Italian Gothic.-Italy is poorer than any other country in examples of the transition from round arched to pointed arched buildings. The use of the pointed arch was accepted at last as a necessity, and cannot be said ever to have been welcomed. The first buildings in which it is seen worked out fully in detail are those of Niccola Pisano, and but few examples exist of good Gothic work earlier than his time. The elaborately arcaded and sculptured west front of Ferrara cathedral is a screen to an early building. The cathedral and other churches at Genoa are certainly exquisite works, but they appear to owe their internal design rather to the influence of (perhaps) Sicilian taste than north Italian, and the exquisite beauty of the west front owes a good deal, at any rate, to French influence, softened, refined and decorated by the extreme taste of an Italian architect. The feature which most marks all Italian Gothic is the indifference to the true use of the pointed arch. Everywhere arches were constructed which could not have stood for a day had they not been held together by iron rods. There was none of that sense of the unities of art which made a northerner so jealous to maintain the proper relations of all parts of his structure. In Niccola Pisano's works the arch mould rarely fits the capital on which it rests. The proportions of buttresses to the apparent work to be done by them are bad and clumsy. The window traceries look like bad copies of some northern tracery, only once seen in a hurry by an indifferent workman. There is no life, or development, or progress in the work. If we look at the ground-plans of Italian Gothic churches, we shall find nothing whatever to delight us. The columns are widely spaced, so as to diminish the number of vaulting bays, and to make the proportions of the oblong aisle vaulting bay very ungainly. Clustered shafts are almost unknown, the columns being plain cylinders with poorly sculptured capitals. There are no triforium galleries, and the clerestory is generally very insignificant. In short, a comparison of the best Gothic works in Italy with the most moderate French or English work would show at once how vast its inferiority must be allowed to be. Still there were beauties which ought not to be forgotten or passed over. Such were the beautiful cloisters, whose arcades are carried on delicate coupled shafts, e.g. in St John Lateran and St Paul's at Rome. Such also were the porches and monuments at Verona and elsewhere; and the campaniles, both those in Rome, divided by a number of stringcourses into a number of storeys, and those of the north, where there are hardly any horizontal divisions, and the whole effort is to give an unbroken vertical effect; or that unequalled campanile, the tower of the cathedral at Florence by Giotto, where one sees in ordered proportion, accurately adjusted, line upon line, and storey upon storey, perhaps the most carefully wrought-out work in all Europe. The Italian architects were before all others devoted to the display of colour in their works. St Mark's had led the way in this, but, throughout the peninsula, the bountiful plenty of nature in the provision of materials was seconded by the zeal of the artist. They were also distinguished for their use of brick. Just as in parts of Germany, France, Spain and England, there were large districts in which no stone could be had without the greatest labour and trouble; and here the reality and readiness which always marked the medieval workman led to his at once availing himself of the The Gothic of Italy has, it must be admitted, no such grand works to show as more northern countries have. Allowance has to be made at every turn for some incompleteness or awkwardness of plan, design or construction. There is no attempt to emulate the beauties of the best French plans. Milan cathedral, magnificent as its scale and material make it, is clumsy and awkward both in plan and section, though its vast size makes it impressive internally. San Francesco, Assisi, is only a moderately good early German Gothic church, converted into splendour by its painted decorations. At Orvieto a splendid west front is put, without any proper adjustment, against a church whose merit is mainly that it is large and in parts beautifully coloured.

natural material, and making a feature of his brickwork.

The finest Gothic interiors are of the class of which the Frari at Venice and Sant' Anastasia at Verona are examples. They are simple vaulted cruciform churches, with aisles and chapels on the east side of the transepts. But even in these the designs of the various parts in detail are poor and meagre, and only redeemed from failure by the picturesque monuments built against their walls, by the work of the painter, and by their furniture. In fine, Gothic art was never really understood in Italy, and, consequently, never reached to perfection.

Whilst the Pointed style was almost exclusively known and practised in northern Europe, the Italians were but slowly improving in their Gothic style; and the improvement was more evinced in their secular than in their ecclesiastical structures. Florence, Bologna, Vicenza, Udine, Genoa, and, above all, Venice, contain palaces and mansions of the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, which for simplicity, utility and beauty far excel most of those in the same and other places of the three following centuries. The contemporary churches do not exhibit the same degree of improvement in style that is conspicuous in these domestic works, for there are no works in Europe more worthy of study and admiration than the Ducal Palace at Venice, and some of the older works of the same class, and even

many houses in these cities, and at Corneto, Amalfi, Asti, Orvieto and Lucca, the fountains of Perugia and Viterbo, and the monuments at Bologna, Verona and Arezzo, may be named as evidence of the interest which the national art affords to the architectural student even in Italy, as late as the end of the 14th century; but after this it gradually gave way to the new style, though in some instances its influence may be traced even when it had been overborne by it. (R. P. S.)

