagles, long-tailed birds (cocks?), hawks, and dragons,
without end, or with a dozen of ends, as the case may be; smaller birds,
with rabbits, and small nondescripts, filling the friezes. The actual
leaf, which is used in the best Byzantine mouldings at Venice, occurs in
parts of these Pavian designs. But the Lombard animals are all _alive_,
and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring: the Byzantine birds
peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their
noses. The cinque cento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like
train-bearers; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and
naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it
off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. They are exactly like Jip with
the bit of geranium, worrying imaginary cats in it."
The notice of the leaf in the above extract is important,--it is the
vine-leaf; used constantly both by Byzantines and Lombards, but by the
latter with especial frequency, though at this time they were hardly
able to indicate what they meant. It forms the most remarkable
generality of the St. Michele decoration; though, had it not luckily
been carved on the façade, twining round a stake, and with grapes, I
should never have known what it was meant for, its general form being a
succession of sharp lobes, with incised furrows to the point of each.
But it is thrown about in endless change; four or five varieties of it
might be found on every cluster of capitals: and not content with this,
the Lombards hint the same form even in their griffin wings. They love
the vine very heartily.
In St. Michele of Lucca we have perhaps the noblest instance in Italy of
the Lombard spirit in its later refinement. It is some four centuries
later than St. Michele of Pavia, and the method of workmanship is
altogether different. In the Pavian church, nearly all the ornament is
cut in a coarse sandstone, in bold relief: a darker and harder stone (I
think, not serpentine, but its surface is so disguised by the lustre of
ages that I could not be certain) is used for the capitals of the
western door, which are especially elaborate in their sculpture;--two
devilish apes, or apish devils, I know not which, with bristly
moustaches and edgy teeth, half-crouching, with their hands
impertinently on their knees, ready for a spit or a spring if one goes
near them; but all is pure bossy sculpture; there is no inlaying, except
of some variegated tiles in the shape of saucers set concave (an
ornament used also very gracefully in St. Jacopo of Bologna): and the
whole surface of the church is enriched with the massy reliefs, well
preserved everywhere above the reach of human animals, but utterly
destroyed to some five or six feet from the ground; worn away into large
cellular hollows and caverns, some almost deep enough to render the
walls unsafe, entirely owing to the uses to which the recesses of the
church are dedicated by the refined and high-minded Italians. But St.
Michele of Lucca is wrought entirely in white marble and green
serpentine; there is hardly any relieved sculpture except in the
capitals of the shafts and cornices, and all the designs of wall
ornament are inlaid with exquisite precision--white on dark ground; the
ground being cut out and filled with serpentine, the figures left in
solid marble. The designs of the Pavian church are encrusted on the
walls; of the Lucchese, incorporated with them; small portions of real
sculpture being introduced exactly where the eye, after its rest on the
flatness of the wall, will take most delight in the piece of substantial
form. The entire arrangement is perfect beyond all praise, and the
morbid restlessness of the old designs is now appeased. Geometry seems
to have acted as a febrifuge, for beautiful geometrical designs are
introduced amidst the tumult of the hunt; and there is no more seeing
double, nor ghastly monstrosity of conception; no more ending of
everything in something else; no more disputing for spare legs among
bewildered bodies; no more setting on of heads wrong side foremost. The
fragments have come together: we are out of the Inferno with its weeping
down the spine; we are in the fair hunting-fields of the Lucchese
mountains (though they had their tears also),--with horse, and hound,
and hawk; and merry blast of the trumpet.--Very strange creatures to be
hunted, in all truth; but still creatures with a single head, and that
on their shoulders, which is exactly the last place in the Pavian church
where a head is to be looked for.
My good friend Mr. Cockerell wonders, in one of his lectures, why I give
so much praise to this "crazy front of Lucca." But it is not crazy; not
by any means. Altogether sober, in comparison with the early Lombard
work, or with our Norman. Crazy in one sense it is: utterly neglected,
to the breaking of its old stout heart; the venomous nights and salt
frosts of the Maremma winters have their way with it--"Poor Tom's a
cold!" The weeds that feed on the marsh air, have twisted themselves
into its crannies; the polished fragments of serpentine are spit and
rent out of their cells, and lie in green ruins along its ledges; the
salt sea winds have eaten away the fair shafting of its star window into
a skeleton of crumbling rays. It cannot stand much longer; may Heaven
only, in its benignity, preserve it from restoration, and the sands of
the Serchio give it honorable grave.
In the "Seven Lamps," Plate VI., I gave a faithful drawing of one of its
upper arches, to which I must refer the reader; for there is a marked
piece of character in the figure of the horseman on the left of it. And
in making this reference, I would say a few words about those much
abused plates of the "Seven Lamps." They are black, they are overbitten,
they are hastily drawn, they are coarse and disagreeable; how
disagreeable to many readers I venture not to conceive. But their truth
is carried to an extent never before attempted in architectural drawing.
It does not in the least follow that because a drawing is delicate, or
looks careful, it has been carefully drawn from the thing represented;
in nine instances out of ten, careful and delicate drawings are made at
home. It is not so easy as the reader, perhaps, imagines, to finish a
drawing altogether on the spot, especially of details seventy feet from
the ground; and any one who will try the position in which I have had to
do some of my work--standing, namely, on a cornice or window sill,
holding by one arm round a shaft, and hanging over the street (or canal,
at Venice), with my sketch-book supported against the wall from which I
was drawing, by my breast, so as to leave my right hand free--will not
thenceforward wonder that shadows should be occasionally carelessly
laid in, or lines drawn with some unsteadiness. But, steady, or infirm,
the sketches of which those plates in the "Seven Lamps" are fac-similes,
were made from the architecture itself, and represent that architecture
with its actual shadows at the time of day at which it was drawn, and
with every fissure and line of it as they now exist; so that when I am
speaking of some new point, which perhaps the drawing was not intended
to illustrate, I can yet turn back to it with perfect certainty that if
anything be found in it bearing on matters now in hand, I may depend
upon it just as securely as if I had gone back to look again at the
building.
It is necessary that my readers should understand this thoroughly, and I
did not before sufficiently explain it; but I believe I can show them
the use of this kind of truth, now that we are again concerned with this
front of Lucca. They will find a drawing of the entire front in Gally
Knight's "Architecture of Italy." It may serve to give them an idea of
its general disposition, and it looks very careful and accurate; but
every bit of the ornament on it is _drawn out of the artist's head_.
There is not _one line_ of it that exists on the building. The reader
will therefore, perhaps, think my ugly black plate of somewhat more
value, upon the whole, in its rough veracity, than the other in its
delicate fiction.[97]
[Illustration: Plate XXI.
WALL VEIL DECORATION.]
As, however, I made a drawing of another part of the church somewhat
more delicately, and as I do not choose that my favorite church should
suffer in honor by my coarse work, I have had this, as far as might be,
fac-similied by line engraving (Plate XXI.). It represents the southern
side of the lower arcade of the west front; and may convey some idea of
the exquisite finish and grace of the whole; but the old plate, in the
"Seven Lamps," gives a nearer view of one of the upper arches, and a
more faithful impression of the present aspect of the work, and
especially of the seats of the horsemen; the limb straight, and well
down on the stirrup (the warrior's seat, observe, not the jockey's),
with a single pointed spur on the heel. The bit of the lower cornice
under this arch I could not see, and therefore had not drawn; it was
supplied from beneath another arch. I am afraid, however, the reader has
lost the thread of my story while I have been recommending my veracity
to him. I was insisting upon the healthy tone of this Lucca work as
compared with the old spectral Lombard friezes. The apes of the Pavian
church ride without stirrups, but all is in good order and harness here:
civilisation had done its work; there was reaping of corn in the Val
d'Arno, though rough hunting still upon its hills. But in the north,
though a century or two later, we find the forests of the Rhone, and its
rude limestone cotes, haunted by phantasms still (more meat-eating,
then, I think). I do not know a more interesting group of cathedrals
than that of Lyons, Vienne, and Valencia: a more interesting indeed,
generally, than beautiful; but there is a row of niches on the west
front of Lyons, and a course of panelled decoration about its doors,
which is, without exception, the most exquisite piece of Northern Gothic
I ever beheld, and with which I know nothing that is even comparable,
except the work of the north transept of Rouen, described in the "Seven
Lamps," p. 159; work of about the same date, and exactly the same plan;
quatrefoils filled with grotesques, but somewhat less finished in
execution, and somewhat less wild in imagination. I wrote down hastily,
and in their own course, the subjects of some of the quatrefoils of
Lyons; of which I here give the reader the sequence:--
1. Elephant and castle; less graphic than the St. Zeno one.
2. A huge head walking on two legs, turned backwards, hoofed; the
head has a horn behind, with drapery over it, which ends in
another head.
3. A boar hunt; the boar under a tree, very spirited.
4. A bird putting its head between its legs to bite its own tail,
which ends in a head.
5. A dragon with a human head set on the wrong way.
6. St. Peter awakened by the angel in prison; full of spirit, the
prison picturesque, with a trefoiled arch, the angel eager, St.
Peter startled, and full of motion.
7. St. Peter led out by the angel.
8. The miraculous draught of fishes; fish and all, in the small
space.
9. A large leaf, with two snails rampant, coming out of nautilus
shells, with grotesque faces, and eyes at the ends of their
horns.
10. A man with an axe striking at a dog's head, which comes out of
a nautilus shell: the rim of the shell branches into a stem
with two large leaves.
11. Martyrdom of St. Sebastian; his body very full of arrows.
12. Beasts coming to ark; Noah opening a kind of wicker cage.
13. Noah building the ark on shores.
14. A vine leaf with a dragon's head and tail, the one biting the
other.
15. A man riding a goat, catching a flying devil.
16. An eel or muraena growing into a bunch of flowers, which turns
into two wings.
17. A sprig of hazel, with nuts, thrown all around the quatrefoils
with a squirrel in centre, apparently attached to the tree only
by its enormous tail, richly furrowed into hair, and nobly
sweeping.
18. Four hares fastened together by the ears, galloping in a circle.
Mingled with these grotesques are many _sword_ and _buckler_
combats, the bucklers being round and conical like a hat; I
thought the first I noticed, carried by a man at full gallop on
horseback, had been a small umbrella.
This list of subjects may sufficiently illustrate the feverish character
of the Northern Energy; but influencing the treatment of the whole there
is also the Northern love of what is called the Grotesque, a feeling
which I find myself, for the present, quite incapable either of
analysing or defining, though we all have a distinct idea attached to
the word: I shall try, however, in the next volume.
9. WOODEN CHURCHES OF THE NORTH.
I cannot pledge myself to this theory of the origin of the vaulting
shaft, but the reader will find some interesting confirmations of it in
Dahl's work on the wooden churches of Norway. The inside view of the
church of Borgund shows the timber construction of one shaft run up
through a crossing architrave, and continued into the clerestory; while
the church of Urnes is in the exact form of a basilica; but the wall
above the arches is formed of planks, with a strong upright above each
capital. The passage quoted from Stephen Eddy's Life of Bishop Wilfrid,
at p. 86 of Churton's "Early English Church," gives us one of the
transformations or petrifactions of the wooden Saxon churches. "At Ripon
he built a new church of _polished stone_, with columns variously
ornamented, and porches." Mr. Churton adds: "It was perhaps in bad
imitation of the marble buildings he had seen in Italy, that he washed
the walls of this original York Minster, and made them 'whiter than
snow.'"
10. CHURCH OF ALEXANDRIA.
The very cause which enabled the Venetians to possess themselves of the
body of St. Mark, was the destruction of the church by the caliph for
the _sake of its marbles_: the Arabs and Venetians, though bitter
enemies, thus building on the same models; these in reverence for the
destroyed church, and those with the very pieces of it. In the somewhat
prolix account of the matter given in the Notizie Storiche (above
quoted) the main points are, that "il Califa de' Saraceni, per
fabbricarsi un Palazzo presse di Babilonia, aveva ordinato che dalle
Chiese d' Cristiani si togliessero i più scelti marmi;" and that the
Venetians, "videro sotto i loro occhi flagellarsi crudelmente un
Cristiano per aver infranto un marmo." I heartily wish that the same
kind of punishment were enforced to this day, for the same sin.
