Collection of Architectural Ornaments of the Middle Ages in the Byzantine and Gothic styles. By Charles Heideloff, Architect, and Professor of the Polytechnic School of Nuremberg, Germany. With 64 Plates. London, Hering and Remington, 1844. 4to.
This is a valuable work, deserving to be better known, and the English translation of the letter-press, which now accompanies the plates, will greatly facilitate this object. It is desirable that English architects should make themselves acquainted with the foreign varieties of Gothic architecture, although it is seldom to be wished that they should imitate them: to architectural amateurs the comparison is so extremely interesting, that there is little fear of their neglecting any opportunities for investigating it. The work consists of a series of examples of capitals and other details of Byzantine and German architecture, corresponding to our Norman and Gothic, carefully drawn and well engraved at Nuremberg, where it was originally published in eight parts: the chief objection to the work, in its present form, is that this arrangement is still adhered to, instead of a chronological or systematic one of some kind, which would be much more convenient: the continual jump from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, and back again, is rather puzzling, especially for students.
The subject which this work naturally brings before the mind of an English antiquary or amateur of Gothic Architecture, is the comparative chronology of this style in England and in Germany; and here he will find on commencing, the same stumbling-block as in most other foreign works on the subject; the dates assigned to particular specimens are very inconsistent and unsatisfactory: in general, though by no means always, they assign dates about a century earlier than we should affix to similar buildings in England, after making allowance for the variation of style, or rather of the ornament and mode of working in each successive style, which might naturally be expected between one country and another; the same in kind, only greater in degree, as the provincialism which is so strongly marked between the different parts of the same country. Whether these authors are right in assuming this priority of date, may fairly admit of question, and it will generally be observed that those amongst them who have most carefully investigated the subject, have been the most ready to abandon the claim as untenable, and to acquiesce in the chronology adopted by the English authorities since the time of Rickman, as the most consistent with reason, and with ascertained facts: for instance, M. De Lassaulx in Germany, and M. De Caumont in France, in their recent works have adopted the English chronology, or have arrived at the same results.
So far as the work before us affords evidence, it is remarkable that in almost every instance in which an ascertained date is mentioned, it agrees with the received English chronology. For instance, the chapel of the Klostre Heilbronn, founded in 1135, (I. 4; and VII. 3, 4.); Walderich's chapel at Murrhard, the work of Abbot Herbot in 1180, (III. 1—3: and
