Part 21

The first country to visit is unquestionably France. A question may occur whether it is best to begin with the old royal domain--the great central province of the Pointed style, the fountain-head of our art--or with Normandy as the connecting link between ourselves and that fountain-head. On this question I would not offer any very strong opinion, though I incline towards the former. I do not think that, after the Romanesque period, the developments of the French came to us in any very great, or at least any very exclusive, degree through Normandy; and we know that very shortly afterwards that link of communication was cut off by our loss of that province, and that immediately after this the architecture of Normandy became more distinctly _French_, and that of England more exclusively _English_. I think, therefore, that you would be better prepared to understand the architecture of Normandy by having first studied that of the central province of France.

This, however, is a secondary question. The great matter is, wherever you go, thoroughly to _study_, thoroughly to _sketch_; not to hasten over the ground to get through an extensive programme, but to seat yourselves down where you find good material, and work on patiently at it. Where you begin is comparatively of little matter, excepting that it is undesirable to take the abnormal before the normal--the mere dialect before the language.

If you begin at Paris, as the great centre, you will find, amidst the Napoleonic modernisms of that centre of fashion, a very perfect series of typical Mediæval remains, over-restored and otherwise often sadly damaged, but nevertheless of the utmost value. I have mentioned most of them in my former lectures, but I will just enumerate them to refresh your memory, and roughly in chronological order.

I know little of purely Romanesque date unless it be the eastern part of the abbey church of St. Martin. This is curious and worthy of attention. The earliest object, however, of paramount importance is the older part of the church of St. Denis. I have said a good deal about it before, and will now content myself with pressing its importance as the grand typical example of transition. The Byzantine foliage here displays itself in a most marked form. You will find it in the string-courses and other parts of the west end very finely developed.[79] The great portal of the north transept is a noble specimen of this early style. The foliated carving on it is of very high merit. The eastern chapels, both of the church and crypt, are well worthy of the closest study, and there are many fine remains both stowed away in the churchyard and preserved in a temporary museum close by. These, however, do not all belong to this church, some having been brought here, under what circumstances I do not know, from St. Germain des Près. I will just mention that you must get permission to sketch (so long as the works of restoration are going on) from M. Viollet le Duc, and, having obtained, pray use it to the utmost.

Next in date, so far as I know, comes St. Germain des Près. Here you will find, especially in the choir and its aisles, a most noble series of studies of the Byzantinesque foliage. The architecture, too, is very excellent; but you will perceive that the present form of the triforium is altered from the original.

Perhaps about the same age is the church of Montmartre. Here the Byzantinesque foliage is nearly all of the plain unraffled form, and is very curious and worthy of study.

In the same class may be placed the little church of St. Julien le Pauvre, now the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu. The choir and its aisles form a perfect work on a very small scale in the transitional style, with Byzantinesque foliage. The church is but little known, but is well worthy of attention. It shows how mistaken is the idea that the Early French style is not suited to small buildings. The clear width of the side bays is actually under four feet, and the other dimensions in proportion, yet the whole not only has not a _miniature_, but has a decidedly _dignified_ air, while its details offer considerable varieties, even the two apsidal chapels being wholly different in their design and plan. What remains of the nave and the fragments of the fine western portal are good specimens of the succeeding style.

We now come to the church of Nôtre Dame, which offers an almost perfect series of objects of study from the same period on into the fourteenth century. In the eastern parts is transitional work with Byzantine foliage, showing some very curious varieties. One of the western portals, too, contains two exquisite corbels belonging to its predecessor of the transitional period (Figs. 187, 188). The nave with its truly glorious portals is a most noble illustration of two immediately succeeding periods; as fine, indeed, in its details as anything can be. The iron-work of one of the west doors is unequalled. The upper portions of the façade go off into later yet still noble work. The transepts, now sadly over-restored, belong to the latter half of the thirteenth century, and have been fine though somewhat attenuated works.

The _porte rouge_ is a model of a small and elegant doorway, while the eastern chapels, which nevertheless possess great elegance, show how the massive and masculine Early French style had become thinned down before the close of the first quarter of the fourteenth century.

