Now in judging such building, and such artistic intention as this, it is evident that we cannot use the maxims which are convenient to observe in the case of a Greek or a Greco-Roman monument. Lightness takes the place of evident stability: that is the first thing to notice. It is not so much that the walls are thin, as that they have disappeared: there are no walls—only a series of piers dividing windows, the opening filled with glass being much greater, if measured along a horizontal line running through the windows, than is the extent of the solid masonry. You see at once wherein there is an excuse for the saying “a wall of glass with a roof of stone.” But there is more than this: the primary object of the designer has been to treat his construction as the main inspiration of his design. Inside and out everything is shown as it really is, the exact duty done by every stone in the structure is clearly visible to even an uncareful observer. This may be thought true of early Greek work as well: but then the structure of the Greek temple is the simplest conceivable, a mere carrying of stone beams upon stone posts—no arches to thrust, no windows to open in the wall, most of all, no attempt to roof anything with masonry except in so far as a stone beam is strong enough to span a small open space between two strong pillars. Moreover, the Greek temple was so covered up with painting, and where the paint did not conceal the whole surface that surface was already so carefully smoothed and unified, that it was hard to distinguish stone from stone even in the marble-built temples of Athens—whereas those of the soft stone regions, coated with stucco, were in architectural effect absolutely monoliths. As for the Roman structure, built with unexampled massiveness, and wonderfully imposing in its mass and in the great size and noble proportions of its interiors, it was concealed from view by the entirely contradictory pretense at trabeated construction in the modified Greek orders of columns and pilasters: and where these were not in use the walls were very commonly concealed by marble in great sheets, by tiling of glass, or by moulded stucco. The Gothic building also was painted: nor was there any hesitation on any one’s part in putting up surfaces of stucco to paint upon where an elaborate picture was wanted: but this concealed nothing except the joints of a few courses of stone. The essential facts of the structure remained visible outdoors and in, and it was by a judicious proportioning of the parts of these structures, each to all the others, that the chief architectural effect was obtained.
Another class of fourteenth century buildings must be named, the Italian Gothic churches. [Plate XXXII] gives the most perfect piece of work among them, the tower known as Giotto’s Campanile. Its exterior face is entirely sheathed in marble, thin slabs for the most part, white which has grown yellow, red which has grown a warm brown, and black or nearly black; and to the larger members of the elaborate composition is added the minute mosaic of one band after another all the way up, and the still more delicate play of light and shade caused by slight and well modelled reliefs of ornamental character. Down below, unseen in the photograph, is a row of statues in niches, and two horizontal bands of bas-reliefs of sacred and legendary subject. The tower is exceptional in its perfect building: but there is nothing in the scheme of construction: it is almost as simple as a Greek temple. And this is where the great cathedral by its side is similar in character. Not Gothic in proportion, nor in any system of buttresses, nor in the disappearing of walls in constructional piers, nor in the disposition of the sculpture; it is Gothic only in its having pointed arches, and ribbed vaults, though these are so stayed up by massive masonry that the thing is no more elastic than the halls of Roman thermæ.[43] But it is beautiful in detail, encrusted and embossed, and most imposing in mass without, however ill-proportioned in the nave, within; and even within it is a grandiose nave up which you walk towards the culmination of the whole in the sanctuary under the great cupola.
CHAPTER V
LATE MEDIÆVAL DESIGN
IN Chapter IV we have seen how strongly the artistic effect of the Gothic churches depends upon their structure. Everything in the structure depends upon and leads up to the vaulting; everything in decorative treatment depends upon the structure. That is true except in so far as the universally felt need of ornament founded on the study of nature and of abstract form modifies design. Thus the carving in conventionalized leafage of a band, straight or seemingly bent around a pier, and the choice of colors in a decorative window or a painted panel of wall beneath a window, are indeed independent of the structure. Moreover, the Gothic sculptors were as exceptionally energetic and forcible as the Gothic builders, and worked with them in the production of great schemes of associated sculpture which were in harmony with the work of these very bold and skillful builders. Now, when, after the final expulsion of the English king and his armies from France, the suppression of the domestic feuds between hostile parties, and the pacification of the country under Charles VII, there was a sudden recrudescence of building and of decorative art, the half ruined churches were repaired, those destroyed were replaced. Between 1455 and 1515 there was a revival of architectural art comparable to that of the close of the twelfth century. There were not as many great churches undertaken, because nearly every diocese had its cathedral, and because the exclusively ecclesiastical point of view was no longer held by the people of the towns or by the nobility: but this was made good by the great increase in the number and splendor of civic and private buildings.
