Part 4

During a genuine and natural state of art, every one learned it from, and developed it upon, the works of his immediate predecessors. This natural course having been broken up, the most reasonable substitute for it is to study the actual works which surround us, and which were produced while art was still genuine and unbroken. We have not to visit distant shores, and to investigate obscure fragments,--the works of races which have vanished from the face of the earth: we are surrounded on every side by original examples of the arts which we would study; they are the productions of our own country and our own race. The temples from which our authorities are derived are not those of an ancient and bygone nation, but those in which we ourselves worship, and within and around whose hallowed walls sleep the remains of our own forefathers. We study no outlandish or exotic architecture, but that of buildings which from our infancy we have been taught to venerate. We have, then, no excuse if we neglect to obtain our knowledge from the fountain head.

The choice and order of the particular buildings which we select for our studies must depend much upon accidental circumstances; but, as a general rule, I would advise each student to begin with those which are readiest to his hand. If your home is in the country, visit, study, and sketch from your own parish church, and from those immediately surrounding you, widening your circle as you proceed; generally studying the simpler specimens before you venture upon the more magnificent. If you live in London the case is different. The humbler specimens have mostly perished, but the earnest student will still find out many of which the public are ignorant. Here, however, you must for the most part attend to the more magnificent works, and reserve the humbler for your rural excursions; and, above all, you must diligently study the glorious abbey church of Westminster--internally, perhaps, the finest in England, but which, from its proximity, is made nothing like so much use of as it ought to be. Though the village churches round London have suffered more than almost any others, you would still do well to make pedestrian excursions among them, and carefully sketch what remains of them; and by extending your excursions to Waltham and St. Alban’s, to Eltham and Hampton Court, you will find objects of study of the highest merit and the most thrilling interest. I would, however, recommend, as the most profitable mode of following up the subject, more lengthened excursions; as, for instance, pedestrian tours through particular counties or districts, walking from village to village, and carefully sketching everything worthy of note to be found in it, whether ecclesiastical or domestic. This should be repeated over and over again in different districts. If you wish to direct your attention to the nobler productions of architecture, you must seat yourselves down in some cathedral town, and follow it up patiently from day to day, till your time is exhausted. A hasty view to these noblest of structures is of but little use.

Especially would I entreat your attention to those beauteous but melancholy ruins which still mark the sites of ancient monastic institutions. You may find in them the finest and best studied examples of your art--works designed and carried out, not in the bustle and busy hum of cities, but under the quieting influence of learned retirement: they are the works of the most thoughtful spirits of their age, and have received their utmost study and consideration. Not only are they intrinsically among the most beautiful specimens you can visit, but their present condition is calculated to impress them the most deeply upon the imagination and memory.

It is well to visit these remains _alone_; to stay long at them; to study them thoroughly, and not to repress the emotions to which they are calculated to give rise. I would also plead for them on another ground. There are many of them fast mouldering away or tottering to their fall. A few years more, and many of them will have perished. Lend, then, a friendly hand while they still exist, and rescue from oblivion their noble details by making careful and measured drawings of every part; so that, when the reality is no more, the truthful representation at least will be preserved.

I need hardly say that no works of art can be really profitably studied without _drawing_ from them. The memory will not retain its impressions by mere abstract study and observation. I would not advise hasty and careless sketching, unless your time is so short as to render more impossible, but would urge upon you the necessity of carefully and assiduously drawing whatever strikes you as worthy of it, making measured drawings whenever you can, and noting down your impressions as to the merits or the defects of the work. So study what you see as thoroughly to learn it,--as if no one had ever made drawings of it before. Never buy prints or photographs of it as substitutes for your own work; though they are most useful when you have done all you can for yourself. In this way you will in a few years obtain a good knowledge of the architecture of your own country, and this is the best preparation for studying the contemporary works of other lands.

I would never encourage a student to go too early abroad. Study well our own examples first, and follow up foreign ones later.

When you go abroad, begin with France. It is the great centre of Mediæval art. Perhaps the best course is to take Normandy first, as being most allied to our own country; but still more important is the district round Paris--the old royal domain--which seems to be the heart from which Gothic architecture diffused itself throughout Europe. The architecture of this central district, particularly in works of the thirteenth century, demands the closest and the most diligent study; it is the great standard and type of the style, and, without a good knowledge of it, your studies would be not only incomplete, but defective at the most vital part.