ROMANESQUE AND GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE Most generally, Romanesque art is thought of as that period of art which followed and partook of the nature of Roman art and yet was too far removed from it to be classed as Roman. The difference, however, was not merely one of decay; it is rather in positive factors that we shall find the true characteristics of the style. Its formation was parallel to the development of the Romance languages, and like them it acquired barbaric elements. In Rome itself hardly any, if any, contributions were made to its growth, and there as late as the 12th century the early Christian forin of basilican church continued to be built. It may, perhaps, best be conceived as a Germano-Roman product, for even in Spain and north Italy, which became such strong centres of the art, the Visigoths and Lombards provided the Teutonic element. Besides this change of "blood" in the style, the more rapidly developed art of the East. This influence there is another element of change in the influences obtained from indeed was so strong and constant that, having it in view, we might almost describe the Romanesque style as GermanoByzantine.

In the 6th and 7th centuries we have, on the one hand, the almost pure traditional early Christian art of Rome and indeed of western Europe, and on the other the direct establishment of matured Byzantine art at Ravenna, Parenzo, Naples and even in Rome. Then followed the mixture of these and of barbaric elements in the formation of several pre-Romanesque varieties, one of which has been named Italo-Byzantine. It was not until the age of Charlemagne that a centre was established strong enough for the formation of a new western school which should persist. From this time a progressive style was developed which led straight forward to the Gothic, and it is this movement which is best called Romanesque. This art was a perfect ferment of striving and experiment, of gathering and even of research; Roman, Byzantine and Saxon clements entered into its composition. It is probable also, as a result of Saracenic pressure "bringing their crafts with them," drew together from still on Syria, Asia Minor, North Africa and Spain, that artists, remoter parts to gain the protection of the great ruler of the West and to help in the formation of Carolingian art. With the disintegration of the empire of Charlemagne many local schools arose in Germany, France and Lombardy, which--especially after the year 1000, when there appears to have been a renewed burst of building energy-resulted in considerable differentiation of styles. The centre of energy seems to have been now here, now there, yet with all the differences there was a general resemblance over the whole field. Until the exact date of a very large number of monuments is more perfectly established, it will be impossible to trace out exactly the intricate windings of the line of advance. In fact there are two conflicting sides to the question presented by Romanesque art. In the first place we have to consider the several schools in regard to a standard of absolute attainment, and in the second as relative to the line of persistence and to the formation of Gothic, which was so largely the culmination, and then the decay, of the forces present in Romanesque art. Some of the most beautiful and complete of the Romanesque schools contributed least, some of the most inchoate gave the most, to that which was to be.

The most important existing monument of the age of Charlemagne is the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (see fig. 44), which was being built in the year 800. It has an octagonal central area, covered by a dome and surrounded with two storeys of aisles both completely vaulted. The interior surface of the dome was encrusted with mosaic. Another important work of about the same time is the church of Germigny-des-Prés near Orleans, which also is of the "central type," having a square tower above four piers surrounded

A

From the 9th to the 11th century the great problem worked out was that of perfecting the standard plans of large churches. In the MS. plan of the monastic church of St Gall, drawn about 820, we find a great nave with aisles, apsidal terminations both to the east and the west, transepts and probably a central tower (cf. the abbey church of Saint-Riquier near Abbeville, built c. 800, of which a slight representation has been preserved). In St Martin at Tours was probably evolved the most perfect type of plan, that with an ambulatory and radiating chapels surrounding the eastern apse. magnificent church of this form was built here at the beginning of the 11th century, but not for the first time. Excavations have shown that the plan was probably suggested by a still earlier church in which five tomb-niches surrounded the central apse and tomb of St Martin. At Jumièges (begun 1040) it has recently been found that the plan terminated to the east with parallel apses, as at St Albans in England; this is a second important type. A third type is that in which the transepts as well as the east end are finished with apses, like St Mary-in-the-Capitol at Cologne.

