Part 14

Nor was it to architecture alone that the arts of the period were devoted: we find the same art expended on stained glass, on metal-work of all sorts, on enamels of the most magnificent character, on the illumination of manuscripts, the painted decoration of the buildings, on jewellery, on ivory-carving, on embroidery, on woven fabrics, tapestry, seal-engraving--in fact, on every branch of decoration; every one of which arts were carried out with a degree of skill and instinctive taste truly amazing. All these branches should, however, be treated of separately.

In my enumeration of buildings I have limited myself to our own country; but we all know that in France the same great facts are, if possible, yet more wonderfully proved. The architecture of the thirteenth century, in France, is rendered illustrious by an endless category of buildings, the most glorious perhaps which the world has produced.

Germany, though her style is broken harshly by the cause I have before alluded to, nevertheless furnishes, whether in the native variety of the former or in the adopted one of the latter half of the century, a series of buildings of which any country might well be proud.

In Italy the style was certainly imported from the North; but was it an unnatural transplantation? I should say by no means so. Had not Italy her own Romanesque, which she had in some degree exported to Northern countries? and have I not shown that Pointed architecture was a natural and logical development from Romanesque? Why, then, should it be accounted foreign to the land from which Romanesque itself had sprung?--and if the growth of Pointed architecture was aided by ideas culled from Byzantium and the East, why should those ideas be less suited to Italy than to France or England, whose communications with the East were far less direct? Did not she take part in the same Crusades? nay, did not the Byzantine element in French art actually come there through the medium of Italy? Let us not, then, deny to her a fair participation in the architecture of the age. We had it before her, it is true, but let us not on that account say that it is none of hers.

The great fault in the Mediæval architecture of Italy lies in its details, such as its mouldings, etc., which evince too much of their antique original: its great value lies in its use of materials of varied colour, of inlaying, mosaic-work, and other decorative arts, inherited also from the past. These arts ally themselves well with our style, though the Classic mouldings do not so; and in our judgment of Italian work we should never lose sight of this; we may otherwise be led either to reject real merit from the offence which incongruous detail offers to our taste, or we may be led to accept what is bad and spurious, because gilded over, and its demerits concealed by beautiful art, which would appear to greater advantage if united with purer architecture.

Another cause, however, which gives great value to the Mediæval art of Italy, arises from the somewhat accidental circumstance that her internal position was such as to require town buildings very much of the kind which we want now. The consequence is that Italy was, even in those early days, the land of street palaces, and that we find yet remaining there numberless buildings of a class which we find but rarely in other countries, and those treated in a manner very parallel with what we often require at the present day. Not, let it be borne in mind, that they are treated in a manner essentially different from the coeval works in more Northern countries, but rather that there were more of them, that these were on a larger scale, and that more of them have remained to our own day.

It is a mistake to suppose that the secular architecture of Italian cities essentially differed from that of the same period elsewhere. If you will carefully look through any book showing specimens of the domestic architecture of France in the thirteenth century, you will find that it closely resembles that of Italy, except in having purer details. The same kind of window, for instance, which, from habit, people have got into the way of calling Italian or Venetian, prevailed in France and Germany, and is often found in England.

I give you a series of Italian (Figs. 123, 124), French (Figs. 125, 126), German (Figs. 127, 128, 129), and English (Figs. 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135) windows of early date, where you can scarcely distinguish the one from the other; indeed, you would seldom be able to detect an Italian window at all, if divested of the accidental clothing of its non-essential details. This establishes the unity of the style; yet the fact remains that works of the kind are more abundant, larger, and more developed in Italy, and that they may consequently be studied there to great advantage as an aid and expletive to what we learn elsewhere.

This brings me to the concluding subject of my lecture--the question of what lessons we should learn from what has passed in array before us, and what effect it ought to have on our own artistic practice.

It would be hopeless to enter upon the general question of the revival of styles. I will suppose that question to have been disposed of _for_ us, and limit myself to considering what is the most reasonable course to follow in conducting such a revival, or rather in carrying on the development of a style upon a revived basis such as that of the architecture we have been considering.