After France, I would recommend Germany. Pointed architecture in Germany is a direct emanation from France, far more so than is the case with that of our own country. Yet it has a character of its own which it is well to study, and the later Romanesque of Germany, which is contemporary with the early Pointed architecture of France and England, is replete with beauty and suggestiveness.

Italy should come after France and Germany; and the study of its Mediæval works is, in my opinion, necessary to the completeness of the course I am suggesting. It should, however, be undertaken with much caution, without which it is apt to lead astray. I have above recommended you never to repress the generous impulses of enthusiasm; I fear, however, I must here make an exception to my rule. On first visiting Italy, the scenes are so new and so exciting, and the effects of the climate and the beauty of the atmosphere so intoxicating to the feelings, that we are apt to view everything through an exaggerating medium. Without repressing noble and generous emotions, I would still suggest that a rigorous watch should be kept over the undue effect of merely external influences. “Put a knife to thy throat if thou be a man given to appetite.” With proper safeguards, however, on this head, southern Gothic is one of the most useful and delightful branches of the studies which lie before you, and supplies many a _hiatus_ which would otherwise exist.

I hope, however, on some future occasion, to say more on this subject. For the present, I will close my remarks on the manner in which Gothic architecture should be studied, by saying that it is not mere architecture which you will have to attend to: painted decoration, whether in its nobler or humbler branches, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, metal-work, jewellery, enamelling, seals, carved ivories, embroidery, and a hundred other subsidiary branches, possess an almost equal claim upon your attention; and many of these must be followed up in museums and public libraries, in collections of archives, and in the sacristies and treasuries of monasteries and cathedrals, where, for the most part, they lie hidden and unknown to the busy world around. Nor would I leave you to suppose that the objects of your study should be either exclusively, or even, perhaps, mainly, ecclesiastical. You must search out with the utmost diligence the remnants of civil, secular, and domestic buildings of the same ages: without this your studies would be imperfect indeed! The caprice of individuals and the love of living in new houses, have rendered these remains most imperfect and fragmentary; yet the fragments are strewn on all sides of us, and demand to be carefully collected, and not a village you pass will fail to supply you with some contribution.

Finally. What are the special objects for which this course of study should be undertaken? They are, I think, threefold.

_First._ For the mere sake of acquainting ourselves with one of the most remarkable phases in the whole history of art, and that which belonged to our own race, country, and religion. It is one of the most striking characteristics of our day that in it alone, of all periods of the world’s history, the arts of all preceding times are studied and their history understood; and strange would it be if, while traversing every land to glean vestiges of its bygone arts, we should neglect to acquaint ourselves with that noble style which prevailed among our own forefathers, and whose glorious monuments surround us on every side.

The _second_ object is one of a more practical nature. These noble monuments, the pride and glory of our land, have, through the lapse of time and the barbarous hand of modern Vandalism, become in many cases so decayed and mutilated as to demand at our hands the most careful and judicious reparations. This cannot safely be undertaken by any but those who have as perfect knowledge as is possible of their architecture, and who are able to trace out with precision the history and changes they have undergone, and whose feelings are such as to lead them to deal tenderly and lovingly with them. This alone is a sufficient object to induce a careful study of our Mediæval architecture.

There remains, however, a _third_ object to lead us to this study, but it is one on which so much difference of opinion exists, that I must avoid on the present occasion doing more than naming it. I refer, of course, to the revival of Pointed architecture now going on. The promoters of this great movement do not desire to revive a departed art, however glorious, exactly as they find it in its original remains. Such may naturally be the character of their first essays, but it is not their ultimate wish. Their view is rather this: that, feeling deeply the fact that we have long since ceased to possess an architecture which can be said to belong to our race or our age, and fully agreeing with those who desire to see a new development of our art to meet these demands, they feel that the most probable foundation for such a development is the native architecture of our own race and country, and that the thorough study of its principles may tend in time to promote the formation of an architecture of the future, which will be more thoroughly our own than that, however meritorious, which has been founded upon traditions of the ancient world.

LECTURE II.

Sketch of the Rise of Mediæval Architecture.