There is, then, a new and very magnificent Gothic art beginning about the time of the conquest of Bordeaux and Gascony, when the English armies were finally driven out of France, and ending only with the complete establishment of the classical revival under Francis I. Contemporaneous with this, or nearly so, was the very splendid art of Spain, that curious and fantastic earliest Renaissance marked for us by such monuments as the Casa Lonja of Valencia, the portal of the University at Salamanca and that of the church of St. Paul at Valladolid: and in Belgium, the epoch of the great town halls, that of Louvain being of about 1460: that of Audenarde at the close of the epoch now under consideration. In Germany, too, there was the beginning of a most attractive civic architecture: and in England, although the civil war of the Yorkists and Lancastrians postponed anything like peaceful growth in art until near the close of the fifteenth century, there was established, beginning with the accession of Henry VII, in 1485, the so-called Tudor architecture which was really a continuation and development of the curious Perpendicular Gothic art with the added feature of fan-vaulting—the most original and perhaps also the most splendid artistic achievement of the British Isles. Now in all this highly organized and florid art there was a general abandonment of the constructional principle which had been the root of the earlier Gothic, and there was no new constructional device or system invented to take its place. The new art is an art of convenience and splendor, but it has no especial root in the necessities of building. The new Gothic builders were very skillful and learned, they knew rib-vaulting by heart, and also they understood vaulting in the solid shell: they could do anything,—but there was no special task to which they had set themselves and therefore they played with their buildings. Nor was there to be introduced, during the centuries that were to follow, any new principle of building.
In Greek building, in Roman building, in Romanesque building, and especially in its culmination in the Gothic system, we are to look to the way in which the buildings have been carried out. Plan, that is to say the arrangement of parts for utility or internal effect, has much to do with our appreciation of a building: but the structure, the actual putting together of materials, is of still greater importance. You do not pretend to judge of a Greek temple without being able almost to count the stones of which it is composed or without appreciating fully the relative part which they play. In Gothic architecture, assuredly no person would dream of finding any enjoyment in a church without having first secured a good working knowledge of how it came to be what it is—how the stone roof is kept in place in the wonderful way that we see it and what part is played by pier and flying buttress. But this interest in the life of the structure becomes faint as we consider the buildings of the four centuries beginning with the year 1400. We have to consider some splendid works of art produced between that year and the outbreak of the French Revolution, but in none of them is there any special call for studying the theory or practice of the builders. They may build well or they may build carelessly: that is comparatively indifferent under the new régime, for designs are made and carried out for their own sake; nor is the master of construction any longer the master of design.
The reader will understand that in such general statements as these in matters of fine art there are always many drawbacks and qualifications. The fifteenth century had still a deal of Gothic vigor, in all the north of Europe. There were great builders after, as before, the pivotal year 1400. This discussion will even include the names of men especially praised as being great constructors: the point is that their system of construction had little to do with their design. Jacopo Sansovino and Sir Christopher Wren were great builders, but their designs were not in any special way the better for that. Their work is marked everywhere with the modern characteristic of being designed abstractly, and as if intended to be carved out of a single block, and afterwards put into terms of mortar-masonry and cut stone, because that was the only way in which the builders of the time could proceed.
Let us consider the fan-vaulting of England. Its earliest appearance is in the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral, built after 1375. [Plate XXXIII] shows the eastern ambulatory of these cloisters. At the first glance this vault seems to be built with ribs like that of Amiens or that of Reims, as shown in the plates of Chapter IV; but the network of projecting ribs in the Gloucester vault is a simulacrum only. The vault is a solid stone shell, homogeneous, and built of large pieces. Plate XXXIV shows the vault of the choir-aisle of Peterborough cathedral seen as looked at from below. The joints of the stones can be made out: they have no relation to the system of mouldings and panels. In England, however, where the Gothic vaulting system had never been as important a factor in art as it was on the Continent, this new and unique system of vaulting was introduced as soon as the Wars of the Roses were over. The three great monuments