How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (free reads .txt) 📕

a symbol of power, it is usually detached from the church, and square in plan. The walls are simply treated, being reinforced often with masonry piers, but interrupted with as few windows as possible, while the top is marked by one or two stories of arcaded windows and is crowned with a pyramidal or conical roof. FRENCH ROMANESQUE

The map of France at the end of the tenth century shows the Royal Domain, the Ile de France, a dense forest with Orleans, the city of learning, at one end, and at the other, Paris, the city of the future—hemmed in on all sides by counties and duchies over which the Capetian King held little more than nominal suzerainty. For the purpose of architectural study these territories may be divided into north and south, on a line with the River Loire. Thus, to the north belong the Ile de France, Normandy, and Brittany; to the south, Provence, Aquitaine, Anjou, and Burgundy.

Everywhere the builders were intent upon the problem of vaulting; but were influenced in the south by local conditions. In Provence, for example, the seat of Roman civilisation, not only does classical influence appear in the details, but the vaulting is of the old Roman kind. Notre Dame, Avignon, is a well-known instance. And the barrel-vaulting was continued throughout the neighbouring Duchy of Aquitaine. Here, however, another influence intervened. The district had close commercial relations with Venice, Ravenna, and Byzantium, and it is reflected in the domical vaulting of many of the churches.

S. Front, Perigeux, for example, resembles S. Mark’s, Venice, in having the plan of a Greek cross, surmounted by five pendentives. The arches, however, are pointed; of great depth, resting on piers, pierced with passages. In the cathedral of the neighbouring city, Angoulême, a Latin cross is substituted for the Greek in plan. The aisleless nave is surmounted by three stone domes, roofed on the exterior. Over the crossing rises another dome, visible outside, which is raised upon a drum that is pierced with pointed windows, disposed in pairs. The southern transept is still crowned with a tower, its fellow to the north having been destroyed in 1568.

This building served as a model for the Abbey of Fontevrault in Anjou.

In Burgundy the most renowned of the numerous monastic establishments was the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny. Until the building of the present S. Peter’s, its abbey church was the largest and most magnificent in Christendom. The plan was a basilica with double aisles, the east end terminating in a chevêt (shě-vay´); that is to say, an apse surrounded by a circular aisle, divided into chapels; in this case five in number. The nave was arcaded with pointed arches and spanned by an immense barrel vault. Groined vaulting, on the other hand, is supposed to have covered the aisles.

Groined vaulting takes the place of barrel-vaulting in the nave of the Church of Vézelay, and was also used in the ante-chapel, erected some thirty years later. But by this time the builders, in order to reduce the thrust, adopted a pointed section for the ribs—the first instance in France of the pointed groined vault, which was successfully developed later by the Gothic architects.

It is to be noted that the early vaulting, erected by the Clunisian architects, compelled the abandonment of the clerestory windows. The thrust of the great barrel vault of the nave was sustained either by high side aisles with either transverse or groined vaults over the bays, or by barrel vaults over the aisles, which in turn were supported by the massive outer walls. For the use of the flying buttress had not yet been adopted.

Meanwhile, the northern climate demanded the additional light provided by a clerestory, and the architects of Normandy applied themselves to the problem. It was to be solved later in Gothic architecture by the use of pointed groin vaulting, but, pending this discovery, a method of vaulting was employed which is known as sexpartite. For the square bay was crossed in the centre by another transverse arch, which, when cut by the two diagonals, produced a plan of six parts. This, however, necessitated two narrow skew vaults, meeting in the centre, which was awkward in appearance. The method is illustrated in S. Etienne, the great church of the Abbaye-aux-hommes and La Trinité of the Abbaye-aux-Dames, both in Caen. These and other churches of Normandy such as the Abbey church of Mont-St. Michel, are characterised by an adventurous spirit as well as logic of design, marking a distinct progress toward the Gothic.

ENGLISH ROMANESQUE OR NORMAN

The audacity and resourcefulness of the Norman builders found extensive opportunity after the conquest of England. But few remains survive of Anglo-Saxon architecture, and they suggest that the buildings were of a rude kind. They were constructed of rubble work, reinforced with engaged piers and ashlar masonry at the corners, arranged in what is called “long and short” courses. The columns were short, stumpy cylinders crowned with one or two square blocks, and the details of doorways and windows were roughly hewn with an axe, though in the case of certain belfry windows, jambs of baluster shape, seem to have been turned upon a lathe. The openings were either round-topped, suggesting a clumsy copy of the Roman style or else triangular, as if perpetuating a form of timber construction. The plan of the church appears to have been of the simplest, representing an oblong nave, separated by an arch from the smaller oblong of the chancel; the latter being lower than the nave and, on the inside, approached by two or three descending steps. The arrangement seems to have been derived from the example of the Celtic churches, as also was the habit of erecting towers, which, however, are not circular as in Ireland, but square without buttresses. One example of such a tower exists at Earl’s Barton, Northamptonshire, in which occur balustered windows.

