This brings us to the new development, for the style now ceases to be Byzantine. It is very noble Gothic, united with domical construction.
The sketches of this and St. Front serve to show the greatness of the change,—the one a rude transcript of St. Mark’s without its decorations,—the other a noble interior of the Transitional style, but with a pendentive dome; and it will be seen that this addition in no degree clashes with the style into which it is adopted.
At Angoulême we find this development carried out fully ([Fig. 447]). We have a complete cruciform church, precisely in the style of the work last named, the bays of the nave almost exactly like it, but the crossing rising to a far greater height, with a sort of drum forming a clerestory over the arches, and imperfect pendentives bearing the dome aloft ([Fig. 448]).
| Fig. 447.—Plan, Angoulême. | Fig. 448.—Angoulême. |
I may mention that this dome is not circular in plan, but that the middle of each side is flattened.
A very parallel arrangement exists in a church far more to the north, on the banks of the Loire, and one in which we, as Englishmen, are specially interested, as being the burial-place of our earlier Plantagenets. I refer to the Abbey Church of Fontevrault ([Fig. 449]).
