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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

There can be no doubt that, whichever class of window we prefer, this invention was of immense practical utility. It rendered possible what was never attained before—the formation of windows of any width which might be wanted, without injury to the beauty of the building. This is, in fact, the great use of the mullion, to enable you to use wider windows than you could use without it—indeed, to render their width unlimited; and the consequence of the invention was the introduction of windows in some cases not less than 30 feet or more in width, and 60 or 70 in height, and that without appearing to make any unseemly gap in the walling, which would otherwise have been the case with a window of one-sixth of the size.

After the system was once introduced, it seems to me to have been often more beautifully carried out in England than in France; indeed, I hardly know in France windows of equal beauty with those at Lincoln, Tintern, or St. Mary’s Abbey at York.

At a later period excess of tracery became the great vice of the style, but while kept within bounds, it unquestionably was a great element to its perfection; and though it must always be remembered that a building of any amount of beauty and dignity can be designed without it, it would be placing upon ourselves a very foolish restriction if, merely from an individual preference for the earlier and sterner style, we were to debar ourselves from the use of so convenient and reasonable an element.

Figs. 103, 104, 105, 106, 107.—Base moulds of Buildings.

One feature in which the English works of this period appear to me to be peculiarly excellent is the base moulds; I do not mean of columns, but of the building itself. I have never seen any in France to equal many of our own in the quality of appearing eminently fitted to support the whole structure, or in the artistic arrangement of their parts.

Against this we may balance on the other side the French cornices and foliated bands, which are one of their most beautiful characteristics. They usually consist of two courses—a hollow projecting moulding containing the foliage, capped by a weather moulding—the equivalent respectively of the bell and abacus of the capital; indeed, in many cases forming the continuation of the capitals of window jambs across the intervening piers. We have in many cases cornices equivalent to these—as at York, Howden, and the nave of Lichfield; but they are, on the whole, a much less English than French feature. The foliage they contain is usually of great beauty, and eminently suited to its position.

The great glory, however, of the French churches is their doorways; and beautiful as are those of our own, they make no kind of pretension to vie with those of our neighbours in magnificence. In this respect the architects of the two nations seem to have gone on quite contrary principles; for the French, even in buildings on a secondary scale, introduced portals of prodigious size and extreme richness, while the English, even in buildings on a grand scale, often made their doorways very inconspicuous. Compare, for instance, the façades of Amiens and of Wells: in one the portals are everything, so that you can recollect little else; in the other they are nothing, and you can scarcely recollect their existence; while, in the façade above, the English example is the richer of the two; and the illustrative sculpture which in the one case is expended on the portals, is in the other diffused over the entire front. In England a magnificent portal is of rare occurrence; in France one looks for it as a thing of course. Nothing more glorious than the great French portals can be conceived: the lofty and deeply-receding jambs are divided in their ample height into two portions, the pedestal or basement of which is richly decorated either with diaper-work or with sculptured medallions, or, as at Amiens, with both; and the upper stage contains colossal figures of apostles or other holy men of old, who appear to view with severe and solemn benignity the entering crowd, and to express, by the gravity of their countenances, the caution, “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God.” In the tympanum are sculptured scenes from Scripture history, the lives of saints, our Lord surrounded by the evangelistic symbols, or perhaps the awful scenes of the final Judgment; and the mouldings of the arch are probably filled with angelic figures, as if the guardians of the faithful worshippers; while this impressive array of imagery is placed in a setting of the noblest and most perfect architecture, and that on a scale well suited to the sublimity of the sentiments expressed.

The portals of Nôtre Dame at Paris, of Amiens, and of Chartres, may be instanced as among the most striking examples; but all great churches of the end of the twelfth and of the thirteenth century have the same truly glorious approaches, well calculated to solemnise the minds of those entering by them, and to prepare the way for the overwhelming dignity of the interior.