Our journey to Troyes occupied twenty-four hours. I did little that evening. The next morning I walked round the ramparts and made a few memoranda. Monday was unfortunately a jour de fête, which I had not anticipated, and I was sadly disturbed in my sketches and observations by the services and by the crowds of people. The first view of the buildings at Troyes rather discontented me, but since I have left it I begin to think more highly of its architecture, and to regret that I did not spend more time there. The cathedral of course was my first object, and I endeavoured to ascertain the precise date of its architecture, but without success. I was told indeed that the chapels of the choir are older than the rest of the building, that the choir is eight hundred years old, that the nave was built twenty-five years later, and the front last of all. I was pleased with this traditionary account, because the architecture announces the same order in the erections, though not precisely at these epochs. The windows of the chapels, narrow, pointed, and without any sort of internal ornament, may perhaps indicate a building of the middle or latter end of the twelfth century. I insert these guesses at dates, because they tell in themselves several things of the style of building, and are of importance in judging of the historical evidence which I may hereafter be able to obtain; but if I were now to give to the early architecture of France all the attention it deserves, it would be some years before I went to Italy. The choir has roses in the windows, but the piers are slender to excess, and they are consequently much crippled. It must be decidedly posterior to the cathedral of Rheims and Amiens, and perhaps to the choir at Beauvais. The earliest date would be therefore the latter part of the thirteenth century, and it may class very well with the nave of St. Denis, built by Matthieu de Vendôme in 1281. In the improved architecture of that period there is usually a capital all round the pier, at the springing of the arches, which open from the body of the building into the side aisles. The capitals of the small shafts are sometimes smaller (in height) than the general capital, (perhaps this indicates a difference of date) but at Troyes they have disappeared altogether. Every column and every shaft, still has its capital; but the longer ones are not divided into two heights with a capital to each. The capitals which remain are smaller in proportion, and the pillars more slender than in the earlier Gothic. If the nave was built only twenty-five years later, a great change had taken place in a very short interval. The roses of the windows are entirely gone, and the heads filled up with rather a complicated tracery; the mullions both of the windows, and of the divisions of the arches of the gallery, have lost their capitals; the ribs of the vaulting continue quite simple, and the intermediate spaces are much arched upon them. This must be considered as an example of the third style of French Gothic, and is the most important instance I have seen. The rose windows at the ends of the transepts have a perpendicular pillar of masonry running up the middle, to support them; a precaution dictated by the same necessity as the upright mullions of our perpendicular style, when the parts became very light and the windows very extensive. The effect is by no means pleasing. That of the north transept is inserted in a square externally. I cannot venture to assign a date for these novelties, but both of them are characteristic in the history of the art. The earliest rose windows were complete detached circles; those which succeeded are more or less united with accessories, forming a pointed window. The peculiarities at Troyes are posterior to both these.
The western front is of the last style of Gothic, and is a rich and beautiful specimen. Two towers were designed, but one only is built, and this is so singular, that I am induced to think it an old tower, of which the lower part has been entirely covered with work of the latter part of the fifteenth century, and the upper touched up and altered towards the latter part of the sixteenth, or beginning of the seventeenth. This last is abundantly denoted by the ornaments, and by little but the ornaments. In the earlier parts the little arches of the decorations terminate in a trefoil, and some of the mouldings pass over the others in the manner I have already described, as belonging to the fourth style of Gothic. In the second French Gothic, the crenated ornament occurs abundantly in the circular parts of the windows. In the third it is found at the heads of the divisions of the windows, and among the leaves of the tracery. In both these it is always on the edge of the opening, and close to the glass; in the fourth it occurs among the mouldings, and lies over some of the interior ones; it is even repeated two or three times in the same opening, and becomes singularly varied in its forms. One opening at Troyes has it as in fig. 1, another exhibits it as in fig. 2, or as in fig. 3,
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3
becoming a sort of scroll, enriched with foliage; lastly, and this also may be seen in a church at Troyes, it inclines forwards from the face of the work, instead of lying parallel to it.
Two other churches at Troyes attracted my attention, that of the Madelaine and St. Urban. The former has the shape of a Greek cross in a square, the angles being filled up with double aisles. The windows are narrow and unornamented; one, two, or three together; in the last case the middle is the largest. Externally, they exhibit the triangular ornament, but this has been cut away from a great many of them. There are neither galleries nor two stories of aisles, and the ‘rond point’ is of a late Gothic, neither curious nor beautiful; so that we lose the character usually offered by that part in ascertaining the date. The groining of the vault is oblique. Across the opening of the choir is a beautiful arched screen, somewhat less complicated than at Chartres, and of less delicate workmanship, but still very rich, and well executed. One of the statues contained in it, and apparently of the same date, is very fine; but most of these have been destroyed, and one or two are supplied in painted wood. We may still distinguish that the old work has been painted. The church of St. Urban is perhaps of the end of the thirteenth century, or beginning of the fourteenth; it is small, but very beautiful inside and out. The tracery of the windows is in roses, not in leaves. The aisles are not continued to the ‘rond point,’ but there is a sort of gallery which is opened into windows, forming a continuation of the upper windows. The south and north portals offer the peculiarity of arches supported on detached columns, but these columns have a rib down each side, and are without capitals. I consider them as posterior to the body of the building, with which they do not well unite, or rather the outer half of the portico does not correspond well with the part which joins the church, and here perhaps the addition took place, in the fifteenth century.