11. RENAISSANCE LANDSCAPE.
I am glad here to re-assert opinions which it has grieved me to be
suspected of having changed. The calmer tone of the second volume of
"Modern Painters," as compared with the first, induced, I believe, this
suspicion, very justifiably, in the minds of many of its readers. The
difference resulted, however, from the simple fact, that the first was
written in great haste and indignation, for a special purpose and
time;--the second, after I had got engaged, almost unawares, in
inquiries which could not be hastily nor indignantly pursued; my
opinions remaining then, and remaining now, altogether unchanged on the
subject which led me into the discussion. And that no farther doubt of
them may be entertained by any who may think them worth questioning, I
shall here, once for all, express them in the plainest and fewest words
I can. I think that J. M. W. Turner is not only the greatest (professed)
landscape painter who ever lived, but that he has in him as much as
would have furnished all the rest with such power as they had; and that
if we put Nicolo Poussin, Salvator, and our own Gainsborough out of the
group, he would cut up into Claudes, Cuyps, Ruysdaels, and such others,
by uncounted bunches. I hope this is plainly and strongly enough stated.
And farther, I like his later pictures, up to the year 1845, the best;
and believe that those persons who only like his early pictures do not,
in fact, like him at all. They do _not_ like that which is essentially
_his_. They like that in which he resembles other men; which he had
learned from Loutherbourg, Claude, or Wilson; that which is indeed his
own, they do not care for. Not that there is not much of his own in his
early works; they are all invaluable in their way; but those persons who
can find no beauty in his strangest fantasy on the Academy walls, cannot
distinguish the peculiarly Turneresque characters of the earlier
pictures. And, therefore, I again state here, that I think his pictures
painted between the years 1830 and 1845 his greatest; and that his
entire power is best represented by such pictures as the Temeraire, the
Sun of Venice going to Sea, and others, painted exactly at the time when
the public and the press were together loudest in abuse of him.
Turner. Tintoret.
Massaccio.
John Bellini.
Albert Durer.
Giorgione.
Paul Veronese.
Titian.
Rubens.
Correggio.
Orcagna.
Benozzo Gozzoli.
Giotto.
Raffaelle.
Perugino.
I desire, however, the reader to observe that I said, above, _professed_
landscape painters, among whom, perhaps, I should hardly have put
Gainsborough. The landscape of the great figure painters is often
majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret's especially shows exactly
the same power and feeling as Turner's. If with Turner I were to rank
the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power
they show, than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I
should class those, whose landscapes I have studied, in some such order
as this at the side of the page:--associating with the landscape of
Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of
religious subjects. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not
knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in
the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but
Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace yet not
separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to
him in Venice; and it is well we should take note of it here, for it
furnishes us with a most interesting confirmation of what was said in
the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious
painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson's "Essay
on Wood-engraving," from Albert Durer's Diary:
"I have many good friends among the Italians who warn me not to eat or
drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my
picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them,
and yet they blame them, _and say they are not according to ancient art,
and therefore not good_. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me
highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing:
he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for
him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised
that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is
very old, but is still the best painter of them all."
A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters,
side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to
their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying,
stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose.
12. ROMANIST MODERN ART.
It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be
deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness
have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call
it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church
of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some
measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of
apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the
Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the
proselyte to priestly power; I say I can respect these feelings, though
I cannot pardon unprincipled submission to them, nor enough wonder at
the infinite fatuity of the unhappy persons whom they have
betrayed:--Fatuity, self-inflicted, and stubborn in resistance to God's
Word and man's reason!--to talk of the authority of the Church, as if
the Church were anything else than the whole company of Christian men,
or were ever spoken of in Scripture[98] as other than a company to be
taught and fed, not to teach and feed.--Fatuity! to talk of a separation
of Church and State, as if a Christian state, and every officer therein,
were not necessarily a part of the Church,[99] and as if any state
officer could do his duty without endeavoring to aid and promote
religion, or any clerical officer do his duty without seeking for such
aid and accepting it:--Fatuity! to seek for the unity of a living body
of truth and trust in God, with a dead body of lies and trust in wood,
and thence to expect anything else than plague, and consumption by worms
undying, for both. Blasphemy as well as fatuity! to ask for any better
interpreter of God's Word than God, or to expect knowledge of it in any
other way than the plainly ordered way: if _any_ man will do he shall
know. But of all these fatuities, the basest is the being lured into the
Romanist Church by the glitter of it, like larks into a trap by broken
glass; to be blown into a change of religion by the whine of an
organ-pipe; stitched into a new creed by gold threads on priests'
petticoats; jangled into a change of conscience by the chimes of a
belfry. I know nothing in the shape of error so dark as this, no
imbecility so absolute, no treachery so contemptible. I had hardly
believed that it was a thing possible, though vague stories had been
told me of the effect, on some minds, of mere scarlet and candles, until
I came on this passage in Pugin's "Remarks on articles in the
Rambler":--
"Those who have lived in want and privation are the best qualified to
appreciate the blessings of plenty; thus, those who have been devout and
sincere members of the separated portion of the English Church; who have
prayed, and hoped, and loved, through all the poverty of the maimed
rites which it has retained--to them does the realisation of all their
longing desires appear truly ravishing. * * * Oh! then, what delight!
what joy unspeakable! when one of the solemn piles is presented to them,
in all its pristine life and glory!--the stoups are filled to the brim;
the rood is raised on high; the screen glows with sacred imagery and
rich device; the niches are filled; the altar is replaced, sustained by
sculptured shafts, the relics of the saints repose beneath, the body of
Our Lord is enshrined on its consecrated stone; the lamps of the
sanctuary burn bright; the saintly portraitures in the glass windows
shine all gloriously; and the albs hang in the oaken ambries, and the
cope chests are filled with orphreyed baudekins; and pix and pax, and
chrismatory are there, and thurible, and cross."
One might have put this man under a pix, and left him, one should have
thought; but he has been brought forward, and partly received, as an
example of the effect of ceremonial splendor on the mind of a great
architect. It is very necessary, therefore, that all those who have felt
sorrow at this should know at once that he is not a great architect,
but one of the smallest possible or conceivable architects; and that by
his own account and setting forth of himself. Hear him:--
"I believe, as regards architecture, few men have been so unfortunate as
myself. I have passed my life in thinking of fine things, studying fine
things, designing fine things, and realising very poor ones. I have
never had the chance of producing a single fine ecclesiastical building,
except my own church, where I am both paymaster and architect; but
everything else, either for want of adequate funds or injudicious
interference and control, or some other contingency, is more or less a
failure. * * *
"St. George's was spoilt by the very instructions laid down by the
committee, that it was to hold 3000 people on the floor at a limited
price; in consequence, height, proportion, everything, was sacrificed to
meet these conditions. Nottingham was spoilt by the style being
restricted to lancet,--a period well suited to a Cistercian abbey in a
secluded vale, but very unsuitable for the centre of a crowded
town. * * *
"Kirkham was spoilt through several hundred pounds being reduced on the
original estimate; to effect this, which was a great sum in proportion
to the entire cost, the area of the church was contracted, the walls
lowered, tower and spire reduced, the thickness of walls diminished, and
stone arches omitted." (Remarks, &c., by A. Welby Pugin: Dolman, 1850.)
Is that so? Phidias can niche himself into the corner of a pediment, and
Raffaelle expatiate within the circumference of a clay platter; but
Pugin is inexpressible in less than a cathedral? Let his ineffableness
be assured of this, once for all, that no difficulty or restraint ever
happened to a man of real power, but his power was the more manifested
in the contending with, or conquering it; and that there is no field so
small, no cranny so contracted, but that a great spirit can house and
manifest itself therein. The thunder that smites the Alp into dust, can
gather itself into the width of a golden wire. Whatever greatness there
was in you, had it been Buonarroti's own, you had room enough for it in
a single niche: you might have put the whole power of it into two feet
cube of Caen stone. St. George's was not high enough for want of money?
But was it want of money that made you put that blunt, overloaded,
laborious ogee door into the side of it? Was it for lack of funds that
you sunk the tracery of the parapet in its clumsy zigzags? Was it in
parsimony that you buried its paltry pinnacles in that eruption of
diseased crockets? or in pecuniary embarrassment that you set up the
belfry foolscaps, with the mimicry of dormer windows, which nobody can
ever reach nor look out of? Not so, but in mere incapability of better
things.
I am sorry to have to speak thus of any living architect; and there is
much in this man, if he were rightly estimated, which one might both
regard and profit by. He has a most sincere love for his profession, a
heartily honest enthusiasm for pixes and piscinas; and though he will
never design so much as a pix or a piscina thoroughly well, yet better
than most of the experimental architects of the day. Employ him by all
means, but on small work. Expect no cathedrals from him; but no one, at
present, can design a better finial. That is an exceedingly beautiful
one over the western door of St. George's; and there is some spirited
impishness and switching of tails in the supporting figures at the
imposts. Only do not allow his good designing of finials to be employed
as an evidence in matters of divinity, nor thence deduce the
incompatibility of Protestantism and art. I should have said all that I
have said above, of artistical apostasy, if Giotto had been now living
in Florence, and if art were still doing all that it did once for Rome.
But the grossness of the error becomes incomprehensible as well as
unpardonable, when we look to what level of degradation the human
intellect has sunk at this instant in Italy. So far from Romanism now
producing anything greater in art, it cannot even preserve what has been
given to its keeping. I know no abuses of precious inheritance half so
grievous, as the abuse of all that is best in art wherever the Romanist
priesthood gets possession of it. It amounts to absolute infatuation.
The noblest pieces of mediæval sculpture in North Italy, the two
griffins at the central (west) door of the cathedral of Verona, were
daily permitted to be brought into service, when I was there in the
autumn of 1849, by a washerwoman living in the Piazza, who tied her
clothes-lines to their beaks: and the shafts of St. Mark's at Venice
were used by a salesman of common caricatures to fasten his prints upon
(Compare Appendix 25); and this in the face of the continually passing
priests: while the quantity of noble art annually destroyed in
altarpieces by candle-droppings, or perishing by pure brutality of
neglect, passes all estimate. I do not know, as I have repeatedly
stated, how far the splendor of architecture, or other art, is
compatible with the honesty and usefulness of religious service. The
longer I live, the more I incline to severe judgment in this matter, and
the less I can trust the sentiments excited by painted glass and colored
tiles. But if there be indeed value in such things, our plain duty is to
direct our strength against the superstition which has dishonored them;
there are thousands who might possibly be benefited by them, to whom
they are now merely an offence, owing to their association with
idolatrous ceremonies. I have but this exhortation for all who love
them,--not to regulate their creeds by their taste in colors, but to
hold calmly to the right, at whatever present cost to their imaginative
enjoyment; sure that they will one day find in heavenly truth a brighter
charm than in earthly imagery, and striving to gather stones for the
eternal building, whose walls shall be salvation, and whose gates shall
be praise.
13. MR. FERGUSSON'S SYSTEM.
The reader may at first suppose this division of the attributes of
buildings into action, voice, and beauty, to be the same division as Mr.
Fergusson's, now well known, of their merits, into technic, æsthetic and
phonetic.
But there is no connection between the two systems; mine, indeed, does
not profess to be a system, it is a mere arrangement of my subject, for
the sake of order and convenience in its treatment: but, as far as it
goes, it differs altogether from Mr. Fergusson's in these two following
respects:--
The action of a building, that is to say its standing or consistence,
depends on its good construction; and the first part of the foregoing
volume has been entirely occupied with the consideration of the
constructive merit of buildings: but construction is not their only
technical merit. There is as much of technical merit in their
expression, or in their beauty, as in their construction. There is no
more mechanical or technical admirableness in the stroke of the painter
who covers them with fresco, than in the dexterity of the mason who
cements their stones: there is just as much of what is technical in
their beauty, therefore, as in their construction; and, on the other
hand, there is often just as much intellect shown in their construction
as there is in either their expression or decoration. Now Mr. Fergusson
means by his "Phonetic" division, whatever expresses intellect: my
constructive division, therefore, includes part of his phonetic: and my
expressive and decorative divisions include part of his technical.
