The liberty which was felt in dealing with the surfaces of vaulting-spaces, when once the salient lines became emphasised by ribs, led to the practice of the “doming up,” as it is called, of those spaces, whether the ridges were raised or level; that is to say, that each course of the filling-in stonework was often laid on a curve, so as to increase the strength of the work, by rendering every course a kind of arch from rib to rib.
I must, however, reserve to my next lecture a description of many of the forms which the vaulting of this period assumed, and a number of practical facts relating to it; as well as the pursuit of the subject into its more advanced history; where, instead of limiting its features to such as originated in obvious and functional utility, others were added for purely decorative purposes. The subject is so extensive that I am compelled to divide my lecture upon it abruptly.
Let us, then, pause here and consider for a moment the artistic sentiment and character of the stage at which we have arrived. I will suggest, in passing, that this stage, in which no architectural features were introduced for mere purposes of decoration, and which consequently leaves wide vaulting-spaces, is peculiarly suited to the extensive introduction of the works of the sister arts of painting and mosaic, which may be used almost as freely here as in the Byzantine domes. The point to which, however, I desire to direct your attention is rather the purely architectural sentiment.
Small as is the difference of principle between the later Norman vaulting and that under consideration, the impression produced upon the mind is entirely changed. The one suggests weight and pressure systematically met and resisted; in the other those forces appear to have vanished; and the effect suggested is rather a shooting boldly upwards, like the growth of a tree, than any downward pressure towards the earth. True it is that, in the decorative treatment, a colonnette is placed under every rib or group of ribs as its artistic support; yet, in its effect upon the imagination, the action is reversed. It is not the column bearing the weight of the arched ribs, but the latter springing vigorously upward from the column.
Who, while viewing a stately tree in the pride of its growth, ever thinks of its weight, or of the pressure of its boughs upon the stem? It is with its upward soaring that the mind becomes impressed; and just so it is with the interior of a Gothic cathedral. The perfection with which all physical forces are met has to the mind the effect, not merely of having annihilated, but of having actually reversed them. So that upward striving, stately growth, and heavenward aspiration are the ideas customarily suggested as illustrating the impressions produced. The lofty avenue, with its intersecting branches, has become the chosen similitude to which it is popularly likened, and it has been universally received as the form of architecture most expressive of the heavenward soarings of our religion.
No one who contemplates our glorious Abbey Church of Westminster, and lays his soul open to its inspiration, can fail to feel sentiments in harmony with those suggested by the cognisance of its saintly founder—selected as if in anticipation of its future glories—the symbol of our religion surrounded by martlets, whose feet are erased in token that they have lost all tendency to rest on earth, but, like the aspirations of Christian worship, ever mounting on the wing towards the supreme object of adoration, and
“Flying up to Heaven gate ascend,
Bear on their wings and in their notes His praise.”
LECTURE XV.
The Transition.
Certain practical points concerning vaulting—Ribs of early and late vaulting—Filling in of intermediate surfaces or cells—Methods adopted in France and England—Sexpartite vaulting—Crypt of Glasgow Cathedral—Choir at Lincoln—Chapter-house, Lichfield—Caudebec, Normandy—Octagonal kitchen of the Monastery, Durham—Lady Chapel, Salisbury—Segmental vaulting—Temple Church—Lady Chapel, St. Saviour’s, Southwark—Westminster Abbey—Intermediate ribs—Presbytery at Ely—Chapter-houses of Chester and Wells—Exeter Cathedral—Cloisters, Westminster—“Liernes”—Ely Cathedral—Chancel, Nantwich Church—Crosby Hall and Eltham Palace—Choir at Gloucester—Winchester Cathedral—Fan-vaulting—Cloisters at Gloucester—King’s College Chapel, Cambridge—Divinity Schools, Oxford—Roof of Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster—Ideal of its design.
MY last lecture brought the subject of vaulting to its full functional development,—that which contains all elements whose origin can be traced to the demands of utility, but none which have been introduced purely for decorative purposes. In my present lecture I must supplement what I then treated of with some cases of its application which I had not then time to detail, and then proceed to carry on my subject into its more distinctly decorative developments.