Now, such a revival, to begin with, is hardly to be viewed as a deliberate act. A man would scarcely be bold enough to make up his mind, _à priori_, to revive a style of architecture: circumstances must have gradually led to such a course, and it must have been set about gradually, and almost unconsciously, to give it a chance of success. We may, in looking back upon what has taken place, construct a very good theory for it all; but no such theory really led to it--it came about very much of itself. We may, by thought and by studying our position, do a little in finding good reasons for an existing movement; but the movement itself must have arisen from some more hidden and deep-seated cause, or it would have died away long ago. What, then, does this deep-seated feeling demand, and with what will it be satisfied?

It craves spontaneously after a great style of art, which it sees to have been once the birthright of our race. It demands that we should--I will not say simply _revive_ that style of art, but that we should _revivify_ it: not that it should be reproduced as a splendid pageant, to be re-enacted for the sake of gratifying our romantic or antiquarian predilections, but that we should rekindle its actual life; and having done so, should not only think, and design, and invent in that style, as the living medium for the expression of our artistic aspirations, but that we should cause it to take root, to spring forth, to germinate and ramify--to shape itself to all the demands of our age, and to adapt itself to its materials, its discoveries, its inventions, and its science; in short, to become in every sense a living, a vigorous, a growing art.

Now, to further such an object, what is the best manner in which we can make use of the lessons to be learnt from the past creations of that style?

One of the lessons I think we should learn is to work in the same free and liberal spirit in which our forefathers worked: not to do _what_ they did, but _as_ they did. If we, on the one hand, shut ourselves up in our own country, and, reproducing the style we find to have prevailed here, sulkily rejecting the lessons to be learned from neighbouring lands, we may produce a servile reproduction of _what_ was done by our predecessors, but shall be acting anything but _as_ they acted. If, on the other hand, we travel widely, and, giving free license to our individual preferences or momentary fancies, we import now this style, and now that--here building in a French, there in an Italian variety of our style--we shall in each case be doing _what_ was done in one or another province of Mediæval art, but shall be equally far from doing as the old artists did: the one course involves servility, the other adds to it frivolity.

The great principle on which the Mediæval architects of each country instinctively acted was, while adhering in the main each to the dialect of the great art which happened to be current amongst them, to improve it by the free importation of ideas and adoption of hints from whencesoever they might be derived, but especially from the dialects of the same artistic language. Thus, for instance, the Pointed architecture of the royal domain of France is, as a whole, a logical sequence of the Romanesque of the same district; yet no scruple was felt at importing into it the Byzantine capitals and foliage, which had come to them through the medium of Venice; and to this foreign importation they owed some of the greatest beauties of their architecture; nay, if the Oriental origin of the Pointed arch be true, they went further, and engrafted upon their traditional art a feature learned from the infidels they were combating. Again, the English Pointed may be traced step by step from the preceding style, yet they had no hesitation about introducing into it details developed by the French. The Germans carried the principle too far: giving up their own traditional variety of Pointed architecture, they adopted the French developments ready made; yet, having done so, they worked them up in a manner quite their own: while in Italy, the new style having been brought in upon the pre-existing Romanesque, they soon elaborated it into a dialect as distinctively characteristic as those of other European countries. Besides this, no nation had any scruples about employing artists belonging to another; so that the advancement made by each became in a degree the common property of all; and even the woven fabrics and other manufactures imported from the far East were allowed to offer suggestions to the European decorator.

To follow out the same principle, we ought, while especially making ourselves masters of the architecture of our own country, and using it as the groundwork of our revival, nevertheless to view the style _as a whole_, and, while not forsaking our own provincial dialect, to make ourselves masters of the _entire language_. We should not wish our revived art to be indistinguishable from that of our forefathers. It should certainly reflect some of the characteristics of our own age, one of which is our enormously-increased habits of locomotion; and as we visit all the districts where our style prevailed, nothing can be more natural than that our revived art should show the effects of our more extended sphere. Knowing, as we do, that France was the central district--the very heart--of Mediæval art, should we not be insane not to study well her glorious monuments, and, having studied them, to enrich our own style by the many lessons we may learn from them? It has been suggested that we should do this, with a special regard to those of the provinces of France which were once subjected to the English kings. I would not reject the historical interest which this connection naturally gives rise to, and I doubt not that those provinces are rich in instruction; but I would not on that account neglect the fact that it is the _royal domain_ of France--the district of which Paris is the centre--which was the special focus of our art. Look again at the ancient cities of Germany--perfect storehouses of old architecture: let us never be so suicidal as to reject the lessons they offer! “So far,” some may, however, say, “is all very well; but, for goodness sake, do not cross the Alps! Ruskin has driven you all mad about Venetian, Veronese, and Florentine architecture: be more of men than to be led astray by popular writing. You cannot but see that Italian Gothic is very corrupt, though somehow or another very captivating. Listen not, then, to the siren’s song; reject the enticing bait, nor pollute the pure stream of Northern art with the corrupted waters of the South.”