Secondly, Mr. Fergusson tries to make the same divisions fit the
_subjects_ of art, and art itself; and therefore talks of technic,
æsthetic, and phonetic, _arts_, (or, translating the Greek,) of artful
arts, sensitive arts, and talkative arts; but I have nothing to do with
any division of the arts, I have to deal only with the merits of
_buildings_. As, however, I have been led into reference to Mr.
Fergusson's system, I would fain say a word or two to effect Mr.
Fergusson's extrication from it. I hope to find in him a noble ally,
ready to join with me in war upon affectation, falsehood, and prejudice,
of every kind: I have derived much instruction from his most interesting
work, and I hope for much more from its continuation; but he must
disentangle himself from his system, or he will be strangled by it;
never was anything so ingeniously and hopelessly wrong throughout; the
whole of it is founded on a confusion of the instruments of man with his
capacities.
Mr. Fergusson would have us take--
"First, man's muscular action or power." (Technics.)
"Secondly, those developments of sense _by_ which _he does!!_ as much
as by his muscles." (Æsthetics.)
"Lastly, his intellect, or to confine this more correctly to its
external action, _his power of speech!!!_" (Phonetics.)
Granting this division of humanity correct, or sufficient, the writer
then most curiously supposes that he may arrange the arts as if there
were some belonging to each division of man,--never observing that every
art must be governed by, and addressed to, one division, and executed by
another; executed by the muscular, addressed to the sensitive or
intellectual; and that, to be an art at all, it must have in it work of
the one, and guidance from the other. If, by any lucky accident, he had
been led to arrange the arts, either by their objects, and the things to
which they are addressed, or by their means, and the things by which
they are executed, he would have discovered his mistake in an instant.
As thus:--
These arts are addressed to the,--Muscles!!
Senses,
Intellect;
or executed by,--Muscles,
Senses!!
Intellect.
Indeed it is true that some of the arts are in a sort addressed to the
muscles, surgery for instance; but this is not among Mr. Fergusson's
technic, but his politic, arts! and all the arts may, in a sort, be said
to be performed by the senses, as the senses guide both muscles and
intellect in their work: but they guide them as they receive
information, or are standards of accuracy, but not as in themselves
capable of action. Mr. Fergusson is, I believe, the first person who has
told us of senses that act or do, they having been hitherto supposed
only to sustain or perceive. The weight of error, however, rests just as
much in the original division of man, as in the endeavor to fit the arts
to it. The slight omission of the soul makes a considerable difference
when it begins to influence the final results of the arrangement.
Mr. Fergusson calls morals and religion "Politick arts" (as if religion
were an art at all! or as if both were not as necessary to individuals
as to societies); and therefore, forming these into a body of arts by
themselves, leaves the best of the arts to do without the soul and the
moral feeling as rest they may. Hence "expression," or "phonetics," is
of intellect only (as if men never expressed their _feelings!_); and
then, strangest and worst of all, intellect is entirely resolved into
talking! There can be no intellect but it must talk, and all talking
must be intellectual. I believe people do sometimes talk without
understanding; and I think the world would fare ill if they never
understood without talking. The intellect is an entirely silent faculty,
and has nothing to do with parts of speech any more than the moral part
has. A man may feel and know things without expressing either the
feeling or knowledge; and the talking is a _muscular_ mode of
communicating the workings of the intellect or heart--muscular, whether
it be by tongue or by sign, or by carving or writing, or by expression
of feature; so that to divide a man into muscular and talking parts, is
to divide him into body in general, and tongue in particular, the
endless confusion resulting from which arrangement is only less
marvellous in itself, than the resolution with which Mr. Fergusson has
worked through it, and in spite of it, up to some very interesting and
suggestive truths; although starting with a division of humanity which
does not in the least raise it above the brute, for a rattlesnake has
his muscular, æsthetic, and talking part as much as man, only he talks
with his tail, and says, "I am angry with you, and should like to bite
you," more laconically and effectively than any phonetic biped could,
were he so minded. And, in fact, the real difference between the brute
and man is not so much that the one has fewer means of expression than
the other, as that it has fewer thoughts to express, and that we do not
understand its expressions. Animals can talk to one another intelligibly
enough when they have anything to say, and their captains have words of
command just as clear as ours, and better obeyed. We have indeed, in
watching the efforts of an intelligent animal to talk to a human being,
a melancholy sense of its dumbness; but the fault is still in its
intelligence, more than in its tongue. It has not wit enough to
systematise its cries or signs, and form them into language.
But there is no end to the fallacies and confusions of Mr. Fergusson's
arrangement. It is a perfect entanglement of gun-cotton, and explodes
into vacuity wherever one holds a light to it. I shall leave him to do
so with the rest of it for himself, and should perhaps have left it to
his own handling altogether, but for the intemperateness of the spirit
with which he has spoken on a subject perhaps of all others demanding
gentleness and caution. No man could more earnestly have desired the
changes lately introduced into the system of the University of Oxford
than I did myself: no man can be more deeply sensible than I of grievous
failures in the practical working even of the present system: but I
believe that these failures may be almost without exception traced to
one source, the want of evangelical, and the excess of rubrical religion
among the tutors; together with such rustinesses and stiffnesses as
necessarily attend the continual operation of any intellectual machine.
The fault is, at any rate, far less in the system than in the
imperfection of its administration; and had it been otherwise, the terms
in which Mr. Fergusson speaks of it are hardly decorous in one who can
but be imperfectly acquainted with its working. They are sufficiently
answered by the structure of the essay in which they occur; for if the
high powers of mind which its author possesses had been subjected to the
discipline of the schools, he could not have wasted his time on the
development of a system which their simplest formulæ of logic would have
shown him to be untenable.
Mr. Fergusson will, however, find it easier to overthrow his system than
to replace it. Every man of science knows the difficulty of arranging a
_reasonable_ system of classification, in any subject, by any one group
of characters; and that the best classifications are, in many of their
branches, convenient rather than reasonable: so that, to any person who
is really master of his subject, many different modes of classification
will occur at different times; one of which he will use rather than
another, according to the point which he has to investigate. I need only
instance the three arrangements of minerals, by their external
characters, and their positive or negative bases, of which the first is
the most useful, the second the most natural, the third the most simple;
and all in several ways unsatisfactory.
But when the subject becomes one which no single mind can grasp, and
which embraces the whole range of human occupation and enquiry, the
difficulties become as great, and the methods as various, as the uses to
which the classification might be put; and Mr. Fergusson has entirely
forgotten to inform us what is the object to which his arrangements are
addressed. For observe: there is one kind of arrangement which is based
on the rational connection of the sciences or arts with one another; an
arrangement which maps them out like the rivers of some great country,
and marks the points of their junction, and the direction and force of
their united currents; and this without assigning to any one of them a
superiority above another, but considering them all as necessary members
of the noble unity of human science and effort. There is another kind of
classification which contemplates the order of succession in which they
might most usefully be presented to a single mind, so that the given
mind should obtain the most effective and available knowledge of them
all: and, finally, the most usual classification contemplates the powers
of mind which they each require for their pursuit, the objects to which
they are addressed, or with which they are concerned; and assigns to
each of them a rank superior or inferior, according to the nobility of
the powers they require, or the grandeur of the subjects they
contemplate.
Now, not only would it be necessary to adopt a different classification
with respect to each of these great intentions, but it might be found so
even to vary the order of the succession of sciences in the case of
every several mind to which they were addressed; and that their rank
would also vary with the power and specific character of the mind
engaged upon them. I once heard a very profound mathematician
remonstrate against the impropriety of Wordsworth's receiving a pension
from government, on the ground that he was "only a poet." If the study
of mathematics had always this narrowing effect upon the sympathies, the
science itself would need to be deprived of the rank usually assigned to
it; and there could be no doubt that, in the effect it had on the mind
of this man, and of such others, it was a very contemptible science
indeed. Hence, in estimating the real rank of any art or science, it is
necessary for us to conceive it as it would be grasped by minds of every
order. There are some arts and sciences which we underrate, because no
one has risen to show us with what majesty they may be invested; and
others which we overrate, because we are blinded to their general
meanness by the magnificence which some one man has thrown around them:
thus, philology, evidently the most contemptible of all the sciences,
has been raised to unjust dignity by Johnson.[100] And the subject is
farther complicated by the question of usefulness; for many of the arts
and sciences require considerable intellectual power for their pursuit,
and yet become contemptible by the slightness of what they accomplish:
metaphysics, for instance, exercising intelligence of a high order, yet
useless to the mass of mankind, and, to its own masters, dangerous. Yet,
as it has become so by the want of the true intelligence which its
inquiries need, and by substitution of vain subtleties in its stead, it
may in future vindicate for itself a higher rank than a man of common
sense usually concedes to it.
Nevertheless, the mere attempt at arrangement must be useful, even where
it does nothing more than develop difficulties. Perhaps the greatest
fault of men of learning is their so often supposing all other branches
of science dependent upon or inferior to their own best beloved branch;
and the greatest deficiency of men comparatively unlearned, their want
of perception of the connection of the branches with each other. He who
holds the tree only by the extremities, can perceive nothing but the
separation of its sprays. It must always be desirable to prove to those
the equality of rank, to these the closeness of sequence, of what they
had falsely supposed subordinate or separate. And, after such candid
admission of the co-equal dignity of the truly noble arts and sciences,
we may be enabled more justly to estimate the inferiority of those which
indeed seem intended for the occupation of inferior powers and narrower
capacities. In Appendix 14, following, some suggestions will be found as
to the principles on which classification might be based; but the
arrangement of all the arts is certainly not a work which could with
discretion be attempted in the Appendix to an essay on a branch of one
of them.
14. DIVISIONS OF HUMANITY.
The reader will probably understand this part of the subject better if
he will take the trouble briefly to consider the actions of the mind and
body of man in the sciences and arts, which give these latter the
relations of rank usually attributed to them.
It was above observed (Appendix 13) that the arts were generally ranked
according to the nobility of the powers they require, that is to say,
the quantity of the being of man which they engaged or addressed. Now
their rank is not a very important matter as regards each other, for
there are few disputes more futile than that concerning the respective
dignity of arts, all of which are necessary and honorable. But it is a
very important matter as regards themselves; very important whether
they are practised with the devotion and regarded with the respect
which are necessary or due to their perfection. It does not at all
matter whether architecture or sculpture be the nobler art; but it
matters much whether the thought is bestowed upon buildings, or the
feeling is expressed in statues, which make either deserving of our
admiration. It is foolish and insolent to imagine that the art which we
ourselves practise is greater than any other; but it is wise to take
care that in our own hands it is as noble as we can make it. Let us take
some notice, therefore, in what degrees the faculties of man may be
engaged in his several arts: we may consider the entire man as made up
of body, soul, and intellect (Lord Lindsay, meaning the same thing, says
inaccurately--sense, intellect, and spirit--forgetting that there is a
moral sense as well as a bodily sense, and a spiritual body as well as a
natural body, and so gets into some awkward confusion, though right in
the main points). Then, taking the word soul as a short expression of
the moral and responsible part of being, each of these three parts has a
passive and active power. The body has senses and muscles; the soul,
feeling and resolution; the intellect, understanding and imagination.
The scheme may be put into tabular form, thus:--
Passive or Receptive Part. Active or Motive Part.
Body Senses. Muscles.
Soul Feeling. Resolution.
Intellect Understanding. Imagination.
In this scheme I consider memory a part of understanding, and conscience
I leave out, as being the voice of God in the heart, inseparable from
the system, yet not an essential part of it. The sense of beauty I
consider a mixture of the Senses of the body and soul.
