CHAPTER IV
POINTED CONSTRUCTION IN GERMANY, ITALY, AND SPAIN
I.— Germany
Pointedforms in architectural design were not adopted in Germany at so early a period as they were in England, nor was their progress so rapid after they began to be employed. In fact, so far as regards structural modifications the pointed arch had little effect here until the fully developed Gothic of France began to be imperfectly copied about the middle of the thirteenth century.
Germany possessed, in the twelfth century, a Romanesque architecture which, especially in the important buildings along the Rhine, was of a very admirable character, and with it the people were apparently content. This architecture was derived from that style of Northern Italy which had been developed under the Lombard influence out of the older round arched styles, and it was hence largely a German art. It was therefore natural that the country should be slow to yield to the influence of the Gothic movement, notwithstanding that this movement was active in its near neighbourhood and among a people with whom it had intimate relations. During the early Gothic development in France the German art of building remained wholly unchanged. Even so important an edifice as the Cathedral of Speyer, the erection of which was contemporaneous with that of the choir of the Cathedral of Paris,[1] was constructed in the almost unmodified Romanesque style. The central
- ↑ The existing Cathedral of Speyer was, according to Forster, begun immediately after a fire which had in 1159 destroyed an earlier edifice.
