SHRINE-WORK AT CHARTRES.
London. Published by J & A Arch. Cornhill. March 1st. 1828.

The single story of side aisles, the polygonal end of the choir, the piers which support the groins behind it, and the windows of the choir single, and not disposed by threes, all unite to refer this building to the second style of French Gothic; which the greater massiveness of the work, and the presence of some circular arches in the towers, might otherwise render doubtful. The single story of aisles and the greater height of the building seem to indicate a later period than Nôtre Dame at Paris, but on the other hand the smaller windows, surmounted in the nave by a single rose, the more solid divisions of the great rose windows, and the style of finishing externally, announce an earlier stage of the art. If I had to estimate the date from the architecture, I should be very much puzzled by many peculiarities, either very rare, or not met with elsewhere; but on the whole, excepting a portion of the towers, I could not have placed it before 1150.

With good proportions, beautiful parts, and finely coloured windows, you will conclude that the whole impression produced is sublime; but I wish I had you here, where you would find some better proof of this, than the cold conviction of your reason. The people seemed very devout, and were all day long kissing the pedestals, and various parts of the decorative architecture, about a figure of the virgin, which is almost black. In this part of France the virgin is usually represented with a very dark complexion; and such is, I believe, the case with the most popular images of her in all Catholic countries. There is a labyrinth in the pavement which is said to be a league, measured along all its folds; a countryman applied to me to know if this was true. I told him it was impossible, and shewed him that the number of turns, multiplied by the length of the middle one, only gave 1320 feet, but he was determined to believe as his fathers had believed before him.

I must not quit the cathedral without mentioning the beautiful shrine-work which surrounds the choir, to see which is alone well worth a journey to Chartres. It consists of forty-five compartments, forming a sort of continued gallery, and contains in all about two hundred and fifty figures, each of three feet high. It is a very curious specimen, both for the extreme delicacy of the workmanship, and as a model of the last period of Gothic architecture in France. It is complete point lace in stone, and some of the threads are not thicker than the blade of a penknife. The style is rich and beautiful, or at least many parts are beautiful; but as a whole, it wants simplicity, and is inferior in design to the architecture of King’s College chapel at Cambridge, and perhaps even to Henry VII. chapel at Westminster; but the extreme intricacy of the multiplied ornaments in the last-mentioned building does not please me. In the work at Chartres the disposition of the masses is much more simple and intelligible, but the tracery and detail of the ornaments are even more confused. It is worthy of notice that the vaulting continues entirely simple, and without any trace of the palm-tree branching, exhibited in that of King’s College chapel, or of the still more complicated arrangement of that of Redcliff church at Bristol. This fine work is in two series, the first of which is said to have been executed with the surplus of the money raised for erecting the spire. It is precisely of the same style as that erection, if we make allowance for its greater delicacy, adapted to the different nature of the work; but no dates are marked on it: this forms the largest part. The second series exhibits some traces of the knowledge of Roman architecture, and has dates from 1523 to 1530. This is ornamented with arabesques in imitation of the Italian cinque cento. I observed two dates of a later period, T. Bovdin Mil vic xi, and a similar inscription of 1612, but there is no difference of style to account for them.

I was led by the accounts of Chartres to suppose I should find some vestiges of very high antiquity in the crypt under the cathedral, but I was disappointed; there seems to be nothing but what is coeval with the building, and the vaults do not extend under the whole edifice, but only under the chapels and side aisles. The people in this neighbourhood are more unfavourably disposed towards the Bourbons than those who live to the east of Paris. A woman observed that I was one of those who had brought back Louis XVIII. She had nothing to say against them or him, but the tones of her voice did not promise that she would say any thing for either. The conducteur of the diligence perhaps was not a Napoleonite. “Whether God or the devil, Napoleon or Louis XVIII. be on the throne,” he observed, “the laws should be obeyed. There were revolutions in France before this, of which they talk so much; for instance, in the times of Charles V., who drove the English out of France; and if the French were now as devoted to their country as they were then, these things could never have happened.” I could not be displeased with any Frenchman for a feeling of soreness at the interference of foreigners in the affairs of his country, however political circumstances may have required it.

The two churches last described, and that of Nôtre Dame at Paris, may be considered as belonging to a style of Gothic, intermediate between the first and second of those I have enumerated; and as I wish to give you a sort of historical series elucidating the progress of architecture, I shall here introduce some account of the French metropolitan edifice. This is said to have been originally founded by Childebert, in 522. It had 30 marble columns, and very large windows, according to the account left us of it by Fortunatus, a cotemporary poet.[[11]] This description, however, has nothing to do with the present building, which was commenced in 1010 by Robert the Pious. After his death it was neglected, and little was done till 1165, when Maurice de Sully, a liberal and munificent prelate, filled the see of Paris, and to him we seem to have been indebted for the greater part of the edifice. He destroyed the old church of Childebert, which had existed till this period; and in the year 1181 the eastern part was so far advanced, that it was consecrated by Henry, the Pope’s legate, and by the bishop himself, who died the next year. Odo de Sully succeeded, and prosecuted the work with great zeal till his death in 1208, so that for forty-three years from the resumption of the work, it was carried on with spirit, and we must suppose a large portion of it was completed. Pierre de Nemours, who died in 1220, is thought to have finished the nave and western front. The last figure of a king exhibited in its galleries is that of Philip Augustus, who died in 1223, and this is one reason for supposing it finished in his reign, but it is not a very strong one. The south transept was not, however, begun till 1257, as we are informed by a Gothic inscription on the porch, and an ancient church of St. Stephen was then destroyed to make room for it. The present rose window was renewed on the model of the ancient one in 1726. The date of the north transept is unknown; it probably preceded the south; but its porch and chapels are assigned by Le Grand to the fourteenth century.