I admit that there is some ground for such a caution:--there is a mysterious fascination about Italy, which has led astray many who have visited it before they had grounded themselves firmly upon a Northern foundation; but is this a reason for rejecting all the lessons she offers? Was not Italy the land of ancient art, of painting, of sculpture, of mosaic-work? Is she not the land of marbles and richly-coloured material, and the land of ancient municipal institutions, and of the edifices to which they gave birth? Her Romanesque architecture was the parent stock of our own; and if our Gothic was in its turn the stem from which hers sprang, surely its transplantation into so prolific a soil offers the greatest possible _primâ facie_ grounds for expecting a rich variety to spring forth from it--and such has been the result. It is for us to use it with judgment: rejecting what is in its own nature defective; not bringing into the North any features which are the result of a Southern climate, but judiciously culling such suggestions as will with advantage unite themselves to our English nucleus; and especially let us take advantage of the lessons it affords us in the use of rich materials of mosaic and fresco painting, and in any suggestions it offers for the perfecting of our secular architecture. Only let us do so with judgment, never forgetting that it is _in England_ that we are working, and that if we borrow ideas from France, from Germany, or from more southern lands, those ideas must be expressed _in English_--a language in art, as in literature, of whose antecedents we find abundant cause to be proud.

Let us also remember that, though we must be ever learning, it is not by this alone that an art is to be generated; that we must _act for ourselves_, as well as learn from others; and that it is to our own vigorous and manly exertions we must trust to make the art we are reviving shape itself to the necessities and the spirit of the age we live in.

LECTURE VI.

The Rationale of Gothic Architecture.

Contradictory opinions as to the character and origin of Gothic Architecture--True causes of its origin--The arch--The Romans eminently practical--Two defects in their architecture--Practical improvements--Use of small materials--Arches in rims--Sub-ordinating rims--Imposts--Pilaster capitals--Decorative columns--Romanesque arch decorations--Labels--Clustered columns--Weight of arches on columns--Doorways--Windows--Rejection of ancient rules of proportion--Efforts to improve construction and decoration in the twelfth century--Absolute demand for an arch of less pressure and for an abutment of greater resistance--_Ribbed_ as distinguished from _arris_ vaulting--Reasons for adopting the former--Pointed arch as effecting proportion.

In my former lectures I have endeavoured to trace out the history of that course of transition by which the rude arcuated architecture which prevailed in Western Christendom, during the dark ages between the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of modern civilisation,--commonly known as the “Romanesque” style,--first emancipated itself from its semi-barbaric character, and became a consistent round-arched style, and subsequently, by a perfectly logical series of changes, resulting from the suggestions partly of scientific construction, and partly of artistic refinement, developed itself into that new, original, and beautiful style which has in more modern times received the very absurd, but now unavoidable, name of _Gothic_ architecture.

Having traced this development up to what I consider to be its culminating point--the form which it arrived at towards the end of the thirteenth century--it had been my intention, before I proceeded farther with the historical view of the subject, to have given a series of short practical treatises on several of the more important elements of the style whose history I have traced out; as, for instance, on the principles of Gothic _vaulting_, on _tracery_, on the system of _mouldings_ belonging to the style; on _roofing_; on architectural _carving_ and _sculpture_, etc., etc. Circumstances, however, having rendered it impracticable for me just now to devote to it the time which would be necessary to do justice to these subjects, I purpose on the present occasion to content myself--at the risk (I may say with the _certainty_) of repeating what I have already stated--with an inquiry into the _rationale_ of the style of architecture of which I have been treating.

