At Winchester and Rochester Cathedrals, St. Peter’s Church, Northampton, the transepts of Exeter, Peterborough, and, above all, at Durham, the Norman style is seen both in its best earlier and later developments.
The ornaments are very few, the zigzag being the chief. The lozenge and billet are also used in the early work, but in the later, as in the rich doorways, such as that at Iffley, Oxfordshire (1160), grotesque masks, frets, interlacings, birds, dragons, fishes, and the quadruple form of the zigzag are added. The columns in some cases are twisted and banded, and Ionic volutes appear in the capitals. In some late Norman work the tympana are richly carved with figures and ornament. Many examples of Romanesque non-ecclesiastical buildings are still in existence in Germany, or have been skilfully restored as such, which give a tolerably good idea of the private dwellings of this period. The illustration (Fig. 385) is an example of the domestic Romanesque. It is the interior of the Landgrave’s room at the Wartburg, Germany.
Examples of Romanesque ornament are given in the iron hinge from the Church of Nôtre Dame, Paris (Fig. 386), and the panel from Bonn (Fig. 387).
CHAPTER XX.
GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND ORNAMENT.
The Gothic or “Pointed” style grew, as we have seen, out of the Romanesque. Churches were built in which the pointed arch was used side by side with the round arch of Romanesque. These were the buildings of the transitional period. In France, Germany, and in England some of the earlier Gothic buildings were purer in style than those of the later period. The work of the thirteenth century is more correct in artistic principles, more restrained, and less bewildering in the principles of construction than the work of any subsequent period. The true home of the Gothic style was in France, from which country it extended to Germany and England almost simultaneously. The Cathedral of Soissons in France may be mentioned as one of the transitional buildings (1212), though portions of it are of a still earlier date. It is noted for its early plate tracery and very ornate foliated capitals. The hall of the Hospital of St. John at Angers shows many features of the transitional style. Its vaulted roofs and arching are in the Gothic or Pointed style, and the windows are in the round-headed Romanesque. The hospital was built by Henry II., and completed A.D. 1184.
In England, portions of Canterbury Cathedral, the hall at Oakham Castle, Rutlandshire, and the Temple Church, London, may be given as examples of the transitional Romanesque or Norman to the Early English Gothic. In all the above examples, the square-moulded abacus with debased Corinthian foliage on the bell underneath may be seen, which indicates the transitional type of capital. The buildings of the transitional style may be distinguished from those of the earlier one by being much lighter in construction: the masons, having learned their trade better, found they could economise the material—which was a great thing in those days of rapid church building—by having more slender proportions, which led to the more refined and elegant style of the Early Gothic both in England and on the Continent.
Fig. 388.—Cathedral of Notre-Dame Paris.
The Church of Nôtre[Nôtre]-Dame in Paris is a fine example of the Early French style (Fig. 388). The towers look unfinished, but they had at one time wooden spires. Chartres (1260), Rheims (1250), and Rouen (1280) are other typical examples of this period.
The period of the Early English style lasted from about A.D. 1190 to 1270, embracing the reigns of Richard I., John, and Henry III. This style is distinguished from the Norman transitional by the light and lofty pillars used singly or in groups and clusters, lancet windows, pointed arches, and by the additional use made of buttresses and pinnacles.