How to Study Architecture

by Charles H. Caffin

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 the Apostles, Cologne (1220-1250). It offers a varied application of the same features in a singularly perfect design. The transepts and choir present a cluster of three apses round a low, octagonal lantern. The nave is short, twice the width of the side aisles and has western transepts and a square western tower. Especially fine are the exterior embellishments of the apses, consisting of two stories of blind arcading, surmounted by open arcades beneath the roof, while a corresponding sense of proportional dignity characterises the grouping of the eastern towers and lantern and the solitary distinction of the western tower. Here, as in three other examples of triapsal churches in Cologne—S. Maria-in-Capitol, S. Martin, and S. Cunibert—the domical vaulting is supported by squinches or pendentives.

The earliest example of nave vaulting is found in the Cathedral of Mayence, closely followed in the Cathedrals of Spires and Worms and the abbey church at Laach.