When we come to the developed Romanesque of the end of the 11th century, we find not only several French varieties, but strong schools in Lombardy and on the Rhine. Without distinguishing too minutely, four broad types representing schools of the east and west, north and south (or rather north-east, north-west, south-east and south-west) of France, may be spoken of, and all of these were engaged in the task of completely covering with vaults large churches of basilican plan--the typical problem of this period. In the east of France we have a school represented by the monastic church of Tournus, where the nave was vaulted by a series of compartments placed transversely to the axis of the church. This church, which has a plan of the type of St Martin's at Tours, was begun in 1019, but the nave vaults were not reached until after 1066. This style of vaulting persisted in Burgundy, and from thence it spread to Fountains Abbey in England, where it is found over the aisles. The most beautiful class of buildings in eastern France is that of which the church at Issoire is the most perfect example. The external walls are here ornamented with patterns countercharged in light and dark stone. The wonderful church at Le Puy also belongs to this group, but here strong Moorish influence is to be traced. The inlays were probably derived from a late Gallo-Roman source. Countercharging of stones of two colours was a favourite method of building in Romanesque churches erected between 1100 and 1150. We find it at Vézelay, a magnificent abbey church of Burgundy, at Le Mans cathedral, and as far north-west as Exeter and Worcester. In the west (south-west) the most prominent school was that of Perigord, of which the church of St Front, Périgueux, may be taken as the example. St Front was rebuilt after a fire in 1120, but there are many earlier specimens, two of the most important being at Angoulême (1105-1128) and Fontevrault. This school applied a series of domes of eastern fashion not only at the centre but over the whole extent of the church. St Front so closely resembles St Mark's, Venice, that it must be derived from it or from some similar eastern church. The method largely influenced the Angevin school of vaulting, but it does not seem to have been effective as a protection from the weather. Some examples were covered by external roofs, as was St Front itself at a late time. St Ours at Loches, originally a small church covered by domes, had spire-like pyramids substituted for them when the church was enlarged about 1168.

The third class of vaulting we may for symmetry's sake associate with the south, though it is found widely distributed. The chapel in the Tower of London is an example, and its true centre seems to be the Auvergne. The vaults of this type run along with the axis of the space to be covered. In the case of large churches the central span is frequently supported by quadrant vaults leaning against it on either side. One of the most noble churches in which the central span is covered by such a barrel vault is that of St Savin near Poitiers, where very much has been preserved of the complete series of paintings which once adorned it and the walls beneath. The most characteristic buildings of the south are the churches of Moissac, St Trophime at Arles, St Gilles near Nîmes and St James of Compostella, where there is much sculpture of a Lombardic type. There was a great revival of sculpture, going together with a study of the antique, in Lombardy at the end of the 11th century. Wiligelmus, who later worked at San Zeno, Verona, signed some sculptures at Modena in 1099.

Of the schools of the north, Normandy took the lead. It was adventurous, if somewhat barbaric. It derived much from Germany and gave much to the Gothic style. About the middle of the 11th century the Normans began to experiment with cross-groined vaults and their application to the church problem. This from the first contained an important possibility of future development, in that it allowed of windows of considerable height being placed in the lunettes of these vaults. Soon a very great step in advance was made by the invention or application of diagonal ribs under the intersection of the plain groined vault. This association of strengthening ribs in a cross form to each bay of the structure forms the ogive, the characteristic form from which the alternative name to Gothic, "ogival," has been derived. The first instance we know of the use of this system is at Durham cathedral, where the aisles of the east

The word "Gothic" was applied by Italian writers of the Renaissance to buildings later than Roman, which in some cases (e.g. Theodoric's works at Ravenna) might be properly so named. What we now call Gothic the same writers called Modern. Later the word came to mean the art which filled the whole interval between the Roman period and the Renaissance, and then last of all, when the Byzantine and Romanesque forms of art were defined, Gothic became the art which intervened between the Romanesque era and the Renaissance.

As remarked above, Gothic architecture is to a large extent the crown of Romanesque. It is agreed that its chief element of construction was the ogival vaulting which was being widely used by Romanesque builders in the first half of the 12th century; and pointed arches appeared as early.