Now all these parts of the human system have a reciprocal action on one
another, so that the true perfection of any of them is not possible
without some relative perfection of the others, and yet any one of the
parts of the system may be brought into a morbid development,
inconsistent with the perfection of the others. Thus, in a healthy
state, the acuteness of the senses quickens that of the feelings, and
these latter quicken the understanding, and then all the three quicken
the imagination, and then all the four strengthen the resolution; while
yet there is a danger, on the other hand, that the encouraged and morbid
feeling may weaken or bias the understanding, or that the over shrewd
and keen understanding may shorten the imagination, or that the
understanding and imagination together may take place of, or undermine,
the resolution, as in Hamlet. So in the mere bodily frame there is a
delightful perfection of the senses, consistent with the utmost health
of the muscular system, as in the quick sight and hearing of an active
savage: another false delicacy of the senses, in the Sybarite,
consequent on their over indulgence, until the doubled rose-leaf is
painful; and this inconsistent with muscular perfection. Again; there is
a perfection of muscular action consistent with exquisite sense, as in
that of the fingers of a musician or of a painter, in which the muscles
are guided by the slightest feeling of the strings, or of the pencil:
another perfection of muscular action inconsistent with acuteness of
sense, as in the effort of battle, in which a soldier does not perceive
his wounds. So that it is never so much the question, what is the
solitary perfection of a given part of the man, as what is its balanced
perfection in relation to the whole of him: and again, the perfection of
any single power is not merely to be valued by the mere rank of the
power itself, but by the harmony which it indicates among the other
powers. Thus, for instance, in an archer's glance along his arrow, or a
hunter's raising of his rifle, there is a certain perfection of sense
and finger which is the result of mere practice, of a simple bodily
perfection; but there is a farther value in the habit which results from
the resolution and intellect necessary to the forming of it: in the
hunter's raising of his rifle there is a quietness implying far more
than mere practice,--implying courage, and habitual meeting of danger,
and presence of mind, and many other such noble characters. So also in a
musician's way of laying finger on his instrument, or a painter's
handling of his pencil, there are many qualities expressive of the
special sensibilities of each, operating on the production of the habit,
besides the sensibility operating at the moment of action. So that there
are three distinct stages of merit in what is commonly called mere
bodily dexterity: the first, the dexterity given by practice, called
command of tools or of weapons; the second stage, the dexterity or
grace given by character, as the gentleness of hand proceeding from
modesty or tenderness of spirit, and the steadiness of it resulting from
habitual patience coupled with decision, and the thousand other
characters partially discernible, even in a man's writing, much more in
his general handiwork; and, thirdly, there is the perfection of action
produced by the operation of _present_ strength, feeling, or
intelligence on instruments thus _previously_ perfected, as the handling
of a great painter is rendered more beautiful by his immediate care and
feeling and love of his subject, or knowledge of it, and as physical
strength is increased by strength of will and greatness of heart.
Imagine, for instance, the difference in manner of fighting, and in
actual muscular strength and endurance, between a common soldier, and a
man in the circumstances of the Horatii, or of the temper of Leonidas.
Mere physical skill, therefore, the mere perfection and power of the
body as an instrument, is manifested in three stages:
First, Bodily power by practice;
Secondly, Bodily power by moral habit;
Thirdly, Bodily power by immediate energy;
and the arts will be greater or less, cæteris paribus, according to the
degrees of these dexterities which they admit. A smith's work at his
anvil admits little but the first; fencing, shooting, and riding, admit
something of the second; while the fine arts admit (merely through the
channel of the bodily dexterities) an expression almost of the whole
man.
Nevertheless, though the higher arts _admit_ this higher bodily
perfection, they do not all _require_ it in equal degrees, but can
dispense with it more and more in proportion to their dignity. The arts
whose chief element is bodily dexterity, may be classed together as arts
of the third order, of which the highest will be those which admit most
of the power of moral habit and energy, such as riding and the
management of weapons; and the rest may be thrown together under the
general title of handicrafts, of which it does not much matter which are
the most honorable, but rather, which are the most necessary and least
injurious to health, which it is not our present business to examine.
Men engaged in the practice of these are called artizans, as opposed to
artists, who are concerned with the fine arts.
The next step in elevation of art is the addition of the intelligences
which have no connection with bodily dexterity; as, for instance, in
hunting, the knowledge of the habits of animals and their places of
abode; in architecture, of mathematics; in painting, of harmonies of
color; in music, of those of sound; all this pure science being joined
with readiness of expedient in applying it, and with shrewdness in
apprehension of difficulties, either present or probable.
It will often happen that intelligence of this kind is possessed without
bodily dexterity, or the need of it; one man directing and another
executing, as for the most part in architecture, war, and seamanship.
And it is to be observed, also, that in proportion to the dignity of the
art, the bodily dexterities needed even in its subordinate agents become
less important, and are more and more replaced by intelligence; as in
the steering of a ship, the bodily dexterity required is less than in
shooting or fencing, but the intelligence far greater: and so in war,
the mere swordsmanship and marksmanship of the troops are of small
importance in comparison with their disposition, and right choice of the
moment of action. So that arts of this second order must be estimated,
not by the quantity of bodily dexterity they require, but by the
quantity and dignity of the knowledge needed in their practice, and by
the degree of subtlety needed in bringing such knowledge into play. War
certainly stands first in the general mind, not only as the greatest of
the arts which I have called of the second order, but as the greatest of
all arts. It is not, however, easy to distinguish the respect paid to
the Power, from that rendered to the Art of the soldier; the honor of
victory being more dependent, in the vulgar mind, on its results, than
its difficulties. I believe, however, that taking into consideration the
greatness of the anxieties under which this art must be practised, the
multitude of circumstances to be known and regarded in it, and the
subtleties both of apprehension and stratagem constantly demanded by it,
as well as the multiplicity of disturbing accidents and doubtful
contingencies against which it must make provision on the instant, it
must indeed rank as far the first of the arts of the second order; and
next to this great art of killing, medicine being much like war in its
stratagems and watchings against its dark and subtle death-enemy.
Then the arts of the first order will be those in which the Imaginative
part of the intellect and the Sensitive part of the soul are joined: as
poetry, architecture, and painting; these forming a kind of cross, in
their part of the scheme of the human being, with those of the second
order, which wed the Intelligent part of the intellect and Resolute part
of the soul. But the reader must feel more and more, at every step, the
impossibility of classing the arts themselves, independently of the men
by whom they are practised; and how an art, low in itself, may be made
noble by the quantity of human strength and being which a great man will
pour into it; and an art, great in itself, be made mean by the meanness
of the mind occupied in it. I do not intend, when I call painting an art
of the first, and war an art of the second, order, to class Dutch
landscape painters with good soldiers; but I mean, that if from such a
man as Napoleon we were to take away the honor of all that he had done
in law and civil government, and to give him the reputation of his
soldiership only, his name would be less, if justly weighed, than that
of Buonarroti, himself a good soldier also, when need was. But I will
not endeavor to pursue the inquiry, for I believe that of all the arts
of the first order it would be found that all that a man has, or is, or
can be, he can fully express in them, and give to any of them, and find
it not enough.
15. INSTINCTIVE JUDGMENTS.
The same rapid judgment which I wish to enable the reader to form of
architecture, may in some sort also be formed of painting, owing to the
close connection between execution and expression in the latter; as
between structure and expression in the former. We ought to be able to
tell good painting by a side glance as we pass along a gallery; and,
until we can do so, we are not fit to pronounce judgment at all: not
that I class this easily visible excellence of painting with the great
expressional qualities which time and watchfulness only unfold. I have
again and again insisted on the supremacy of these last and shall
always continue to do so. But I perceive a tendency among some of the
more thoughtful critics of the day to forget that the business of a
painter is to _paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, Veronese
and Rubens for instance, who were painters, par excellence, and in whom
the expressional qualities are subordinate. Now it is well, when we have
strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as
the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of
small account, the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed,
for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a
just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was
wrong of him to paint. He had much better put his morality into sermons,
and his poetry into verse, than into a language of which he was not
master. And this mastery of the language is that of which we should be
cognizant by a glance of the eye; and if that be not found, it is wasted
time to look farther: the man has mistaken his vocation, and his
expression of himself will be cramped by his awkward efforts to do what
he was not fit to do. On the other hand, if the man be a painter indeed,
and have the gift of colors and lines, what is in him will come from his
hand freely and faithfully; and the language itself is so difficult and
so vast, that the mere possession of it argues the man is great, and
that his works are worth reading. So that I have never yet seen the case
in which this true artistical excellence, visible by the eye-glance, was
not the index of some true expressional worth in the work. Neither have
I ever seen a good expressional work without high artistical merit: and
that this is ever denied is only owing to the narrow view which men are
apt to take both of expression and of art; a narrowness consequent on
their own especial practice and habits of thought. A man long trained to
love the monk's visions of Fra Angelico, turns in proud and ineffable
disgust from the first work of Rubens which he encounters on his return
across the Alps. But is he right in his indignation? He has forgotten,
that while Angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was
different work doing in the dank fields of Flanders;--wild seas to be
banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be
drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful
breeding of stout horses and fat cattle; close setting of brick walls
against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands and gross
stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes and
Christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections,
and sluggish imagination; fleshy, substantial, ironshod humanities, but
humanities still; humanities which God had his eye upon, and which won,
perhaps, here and there, as much favor in his sight as the wasted
aspects of the whispering monks of Florence (Heaven forbid it should not
be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and
reapers still). And are we to suppose there is no nobility in Rubens'
masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human
rendering of it, Gentleman though he was, by birth, and feeling, and
education, and place; and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? He
had his faults, perhaps great and lamentable faults, though more those
of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister
breeding nor boudoir breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in
missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in
him, that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court,
knight's camp, or peasant's cottage. On the other hand, a man trained
here in England, in our Sir Joshua school, will not and cannot allow
that there is any art at all in the technical work of Angelico. But he
is just as wrong as the other. Fra Angelico is as true a master of the
art necessary to his purposes, as Rubens was of that necessary for his.
We have been taught in England to think there can be no virtue but in a
loaded brush and rapid hand; but if we can shake our common sense free
of such teaching, we shall understand that there is art also in the
delicate point and in the hand which trembles as it moves; not because
it is more liable to err, but because there is more danger in its error,
and more at stake upon its precision. The art of Angelico, both as a
colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and beautiful,
that his work may be recognised at any distance by the rainbow-play and
brilliancy of it: However closely it may be surrounded by other works of
the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, Angelico's may be told
from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal lying among
common marbles. So again with Giotto; the Arena chapel is not only the
most perfect expressional work, it is the prettiest piece of wall
decoration and fair color, in North Italy.
Now there is a correspondence of the same kind between the technical and
expressional parts of architecture;--not a true or entire
correspondence, so that when the expression is best, the building must
be also best; but so much of correspondence as that good building is
necessary to good expression, comes before it, and is to be primarily
looked for: and the more, because the manner of building is capable of
being determinately estimated and classed; but the expressional
character not so: we can at once determine the true value of technical
qualities, we can only approximate to the value of expressional
qualities: and besides this, the looking for the technical qualities
first will enable us to cast a large quantity of rubbish aside at once,
and so to narrow the difficult field of inquiry into expression: we
shall get rid of Chinese pagodas and Indian temples, and Renaissance
Palladianisms, and Alhambra stucco and filigree, in one great rubbish
heap; and shall not need to trouble ourselves about their expression, or
anything else concerning them. Then taking the buildings which have been
rightly put together, and which show common sense in their structure, we
may look for their farther and higher excellences; but on those which
are absurd in their first steps we need waste no time.
16. STRENGTH OF SHAFTS.
I could have wished, before writing this chapter, to have given more
study to the difficult subject of the strength of shafts of different
materials and structure; but I cannot enter into every inquiry which
general criticism might suggest, and this I believe to be one which
would have occupied the reader with less profit than many others: all
that is necessary for him to note is, that the great increase of
strength gained by a tubular form in iron shafts, of given solid
contents, is no contradiction to the general principle stated in the
text, that the strength of materials is most available when they are
most concentrated. The strength of the tube is owing to certain
properties of the arch formed by its sides, not to the dispersion of its
materials: and the principle is altogether inapplicable to stone shafts.
