Fig. 445.—St. Front, Perigueux.
Here, at St. Front, we have it appearing at a date a century and a half earlier than in our own country, and used solely in the parts where the constructive necessities were the most urgent.
The style, once transplanted into this region, widely separated though it was from all its previous seats, seems to have seized powerfully upon the public mind, and to have become, within a century, the nucleus of a new form of architecture, of very great beauty and interest, uniting the domical construction of the East with the Romanesque and the Early Pointed architecture of the West.
The entire district, some 200 miles in extent, adopted the dome as its acknowledged form of vaulting, nearly always supported it by the pointed arch, and also employed it as the section of the cupola itself.
At Souillac we find a nave, apparently nearly as early as St. Front, covered by a series of pointed domes supported by massive transverse pointed arches, and terminated by a semi-domical apse, all carried out with scarcely an attempt at architectural detail.
At the church of St. Stephen, at Perigueux, commonly called La Cité, we have an imperfect early nave of simple character, with one of its domes remaining, but to the east of it stands a later compartment, in which the same construction is carried out with very fine architecture, agreeing in character with our own Transitional style ([Fig. 446]).
Fig. 446.—La Cité, Perigueux.