Such an inquiry is the more necessary from the extraordinary contrariety of opinion which we find to exist as to the real character of the style, as well as the external and internal causes of its development. Such opinions assume the most contradictory forms. One class of them may be denominated the _religious_ view of the question. Under this head one party describes it as Christian, and another as Roman Catholic architecture. One attributes to its various parts a deep symbolisation of Christian truth; another discovers in them nothing but the mystic arcana of Romanism; while another cuts the knot by protesting that it is Mahometan architecture. A second class of opinions assumes an _ethnological_ form. Under this head some have thought the style especially English; some pre-eminently German; some, again, in the most exclusive and straitened sense of the term, French; and others (in the widest sense) Teutonic; while the entanglement is again cut through by the champions of the _Saracenic_ claim.

Then comes a _political_ class of disputants. One declares the style to be nothing more or less than the visible exponent of feudalism. If the system of Durandus were applied to this view, we should perhaps have the orders of the arch shown to represent the divisions of feudal aristocracy.--The point of the arch to be the king; the outer voussoirs the great, and the inner the lesser, vassals; the clustered pillars to be the bishops surrounded by their clergy; the ashlar stones the freemen; the rubble stones the villains and serfs; the mortar to be the bond of union or of slavery by which the whole system was cemented together; and the painted glass to be that clerical monopoly of learning by which the pure light of knowledge was imparted through an artificially-coloured medium. Others have, however, shown that the style developed itself just when feudalism was giving way, and just among those very communities who were most resolutely exerting themselves for its overthrow; and that, in England especially, it synchronises with the foundation of those institutions to which we owe our liberties and our greatness; while our knot-cutting friends would contemptuously pooh-pooh the whole question by saying that it had nothing to do either with feudalism or Magna Charta, but was simply the natural result of the Crusades.

Again, as to its more practical characteristics; one party claims for it the most unbounded liberty, another denounces it as curbing the free following of practical and artistic requirements. The very same party sometimes describes it as excluding the light of day, and sometimes as offering no protection against the glare of sunshine. In fact, without going farther into these contrarieties, it may be sufficient to say that among those who have not gone much into the subject no opinions are too inconsistent either with one another or with facts to find ready advocates.

My object in this and the succeeding lecture will be to show that the style originated in no occult influences; that, if it can be called either Christian, Teutonic, French, English, German, or Western European, it is so only in a plain, straightforward, and historical, and not in any hidden, exclusive, or mysterious, sense; but that it, in fact, arose from the application of plain common sense to plain practical requirements; that many of these requirements were not peculiar to the period, but belong to all time; that many were not limited to a race or climate, but are common, with certain modifications, to different races and countries; and that the application of the same class of common sense to altered requirements would produce results by no means militating against those thus arrived at, but, on the contrary, tending to enrich, to amplify, and to add new life, variety, and harmony to the art which it had first suggested.

To judge of the practical reasonableness of a style of building, it is not enough to prove that it answers its purpose; we may pre-suppose that all civilised people would effect as much as that--indeed, that all people would do so who can construct at all; for if uncivilised, their aim would be more simple and more readily attained.

The question is, whether the purpose is provided for by means consistent with common sense, with the laws of nature, with the properties of the materials at hand, and without an expenditure of labour and material disproportioned to the result. In this I do not restrict the question to merely utilitarian results, but admit the artistic element in a degree proportioned to the rank and purpose of the edifice. I would also wish to guard myself against being understood to imply that the superior reasonableness of a style of architecture proves a higher state of civilisation among the people who use it. Inventions are often accidental, and independent of high civilisation. Thus, though an arch is a more rational means of spanning a wide opening than a single block of marble, the early Romans who used the arch were probably much less civilised than the early Greeks, who were ignorant of it.

The Egyptians and the Greeks used most nobly the means of spanning openings with which they were best acquainted, and for which their numerous quarries of granite and marble supplied them so liberally with the materials; but such a mode of construction is manifestly costly, dependent upon natural facilities of the most exceptional kind, and extremely limited in its application. The use of the arch obviates all these difficulties, and consequently a mode of construction which admits the arch is more rational than one which does not. Roman architecture, in short, than Greek.

The Romans were, in fact, eminently a practical race, and their architecture is in its construction in a high degree practical and rational; they by no means limited themselves to the use of costly and bulky materials, but united in their structures the use of all the materials of which their world-wide dominion gave them command, and were equally successful in employing in them the most stupendous masses of marble, as at Baalbec, the granite of Egypt, or the flint-nodules of Kent; and never hesitated at spanning the widest structure with vaults of domes of such solidity as almost to defy the ravages of the elements and of time.