Fig. 292.—“The Entombment,” by Richier, in the Church of St. Mihiel (Meuse). (Sixteenth Century.)
Cellini, Primaticcio, or any of the other Italian artists who were settled in France; that they combined in the best possible way the mythological expression of the ancients with our modern ideas, and that, thanks to them, France is enabled to point with pride to a natural art, original and independent, which has been handed down to our days in direct succession by Sarrazain, Puget, Girardon, and Coysevox.
Figs. 293, 294.—Gargoyles on the Palace of Justice, Rouen. (Fifteenth Century.)
ARCHITECTURE.
The Basilica the first Christian Church.—Modification of Ancient Architecture.—Byzantine Style.—Formation of the Norman Style.—Principal Norman Churches.—Age of the Transition from Norman to Gothic.—Origin and Importance of the Ogive.—Principal Edifices in the pure Gothic Style.—The Gothic Church, an Emblem of the Religious Spirit in the Middle Ages.—Florid Gothic.—Flamboyant Gothic.—Decadency.—Civil and Military Architecture: Castles, Fortified Enclosures, Private Houses, Town Halls.—Italian Renaissance: Pisa, Florence, Rome.—French Renaissance: Mansions and Palaces.
Constantine, in the mighty ardour of his zeal, wished to see the worship of the true God efface in pomp and in magnificence all the solemnities of the heathen world. In expelling the idols from their temples, the idea could not have suggested itself of using these buildings for the new religion, because they were generally of excessively limited dimensions, and the plan on which they were built would have but indifferently answered the requirements of the Christian ceremonial. What was necessary for these services was principally a spacious nave, in which a large congregation could assemble to hear the same word, to join in the same prayer, and to intone the same chants. The Christians sought, therefore, among the edifices then in existence ([Fig. 295]), for such as would best answer these purposes. The basilicas presented themselves; these buildings served at once as law-courts and places of assembly for tradesmen and money-changers, and were generally composed of one immense hall, with lateral galleries and tribunes adjoining it. The name of basilica, derived from the Greek word basileus (a king), was given them, according to some writers, from the fact that formerly the kings themselves used to administer justice within their walls; according to others, because the basilica of Athens served as a tribunal of the second archon, who bore the title of king; whence the edifice was called stoa basiliké (royal porch), a designation of which the Romans preserved only the adjective, the substantive being understood.
