69. CHURCH OF ST. OUEN AT ROUEN. CENTRAL TOWER AND APSE, SOUTH FRONT
The Church of St. Ouen at Rouen, except for the west front and its towers, which are modern, is a typical example of the rare religious buildings constructed in the north of France during the fourteenth century. The arrangement of these churches varies, inasmuch as, while in general they follow the methods of construction adopted by the Northern architects of the thirteenth century, their special characteristic is a refinement or rather an attenuation of the piers, less by actual reduction of their section than by a diminution of their apparent bulk. This was effected by multiplying the clustered shafts, the slenderness of which was still further exaggerated by the prodigality of the mouldings, and the over-hollowness of their profiles. These profiles and mouldings rise from the base to the summit, and in the fourteenth century mark the spring of the arches by rings of sculpture, crowned with rudimentary abaci. These latter details were the last traces of a tradition which was to finally disappear in the fifteenth century. Thenceforward the lines of the intersecting arches of the vault, as of the longitudinal and transverse arches, run down without interruption to the base of the piers, where we find a complex faggot of mouldings crossing and recrossing, and showing little beyond the technical dexterity of the carver.
The main preoccupation of the architects of this period seems to have been the reduction of solid surfaces so as to give full play to the soaring effect of their airy shafts and vaults. The walls disappear, save below the windows, which now occupy the entire space of each bay. The triangular divisions of the vault are concealed by a serried network of supplementary ribs, for the most part useless save as decorations. But it must in justice be remembered that to this exaggeration of the window spaces we owe the growth of the beautiful art of painting on glass. This art, the admirable fitness of which for decorative purposes can hardly be over-estimated, had already manifested itself in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the interval from that period to the Renascence it produced its grandest masterpieces.[19]
[19] See chap. xii. "Decorative Painting on Walls and Glass."
It must be borne in mind that the great constructive and reconstructive movement which had manifested itself throughout Western Europe, and notably in the north of France, by great buildings, the distinguishing characteristics of which are vaulted roofs and flying buttresses, had made little progress in Southern France. The few exceptions of importance are—Bazas, Bayonne, Auch, Toulouse, and Narbonne. The Southern architects, as we have already stated, adhered to the ancient tradition, whether influenced by impulses of reaction, resistance, or defiance. Their conservatism is comprehensible enough in view of the strong Gallo-Roman tendencies which governed architectural activity throughout the district. The builders of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did indeed accept the Angevin intersecting arch, an invention the admirable simplicity of which was its own recommendation. But this concession was without prejudice to their broad principles. In the general arrangement of their religious buildings they still adhered to Roman usage, and to such models as the Basilica of Constantine and the tepidarium of the Baths of Caracalla.[20]
[20] L'Architecture Romane, by Ed. Corroyer; Paris, Maison Quantin, chaps. iii. and vii.
Towards the close of the thirteenth, and throughout the fourteenth century, a large number of churches were built in the South, consisting of a single wide and lofty aisle, vaulted on intersecting arches, the thrusts of which were received by buttresses of great bulk and prominence in the interior of the building, but very slightly indicated on the exterior. The spaces between the massive interior buttresses, on either side of the aisle, were occupied by a series of chapels, supporting disconnected tribunes or a continuous corridor. The two great churches of the Cordeliers and of the Jacobins at Toulouse were built in the brick of the country in the second half of the thirteenth century. These have two aisles, according to the Dominican usage of the period, but the exterior arrangement is the same as in the one-aisled churches. The Churches of St. Bertrand at Comminges, and those of Lodève, Perpignan, Condom, Carcassonne, Gaillac, Montpezat, Moissac, etc., were built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries on the single-aisled plan. That of Perpignan has
this peculiarity; its vaults, though supported on intersecting arches, are built in accordance with Roman methods, which further prevail both in the forms of the terra-cotta materials, and in the manner of their application. The reins of the vault, which measures some 53 feet across, are ornamented by terra-cotta jars embedded in an admirably prepared lime mortar of great durability. The actual roof lies without the support of any intervening structure of timber upon the extrados of the vault. This consists of voussoirs of Roman brick, retained by a layer of terra-cotta upon which the tiles, also of the antique Roman form, are laid. This arrangement protects the vault from any infiltration of water due to the rupture of the tiles, an absolutely necessary precaution, if the former was to retain its stability.
70. ALBI CATHEDRAL. PLAN