The eminent architect, G. E. Street, writing' of what we have called the standard plan of great 12th-century churches, says, "In whatever way the early chevets (as the French term them) grew up there is no doubt that they contain the germ of the magnificent chevets in the complete Gothic churches of the north of France." Architecture of the middle ages having been continuously developed, it is necessarily somewhat arbitrary to mark off any given period; all are agreed, however, that about the year 1150 there was a time of rapid change towards a slenderer and more energetic type of building, and the forms which followed for about four centuries we now call Gothic. The special character which the architecture of this period took was partially conditioned by the fact that the expanding power of the French kingdom, with its centre at Paris, was situated in a particular artistic environment. The body of ideas on which it for the most part worked was furnished by the Romanesque art of north France, the German borderland and Burgundy. A great contributory cause was the immense monastic activity of the time, and the need of accomplishing large results with limited means resulted in a casting aside of old ornamental commonplaces and in innovations of planning and structure. This was especially the case with the Cistercian order, which carried certain transitional Gothic forms of building into England, Germany, Italy and Spain. If, however, we make the transition to Gothic date from the first use of "ogival" vaults in northwest Europe, then Durham cathedral is, so far as we now know, the earliest example of the transitional style. The next step, the appearance of Gothic itself, may best be held to date from the systematic but not exclusive use of pointed arches in association with ogival vaults about the middle of the 12th century.

At this time was waged a war of domination amongst the styles, a war which resulted not necessarily in the victory of the most beautiful nor even of the strongest, but one in which political and geographical considerations had much to do with the decision. When the French kingdom took the lead in western civilization, it was settled that a northern form of art, one which had perforce to make a chief element of the window, should be followed out. The consequent development of the window is, after all, as the first observers thought, the great mark of the mature style. As to the position of France in the movement, Mr Street may again be quoted:-" When once the Gothic style was well established, the zeal with which the work of building was pursued in France was almost incredibly great. A series of churches exists there within short distances of each other, so superb in all their features that it is impossible to contest their superiority to any corresponding group of buildings. The old Domaine Royale is that in which French art is seen in its perfection. Notre Dame, Paris, is a monument second to nothing in the world; but for completeness in all its parts it would be better to cite the cathedral of Chartres, a short description of which must suffice as an explanation of what French art at its zenith was. The plan has a nave with aisles, transepts with aisles on each side, a choir with two aisles all round it, and chapels beyond them. There are two immense steeples 1 Article" Architecture," Ency. Brit., 9th ed.

at the west end, two towers to each transept and two towers at | the junction of the choir with its apse. The doorways are triple at the west end, whilst to each transept is a vast triple porch in front of the three doorways. The whole of these doorways are covered with sculpture, much of it refined, spirited and interesting in the highest degree. You enter and find the interior surpassing even the exterior. The order of the columns and arches, and of all the details, is so noble and simple that no fault can be found with it. The whole is admirably executed; and, finally, every window throughout its vast interior is full of the richest glass coeval with the fabric. As compared with English churches of the same class, there are striking differences. The French architects aimed at greater height, greater size, but much less effect of length. Their roofs were so lofty that it was almost impossible for them to build steeples which should have the sort of effect that ours have. The turret on Amiens cathedral is nearly as lofty as Salisbury spire, but is only a turret; and so throughout. Few French churches afford the exquisite complete views of the exterior which English churches do; but, on the other hand, their interiors are more majestic, and man feels himself smaller and more insignificant in them than in ours. The palm must certainly be given to them above all others. There is no country richer in examples of architecture than France. The student who wishes to understand what it was possible for a country to do in the way of creating monuments of its grandeur, would find in almost every part of the country, at every turn and in great profusion, works of the rarest interest and beauty. The 19th century may be the consummation of all, but the evidences of its existence to posterity will not be onetenth in number of those which such a reign as that of Philip Augustus has left us, whilst none of them will come up to the high standard which in his time was invariably reached."

The remarks which have been made as to the variation in style visible in various parts of the same country, apply with more force, perhaps, in what we now call France than to any other part of Europe. For the purposes of complete study it would be necessary to keep distinct from each other in the mind the following important divisions:-(1) Provence and Auvergne; (2) Aquitaine; (3) Burgundy; (4) Anjou and Poitou; (5) Brittany; (6) Normandy; (7) the Île-de-France and Picardy; (8) Champagne; and, finally, (9) the eastern border-land (neither quite German nor quite French in its character), the meetingpoint of the two very different developments of French and German art. Speaking generally, it is safe to say that Gothic architecture was never brought to its highest perfection in any portion of the south of France. Aquitaine, Auvergne and Provence were too wedded to classic traditions to excel in an art which seems to have required for its perfection no sort of looking back to such a past. Hence there is no Gothic work in the south for which it is possible to feel the same admiration and enthusiasm as must be felt by every artist in presence of the great works of the north. In Anjou this is less the case; but even there the art is extremely inferior to that which is seen in Normandy and the Île-de-France. Brittany may be dismissed from consideration, as being, like Cornwall, so provincial and so cut off from neighbours, that its art could not fail to be very local, and without much influence outside its own borders.

