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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

were almost entirely expelled, and this mighty monarch reigned without a rival. In his days commenced an almost general rebuilding (wholly or in part) of the cathedrals, excepting such as were of very recent date. The west façade of Nôtre Dame at Paris, the greater part of Rouen, of Rheims, of Amiens, of Coutance, of Bourges, the eastern half of Le Mans, and a list far too long to be enumerated, owe their grandeur to his reign, or those immediately following.

Towards the middle of the century the same work progressed gloriously under the auspices of St. Louis, and though slackened from actual satiety towards the close of the century, it was not really checked till the commencement of the English war.

As in England, the works thus produced evince masculine grandeur of the highest order at the commencement, and the most delicate beauty at the close of the century, while during its middle portion the two are united in the works of St. Louis. In Germany the works of this century evince great artistic disturbance. The change from the round to the pointed-arch style had been there resisted, while both in France and England it had been worked out to maturity. At the opening of the century, German architecture consisted of a highly-refined variety of Romanesque, with the partial use of the pointed arch, chiefly where suggested by constructional necessities. This, during the first quarter or more of the century, developed itself into an Early Pointed style, strictly German, and holding out promises of great force and originality—promises which were frustrated by the sudden inroad of French Gothic about 1250, after which, though Germany took a course still very much her own, it was one in a great degree severed from her noble early tradition, and emanating from the French graft rather than from the original stem.

Italy received her Pointed architecture from France and Germany, and mingled it freely with her Classico-Lombardic traditions. The union produced many noble and many incongruous developments. The lessons they offer must be used with caution; but Italy being the land of ancient art, the land of sculpture, of painting, of rich marbles, of mosaic work, and of municipal and other civic edifices, the graft of Northern art upon so prolific a stock has, as may readily be imagined, produced varieties which the circumstances of Northern nations would have rendered impracticable in its native lands; and the suggestions they offer, if judiciously used, are well calculated to add copiousness to the style in the hands of its modern revivers. Of this I may have occasion to say more hereafter.

The thirteenth century was to Mediæval art what the Periclean and Augustan ages were to the Greek and Roman; and in each case, though war and bloodshed are in themselves hostile to art, there can be no doubt that the excitement of the human mind, resulting from great national struggles, has tended to produce that advance in art which followed, in one case, the glorious assertion of national independence; in another, the conquest of the world; and in a third, the romantic and unselfish efforts of the Crusaders.

It was a period of deep-seated mental excitement, of a prodigious upstirring of the human intellect. Our learned men at the present day may smile at the quaint and imperfect erudition of these early periods of our civilisation, but they should remember that they were our days of youth, of warmth, and of rising vigour, while the more perfected literature of our own age may possibly be found to superadd to its maturity a few symptoms of old age.

This youthful energy pervaded every branch of art; everything seemed to experience a new, a generous, and vigorous impulse. All Europe became filled with the productions of the newly generated art; every city became a repertory of noble and sublime architecture, and every town and village became possessed of productions equally beautiful, if more modest in their pretensions; while the intervening country was studded over with castles and monastic establishments, in which the same majestic art displayed itself in ever-varying forms, each suited to meet their different requirements.

Nothing is more difficult than to describe a perfected art. My last two lectures traced out the gradual construction of Pointed architecture, and its transition from the preceding style. This was comparatively easy; but to describe it when it had attained perfection is far less so.

The fact is that there is neither in France nor in England any very marked difference between the styles during the later period of its transition, and when perfected beyond that unity and consistency of parts which indicate maturity. In France, particularly, this is the case; for neither had the style there continued long to evince its transitional state by the retention of strictly Romanesque features—unless the square abacus can be so designated—nor did it, when perfected, throw off, as in England, that one detail which to our eye seems a relic of transition. The later transition and the earlier perfected specimens seem in France to be the same art, a little more developed and more homogeneous, rather than to have many describable points of difference. In England the change of the abacus from the square to the round form makes the distinction more marked, so that English examples at the opening of the thirteenth century always appear later and more advanced than contemporary French ones. I instanced in my last lecture four early examples of perfected Early English: the eastern transept of Lincoln, completed about 1200; the eastern chapels at Winchester, about 1204; the western portals at St. Alban’s, finished about 1205; and the western porch or Galilee at Ely, finished about 1214. None of them show any remains of transitional character, and all having the English round capital in full development, appear to the English eye more advanced than such works as the western portals of Nôtre Dame at Paris, which are, if anything, somewhat later in date. In this country, in fact, the form of the abacus is the distinguishing feature between the transition to the perfected style, while in France there is no such distinction to be found. The difference is more one of feeling, which the practical eye perceives at once without being able to define.