Anomalous state of things in Western Europe after the destruction of the Roman Empire--Art almost extinct--Saved by the Western Church and the Eastern Empire--Architectural elements of the new races--Charlemagne’s attempts to revive art--Primitive art in England and the north of France--Dawn of better things--Architecture of the tenth century--Schools of art and science--Bishop Bernward’s works--Origin of early styles in France and Germany--Early architecture of Rome--The arcuated and the trabeated systems--Development of Romanesque--Its leading characteristics--Romanesque and Pointed architecture not TWO styles, but ONE--Barrel vaults--Groined vaults--Oblong bays--Main arches of groined vaulting changed from the semicircle to the pointed arch--Flying buttresses--Groin ribs--The pointed arch arose from statical not geometrical or æsthetical motives--Wall ribs remain round long after the wider arches become pointed--Two modes adopted to avoid the difficulty of oblong groining over naves--Sexpartite vaulting.

In the introductory lecture which I had the honour of reading before you last year, I endeavoured to give an outline of the varied claims of the architecture which was developed in our own and neighbouring countries during the Middle Ages, upon the study both of architects and lovers of art at the present day.

I will not recapitulate what I then said; but, presuming that by honouring me with your presence this evening you admit the subject to be well worthy of your attention, will crave your indulgence while I endeavour, at the risk of appearing to be going over a trite and almost exhausted subject, to give a brief outline of the rise and development of the architecture whose claims upon your study I then attempted to advocate.

My object is rather to trace out the re-awakening of art in the eleventh and following centuries from the slumber in which it had so long lain, than to chronicle its changes during the chaotic ages which followed the final catastrophe of the ancient world. Like the contemporary fable of the Seven Sleepers at Ephesus, its changes during this dreamy interval were but the turnings of the slumberer from the right side to the left, and little need is there to investigate such sluggish and disconnected movements. Our concern is rather with _living_ and _energetic_ art; and if we stop at all to inquire into its semi-dormant condition, it is rather for the sake of judging what were the elements of life which it retained, than from any really practical interest which attaches to its productions.

It is hardly possible to conceive of a state of things so utterly anomalous and contrary to all historical precedent as that of Western Europe after the deluge of Northern barbarism had annihilated the mightiest empire the world ever saw, and almost swept from the face of the earth the arts and literature which it had taken the whole period of human history to generate. Like the giant-slayers of old romance, the barbarous conquerors must have been filled with awe in contemplating the stupendous proportions of their now lifeless victim; and while wandering amidst the mighty monuments of the people they had overthrown, they must have been inspired with deep veneration for their intellectual power, and with ardent longings to inherit some portion of their skill--aspirations which, if we may judge from some of the structures erected by Theodoric, there can be little doubt would have been realised had not every wave as it subsided been succeeded by a fresh torrent of barbarism. The lamp of art was only saved from utter extinction by two surviving institutions--the Western Church and the Eastern Empire; the one seeming to absorb each succeeding wave of conquering barbarism, and the other to supply to each those elements of civilisation by which its fury was in its turn to be abated.

As might be expected from the circumstances of their position, the architectural efforts of the new races were founded on the basis of the Roman monuments, with whose vestiges they were on every hand surrounded, aided by friendly and continuous importations of the still living art of the Eastern Empire. Their elements were the Christianised Roman of the Western Basilica, and the newly-developed architecture of the Byzantine Church. Long, long, however, was it before any distinctive style was developed out of these elements. The efforts of Theodoric must be considered as rather Byzantine than _Gothic_; and for three centuries so little, if any, was the progress, that we find Charlemagne, the re-founder of the empire, actually despoiling the palace of the early Gothic king to use its architectural fragments in his own structures!

There can be no doubt, however, that the efforts made by Charlemagne for the revival of art would have soon produced some great results had he been followed by successors in any degree worthy of him; but so far from this, the nations he governed seem to have fallen back into almost worse barbarism than before, while the incursion of Northmen, Huns, and Saracens long repressed every effort after better things. We know little of the actual state of architecture during this melancholy period. The notion of Charlemagne having found a distinctive style of architecture in Lombardy, and having transplanted it to the banks of the Rhine, seems to be little more than a myth, though I think it not improbable that the Lombards had already taken some steps towards the formation of a new style.[2]

It is dubious whether a fragment of the structures erected by the Lombard kings now exists from which we may ascertain their style;[3], and though it is possible that the subsequent architecture may have been influenced by them in some degree, it is certain that the models which the Frankish emperor more especially followed were rather found in Byzantine Ravenna than in barbarous Lombardy, and the few remains of his architecture seem to be imitations of either Classic or Byzantine structures.