The refectory of the abbey of St. Martin aux Champs is a most noble apartment of the first half of the thirteenth century, and some of the foliated carving is among the finest of its period (Figs. 189, 190, 191) while the

Sainte Chapelle, said to be the work of the same architect, carries on the style a little farther, and is too well known to need any remark from me.[80] Of later architecture there are also many specimens, though my tastes and leisure have not allowed me to go much into them. There are also several minor works of the early styles, of most of which I do not remember the names. The Hôtel Cluny, itself a charming specimen of the domestic architecture of the fifteenth century, contains, besides its invaluable collection of movables, a most interesting mass of fragments of architectural detail well worthy of several days’ careful devotion.

Quitting Paris, no city in France has, perhaps, stronger claims on your attention than Chartres. I will not go into any description of what you will find there, further than to say that it contains some of the very finest and richest examples both of the transitional and of the fully-developed Early Pointed styles. You might seat yourselves down there for a month and work hard every day, and be glad to go again and again and do the same, and yet find ample scope for study. In all these works the figure sculpture claims equal attention with the architecture, and no place offers a nobler field for this study than Chartres. A short run farther brings you to Le Mans, where the same two styles are again gloriously displayed, the one in the nave and the other in the choir, etc.; but this takes us out of the regions of the old royal domain and trenches on the Angevine district.

Between Paris and Amiens, and both near to and wide of the road to the right and left, you will find an admirable series of village churches worthy of being made the object of an entire tour, while among them are many more gorgeous monuments, as the abbey church of St. Luc d’Esserent with its exquisite series of capitals, and the cathedral and other churches of Senlis. Amiens and Beauvais need no recommendation from me, nor need I call your attention to that glorious group consisting of Noyen, Soissons, Laon, and Rheims, with the Château de Coucy, the monastery of Ourscamp, etc. This group should be the subject of a distinct tour, though too extensive to be thoroughly studied in one of short duration.

I should have mentioned that at Creil, which you pass in going to almost any of these places, are the ruins of the exquisite transitional church of St. Evremont, another instance of the way in which the early French builders fitted their architecture to works of small size. I know few more valuable examples of its period than this.

In another direction you reach Sens--a church so closely allied with the English transition--and Auxerre--a mine of fine detail, and farther on the venerable abbey of Vezelay, and several others less in scale but of great interest; but here again we get out of our province: only let me beg you, if you go to Vezelay, to give plenty of time to the chapter-house, a truly exquisite work of the transitional period.

Each district of France, however, has its own special objects, all interesting and instructive, and all claiming your careful study, though the central district bears most directly upon ourselves, excepting only Normandy, with its Romanesque identical with our own, and its host of charming village churches, which remind one so much of those of England. Wherever you go, be particular to give attention to the _rarer_ objects, such as timber roofs of early date, chancel stalls, wall decorations, with those relating to groining, etc., to metal-work, jewellery, shrines, illuminated manuscripts, and more especially to stained glass; and, perhaps, almost more than all, to figure sculpture. I would also suggest that you should generally give preference to objects which are really _beautiful_ rather than to those which are odd and extravagant. I confess I have not myself seen much of the latter class in France; but some of my friends who have a keener eye have, if one may judge of causes by effects, come home loaded with eccentricities such as I have failed to meet with.

Germany is almost as delightful to the architectural tourist as France itself, and is much more so in one respect. I mean the general retention of the movables of churches, even to the jewellery.

The architecture in Germany which is, perhaps, the most valuable is that of the transition, which, as I have before pointed out, took here a line of its own. After this, the most valuable is, perhaps, the brick architecture of the North. The timber buildings, however, are almost equally important, were it not that it is a material not much in use for external architecture in our own day.

