Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/317

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AND AFTER-GOTHIC STYLES IN GERMANY. 219 extent, expressed by German^ archaeologists. This is espe- cially the case in the work of M. Kallenl^ach, " The German Architecture of the Middle Ages" (Deiitsch-mittelalterliche Baukunst), in which a large collection of buildings is drawn and described. I shall avail myself of M. Kallenbach's assist- ance in illustrating the principles which I point out, and their gradual development; but I shall state in my own manner the principles which, as I conceive, show themselves in the progress and completion, and subsequently in the decline and disintegration, of the Gothic style. I. Principle of Frame-work. — It is impossible, in looking at a tolerably complete Gothic building (as Cologne Cathedral, St. Ouen, King's College Chapel), not to allow that the w^ork is governed and constituted by a leading idea of frame-work. The structure does not consist, or strike the eye as consisting, of masses of wall and roof, lying merely as inert masses, upon vertical columns and walls, which is the idea of Greek archi- tecture, and of Roman and Romanesque as thence derived. In Gothic work, on the contrary, the vertical pillars which support are continued into the arches which are supported, and into the ribs which are the main lines of the roof; and thus an internal frame- work is produced, which is kept together and supported externally by a collection of buttresses, another outward frame- work. This frame-work not only supports, but almost entirely constitutes, the edifice. The blank spaces, such as the spandrels of the pier arches, and the panels of the roof, are comparatively unimportant and subordinate, and even these are often further reduced by subordinate paneling. The frame-work, again, is constituted of several parallel members ; parallel, at least at first, as, for instance, the several shafts of a clustered pier ; but in their continuation some forming the ribs of vaults, some the heads of pier arches or windows. These frames, parallel in their origin, and subordinate in succession to one another, form the principal part of a Gothic edifice ; and to trace the steps by which this idea of a building superseded the older notion of inert masses resting on props, is always a matter of hiterest to the architectural speculator. M. Kallcnbach has noticed in many of his examples the steps of this change. He has marked its successive development at Gelnhausen (xxiii.^), Ratisbon (xxxii.), Naumburg (xxxiii.), ^ The references ai'e to the plates of of each. ^I. K., however, does not appear M. Kallenbach's Deutsch mittclalterliche to think that the formation of the Gothic Baukunst, and to the text at the bottom style was so soon completed. He savs that