Figs. 366, 367.—Carved Panels from the Maristan of Kalaun (after Prisse d’Avennes): Late Thirteenth Century. (L.-P.)
This architect is right, generally speaking, in his admirable remarks, but we think, although it is admitted that Saracenic architecture lacks the cohesion and unity of parts that is the chief beauty in Greek and best examples of the Gothic, that in some instances, in the mosques and more particularly in the wekālas and in domestic architecture, the Saracen architects have proved themselves masters in the creation of architectural works second to none in point of beauty, while in their architectural application of ornament to the decoration of the various surfaces and other features of their buildings they are unrivalled. They have not only invented a new style of ornament, but in their correct application of it they have scarcely ever been equalled.
The decoration of surfaces, which is the chief glory of all Saracenic art and architecture, was the first and last lesson they learnt from their Persian masters in art, for Persian art, like the manners and customs of the people, has all its beauty and politeness on the surface.
CHAPTER XIX.
ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT.
Romanesque is the name given to the architectural style developed by the Western barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, after their partial civilisation, when they had learned the art of building. The style arose chiefly from the copying of Roman buildings and their remains, with some added features of Byzantine buildings.
Out of this Romanesque, in its turn, there sprang another style which was founded on the Romanesque and on the architecture of the Saracens. Towards the end of the eleventh century the new masters of the Roman Empire, in the course of their military expeditions to Asia Minor, Syria, and Palestine, were brought in contact with the Saracens and their architecture, and in coming back to Europe they brought with them new ideas of building, such as the pointed arch of the Saracens, which feature together with new forms of ornament were added by them to the prevalent Romanesque style, the mixture producing an entirely new style, which has been curiously named after the early Northern barbarians—the Gothic.
The subsequent Crusades against the Mohammedans had the effect, among others, of extending the knowledge of mathematics and geometry among the Crusaders, sciences in which the Saracens excelled; and in coming home again to the West, they applied their geometrical knowledge to the development of Gothic architecture to such an extent that, towards the end of the fourteenth century, this architecture could show examples of the most lofty and daring constructions in stone that were marvels in the science of building. Some Gothic buildings present with their fretted pinnacles, spires, flying buttresses, intersecting and pierced work, in flamboyant tracery, daring vaulting, and inter-penetrating mouldings, a worked-out solution of some intricate mathematical problem. In its complicated phases Gothic construction is more scientific than artistic, however much one may admire the grouping or design of the Gothic pile as a picturesque conception.
Returning to the Romanesque style, we find that in the sixth century Theodoric the Ostrogoth had, in the erections of churches, palaces, and of his tomb in Ravenna—his capital—sown the first seeds of the future developments of the German Romanesque, and in some degree of the later German Gothic style. In producing these works his ambition was to emulate the grandeur of Imperial Rome. The Longobards, the successors of the Ostrogoths, continued this building activity through the Middle Ages, and have left to us monuments of their genius in the early and rude Duomo Vecchio of Brescia, and amongst many others of their noblest works were Sant’ Ambrogio at Milan, and San Zeno at Verona.
Prior to the Carlovingian era, the Germanic people began to cultivate the fine arts in a tentative manner. This was brought about by the contact of German chiefs and warriors with Italian pomp and splendour, which also bred in them a love for personal adornment, that strongly marked the nobles and warriors of this period.
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor of Germany at Rome, on Christmas Day in the year A.D. 800. The dream and ambition of this great German Prince was to establish a mighty Christian Empire in the West of Europe that should rival pagan Rome itself, not only in military power, but in a widespread culture of literature, science, and artistic excellence.