The movables, however, are the richest inheritance of the German churches, and to these I would recommend your devoted attention. They form a special and most important subject of study, and one for which no country offers such facilities. Besides the more ordinary objects, such as chancel fittings, reredoses, bronze gates, metal and other screens, lamps, _coronæ_, fonts (whether of stone or of brass), tabernacles for the reservation of the host, ancient organs, paintings, and a hundred others of parallel classes, almost every great church has its _Schatzzimmer_, or treasury, and these usually contain valuables of the highest interest and of the most splendid art. These are not always easy of access, and it is difficult to obtain permission to sketch in them; but it is worth every exertion to do so. The treasuries at Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne are known to every traveller, and their claims upon the student are apt to be passed over from very familiarity; but a few days devoted to each would be invaluable. I know no ancient work more glorious or more exquisite, so far as it remains intact, than the shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne. I have on two occasions obtained permission for a brief period to draw from it, and have been filled with wonder at the exquisite art which a close examination unfolds. At Hildesheim are numberless objects of early art of the same class. At Brunswick, again, are a few; while the treasury of the cathedral at Halberstadt is a complete museum of Mediæval art. Sacred vessels, reliquaries containing the finest early workmanship, books with glorious jewelled covers, mitres of all degrees of richness, tapestries from the earliest periods, altar coverings both of embroidery and linen of early periods, and exquisite works of every class we can imagine are to be found in that charmed enclosure.[81] At Marburg there are also many such objects, and among them the shields of the old Teutonic knights and the perfectly wonderful shrine of St. Elizabeth. I do not refer to the beautiful stone structure which contained it, and which is figured by Moller, but to the gorgeous jewelled shrine which it contained. All through Germany, however, the case is the same: wherever you go you find the great churches replete with the movable works of Mediæval art. It is for you to study them with the care which they deserve.

I have in a previous lecture said a good deal about the study of Italian architecture, and I will not now repeat it. Suffice it to say that Italy is the land in which to study the use of rich materials, of mosaic-work, and of architectural decoration in its highest forms. It is the land in which to give the finishing touch to your architectural training, to learn the last and loftiest lessons--those which show us how to link architecture with the sister arts in their highest perfection. If you are artists when you go there, you may be much more advanced artists when you return. We learn, too, there much that is most useful in respect of the domestic architecture of towns. It is, however, a seductive country, and we have to keep on our guard there, and not to forget that we are members of a Northern nation.

Mr. Street has told us a great deal that is deeply interesting about Spanish architecture, so I will not (as I have never seen it) enter upon that subject; and will close what I have to say on foreign travel by urging you to the diligent use of it, but urging you also when you return home, not to forget that you are _Englishmen_, and that _English_ is your proper language. I would also advise that your foreign tours should be followed up or alternated with English ones, so that your own native architecture may always be kept prominently before your mind.

I have offered to you in this lecture what may appear to you but the dry bones of the subject. In my next I hope to follow it up by suggestions, both as to the spirit in which this course of study should be undertaken, and the personal training both of the mind, the eye, and the hand necessary to fit you for such studies; and as to the practical uses which you should subsequently make of the lessons you will have thus learned.

LECTURE IX.

On the Study and Practice of Gothic Architecture.

Every day business and practical work to go on _hand in hand_ with the study of ancient buildings--How best to be accomplished--The study _from books_--Artistic and archæological portions cannot be wholly disconnected--Heraldry--A knowledge of the history of art absolutely necessary for the study of Mediæval architecture--Greek art the parent of Gothic sculpture--Ruined cities of Central Syria--Mahometan styles--Our own form of church the direct inheritance from the earliest Christian temples--Training _as artists_--Choice among specimens of different Mediæval periods and styles--Examples especially recommended--Practical studies of ancient buildings in connection with their _structural_ and _mechanical_ qualities--Vaulting--Timber-work--Stone-work, etc., etc.--The _actual practice_ of Mediæval architecture--The _repairs_ and _restoration_ of ancient buildings.

In my last lecture I gave you an outline of the course of study requisite to obtaining a knowledge of Mediæval architecture, so far as this is to be done by the studying and sketching from ancient buildings. I purpose, in this, to carry on the same subject into other particulars, and also to offer some suggestions as to the actual practice of the revived style.

I might have appeared, in what I have said, almost to presuppose--what is improbable, if not impossible--that those whom I have been advising as to their studies have the entire command of their time, and are comparatively free from the demands of every-day business. I not only do _not_ suppose, but should be as far as possible from desiring, this; for I am convinced that those whose usual occupations are not such as to familiarise them with the demands and the difficulties of practical work, and with the questions which are ever being suggested by actually working out the details of architecture for practical use, are not prepared to profit in the fullest degree from the study of old examples. This study, and the practical work to which it is the only key, must go on _hand in hand_. There are numberless intricacies and niceties; problems long since solved; difficulties ingeniously met; clever ways of making accidents, which in their own nature would cause a blemish, the means of adding beauty; numberless instances in which decorative or other treatment was the result of some practical reason which would at first sight appear to be merely a matter of taste; and a thousand other instructive and important matters which would be entirely passed over or fail of approving themselves to the understanding of the student who is not prepared to appreciate them by the suggestion to themselves of the same problems, the same difficulties, the same little knots to be untied, the same little intricacies to be unravelled, and the same calls for clever contrivance to meet accidental circumstances arising in their own daily practical work.

