Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The architecture in Germany which is, perhaps, the most valuable is that of the transition, which, as I have before pointed out, took here a line of its own. After this, the most valuable is, perhaps, the brick architecture of the North. The timber buildings, however, are almost equally important, were it not that it is a material not much in use for external architecture in our own day.

The movables, however, are the richest inheritance of the German churches, and to these I would recommend your devoted attention. They form a special and most important subject of study, and one for which no country offers such facilities. Besides the more ordinary objects, such as chancel fittings, reredoses, bronze gates, metal and other screens, lamps, coronæ, fonts (whether of stone or of brass), tabernacles for the reservation of the host, ancient organs, paintings, and a hundred others of parallel classes, almost every great church has its Schatzzimmer, or treasury, and these usually contain valuables of the highest interest and of the most splendid art. These are not always easy of access, and it is difficult to obtain permission to sketch in them; but it is worth every exertion to do so. The treasuries at Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne are known to every traveller, and their claims upon the student are apt to be passed over from very familiarity; but a few days devoted to each would be invaluable. I know no ancient work more glorious or more exquisite, so far as it remains intact, than the shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne. I have on two occasions obtained permission for a brief period to draw from it, and have been filled with wonder at the exquisite art which a close examination unfolds. At Hildesheim are numberless objects of early art of the same class. At Brunswick, again, are a few; while the treasury of the cathedral at Halberstadt is a complete museum of Mediæval art. Sacred vessels, reliquaries containing the finest early workmanship, books with glorious jewelled covers, mitres of all degrees of richness, tapestries from the earliest periods, altar coverings both of embroidery and linen of early periods, and exquisite works of every class we can imagine are to be found in that charmed enclosure.[81] At Marburg there are also many such objects, and among them the shields of the old Teutonic knights and the perfectly wonderful shrine of St. Elizabeth. I do not refer to the beautiful stone structure which contained it, and which is figured by Moller, but to the gorgeous jewelled shrine which it contained. All through Germany, however, the case is the same: wherever you go you find the great churches replete with the movable works of Mediæval art. It is for you to study them with the care which they deserve.

I have in a previous lecture said a good deal about the study of Italian architecture, and I will not now repeat it. Suffice it to say that Italy is the land in which to study the use of rich materials, of mosaic-work, and of architectural decoration in its highest forms. It is the land in which to give the finishing touch to your architectural training, to learn the last and loftiest lessons—those which show us how to link architecture with the sister arts in their highest perfection. If you are artists when you go there, you may be much more advanced artists when you return. We learn, too, there much that is most useful in respect of the domestic architecture of towns. It is, however, a seductive country, and we have to keep on our guard there, and not to forget that we are members of a Northern nation.

Mr. Street has told us a great deal that is deeply interesting about Spanish architecture, so I will not (as I have never seen it) enter upon that subject; and will close what I have to say on foreign travel by urging you to the diligent use of it, but urging you also when you return home, not to forget that you are Englishmen, and that English is your proper language. I would also advise that your foreign tours should be followed up or alternated with English ones, so that your own native architecture may always be kept prominently before your mind.

I have offered to you in this lecture what may appear to you but the dry bones of the subject. In my next I hope to follow it up by suggestions, both as to the spirit in which this course of study should be undertaken, and the personal training both of the mind, the eye, and the hand necessary to fit you for such studies; and as to the practical uses which you should subsequently make of the lessons you will have thus learned.

LECTURE IX.
On the Study and Practice of Gothic Architecture.

Every day business and practical work to go on hand in hand with the study of ancient buildings—How best to be accomplished—The study from books—Artistic and archæological portions cannot be wholly disconnected—Heraldry—A knowledge of the history of art absolutely necessary for the study of Mediæval architecture—Greek art the parent of Gothic sculpture—Ruined cities of Central Syria—Mahometan styles—Our own form of church the direct inheritance from the earliest Christian temples—Training as artists—Choice among specimens of different Mediæval periods and styles—Examples especially recommended—Practical studies of ancient buildings in connection with their structural and mechanical qualities—Vaulting—Timber-work—Stone-work, etc., etc.—The actual practice of Mediæval architecture—The repairs and restoration of ancient buildings.

IN my last lecture I gave you an outline of the course of study requisite to obtaining a knowledge of Mediæval architecture, so far as this is to be done by the studying and sketching from ancient buildings. I purpose, in this, to carry on the same subject into other particulars, and also to offer some suggestions as to the actual practice of the revived style.

I might have appeared, in what I have said, almost to presuppose—what is improbable, if not impossible—that those whom I have been advising as to their studies have the entire command of their time, and are comparatively free from the demands of every-day business. I not only do not suppose, but should be as far as possible from desiring, this; for I am convinced that those whose usual occupations are not such as to familiarise them with the demands and the difficulties of practical work, and with the questions which are ever being suggested by actually working out the details of architecture for practical use, are not prepared to profit in the fullest degree from the study of old examples. This study, and the practical work to which it is the only key, must go on hand in hand. There are numberless intricacies and niceties; problems long since solved; difficulties ingeniously met; clever ways of making accidents, which in their own nature would cause a blemish, the means of adding beauty; numberless instances in which decorative or other treatment was the result of some practical reason which would at first sight appear to be merely a matter of taste; and a thousand other instructive and important matters which would be entirely passed over or fail of approving themselves to the understanding of the student who is not prepared to appreciate them by the suggestion to themselves of the same problems, the same difficulties, the same little knots to be untied, the same little intricacies to be unravelled, and the same calls for clever contrivance to meet accidental circumstances arising in their own daily practical work.

The man, on the other hand, who is always at practical work, without studying much from old examples, becomes dull and normal, or flighty and crotchety, according to the bent of his own mind; while, if he constantly supplies and revivifies his practical work by study from original examples, and fits his mind to receive these lessons by his practical work, he is prevented from becoming dull and lifeless by the constant suggestions of brightness and life which he receives, or from becoming crotchety and over fanciful by the reasonableness which he finds to pervade the objects which he studies, and the evident aim which they evince rather to chasten and conceal—to subject to the doctrine of reserve—their clever contrivances than to flaunt them obviously to public gaze.