The Normans, therefore, had a free field for their architectural enterprise and, while they immediately commenced the erection of castles to overawe the country, they also erected monasteries and cathedrals, designed to surpass in size and magnificence the ones in Normandy. While following the latter in a general way, the English examples were characterised, on the one hand, by a more massive and picturesque treatment, and, on the other, owing probably to the scarcity of skilled labour, by simpler and less refined details.

The capitals of columns, for instance, were usually of the cubic-cushion form, as may be seen in S. John’s Chapel in the Tower of London. The piers were often round and frequently clustered with columns, the round arches being recessed and framed with round mouldings. The latter, in the case of doorways and windows, were enriched with ornament carved in zig-zag, chevrons, billets, and beaked heads. The plan was apt to be longer than that of the French churches, and the elevations were proportionately lower. Vaulting was, for the present, confined to smaller churches and the side aisles of the larger; but the nave walls of the cathedrals were built sufficiently massive to support the vaulting which in some cases was subsequently added. The clerestory windows were set toward the outer part of the wall, the remaining space being occupied by a passageway, which, in front of the windows was screened from the nave by three arches.

While the Norman style, as the English-Romanesque is usually called in England, appears in many cathedrals, the character of it has been greatly modified by later additions. But the finest example still existing is that of Durham; next to which come Peterborough and portions of Norwich. The tower above the crossing, which became a distinction of English cathedrals and is so imposing a feature of Durham, was added much later. But the original nave (1096) is a remarkable example of massive Norman construction, the round piers having a diameter nearly equal to the span of the arches and being channelled with flutings and spirals. The vaulting was completed in 1133 and is said to be the earliest example of Norman vaulting in England. Another notable feature of Durham Cathedral is the so-called Galilee chapel, which, in imitation of the ante-chapel in Caen, takes the place of a porch at the west end. It was used by penitents.

At Peterborough the nave, only second to Durham as an example of Norman at its finest, is still covered with the original wooden ceiling, divided into lozenge shapes and painted. It is believed to be the oldest wooden roof in England. The Norman parts of Norwich Cathedral are the long, narrow, aisleless nave, the transepts, and the choir with its chevêt of chapels. Ely, again, has Norman nave and transepts; Bristol, a Norman chapter house; Oxford, nave and choir; Southwell, Norman nave, transepts, and towers; Winchester, transepts and towers; while Worcester has a Norman crypt, transepts, and circular chapter house. The last named is the only one of this design in England. Original Norman work is also to be found in the transepts at Canterbury, while the narrowness of its choir is due to the preservation of two Norman chapels.

In England the interior wall spaces and vaulting were decorated with paintings, for in this branch of decorative work the Normans found no scarcity of skill, since the Anglo-Saxon school of miniaturists, originally started by Celtic missionaries, had attained a high degree of proficiency, and now developed the principles of missal-painting into the larger and freer scope of mural decoration.

A good example of the small Norman church is that of Iffley, near Oxford. Especially interesting is the west front. In the larger examples this feature underwent change with the introduction of the pointed arch; but here is a distribution of the gabled end into three well defined and excellently proportioned stories, pierced, respectively, with a doorway, circular window, and an arcade of three windows. All are deeply recessed and enriched with characteristic moulding, and the effect, while a trifle barbaric, is vigorously decorative.

RHENISH ROMANESQUE

In the Rhenish Provinces is found the most fully developed Romanesque style, characterised by the fewest local differences. When, during the years 768-814, Charlemagne built his royal tomb-church, which with subsequent Gothic additions is now the Cathedral of Aix-le-Chapelle, he adopted the plan of S. Vitale in Ravenna and imported classic columns. Moreover, the Rhine Provinces possessed many remains of Roman architecture. Later they became closely allied by commerce with Northern Italy and seem to have employed the services of Lombard architects.

All these circumstances tended to make Rhenish Romanesque resemble that of Northern Italy. On the other hand, it developed a style more constructively adventurous, vigorous, and picturesque; while at the same time it was on the whole more systematically organised than the French. It was, however, about fifty years behind the latter in its development which began late and continued longer.

A typical example of the earlier period of Rhenish Romanesque is the Cathedral at Worms (1110-1200). Its design shows features that are characteristically Rhenish: an apse at both the west and east end, flanked in each case by two towers; the use of transepts at the west end as well as the east (the eastern ones being here omitted), the erection of octagonal lanterns over both crossings, and entrances on the north and south sides instead of the west.

The exterior exhibits a well-defined orderliness and picturesqueness. The walls are reinforced with projecting piers and pierced with deeply recessed, round-arch windows. Noticeable also is the effective use of corbel arcades beneath the gable ends of the roofs and in various string courses, while the richer emphasis of open arcades is applied with equal discretion and effectiveness. Another noteworthy feature in the towers is the use of dormers to embellish the conical or octagonal roof, which in effect are rudimentary spires.

Other early representative cathedrals are those of Spires, Treves, and Mayence while to the later period belongs the Church of