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

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

Now, to further such an object, what is the best manner in which we can make use of the lessons to be learnt from the past creations of that style?

One of the lessons I think we should learn is to work in the same free and liberal spirit in which our forefathers worked: not to do what they did, but as they did. If we, on the one hand, shut ourselves up in our own country, and, reproducing the style we find to have prevailed here, sulkily rejecting the lessons to be learned from neighbouring lands, we may produce a servile reproduction of what was done by our predecessors, but shall be acting anything but as they acted. If, on the other hand, we travel widely, and, giving free license to our individual preferences or momentary fancies, we import now this style, and now that—here building in a French, there in an Italian variety of our style—we shall in each case be doing what was done in one or another province of Mediæval art, but shall be equally far from doing as the old artists did: the one course involves servility, the other adds to it frivolity.

The great principle on which the Mediæval architects of each country instinctively acted was, while adhering in the main each to the dialect of the great art which happened to be current amongst them, to improve it by the free importation of ideas and adoption of hints from whencesoever they might be derived, but especially from the dialects of the same artistic language. Thus, for instance, the Pointed architecture of the royal domain of France is, as a whole, a logical sequence of the Romanesque of the same district; yet no scruple was felt at importing into it the Byzantine capitals and foliage, which had come to them through the medium of Venice; and to this foreign importation they owed some of the greatest beauties of their architecture; nay, if the Oriental origin of the Pointed arch be true, they went further, and engrafted upon their traditional art a feature learned from the infidels they were combating. Again, the English Pointed may be traced step by step from the preceding style, yet they had no hesitation about introducing into it details developed by the French. The Germans carried the principle too far: giving up their own traditional variety of Pointed architecture, they adopted the French developments ready made; yet, having done so, they worked them up in a manner quite their own: while in Italy, the new style having been brought in upon the pre-existing Romanesque, they soon elaborated it into a dialect as distinctively characteristic as those of other European countries. Besides this, no nation had any scruples about employing artists belonging to another; so that the advancement made by each became in a degree the common property of all; and even the woven fabrics and other manufactures imported from the far East were allowed to offer suggestions to the European decorator.

To follow out the same principle, we ought, while especially making ourselves masters of the architecture of our own country, and using it as the groundwork of our revival, nevertheless to view the style as a whole, and, while not forsaking our own provincial dialect, to make ourselves masters of the entire language. We should not wish our revived art to be indistinguishable from that of our forefathers. It should certainly reflect some of the characteristics of our own age, one of which is our enormously-increased habits of locomotion; and as we visit all the districts where our style prevailed, nothing can be more natural than that our revived art should show the effects of our more extended sphere. Knowing, as we do, that France was the central district—the very heart—of Mediæval art, should we not be insane not to study well her glorious monuments, and, having studied them, to enrich our own style by the many lessons we may learn from them? It has been suggested that we should do this, with a special regard to those of the provinces of France which were once subjected to the English kings. I would not reject the historical interest which this connection naturally gives rise to, and I doubt not that those provinces are rich in instruction; but I would not on that account neglect the fact that it is the royal domain of France—the district of which Paris is the centre—which was the special focus of our art. Look again at the ancient cities of Germany—perfect storehouses of old architecture: let us never be so suicidal as to reject the lessons they offer! “So far,” some may, however, say, “is all very well; but, for goodness sake, do not cross the Alps! Ruskin has driven you all mad about Venetian, Veronese, and Florentine architecture: be more of men than to be led astray by popular writing. You cannot but see that Italian Gothic is very corrupt, though somehow or another very captivating. Listen not, then, to the siren’s song; reject the enticing bait, nor pollute the pure stream of Northern art with the corrupted waters of the South.”

I admit that there is some ground for such a caution:—there is a mysterious fascination about Italy, which has led astray many who have visited it before they had grounded themselves firmly upon a Northern foundation; but is this a reason for rejecting all the lessons she offers? Was not Italy the land of ancient art, of painting, of sculpture, of mosaic-work? Is she not the land of marbles and richly-coloured material, and the land of ancient municipal institutions, and of the edifices to which they gave birth? Her Romanesque architecture was the parent stock of our own; and if our Gothic was in its turn the stem from which hers sprang, surely its transplantation into so prolific a soil offers the greatest possible primâ facie grounds for expecting a rich variety to spring forth from it—and such has been the result. It is for us to use it with judgment: rejecting what is in its own nature defective; not bringing into the North any features which are the result of a Southern climate, but judiciously culling such suggestions as will with advantage unite themselves to our English nucleus; and especially let us take advantage of the lessons it affords us in the use of rich materials of mosaic and fresco painting, and in any suggestions it offers for the perfecting of our secular architecture. Only let us do so with judgment, never forgetting that it is in England that we are working, and that if we borrow ideas from France, from Germany, or from more southern lands, those ideas must be expressed in English—a language in art, as in literature, of whose antecedents we find abundant cause to be proud.

Let us also remember that, though we must be ever learning, it is not by this alone that an art is to be generated; that we must act for ourselves, as well as learn from others; and that it is to our own vigorous and manly exertions we must trust to make the art we are reviving shape itself to the necessities and the spirit of the age we live in.

LECTURE VI.
The Rationale of Gothic Architecture.

Contradictory opinions as to the character and origin of Gothic Architecture—True causes of its origin—The arch—The Romans eminently practical—Two defects in their architecture—Practical improvements—Use of small materials—Arches in rims—Sub-ordinating rims—Imposts—Pilaster capitals—Decorative columns—Romanesque arch decorations—Labels—Clustered columns—Weight of arches on columns—Doorways—Windows—Rejection of ancient rules of proportion—Efforts to improve construction and decoration in the twelfth century—Absolute demand for an arch of less pressure and for an abutment of greater resistance—Ribbed as distinguished from arris vaulting—Reasons for adopting the former—Pointed arch as effecting proportion.

IN my former lectures I have endeavoured to trace out the history of that course of transition by which the rude arcuated architecture which prevailed in Western Christendom, during the dark ages between the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of modern civilisation,—commonly known as the “Romanesque” style,—first emancipated itself from its semi-barbaric character, and became a consistent round-arched style, and subsequently, by a perfectly logical series of changes, resulting from the suggestions partly of scientific construction, and partly of artistic refinement, developed itself into that new, original, and beautiful style which has in more modern times received the very absurd, but now unavoidable, name of Gothic architecture.

Having traced this development up to what I consider to be its culminating point—the form which it arrived at towards the end of the thirteenth century—it had been my intention, before I proceeded farther with the historical view of the subject, to have given a series of short practical treatises on several of the more important elements of the style whose history I have traced out; as, for instance, on the principles of Gothic vaulting, on tracery, on the system of mouldings belonging to the style; on roofing; on architectural carving and sculpture, etc., etc. Circumstances, however, having rendered it impracticable for me just now to devote to it the time which would be necessary to do justice to these subjects, I purpose on the present occasion to content myself—at the risk (I may say with the certainty) of repeating what I have already stated—with an inquiry into the rationale of the style of architecture of which I have been treating.