Colour Decoration of Architecture

by James Ward

DECORATION OF GROINED CEILING IN THE CHURCH OF ST. JACQUES, LIEGE.

1522-1558

the ribs. (Plate [24].) It was in the smaller churches, and in the chambers and chapels attached to larger churches and cathedrals, in the crypts, sacristies, baptisteries, and sanctuaries, that complete schemes of colour decoration were carried out, or attempted in the Gothic period. It might be mentioned that some effective colour notes were obtained by the richly-coloured and gilt carvings and sculpture in wood and stone screens, altar-pieces, and the carved and painted tabernacles, which have been found in great numbers in the Gothic churches of Germany.

The stained-glass windows of the Gothic period, especially of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were the finest and best understood colour decoration in the glass material that has ever been done. Though many fine windows belonging to this time are found throughout Germany, Flanders, Bohemia, and Austria, the best examples are found in France, as at Chartres, and in England at York. The colouring of the glass of this period has never been surpassed for its splendour and beauty, and the figure-work and general ornamentation are designed and drawn in a suitably flat and architectonic style, in harmony with the material. The flat tapestry-like effect of the designs gives the work an appearance of mosaic in glass, and the result is what it should be, namely, a decorative work in “stained” glass, not “painted.” In the fifteenth century and later, stained glass became degraded to the imitation of pictures, or light and shade paintings in glass, and consequently lost its legitimate character as a mosaic in glass. In a word, it became eventually pictorial in character, and ceased to have the true quality of stained glass. This later degradation of coloured glass was common to Germany, France, Italy and England.

The love for colour decoration, as applied to the interiors and exteriors of secular buildings and private dwellings, was more marked in Germany than in other European countries during the Middle Ages, and, as we would expect, Germany, with a tenacious and faithful conservatism, has clung more closely to her old traditional love for colour and decoration, and still takes a greater pride in all the circumstance of civic processions and pageantry, than any other nation in Europe. If we seek for an explanation of this we shall find that it is an inherited love from their ancestors, the old Germanic warriors and chiefs, who ruled the country before the days of Charlemagne, and who took a passionate delight in colour and in personal adornment. We may take one illustration of this artistic conservatism, among many others, by pointing out that the Germans paint and decorate their restaurants to-day, for example, in the same way as they did in the days of the fifteenth century.

The museums of Cologne and Munich especially, contain many fragments of interior decorative painting that were taken from the old houses in their neighbourhoods. Such specimens of the old work are generally treated very flatly and only in a few colours, resembling tapestry designs, all of them having strong outlines that mark out the forms, like the constructive outline leads of window glass. We may point to one of the many fragments of this work which is now in the museum at Cologne: it consists of a portion of a deep and battlemented frieze, having three panels painted with scenes from the story of the Prodigal Son (der lieblose Sohn), and is executed in tempera in flat tints of reds, blues, pale yellows and greys, outlined in black. This frieze once formed a part of the decoration of the dining-hall des Hauses Glesch auf der Hochstrasse, Cologne.

Wooden panelled ceilings of private dwellings in the Gothic and Renaissance periods were strongly coloured, and the deep friezes on the walls were painted with figure subjects, heraldry, foliage, flowers and birds, or sometimes with conventional ornament alone, all the work being usually painted in tempera, while the walls below were either panelled with inlaid woods, or carved in wood or stone. In some cases the lower portion of the wall was painted on the wood or plaster, or hung with figured tapestries. It may be mentioned that the Germans have always made the greatest possible use of decorative heraldry, which was designed with great skill, in an elaborate and sumptuous manner, and used by them in every form and material of decorative art.

The adornment of the exteriors and interiors of their public buildings, and also of the better class of private houses, has always been a passion with the Germans. Many of the old houses in such cities as Lübeck, a northern German town of the Renaissance, Brunswick, Hildesheim, Frankfort, Strasburg, Nuremberg, Rothenburg, and the Swabian city of Augsburg are enriched with a wealth of carving and painting, of one or of both, on their façades, and in the interiors of their principal rooms, many examples of which are still in existence. The carving and painting in and on the houses of the Germans were in most cases designed and executed by native artists and craftsmen, but in some instances there are records of foreigners being employed, as in the case of the Fuggerhaus at Augsburg, where Hans Fugger, a member of that powerful and wealthy family, had his house decorated in the Italian Renaissance style, in 1570, the work being done by Italian artists.

The native love for decoration and colour has always been respected in Germany by the ruling powers, by the municipalities and wealthy citizens, who have always encouraged and fostered the decorative arts. The Germans take a civic pride in not only having handsome town-halls, theatres, railway stations, art galleries, museums, colleges, universities, and other public buildings, erected as the best possible examples of fine architecture, but in the adornment of such buildings with sculpture, fresco, mosaic and other colour decoration.