The front is heavy, but not so heavy as usually represented in engravings; I think this appearance arises in part from the square solidity of the towers, and in part from the horizontal lines being marked too strongly, a circumstance which always produces a bad effect in Gothic architecture. I have not been able to determine whether it was intended to crown these towers with spires: I am inclined to answer in the affirmative, but rather from analogy than from direct proof. According to Landon there were twenty-five statues of kings in the arches over the western porch, viz. thirteen of the first race, nine of the second, and seven of the Capetian. They entirely filled one range of arches and no more. Now there are two ranges of arches above the doorways in this front, the lower of which, according to the elevation given by the same author, presents twenty-four niches, and the upper twenty-six. Query, how many statues were there, and where did they stand? Felibien, in his plate of the elevation, which is much better than Landon’s, figures twenty-eight niches in the lower arcade, viz. nine in the middle, seven on one side, and eight on the other, and four on the buttresses. The upper arcade is a gallery not intended for statues, the middle part of which is open on both sides. The arches of the lower range have trefoil heads, and appear from below to be entirely composed of models of architecture. The canopies of the portal abound also with models of architecture, resembling in this, and in the style of sculpture, the south portal at Chartres. Perhaps the design of these, though not the execution, may be attributed to the time of Maurice de Sully, in 1165, but this brings the date a century later than that of Chartres. I wish very much to discover that the south porch in that cathedral was of 1160, instead of 1060, but I cannot persuade myself that the physician of Henry I. lived to build it a hundred years after his sovereign’s death. The Matilda mentioned as having contributed to the church, may be the widow of the emperor.

Whittington says, “The eastern end, which is triagonal and very plain, was probably one of the first Gothic structures in France (1168). This plainness, from a proper regard to uniformity, was maintained in the subsequent part of the building, excepting in the chapels, which are of later date;” this I do not comprehend; the eastern end is semi-circular, and is richly ornamented externally with slender shafts, and spires of different heights, which may perhaps have been added at the same time with the chapels, if these are indeed posterior, but assuredly they do not make part of them. It seems to me that those parts which remain without ornament have never been completed, for they exhibit abrupt terminations, which were not in the taste of the Gothic architects at any period. All the flying buttresses are exceedingly slender, and altogether the construction of Nôtre Dame may be considered as among the boldest, and most successful, existing in Gothic architecture; although even here we find some traces of the too great operation of the thrust of the arches of the side aisles.

On entering Nôtre Dame one is struck with the double range of side aisles and open chapels besides, making an entire width of seven divisions, instead of five, as at Amiens, or three, as in our churches. It is generally supposed, that if two dimensions of a building are great, they will appear of less magnitude if the third be great also. For instance, in a very large building, great height will diminish the apparent extent in the plan, great length will diminish the apparent width, and a narrow room will look higher than a wide one of the same height and length. Yet certainly the impression of space is much less at Nôtre Dame, than in the narrower and loftier edifice at Amiens. One of our travellers has estimated the size of Nôtre Dame as about half that of Westminster Abbey; and some non architectural friends with whom I have talked on the subject, thought that he perhaps underrated it, but that certainly the French building was much smaller than the English. Nôtre Dame is 416 feet long internally, and 153 wide: the length of the transept hardly surpassing the width of the nave and side aisles. Westminster Abbey is 360 feet long and 72 wide. The transept, indeed, is 195 feet long, but the whole internal area of the French building must be at least twice as much as that of the English. Whence is this very false estimate of its size? Does it depend merely on the injudicious arrangement of the parts, or is it in some degree to be attributed to a patriotic determination to find every thing best in our own country? Here are two stories of side aisles, and this double range, and the very slender columns which divide the openings of the upper, are in some points of view very pleasing. There are three arches over each of the larger openings below, united into one common arch; but the space included between the three smaller arches and the larger one is a blank wall. This has a very bad effect, especially as it is a part in which we are accustomed to expect ornament; indeed the arrangement of this gallery is inferior to that before noticed in Nôtre Dame at Chalons. The vaulting of the nave and choir is with oblique groins, as at Beauvais and Mantes. The vaulting itself, according to Millin, is only 6 inches thick.