No one would think of building a pillar of a succession of sandstone
rings; however strong it might be, it would be still stronger filled up,
and the substitution of such a pillar for a solid one of the same
contents would lose too much space; for a stone pillar, even when solid,
must be quite as thick as is either graceful or convenient, and in
modern churches is often too thick as it is, hindering sight of the
preacher, and checking the sound of his voice.
17. ANSWER TO MR. GARBETT.
Some three months ago, and long after the writing of this passage, I met
accidentally with Mr. Garbett's elementary Treatise on Design. (Weale,
1850.) If I had cared about the reputation of originality, I should have
been annoyed--and was so, at first, on finding Mr. Garbett's
illustrations of the subject exactly the same as mine, even to the
choice of the elephant's foot for the parallel of the Doric pillar: I
even thought of omitting, or rewriting, great part of the chapter, but
determined at last to let it stand. I am striving to speak plain truths
on many simple and trite subjects, and I hope, therefore, that much of
what I say has been said before, and am quite willing to give up all
claim to originality in any reasoning or assertion whatsoever, if any
one cares to dispute it. I desire the reader to accept what I say, not
as mine, but as the truth, which may be all the world's, if they look
for it. If I remember rightly, Mr. Frank Howard promised at some
discussion respecting the "Seven Lamps," reported in the "Builder," to
pluck all my borrowed feathers off me; but I did not see the end of the
discussion, and do not know to this day how many feathers I have left:
at all events the elephant's foot must belong to Mr. Garbett, though,
strictly speaking, neither he nor I can be quite justified in using it,
for an elephant in reality stands on tiptoe; and this is by no means the
expression of a Doric shaft. As, however, I have been obliged to speak
of this treatise of Mr. Garbett's, and desire also to recommend it as of
much interest and utility in its statements of fact, it is impossible
for me to pass altogether without notice, as if unanswerable, several
passages in which the writer has objected to views stated in the "Seven
Lamps." I should at any rate have noticed the passage quoted above,
(Chap. 30th,) which runs counter to the spirit of all I have ever
written, though without referring to me; but the references to the
"Seven Lamps" I should not have answered, unless I had desired,
generally, to recommend the book, and partly also, because they may
serve as examples of the kind of animadversion which the "Seven Lamps"
had to sustain from architects, very generally; which examples being
once answered, there will be little occasion for my referring in future
to other criticisms of the kind.
The first reference to the "Seven Lamps" is in the second page, where
Mr. Garbett asks a question, "Why are not convenience and stability
enough to constitute a fine building?"--which I should have answered
shortly by asking another, "Why we have been made men, and not bees nor
termites:" but Mr. Garbett has given a very pretty, though partial,
answer to it himself, in his 4th to 9th pages,--an answer which I
heartily beg the reader to consider. But, in page 12, it is made a grave
charge against me, that I use the words beauty and ornament
interchangeably. I do so, and ever shall; and so, I believe, one day,
will Mr. Garbett himself; but not while he continues to head his pages
thus:--"Beauty not dependent on ornament, _or superfluous_ features."
What right has he to assume that ornament, rightly so called, ever was,
or can be, superfluous? I have said before, and repeatedly in other
places, that the most beautiful things are the most useless; I never
said superfluous. I said useless in the well-understood and usual sense,
as meaning, inapplicable to the service of the body. Thus I called
peacocks and lilies useless; meaning, that roast peacock was unwholesome
(taking Juvenal's word for it), and that dried lilies made bad hay: but
I do not think peacocks superfluous birds, nor that the world could get
on well without its lilies. Or, to look closer, I suppose the peacock's
blue eyes to be very useless to him; not dangerous indeed, as to their
first master, but of small service, yet I do not think there is a
superfluous eye in all his tail; and for lilies, though the great King
of Israel was not "arrayed" like one of them, can Mr. Garbett tell us
which are their superfluous leaves? Is there no Diogenes among lilies?
none to be found content to drink dew, but out of silver? The fact is, I
never met with the architect yet who did not think ornament meant a
thing to be bought in a shop and pinned on, or left off, at
architectural toilets, as the fancy seized them, thinking little more
than many women do of the other kind of ornament--the only true
kind,--St. Peter's kind,--"Not that outward adorning, but the inner--of
the heart." I do not mean that architects cannot conceive this better
ornament, but they do not understand that it is the _only_ ornament;
that _all_ architectural ornament is this, and nothing but this; that a
noble building never has any extraneous or superfluous ornament; that
all its parts are necessary to its loveliness, and that no single atom
of them could be removed without harm to its life. You do not build a
temple and then dress it.[101] You create it in its loveliness, and
leave it, as her Maker left Eve. Not unadorned, I believe, but so well
adorned as to need no feather crowns. And I use the words ornament and
beauty interchangeably, in order that architects may understand this: I
assume that their building is to be a perfect creature capable of
nothing less than it has, and needing nothing more. It may, indeed,
receive additional decoration afterwards, exactly as a woman may
gracefully put a bracelet on her arm, or set a flower in her hair: but
that additional decoration is _not_ the _architecture_. It is of
curtains, pictures, statues, things that may be taken away from the
building, and not hurt it. What has the architect to do with these? He
has only to do with what is part of the building itself, that is to say,
its own inherent beauty. And because Mr. Garbett does not understand or
acknowledge this, he is led on from error to error; for we next find him
endeavoring to define beauty as distinct from ornament, and saying that
"Positive beauty may be produced by a studious collation of whatever
will display design, order, and congruity." (p. 14.) Is that so? There
is a highly studious collation of whatever will display design, order,
and congruity, in a skull, is there not?--yet small beauty. The nose is
a decorative feature,--yet slightly necessary to beauty, it seems to me;
now, at least, for I once thought I must be wrong in considering a skull
disagreeable. I gave it fair trial: put one on my bed-room
chimney-piece, and looked at it by sunrise every morning, and by
moonlight every night, and by all the best lights I could think of, for
a month, in vain. I found it as ugly at last as I did at first. So,
also, the hair is a decoration, and its natural curl is of little use;
but can Mr. Garbett conceive a bald beauty; or does he prefer a wig,
because that is a "_studious_ collation" of whatever will produce
design, order, and congruity? So the flush of the cheek is a
decoration,--God's painting of the temple of his spirit,--and the
redness of the lip; and yet poor Viola thought it beauty truly blent;
and I hold with her.
I have answered enough to this count.
The second point questioned is my assertion, "Ornament cannot be
overcharged if it is good, and is always overcharged when it is bad." To
which Mr. Garbett objects in these terms: "I must contend, on the
contrary, that the very best ornament may be overcharged by being
misplaced."
A short sentence with two mistakes in it.
First. Mr. Garbett cannot get rid of his unfortunate notion that
ornament is a thing to be manufactured separately, and fastened on. He
supposes that an ornament may be called good in itself, in the
stonemason's yard or in the ironmonger's shop: Once for all, let him put
this idea out of his head. We may say of a thing, considered separately,
that it is a pretty thing; but before we can say it is a good ornament,
we must know what it is to adorn, and how. As, for instance, a ring of
gold is a pretty thing; it is a good ornament on a woman's finger; not a
good ornament hung through her under lip. A hollyhock, seven feet high,
would be a good ornament for a cottage-garden; not a good ornament for a
lady's head-dress. Might not Mr. Garbett have seen this without my
showing? and that, therefore, when I said "_good_" ornament, I said
"well-placed" ornament, in one word, and that, also, when Mr. Garbett
says "it may be overcharged by being misplaced," he merely says it may
be overcharged by being _bad_.
Secondly. But, granted that ornament _were_ independent of its position,
and might be pronounced good in a separate form, as books are good, or
men are good.--Suppose I had written to a student in Oxford, "You cannot
have too many books, if they be good books;" and he had answered me,
"Yes, for if I have many, I have no place to put them in but the
coal-cellar." Would that in anywise affect the general principle that
he could not have too many books?
Or suppose he had written, "I must not have too many, they confuse my
head." I should have written back to him: "Don't buy books to put in the
coal-hole, nor read them if they confuse your head; you cannot have too
many, if they be good: but if you are too lazy to take care of them, or
too dull to profit by them, you are better without them."
Exactly in the same tone, I repeat to Mr. Garbett, "You cannot have too
much ornament, if it be good: but if you are too indolent to arrange it,
or too dull to take advantage of it, assuredly you are better without
it."
The other points bearing on this question have already been stated in
the close of the 21st chapter.
The third reference I have to answer, is to my repeated assertion, that
the evidence of manual labor is one of the chief sources of value in
ornament, ("Seven Lamps," p. 49, "Modern Painters," § 1, Chap. III.,) to
which objection is made in these terms: "We must here warn the reader
against a remarkable error of Ruskin. The value of ornaments in
architecture depends _not in the slightest degree_ on the _manual labor_
they contain. If it did, the finest ornaments ever executed would be the
stone chains that hang before certain Indian rock-temples." Is that so?
Hear a parallel argument. "The value of the Cornish mines depends not in
the slightest degree on the quantity of copper they contain. If it did,
the most valuable things ever produced would be copper saucepans." It is
hardly worth my while to answer this; but, lest any of my readers should
be confused by the objection, and as I hold the fact to be of great
importance, I may re-state it for them with some explanation.
Observe, then, the appearance of labor, that is to say, the evidence of
the past industry of man, is always, in the abstract, intensely
delightful: man being meant to labor, it is delightful to see that he
_has_ labored, and to read the record of his active and worthy
existence.
The evidence of labor becomes painful only when it is a _sign of Evil
greater, as Evil, than the labor is great, as Good_. As, for instance,
if a man has labored for an hour at what might have been done by another
man in a moment, this evidence of his labor is also evidence of his
weakness; and this weakness is greater in rank of evil, than his
industry is great in rank of good.
Again, if a man have labored at what was not worth accomplishing, the
signs of his labor are the signs of his folly, and his folly dishonors
his industry; we had rather he had been a wise man in rest than a fool
in labor.
Again, if a man have labored without accomplishing anything, the signs
of his labor are the signs of his disappointment; and we have more
sorrow in sympathy with his failure, than pleasure in sympathy with his
work.
Now, therefore, in ornament, whenever labor replaces what was better
than labor, that is to say, skill and thought; wherever it substitutes
itself for these, or _negatives these by its existence_, then it is
positive evil. Copper is an evil when it alloys gold, or poisons food:
not an evil, as copper; good in the form of pence, seriously
objectionable when it occupies the room of guineas. Let Danaë cast it
out of her lap, when the gold comes from heaven; but let the poor man
gather it up carefully from the earth.
Farther, the evidence of labor is not only a good when added to other
good, but the utter absence of it destroys good in human work. It is
only good for God to create without toil; that which man can create
without toil is worthless: machine ornaments are no ornaments at all.
Consider this carefully, reader: I could illustrate it for you
endlessly; but you feel it yourself every hour of your existence. And if
you do not know that you feel it, take up, for a little time, the trade
which of all manual trades has been most honored: be for once a
carpenter. Make for yourself a table or a chair, and see if you ever
thought any table or chair so delightful, and what strange beauty there
will be in their crooked limbs.
I have not noticed any other animadversions on the "Seven Lamps" in Mr.