In England the works of this period were a very rude and unintelligible imitation of those of the same period at Rome, united with a strange translation into stone of their own timber structures, and occasionally enriched with that primitive kind of ornamentation which it is customary to call Runic.[4]

In the north of France it would not appear that the humbler class of churches were much better than those of which we find the remains in our own country. The remnants of one of the churches erected at that period on the site now occupied by Nôtre Dame at Paris, are debased Roman with Corinthian capitals; but the few remains of smaller churches--such as the old church at Beauvais--are not very unlike the Saxon structures in England. Of the latter it is but fair to state that the fragments which remain nearly all belong to merely rustic churches, and are hardly fair specimens of their style; they afford, however, sufficient proof of the rude state of art, though we have the witness of contemporary and succeeding historians to the fact that they were supposed and intended to be in the Roman style--meaning thereby, not that of ancient Rome, but that which prevailed at the period, and which we usually designate as the Basilican style.

The dawn of better things may be dated from the commencement of the tenth century, and may be mainly attributed to the consolidation of the German empire under the three first Othos (936-1002) and their immediate successors, and more especially to the fact of these emperors having had Lombardy equally with Germany, Switzerland, and portions of France under their sway, and thus in some degree uniting in one that vast expanse of country which extends from the banks of the Po to those of the Elbe.

Though Charlemagne had been the first to establish this mighty empire, and that on a yet grander scale, and may claim the title of the founder of modern civilisation, the seeds he had sown scarcely began to take root till the days of his German successors of the tenth and eleventh centuries. I say _German_ successors, because the kings of France were his successors as _Frankish kings_, the others as _German emperors_; and from this time forward we find a sort of contest or competition ever going on, both in politics and arts, between those who represented him in those two capacities.

From the commencement of the tenth century we find one style of architecture for a time spreading over the plains of Lombardy, the valleys of Switzerland, and that of the Rhine, and extending itself over Saxony and all the civilised parts of Germany.

I do not say that the style was absolutely identical; but still it was essentially the same. It was promoted by the same all-pervading political influence; and there can be no doubt that the same ecclesiastics, and even the same artists, were engaged in carrying it out; and that even among those most remote from one another a constant interchange of views as to taste and construction was ever going on, while the differences which we observe would arise rather from those of climate, material, and proximity to the relics of ancient art, than from any essential or intended difference of style.

The force of the influence brought to bear at this period upon the furtherance of art may be judged of from the accounts we have of the schools of art and science established so far north as Hildesheim (in the neighbourhood of Brunswick and Hanover), by Bernward, Bishop of that see, at the close of the tenth and the commencement of the eleventh century. Bernward was tutor, and afterwards chancellor, to Otho III., and there are extant portions of an elaborate treatise on geometry from which he instructed that prince. He was himself skilled in many arts, as wall-painting, the illumination of MSS., mosaics, working in metals, cutting and setting precious stones, as well as in architecture itself; and it is said that “whenever he found a youth with a feeling for art, he took him into his laboratory, and instructed him with the greatest kindness in giving the required forms to stubborn metals, hard stone, wood, and ivory. The most artistic of these young men he always took with him when he travelled, especially when he went to Italy, that their taste might be improved by seeing masterly works of art, and hence be enabled to execute similar works at home.” Bernward rebuilt his cathedral and erected the church of St. Michael at Hildesheim (still existing); and of his works in metal there remain the gates and the spiral column (of which casts may be seen at the Crystal Palace), as well as the great corona, in the cathedral. I have dwelt the longer on these particulars because we happen to have more complete records of Bernward than of most of his contemporaries in art, and because the sphere of his operations was at a point so distant from the recognised centres of art; and when it is recollected that he was cotemporary with the erection of many of the great Romanesque cathedrals of Germany--as Mayence, Spire, and Bamberg, and of multitudes of less important churches (at the dedication of many of which he was present), and further, that he lived earlier than the erection of the Cathedral of Pisa, the Church of St. Mark at Venice, or St. Zeno at Verona--it will be seen at once how early and energetic was the architectural movement in Germany under those emperors who were also kings of Italy; and we need not wonder at the immense hold which the architecture, thus generated, had over the national mind of Germany.

It is probable that about the same period a style somewhat analogous to the Lombardo-Rhenish, though more strongly tinctured with Classic detail, was growing up in Provence and the other southern provinces of France, spreading itself northward, and thus meeting the German variety on the borders of Switzerland and in Burgundy. The dates, however, of buildings in those districts seem too indefinite to be argued upon with confidence, though it is certain that at a date somewhat later a very noble and refined variety of Romanesque, but with a strong Classic admixture, prevailed there.