The man, on the other hand, who is _always_ at practical work, without studying much from old examples, becomes dull and normal, or flighty and crotchety, according to the bent of his own mind; while, if he constantly supplies and revivifies his practical work by study from original examples, and fits his mind to receive these lessons by his practical work, he is prevented from becoming dull and lifeless by the constant suggestions of brightness and life which he receives, or from becoming crotchety and over fanciful by the _reasonableness_ which he finds to pervade the objects which he studies, and the evident aim which they evince rather to _chasten_ and _conceal_--to subject to the doctrine of reserve--their clever contrivances than to flaunt them obviously to public gaze.

To carry out this mutual co-operation of practical work and the study of old examples, I would recommend you always to note down any puzzle you fall into in your work, and any doubt as to how a perplexity is to be met or difficulty to be got over, and any uncertainty which may occur to you as to the best mode of treating a particular feature; so that, when you next go out sketching, you may have a list of questions for which you have to seek for practical answers from the old architects themselves, still speaking to us and instructing us through their works; and in the same way you may have, ever and anon, answers suggested by the old men to questions which you have not yet thought of asking, but which in your practical work you will soon find to arise. This playing of practice and study into each other’s hands will add vastly to the pleasure and profit of both, and will keep up a zealous and lively interest in your minds which will make your return to business only second in enjoyment to your setting out on a sketching tour; the one keeping alive by practical use the pleasure and interest of the lessons learned by the other.

I must now say a word, which perhaps ought to have come at the beginning of my last lecture, about preparation of another kind for this class of study.

I need hardly dwell upon the obvious necessity for having acquired at the outset, and for constantly continuing to acquire, a knowledge _from books_ of the subject you are studying.

At the beginning of this century it was wholly unknown; since that time it has gradually become better and better understood; and it is clear that, to carry on this cumulative process, each generation of students must take as their basis the full amount of knowledge yet attained, and--riding as it were on the crest of the wave--must add their own progress to that attained by their predecessors. I will not attempt to enumerate books. If you are anxious to follow up the subject, you will already have found them out or will soon do so. I will mention, however, that you must not limit your reading to _English_ works, for the French have done, I think, even more than our own countrymen to elucidate the subject; and among English writers let Professor Willis take a leading place as your instructor.

But what you have to learn from books is not architecture alone. I will not stop to insist on the necessity of general reading, just as every one should follow up: some of the usual classes of general reading are, however (if it were possible) even more directly important in their minute details to architects than to others: I would more especially instance _historical_ knowledge, and all that tends to illustrate the changes which have influenced civilisation, and through it have borne more or less directly upon art.

Though antiquarianism is very distinct from art, and though the architectural student should be always on his guard against the danger of reversing the relative positions of the artistic and the archæological portions of his studies, it is nevertheless manifest that the two can never be wholly disconnected. You must, therefore, follow up antiquarian studies so far as they have a direct or a real bearing upon your main pursuit.

I would mention, in passing, that there is one antiquarian science which is a special link of connection between the present and the past: I refer to _Heraldry_, a branch of study which we too much neglect, but which has very strong claims upon our attention.

Then, again, you must always study the _meaning_ and _object_ of every ancient building which you are examining, that you may know how far its practical characteristics bear upon or are alien to such as belong to our own day. In _ecclesiastical_ works this becomes a practical and necessary study; for, though the ritual uses and customs have greatly changed, many of them hold good in our own day, either directly or in some modified or parallel form, which connects the study of the ritual arrangements of ancient churches more or less directly with our own. The study, then, of ecclesiastical and ritual history and antiquities is one of those directly necessary to the church architect; though, as in the case of antiquarianism, he must avoid the danger of making it in any degree take the place, instead of assisting and guiding his study, of architecture itself.

I would here take the opportunity of urging upon those who purpose devoting themselves especially to Mediæval architecture the necessity of making themselves acquainted, in some reasonable degree at least, and the more thoroughly the better, with the whole range of the history of art. It is only by means of such knowledge that we are able to comprehend the true position which Mediæval architecture takes in the long stream of art history.