Garbett's volume; but if there be more, I must now leave it to his own
consideration, whether he may not, as in the above instances, have made
them incautiously: I may, perhaps, also be permitted to request other
architects, who may happen to glance at the preceding pages, not
immediately to condemn what may appear to them false in general
principle. I must often be found deficient in technical knowledge; I
may often err in my statements respecting matters of practice or of
special law. But I do not write thoughtlessly respecting principles; and
my statements of these will generally be found worth reconnoitring
before attacking. Architects, no doubt, fancy they have strong grounds
for supposing me wrong when they seek to invalidate my assertions. Let
me assure them, at least, that I mean to be their friend, although they
may not immediately recognise me as such. If I could obtain the public
ear, and the principles I have advocated were carried into general
practice, porphyry and serpentine would be given to them instead of
limestone and brick; instead of tavern and shop-fronts they would have
to build goodly churches and noble dwelling-houses; and for every
stunted Grecism and stucco Romanism, into which they are now forced to
shape their palsied thoughts, and to whose crumbling plagiarisms they
must trust their doubtful fame, they would be asked to raise whole
streets of bold, and rich, and living architecture, with the certainty
in their hearts of doing what was honorable to themselves, and good for
all men.
Before I altogether leave the question of the influence of labor on
architectural effect, the reader may expect from me a word or two
respecting the subject which this year must be interesting to all--the
applicability, namely, of glass and iron to architecture in general, as
in some sort exemplified by the Crystal Palace.
It is thought by many that we shall forthwith have great part of our
architecture in glass and iron, and that new forms of beauty will result
from the studied employment of these materials.
It may be told in a few words how far this is possible; how far
eternally impossible.
There are two means of delight in all productions of art--color and
form.
The most vivid conditions of color attainable by human art are those of
works in glass and enamel, but not the most perfect. The best and
noblest coloring possible to art is that attained by the touch of the
human hand on an opaque surface, upon which it can command any tint
required, without subjection to alteration by fire or other mechanical
means. No color is so noble as the color of a good painting on canvas or
gesso.
This kind of color being, however, impossible, for the most part, in
architecture, the next best is the scientific disposition of the natural
colors of stones, which are far nobler than any abstract hues producible
by human art.
The delight which we receive from glass painting is one altogether
inferior, and in which we should degrade ourselves by over indulgence.
Nevertheless, it is possible that we may raise some palaces like
Aladdin's with colored glass for jewels, which shall be new in the annals
of human splendor, and good in their place; but not if they superseded
nobler edifices.
Now, color is producible either on opaque or in transparent bodies: but
form is only expressible, in its perfection, on opaque bodies, without
lustre.
This law is imperative, universal, irrevocable. No perfect or refined
form can be expressed except in opaque and lustreless matter. You cannot
see the form of a jewel, nor, in any perfection, even of a cameo or
bronze. You cannot perfectly see the form of a humming-bird, on account
of its burnishing; but you can see the form of a swan perfectly. No noble
work in form can ever, therefore, be produced in transparent or lustrous
glass or enamel. All noble architecture depends for its majesty on its
form: therefore you can never have any noble architecture in transparent
or lustrous glass or enamel. Iron is, however, opaque; and both it and
opaque enamel may, perhaps, be rendered quite lustreless; and, therefore,
fit to receive noble form.
Let this be thoroughly done, and both the iron and enamel made fine in
paste or grain, and you may have an architecture as noble as cast or
struck architecture even can be: as noble, therefore, as coins can be, or
common cast bronzes, and such other multiplicable things;[102]--eternally
separated from all good and great things by a gulph which not all the
tubular bridges nor engineering of ten thousand nineteenth centuries cast
into one great bronze-foreheaded century, will ever overpass one inch of.
All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a
piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if
unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better
thing, is _art which proceeds from an individual mind, working through
instruments which assist, but do not supersede, the muscular action of
the human hand, upon the materials which most tenderly receive, and most
securely retain, the impressions of such human labor_.
And the value of every work of art is exactly in the ratio of the
quantity of humanity which has been put into it, and legibly expressed
upon it for ever:--
First, of thought and moral purpose;
Secondly, of technical skill;
Thirdly, of bodily industry.
The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is
very great. So far it is good.
The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very
admirable thought of Mr. Paxton's, probably not a bit brighter than
thousands of thoughts which pass through his active and intelligent
brain every hour,--that it might be possible to build a greenhouse
larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some
very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of
human intellect. "But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this
intolerable deal of sack." Alas!
"The earth hath bubbles as the water hath:
And this is of them."
18. EARLY ENGLISH CAPITALS.
The depth of the cutting in some of the early English capitals is,
indeed, part of a general system of attempts at exaggerated force of
effect, like the "_black_ touches" of second-rate draughtsmen, which I
have noticed as characteristic of nearly all northern work, associated
with the love of the grotesque: but the main section of the capital is
indeed a dripstone rolled round, as above described; and dripstone
sections are continually found in northern work, where not only they
cannot increase force of effect, but are entirely invisible except on
close examination; as, for instance, under the uppermost range of stones
of the foundation of Whitehall, or under the slope of the restored base
of All Souls College, Oxford, under the level of the eye. I much doubt
if any of the Fellows be aware of its existence.
Many readers will be surprised and displeased by the disparagement of
the early English capital. That capital has, indeed, one character of
considerable value; namely, the boldness with which it stops the
mouldings which fall upon it, and severs them from the shaft,
contrasting itself with the multiplicity of their vertical lines.
Sparingly used, or seldom seen, it is thus, in its place, not
unpleasing; and we English love it from association, it being always
found in connection with our purest and loveliest Gothic arches, and
never in multitudes large enough to satiate the eye with its form. The
reader who sits in the Temple church every Sunday, and sees no
architecture during the week but that of Chancery Lane, may most
justifiably quarrel with me for what I have said of it. But if every
house in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane were Gothic, and all had early
English capitals, I would answer for his making peace with me in a
fortnight.
19. TOMBS NEAR ST. ANASTASIA.
Whose they are, is of little consequence to the reader or to me, and I
have taken no pains to discover; their value being not in any evidence
they bear respecting dates, but in their intrinsic merit as examples of
composition. Two of them are within the gate, one on the top of it, and
this latter is on the whole the best, though all are beautiful; uniting
the intense northern energy in their figure sculpture with the most
serene classical restraint in their outlines, and unaffected, but
masculine simplicity of construction.
I have not put letters to the diagram of the lateral arch at page 154,
in order not to interfere with the clearness of the curves, but I shall
always express the same points by the same letters, whenever I have to
give measures of arches of this simple kind, so that the reader need
never have the diagrams lettered at all. The base or span of the centre
arch will always be _a b_; its vertex will always be V; the points of
the cusps will be _c c_; _p p_ will be the bases of perpendiculars let
fall from V and _c_ on _a b_; and _d_ the base of a perpendicular from
the point of the cusp to the arch line. Then _a b_ will always be a span
of the arch, V _p_ its perpendicular height, V _a_ the chord of its side
arcs, _d c_ the depth of its cusps, _c c_ the horizontal interval
between the cusps, _a c_ the length of the chord of the lower arc of the
cusp, V _c_ the length of the chord of the upper arc of the cusp,
(whether continuous or not,) and _c p_ the length of a perpendicular
from the point of the cusp on _a b_.
Of course we do not want all these measures for a single arch, but it
often happens that some of them are attainable more easily than others;
some are often unattainable altogether, and it is necessary therefore to
have expressions for whichever we may be able to determine.
V _p_ or V _a_, _a b_, and _d c_ are always essential; then either _a c_
and V _c_ or _c c_ and _c p_: when I have my choice, I always take _a
b_, V _p_, _d c_, _c c_, and _c p_, but _c p_ is not to be generally
obtained so accurately as the cusp arcs.
The measures of the present arch are:
Ft. In.
_a b_, 3 ,, 8
V _p_, 4 ,, 0
V _c_, 2 ,, 4-1/2
_a c_, 2 ,, 0-1/4
_d c_, 0 ,, 3-1/2
20. SHAFTS OF DUCAL PALACE.
The shortness of the thicker ones at the angles is induced by the
greater depth of the enlarged capitals: thus the 36th shaft is 10 ft.
4-1/3 in. in circumference at its base, and 10 ,, 0-1/2[103] in
circumference under the fillet of its capital; but it is only 6 ,,
1-3/4 high, while the minor intermediate shafts, of which the thickest
is 7 ,, 8 round at the base, and 7 ,, 4 under capital, are yet on the
average 7 ,, 7 high. The angle shaft towards the sea (the 18th) is
nearly of the proportions of the 36th, and there are three others, the
15th, 24th, and 26th, which are thicker than the rest, though not so
thick as the angle ones. The 24th and 26th have both party walls to
bear, and I imagine the 15th must in old time have carried another,
reaching across what is now the Sala del Gran Consiglio.
They measure respectively round at the base,
The 15th, 8 ,, 2
24th, 9 ,, 6-1/2
26th, 8 ,, 0-1/2
The other pillars towards the sea, and those to the 27th inclusive of
the Piazzetta, are all seven feet round at the base, and then there is a
most curious and delicate crescendo of circumference to the 36th, thus:
The 28th, 7 ,, 3 The 33rd, 7 ,, 6
29th, 7 ,, 4 34th, 7 ,, 8
30th, 7 ,, 6 35th, 7 ,, 8
31st, 7 ,, 7 36th, 10 ,, 4-1/3
32nd, 7 ,, 5
The shafts of the upper arcade, which are above these thicker columns,
are also thicker than their companions, measuring on the average, 4 ,,
8-1/2 in circumference, while those of the sea façade, except the 29th,
average 4 ,, 7-1/2 in circumference. The 29th, which is of course above
the 15th of the lower story, is 5 ,, 5 in circumference, which little
piece of evidence will be of no small value to us by-and-by. The 35th
carries the angle of the palace, and is 6 ,, 0 round. The 47th, which
comes above the 24th and carries the party wall of the Sala del Gran
Consiglio, is strengthened by a pilaster; and the 51st, which comes over
the 26th, is 5 ,, 4-1/2 round, or nearly the same as the 29th; it
carries the party wall of the Sala del Scrutinio; a small room
containing part of St. Mark's library, coming between the two saloons;
a room which, in remembrances of the help I have received in all my
inquiries from the kindness and intelligence of its usual occupant, I
shall never easily distinguish otherwise than as "Mr. Lorenzi's."[104]
I may as well connect with these notes respecting the arcades of the
Ducal Palace, those which refer to Plate XIV., which represents one of
its spandrils. Every spandril of the lower arcade was intended to have
been occupied by an ornament resembling the one given in that plate. The
mass of the building being of Istrian stone, a depth of about two inches
is left within the mouldings of the arches, rough hewn, to receive the
slabs of fine marble composing the patterns. I cannot say whether the
design was ever completed, or the marbles have been since removed, but
there are now only two spandrils retaining their fillings, and vestiges
of them in a third. The two complete spandrils are on the sea façade,
above the 3rd and 10th capitals (_vide_ method of numbering, Chap. I.,
page 30); that is to say, connecting the 2nd arch with the 3rd, and the
9th with the 10th. The latter is the one given in Plate XIV. The white
portions of it are all white marble, the dental band surrounding the
circle is in coarse sugary marble, which I believe to be Greek, and
never found in Venice to my recollection, except in work at least
anterior to the fifteenth century. The shaded fields charged with the
three white triangles are of red Verona marble; the inner disc is green
serpentine, and the dark pieces of the radiating leaves are grey marble.
The three triangles are equilateral. The two uppermost are 1 ,, 5 each
side, and the lower 1 ,, 2.
The extreme diameter of the circle is 3 ,, 10-1/2; its field is slightly
raised above the red marbles, as shown in the section at A, on the left.
A _a_ is part of the red marble field; _a b_ the section of the dentil
moulding let into it; _b c_ the entire breadth of the rayed zone,
represented on the other side of the spandril by the line C _f_; _c d_
is the white marble band let in, with the dogtooth on the face of it;
_b c_ is 7-3/4 inches across; _c d_ 3-3/4; and at B are given two joints
of the dentil (mentioned above, in the chapter on dentils, as unique in
Venice) of their actual size. At C is given one of the inlaid leaves;
its measure being (in inches) C _f_ 7-3/4; C _h_ 3/4; _f g_ 3/4; _f e_
4-3/4, the base of the smaller leaves being of course _f e_ - _f g_ = 4.
