In the Decorative style the proportions were less lofty, the arches mostly enclosing an equilateral triangle; mouldings bold, finely proportioned, and often ornamented with ball, flower, foliage of ivy, oak, and vine leaves, the execution being natural and beautiful.
The Perpendicular or Tudor style had walls profusely decorated with paintings, parapets embattled, and paneled; open timber roofs of moderate pitch, but of elaborate construction, having hammer beams, the moulded timbers often richly ornamented with pierced tracery, and carved figures of angels.
Ornamental materials of all kinds, such as mosaic, enamel, metal-work, and inlays were freely employed; but the crowning invention of Gothic artists, which contributed largely to the architectural effect of their finest buildings, was stained glass. So much of the old glass has perished, and so much of the new is not even passable, that this praise may seem extravagant to those who have never seen any of the best specimens that still exist. In the choir at Canterbury there is a remnant of the best glass in England, and some good fragments remain at Westminster, but to judge of glass at its best, the student must visit La Sainte Chapelle, of Paris, or the cathedrals at Chartres, Bourges or Rheims, when effects in colors are gorgeous in their richness, brilliancy and harmony. Fresco painting may claim a sort of brightness, and mosaics, when executed in polished materials, have some brilliancy, but in stained glass the light which comes streaming through the window itself gives evidence, while the quality of the glass determines the colors, and we thus obtain a glowing luster which can only be compared to the beauty of the richest gems.
Color was freely introduced both by the employment of colored materials and by painting the interior with colored pigments. Painted decorations were constantly made use of with the happiest effect.
Sculpture is the noblest ornament, and the Gothic architects, of a later day, seem to have been alive to its use, as in all their best works statues abounded. If sometimes uncouth, they always contributed to the effect intended. Whether rising to grace and grandeur or sinking to grotesque ugliness, they had a picturesque power, and added life to the whole. Monsters gaped and grinned from waterspouts; little figures of strange animals twisted in and out of the foliage at angles and corbels; stately effigies occupied dignified niches, and in the head of a doorway there was often carved a whole host of figures representing heaven, earth, and hell, with a rude force and eloquence that, to the present day, has not lost its power.
RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE.
Toward the close of the fifteenth century men’s minds and tastes were ripening for a change. The beautiful Gothic, in its most improved characteristics, did not satisfy. The change first took place in Italy, and was closely connected with the revival of letters. There all the characteristics of the middle ages were rapidly thrown off. The old Roman blood in the Italians asserted itself, and almost at a bound literature and the arts put on the old forms they had displayed fifteen hundred years before. In the schools there was a rage for classic Greek and Latin; and among architects old Roman or Græco-Roman forms were applied to buildings with much freedom and spirit.
The revival of classic taste in art was appropriately called the Renaissance.
In other countries the change came slowly, and people were not prepared to welcome it unreservedly. In France and England there was a transition period, during which most buildings were designed in a mixed style. This in England lasted almost through the century. It was indeed a picturesque and telling style, in its earlier stages called Tudor, and later Elizabethan. In its mixture of classic and Gothic forms there are often incongruities, and even monstrosities; but it allowed unrestrained play for the fancy. Some of the best mansions of the time, such as Hatfield, Hardwick, and Audley End are unsurpassed in their pleasing picturesqueness. The wide oak staircase, with its carved balusters, ornamented newel-post, and heavy hand-rails, the old wainscoted parlor, with its magnificent chimney piece reaching to the ceiling, are all essentially English features, and full of vigor and life, as the work of every transition period is likely to prove. The period in France produced exquisite works, more refined and elegantly treated than those in England, but not so vigorous. No modern buildings are so finely ornamented and yet not spoiled.