Fig. 111.—Conventional Foliage, Chapel of St. John Baptist, Westminster Abbey.
The foliated carving in Westminster Abbey unites the two great types which characterise this century—the conventional and the natural—and contains some of the best of each. I commend it to your careful study, and will mention that all within reach has been indurated in the manner I have just alluded to. What remains of the figure sculpture is also of great merit, especially four angelic figures in the triforium of the transept,[47] and two full-length figures in the chapter-house, one of which I had the great happiness of discovering.
Fig. 112.—Natural Foliage, Chapel of St. John Baptist, Westminster Abbey.
The internal proportions of the church seem to me to surpass those of any other I have seen. They appear to be generally founded upon the equilateral triangle, and a comparison of this with many other churches will confirm the truth of what I have heard has been stated by an ancient Freemason—that the square will furnish good proportions, but the equilateral triangle much better.
The introduction of Italian mosaic-work[48]—both porphyry mosaic on the pavement, and glass mosaic on the tombs of the builder and rebuilder of the Abbey—is a fact of great interest, as showing the high estimation in which the arts peculiar to Italy were then held, so much so as to lead to the bringing to England of two master mosaic-workers—Odorico and Pietro[49] (each, no doubt, with his staff of workmen)—to carry out the two branches of the art. Both artists were from Rome, as the inscriptions still testify; but their work was put together here, as is proved by the use of Purbeck marble, both as the groundwork of the pavement and for the architecture of the tombs. This architecture is not very elegant in its details, excepting only the beautiful spiral pillars, and some of the surface patterns prepared for the mosaic; and the introduction of an art so inferior to their own, for the sake of the rich inlaying it contained, still more strongly proves their appreciation of the merits of the mosaic art. Let us follow the example more wisely, and when we import any foreign specialty, let us not bring with it any of the demerits which chance to accompany it, but unite it with the best art we are masters of.
I know few, if any, churches which possess the same internal beauty as Westminster Abbey. More modern art has done its worst to ruin it, but its intrinsic loveliness overrides every such attempt, and reigns triumphant over every disfigurement. One characteristic it possesses almost alone—I mean the virgin privilege of perpetual exemption from the brush of the whitewasher. It probably owes this unique happiness to its having been built on the principles of constructive polychromy. It has materials of at least four varieties of colour, and these, in some degree, systematically and artistically used; and this fact has been sufficient to keep the whitewasher at bay. We are told that it is un-English and fantastic to care anything about the colours of our materials; but let it never be forgotten that the churches which could boast of the chaste dignity of their unvaried stone colour, have been, both at home and abroad, made over periodically to the tender mercies of the monochromist, while this, at least has been spared,—and that on account of the “un-English” phantasy of using more than one natural colour in its construction. These colours are now nearly concealed by smoke, but they still show modestly through, and still aid in rendering the tone more solemn and striking than that of any church I have seen, excepting that very different one—St. Mark’s at Venice.