The pattern which occupies the other spandril is similar, except that
the field _b c_, instead of the intersecting arcs, has only triangles of
grey marble, arranged like rays, with their bases towards the centre.
There being twenty round the circle, the reader can of course draw them
for himself; they being isosceles, touching the dentil with their
points, and being in contact at their bases: it has lost its central
boss. The marbles are, in both, covered with a rusty coating, through
which it is excessively difficult to distinguish the colors (another
proof of the age of the ornament). But the white marbles are certainly,
in places (except only the sugary dentil), veined with purple, and the
grey seem warmed with green.
A trace of another of these ornaments may be seen over the 21st capital;
but I doubt if the marbles have ever been inserted in the other
spandrils, and their want of ornament occasions the slight meagreness in
the effect of the lower story, which is almost the only fault of the
building.
This decoration by discs, or shield-like ornaments, is a marked
characteristic of Venetian architecture in its earlier ages, and is
carried into later times by the Byzantine Renaissance, already
distinguished from the more corrupt forms of Renaissance, in Appendix 6.
Of the disc decoration, so borrowed, we have already an example in Plate
I. In Plate VII. we have an earlier condition of it, one of the discs
being there sculptured, the others surrounded by sculptured bands: here
we have, on the Ducal Palace, the most characteristic of all, because
likest to the shield, which was probably the origin of the same ornament
among the Arabs, and assuredly among the Greeks. In Mr. Donaldson's
restoration of the gate of the treasury of Atreus, this ornament is
conjecturally employed, and it occurs constantly on the Arabian
buildings of Cairo.
21. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF WATER.
I have long been desirous of devoting some time to an enquiry into the
effect of natural scenery upon the pagan, and especially the Greek,
mind, and knowing that my friend, Mr. C. Newton, had devoted much
thought to the elucidation of the figurative and symbolic language of
ancient art, I asked him to draw up for me a few notes of the facts
which he considered most interesting, as illustrative of its methods of
representing nature. I suggested to him, for an initiative subject, the
representation of water; because this is one of the natural objects
whose portraiture may most easily be made a test of treatment, for it is
one of universal interest, and of more closely similar aspect in all
parts of the world than any other. Waves, currents, and eddies are much
liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and
lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from
the angry Northern ocean; but the Nile is liker the Danube than a knot
of Nubian palms is to a glade of the Black Forest; and the Mediterranean
is liker the Atlantic than the Campo Felice is like Solway moss.
Mr. Newton has accordingly most kindly furnished me with the following
data. One or two of the types which he describes have been already
noticed in the main text; but it is well that the reader should again
contemplate them in the position which they here occupy in a general
system. I recommend his special attention to Mr. Newton's definitions of
the terms "figurative" and "symbolic," as applied to art, in the
beginning of the paper.
* * * * *
In ancient art, that is to say, in the art of the Egyptian, Assyrian,
Greek, and Roman races, water is, for the most part, represented
conventionally rather than naturally.
By natural representation is here meant as just and perfect an imitation
of nature as the technical means of art will allow: on the other hand,
representation is said to be conventional, either when a confessedly
inadequate imitation is accepted in default of a better, or when
imitation is not attempted at all, and it is agreed that other modes of
representation, those by figures or by symbols, shall be its substitute
and equivalent.
In figurative representation there is always _impersonation_; the
sensible form, borrowed by the artist from organic life, is conceived to
be actuated by a will, and invested with such mental attributes as
constitute personality.
The sensible _symbol_, whether borrowed from organic or from inorganic
nature, is not a personification at all, but the conventional sign or
equivalent of some object or notion, to which it may perhaps bear no
visible resemblance, but with which the intellect or the imagination has
in some way associated it.
For instance, a city may be figuratively represented as a woman crowned
with towers; here the artist has selected for the expression of his idea
a human form animated with a will and motives of action analogous to
those of humanity generally. Or, again, as in Greek art, a bull may be a
figurative representation of a river, and, in the conception of the
artist, this animal form may contain, and be ennobled by, a human mind.
This is still impersonation; the form only in which personality is
embodied is changed.
Again, a dolphin may be used as a symbol of the sea; a man ploughing
with two oxen is a well-known symbol of a Roman colony. In neither of
these instances is there impersonation. The dolphin is not invested,
like the figure of Neptune, with any of the attributes of the human
mind; it has animal instincts, but no will; it represents to us its
native element, only as a part may be taken for a whole.
Again, the man ploughing does not, like the turreted female figure,
_personify_, but rather _typifies_ the town, standing as the visible
representation of a real event, its first foundation. To our mental
perceptions, as to our bodily senses, this figure seems no more than
man; there is no blending of his personal nature with the impersonal
nature of the colony, no transfer of attributes from the one to the
other.
Though the conventionally imitative, the figurative, and the symbolic,
are three distinct kinds of representation, they are constantly combined
in one composition, as we shall see in the following examples, cited
from the art of successive races in chronological order.
In Egyptian art the general representation of water is the
conventionally imitative. In the British Museum are two frescoes from
tombs at Thebes, Nos. 177 and 170: the subject of the first of these is
an oblong pond, ground-plan and elevation being strangely confused in
the design. In this pond water is represented by parallel zigzag lines,
in which fish are swimming about. On the surface are birds and lotos
flowers; the herbage at the edge of the pond is represented by a border
of symmetrical fan-shaped flowers; the field beyond by rows of trees,
arranged round the sides of the pond at right angles to each other, and
in defiance of all laws of perspective.
[Illustration: Fig. LXXI.]
In the fresco, No. 170, we have the representation of a river with
papyrus on its bank. Here the water is rendered by zigzag lines arranged
vertically and in parallel lines, so as to resemble herring-bone
masonry, thus. There are fish in this fresco as in the preceding, and in
both each fish is drawn very distinctly, not as it would appear to the
eye viewed through water. The mode of representing this element in
Egyptian painting is further abbreviated in their hieroglyphic writing,
where the sign of water is a zigzag line; this line is, so to speak, a
picture of water written in short hand. In the Egyptian Pantheon there
was but one aquatic deity, the god of the Nile; his type is, therefore,
the only figurative representation of water in Egyptian art. (Birch,
"Gallery of British Museum Antiquities," Pl. 13.) In Assyrian sculpture
we have very curious conventionally imitative representations of water.
On several of the friezes from Nimroud and Khorsabad, men are seen
crossing a river in boats, or in skins, accompanied by horses swimming
(see Layard, ii. p. 381). In these scenes water is represented by masses
of wavy lines somewhat resembling tresses of hair, and terminating in
curls or volutes; these wavy lines express the general character of a
deep and rapid current, like that of the Tigris. Fish are but sparingly
introduced, the idea of surface being sufficiently expressed by the
floating figures and boats. In the representation of these there is the
same want of perspective as in the Egyptian fresco which we have just
cited.
In the Assyrian Pantheon one aquatic deity has been discovered, the god
Dagon, whose human form terminates in a fish's tail. Of the character
and attributes of this deity we know but little.
The more abbreviated mode of representing water, the zigzag line, occurs
on the large silver coins with the type of a city or a war galley (see
Layard, ii. p. 386). These coins were probably struck in Assyria, not
long after the conquest of it by the Persians.
In Greek art the modes of representing water are far more varied. Two
conventional imitations, the wave moulding and the Mæander, are well
known. Both are probably of the most remote antiquity; both have been
largely employed as an architectural ornament, and subordinately as a
decoration of vases, costume, furniture and implements. In the wave
moulding we have a conventional representation of the small crisping
waves which break upon the shore of the Mediterranean, the sea of the
Greeks.
Their regular succession, and equality of force and volume, are
generalised in this moulding, while the minuter varieties which
distinguish one wave from another are merged in the general type. The
character of ocean waves is to be "for ever changing, yet the same for
ever;" it is this eternity of recurrence which the early artist has
expressed in this hieroglyphic.
With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured
waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the
pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91, Museum Marbles, vi.
pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping
tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Mæander pattern
the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the
Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of
the labyrinth on the coins of the Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins
we find the curvilinear form introduced.
In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Mæander
are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently
combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities
in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of
beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is
familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the
Nymphs and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined
with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful
study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the
language of art formed out of these elements.
This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups,
those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water.
The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are
embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus and the Nereids, that is to
say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on
the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the
fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called
Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a
horse, the legs terminating in web-feet: this union seems to express
speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the
movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected to show
how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation.
In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De
Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing
the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented
by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull
suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind
him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top
of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is
probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the
surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is
another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is
indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.
On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii. pl. 50), we
have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details
with which it is made out.
This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling,
that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under
consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as
was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a
figurative representation of the water it contained.
On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on
which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps.
These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the
same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient
designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos
to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an
immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are
indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water
by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).
Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for
instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without
being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which
they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell,
on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder
of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this
latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on
the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the
greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words
from sentences.
The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited
above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression.
We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient
harbors.
Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina
in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and
on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of
which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at
equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are
either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to
be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p.
40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some
examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at
Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No.
30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent
male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a
stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis
of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple
surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two
recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and
Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii.,
c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two
harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph.
On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular
form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote
the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, _subductæ_; at
the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of
the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II.,
No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831,
pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the
harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a
representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.)
In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water
naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the
subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines
drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light
playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship
are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand.
One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea
is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating
in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the
_rari nantes in gurgite vasto_, appear caught up in the coils of these
tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show
the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her
type see Monum. dell'Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.
The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following
heads--rivers, lakes, fountains.
There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very
frequently employed in ancient mythography.
In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with
that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in
Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities
and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man
with a shaggy beard and bull's horns and ears. On a vase of the best
period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of
Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented
with a satyr's head and long bull's horns on the forehead; his form,
human to the waist, terminates in a fish's tail; his hair falls down his
back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of
the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement
of the Trachiniæ.
[Greek: Achelôon legô,
os m' en trisin morphaisin exêtei patros,
phoitôn enargês auros allot' aiolos,
drakôn heliktos, allot' andreiô kytei
bouprôros, ek de daskiou geneiados
krounoi dierrhainonto krênaiou potou].
In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the
waist with the shoulders of a bull's body, in which it terminates. This
occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Oeniadæ
in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander
the Great, the Achelous has a bull's body, and head with a human face.
In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in
the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion
of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to
the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of
the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine
goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp.
106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and
also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are
intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.
Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by
this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for
convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the
archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually
represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the
hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in
Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the
head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented
standing, never reclining.
The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna
Græcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of
this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period,
the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his
head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise
the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On
the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the
adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The
ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This
probably represents the river bank. Two bulls' head occur on the coins
of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that
the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.
The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining
position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as
the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its
subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have
of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly
called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one
angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian
river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a
male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed,
is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.
It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led
the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of
the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull's
horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is
youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like
that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other
symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti,
Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre,
both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types
the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the
original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in
the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded
figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable
produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who
represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a
favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three
compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are
flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the
other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the
bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated
symbolic panorama of the Nile.
The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in
two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks,
herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P.
Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304,
308.)
In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting
representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within
a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled
hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure
sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin.
On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the
youthful head of a river-god, inscribed "Hipparis" on the obverse. On
some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves,
which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of
Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a
lake through which the river Hipparis flows.
We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both
their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the
waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no
doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of
wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the
lake.
Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a
lion's head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf.
CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot
spring at Thermæ in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain
Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing
lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly
imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which
it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type
presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle
of wave pattern described above.
These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek
mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative
and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to
multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later
representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded
compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has
to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and
emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the
refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.
Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures,
generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and
leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian
cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted
female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a
youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms,
and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller
(Denkmäler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind
in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.
On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the
Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military
expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which
boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this
rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in
the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This
is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the
river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have
here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.
On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of
rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast
outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in
the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire,
with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with
figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair
in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the
base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of
a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle
was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl.
1-4).
In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript.
Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is
certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the
sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as
on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.
This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil.
Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant,
and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a _hydria_,
or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water
plants, and the _hydria_ must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water,
the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for
the use of man.
Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs
reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.
One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic
of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be
described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a
bird's-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are
neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but
crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief.
22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION.
I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab
to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable
ornamentation of the Alhambra.[105] The Alhambra is no more
characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a
late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and
its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns
of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and
mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament
has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment
of Regent Street and Oxford Street.
23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER.
Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe
within it a circle, _p_ Q N _p_, of the size of the bead required,
touching A B, A C, in _p_, _p_; join _p_, _p_, and draw B C parallel to
it, touching the circle.
Then the lines B C, _p p_ are the limits of the possible chamfers
constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q _q_,
N _d_, _r u_, _g c_, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in
the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines,
as _a b_, _e f_. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to
be struck between B C and _p p_, from every point in Q A produced to
infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the
number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly
Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the
straight chamfers, _a b_, _e f_, &c., of which the one formed by the
line _a b_, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal
early Gothic chamfer of Venice.
Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A _l_ or A _m_,
radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with
any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an
infinite number of curves may be struck, such as _t u_, _r s_, N _n_
(all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines
represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number
is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N _n_
(for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers
of the same group, _r s_, _t u_, &c., occurring often in Italy. The
lines _r u_, _t u_, and _a b_ may be taken approximating to the most
frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.
[Illustration: Fig. LXXII.]
It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a
relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and
South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the
line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an
angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never
inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q.
24. RENAISSANCE BASES.
The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of
late decoration of shafts.
"The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of
Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a
wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed
arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the
laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as
beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and
richly interlaced--the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work--and
the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as
those of the Noah,[106] though more injured by time. The capitals are
far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine
in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of
course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at
the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set
couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and
cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy,
and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the
marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The
wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next
moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice
who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive,
and utterly useless."
The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being
no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the
proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals,
elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely
insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,--not in a
bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures.
The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate
of the Renaissance architects,--to caricature whatever they imitated,
and misapply whatever they learned.
25. ROMANIST DECORATION OF BASES.
I have spoken above (Appendix 12) of the way in which the Roman Catholic
priests everywhere suffer their churches to be desecrated. But the worst
instances I ever saw of sacrilege and brutality, daily permitted in the
face of all men, were the uses to which the noble base of St. Mark's was
put, when I was last in Venice. Portions of nearly all cathedrals may be
found abandoned to neglect; but this base of St. Mark's is in no obscure
position. Full fronting the western sun--crossing the whole breadth of
St. Mark's Place--the termination of the most noble square in the
world--the centre of the most noble city--its purple marbles were, in
the winter of 1849, the customary _gambling tables_ of the idle children
of Venice; and the parts which flank the Great Entrance, that very
entrance where "Barbarossa flung his mantle off," were the counters of a
common bazaar for children's toys, carts, dolls, and small pewter spoons
and dishes, German caricatures and books of the Opera, mixed with those
of the offices of religion; the caricatures being fastened with twine
round the porphyry shafts of the church. One Sunday, the 24th of
February, 1850, the book-stall being somewhat more richly laid out than
usual, I noted down the titles of a few of the books in the order in
which they lay, and I give them below. The irony conveyed by the
juxtaposition of the three in Italics appears too shrewd to be
accidental; but the fact was actually so.
Along the edge of the white plinth were a row of two kinds of books,
Officium Beatæ Virg. M.; and Officium Hebdomadæ sanctæ, juxta Formam
Missalis et Breviarii Romani sub Urbano VIII. correcti.
Behind these lay, side by side, the following:
Don Desiderio. Dramma Giocoso per Musica.
Breve Esposizione della Carattere di vera Religione.
On the top of this latter, keeping its leaves open,
La Figlia del Reggimento. Melodramma comica.
_Carteggio di Madama la Marchesa di Pompadour, ossia
raccolta di Lettere scritte della Medesima._
_Istruzioni di morale Condotta per le Figlie._
_Francesca di Rimini. Dramma per Musica._
Then, a little farther on, after a mass of plays:--
Orazioni a Gesu Nazareno e a Maria addolorata.
Semiramide; Melodramma tragico da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro
il Fenice.
Modo di orare per l'Acquisto del S. Giubileo, conceduto a tutto il
Mondo Cattolico da S. S. Gregorio XVI.
Le due illustre Rivali, Melodramma in Tre Atti, da rappresentarsi
nel nuovo Gran Teatro il Fenice.
Il Cristiano secondo il Cuore di Gesu, per la Pratica delle sue
Virtu.
Traduzione dell'Idioma Italiana.
La chiava Chinese; Commedia del Sig. Abate Pietro Chiari.
La Pelarina; Intermezzo de Tre Parti per Musica.
Il Cavaliero e la Dama; Commedia in Tre Atti in Prosa.
I leave these facts without comment. But this being the last piece of
Appendix I have to add to the present volume, I would desire to close
its pages with a question to my readers--a statistical question, which,
I doubt not, is being accurately determined for us all elsewhere, and
which, therefore, it seems to me, our time would not be wasted in
determining for ourselves.
There has now been peace between England and the continental powers
about thirty-five years, and during that period the English have visited
the continent at the rate of many thousands a year, staying there, I
suppose, on the average, each two or three months; nor these an inferior
kind of English, but the kind which ought to be the best--the noblest
born, the best taught, the richest in time and money, having more
leisure, knowledge, and power than any other portion of the nation.
These, we might suppose, beholding, as they travelled, the condition of
the states in which the Papal religion is professed, and being, at the
same time, the most enlightened section of a great Protestant nation,
would have been animated with some desire to dissipate the Romanist
errors, and to communicate to others the better knowledge which they
possessed themselves. I doubt not but that He who gave peace upon the
earth, and gave it by the hand of England, expected this much of her,
and has watched every one of the millions of her travellers as they
crossed the sea, and kept count for him of his travelling expenses, and
of their distribution, in a manner of which neither the traveller nor
his courier were at all informed. I doubt not, I say, but that such
accounts have been literally kept for all of us, and that a day will
come when they will be made clearly legible to us, and when we shall see
added together, on one side of the account book, a great sum, the
certain portion, whatever it may be, of this thirty-five years'
spendings of the rich English, accounted for in this manner:--
To wooden spoons, nut-crackers, and jewellery, bought at Geneva, and
elsewhere among the Alps, so much; to shell cameos and bits of mosaic
bought at Rome, so much; to coral horns and lava brooches bought at
Naples, so much; to glass beads at Venice, and gold filigree at Genoa,
so much; to pictures, and statues, and ornaments, everywhere, so much;
to avant-couriers and extra post-horses, for show and magnificence, so
much; to great entertainments and good places for seeing sights, so
much; to ball-dresses and general vanities, so much. This, I say, will
be the sum on one side of the book; and on the other will be written:
To the struggling Protestant Churches of France, Switzerland, and
Piedmont, so much.
Had we not better do this piece of statistics for ourselves, in time?
FOOTNOTES:
[93] Ed. Venetis, 1758, Lib. I.
[94] Compare Appendix 12.
[95] L'Artiste en Bâtiments, par Louis Berteaux: Dijon, 1848. My
printer writes at the side of the page a note, which I insert with
thanks:--"This is not the first attempt at a French order. The
writer has a Treatise by Sebastian Le Clerc, a great man in his
generation, which contains a Roman order, a Spanish order, which the
inventor appears to think very grand, and a _new_ French order
nationalised by the Gallic cock crowing and clapping its wings in
the capital."
[96] The lower group in Plate XVII.
[97] One of the upper stories is also in Gally Knight's plate
represented as merely banded, and otherwise plain: it is, in
reality, covered with as delicate inlaying as the rest. The whole
front is besides out of proportion, and out of perspective, at once;
and yet this work is referred to as of authority, by our architects.
Well may our architecture fall from its place among the fine arts,
as it is doing rapidly; nearly all our works of value being devoted
to the Greek architecture, which is _utterly useless_ to us--or
worse. _One_ most noble book, however, has been dedicated to our
English abbeys,--Mr. E. Sharpe's "Architectural Parallels"--almost a
model of what I should like to see done for the Gothic of all
Europe.
[98] Except in the single passage "tell it unto the Church," which
is simply the _extension_ of what had been commanded before, i.e.,
tell the fault first "between thee and him," then taking "with thee
one or two more," then, to all Christian men capable of hearing the
cause: if he refuse to hear their common voice, "let him be unto
thee as a heathen man and publican:" (But consider how Christ
treated both.)
[99] One or two remarks on this subject, some of which I had
intended to have inserted here, and others in Appendix 5, I have
arranged in more consistent order, and published in a separate
pamphlet, "Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds," for the
convenience of readers interested in other architecture than that of
Venetian palaces.
[100] Not, however, by Johnson's _testimony_: Vide Adventurer, No.
39. "Such operations as required neither celerity nor strength,--the
low drudgery of collating copies, comparing authorities, _digesting
dictionaries_, or accumulating compilations."
[101] We have done so--theoretically; just as one would reason on
the human form from the bones outwards: but the Architect of human
form frames all at once--bone and flesh.
[102] Of course mere multiplicability, as of an engraving, does not
diminish the intrinsic value of the work; and if the casts of
sculpture could be as sharp as the sculpture itself, they would hold
to it the relation of value which engravings hold to paintings. And,
if we choose to have our churches all alike, we might cast them all
in bronze--we might actually coin churches, and have mints of
Cathedrals. It would be worthy of the spirit of the century to put
milled edges for mouldings, and have a popular currency of religious
subjects: a new cast of nativities every Christmas. I have not heard
this contemplated, however, and I speak, therefore, only of the
results which I believe are contemplated, as attainable by mere
mechanical applications of glass and iron.
[103] I shall often have occasion to write measures in the current
text, therefore the reader will kindly understand that whenever they
are thus written, 2 ,, 2, with double commas between, the first
figures stand for English feet, the second for English inches.
[104] I cannot suffer this volume to close without also thanking my
kind friend, Mr. Rawdon Brown, for help given me in a thousand ways
during my stay in Venice: but chiefly for his direction to passages
elucidatory of my subject in the MSS. of St. Mark's library.
[105] I have not seen the building itself, but Mr. Owen Jones's work
may, I suppose, be considered as sufficiently representing it for
all purposes of criticism.
[106] The sculpture of the Drunkenness of Noah on the Ducal Palace,
of which we shall have much to say hereafter.
* * * * *
CORRECTIONS MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
Footnote [31] 'Greek porticos' changed to 'Greek porticoes'.
Page 42: '§ XL. It is not' corrected to '§ XI. It is not'.
Page 161: Added 'r' to 'timbe' in 'long stone or piece of timbe'.
Page 180: 'XII. 2. Inlet' corrected to '§ XII. 2. Inlet'.
Page 237: 'rererence' changed to 'reference' in 'How is ornament to be
treated with rererence'.
Page 247: '§ XIV. Now this is' corrected to '§ XIX. Now this is'.
Page 273: 'no' changed to 'not' in 'a peculiar look, which I can no
otherwise describe'.
Page 333: comma changed to period at the paragraph ending with
'separates its ornament into distinct families, broadly definable'.
Page 370: 'two-thsrds' corrected to 'two-thirds'.
Page 397: 'bodly' corrected to 'bodily' in 'merely through the channel
of the bodly dexterities'.
Page 398: 'calld' corrected to 'called' in 'Men engaged in the practice
of these are calld artizans'.
Page 401: 'necesary' corrected to 'necessary' in 'as Rubens was of that
necesary for his'.
Page 406: Space placement corrected in 'I found it a sugly at last' to
'I found it as ugly at last'.
Page 423: 'Milligen' corrected to 'Millingen' in 'Compare also Milligen,
Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings'.
Page 433: space between 'rappresent' and 'arsi' removed in 'Tre Atti, da
rappresent arsi'.
Page 433: 'del' corrected to 'dell' in 'Traduzione del' Idioma
Italiana'.
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