There are examples of true Gothic outside its proper habitat, almost pure French works being found as far south as Laon and Burgos, as far east as Strassburg and Lausanne and as far north as Canterbury and Cologne. Westminister Abbey was profoundly influenced by direct study of French work. Normandy, Burgundy, and the land as far north as Tournay seem to have shared in the work of transition; but the Gothic area proper is the Île-de-France with Picardy and Champagne, then Burgundy, Normandy and England.

Four remarkable buildings best represent the early phase of the Gothic style, the abbey church of St Denis, and the cathedrals of Noyon, Senlis and Sens. The first was begun in 1137, and the choir was consecrated in 1143. The few parts of this work which remain are sufficient to show how stately and yet fresh the whole work must have been. Noyon cathedral, begun after a fire which occurred in 1131, had its choir consecrated in 1157. The cathedral of Senlis was

begun in 1155. Sens cathedral, begun about the same time, or even belong to the first years of the style; such are the abbey churches of earlier, is the first of the great cathedrals. Many other buildings St Remi at Reims, Notre Dame at Châlons and St Germain-desPrés, Paris. The choir of this last was consecrated in 1163, and in the same year Notre Dame, Paris, was begun This mighty building, although very complete, was altered as to its effect by the substitution, early in the 13th century, of large two-light windows for the earlier lancets of the clerestory. The sculptures of the west front are exquisite. Laon cathedral, another of the great churches, is of about the same age as Notre Dame. It also has beautiful sculpture in its western porches, but its most marked characteristic is the group of six great and romantic towers which flank the fronts to the west, the north and the south. In the 13th century, the church was extended to the east and the original chevet was destroyed. From the evidence furnished by fine double-staged chapels to the transepts, it is most probable that three similar chapels were set about the vaulted triforium. Such an arrangement existed at the noble church ambulatory of the apse, the upper chapels opening from the fine of Valenciennes, now destroyed, but well recorded. At the end of the 12th century Chartres cathedral was begun, perhaps its most notable constructive feature being the high development that the flying buttresses have here attained. It was followed in the early years of the 13th century by Rouen cathedral, which derived much from its prototype. St Omer, a fine early church, in turn followed Rouen.

The second stage of Gothic, introducing the traceried window, was opened by the building of the cathedral of Reims, begun in 1211. This is in every way one of the most perfect of cathedrals, as well for its sculpture and glass as for its structure. Reims was followed by the still greater cathedral at begun in 1220 at the west front, Amiens (fig. 40), which was SO that the superb sculpture (Plate II., fig. 64) of the porches

is earlier than that of Reims. Beauvais cathedral was begun

in 1247 on a still vaster scale, and with

were

On

an ambition that o'erleaped itself. Auxerre cathedral, and the very beautiful collegiate churches of St Quentin and Semur, also followed Reims. Two other cathedrals of the first rank which must be mentioned are those of Bourges and double aisles about the apse, Le Mans, each of these having with a large clerestory to the inner one of the two, above which rises the great clerestory. This scheme is one of the great feats of Gothic construction. Le Mans again furnished the most highly developed form of chevet planning (fig. 41). this point Mr Street may again be cited." It was in the planning of the apse, with its surrounding aisles and chapels, that all their ingenuity and science displayed. A simple apse is easy enough of construction, but directly it is surrounded by an aisle or aisles, with chapels again beyond them, the difficulties are great. The bays of the circular aisle, instead of being square, are very much wider on one side than the other, and it is most difficult to fit the vaulting to the unequal space. In order to get over this, various plans were tried. At Notre Dame, Paris, the vaulting bays were all triangular on plan, so that the circle as on the inside. the points of support might be twice as many on the outside line of But this was rather an unsightly contrivance, and was not often repeated, though at Bourges there is something of the same sort. At Le Mans the aisle vaulting bays are alternately triangular and square; and this is, perhaps, the best the lines of the vault are twisted or distorted in the slightest degree. arrangement of all, as the latter are true and square, and none of The arrangement of the chapels round the apse was equally varied. Usually they are too crowded in effect; and, perhaps, the most beautiful plan is that of Rouen cathedral, where there are only three chapels with unoccupied bays between, affording much greater relief and variety of lighting than the commoner plan which provided a chapel to every bay. The planning and design of the chevet is the great glory of the French medieval school. When the same thing was attempted, as at Westminster, or by the Germans at Cologne, it was evidently a copy, and usually an inferior copy, of French work. No English works led up to Westminster Abbey, and no German works to the cathedral at Cologne."

FIG. 40.-Plan of Cathedral at Amiens.