The variety in the planning of the chevets must be remarked. There might be only one chapel opening from the semicircular ambulatory, as at Langres, Sens, Auxerre, Bayeux and Lausanne. Canterbury cathedral, designed by William of Sens, is perhaps the most perfect example. There were three separated chapels, as at Rouen, St Omer, Semur, &c., or there might be five filling the whole space, which became the general later scheme. Chartres furnishes an intermediate plan, in having the alternate chapels much shallower than the others. The chapels might be circular or polygonal or alternately square and round. Of the last the cathedral of Toledo is a wonderful example. The plan with parallel apses also continued in use, as at the beautiful abbey church at Dijon and St Urbain at Troyes. Apsidal transepts were built at Noyon, Soissons and Valenciennes.
Another stage of development was reached with the building of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, begun in 1244. With this work the Gothic system reached complete maturity. Here for the first time large traceried windows seem to have been perfected, and, moreover, the structure was so organized into a series of wide window spaces, only divided by strong far-projecting buttress piers, that the stained glass ideal found full expression and the building became a lantern for its display.
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| Fig. 41.—Cathedral of Le Mans. East end and Chevet. |
During the next half-century the influence of the Sainte Chapelle is to be traced everywhere, and its system of construction was developed to the furthest possible point in St Urbain at Troyes, begun in 1260. Exploration of the Gothic theory of structure could be carried no further. From this point the style turned in on itself, becoming more unreasonably intricate, artificial and mannerized. One of the finest examples of the style of the early 14th century is the eastern limb of St Ouen, Rouen; Troyes cathedral is also an important example of later work. As Mr Street says: “Later French architecture ran a very similar course to that in England. The 13th century was that in which it was seen at its best. In the 14th the same sort of change took place as elsewhere; and art was beautiful, but it was too much an evidence of skilfulness and adroitness. It was harder and colder also than English work of the same age; and when it fell, it did so before the inroads of a taste for what has been called Flamboyant architecture,—a gay and meretricious style which trusted to ornament for all its effect, and, in spite of many beauties, had none of the sturdy magnificence of much of our English Perpendicular style.”
M. Enlart has recently accepted the view that the germs of flamboyancy in the later French Gothic are to be found in the flowing curvilinear forms of early 14th-century work in England.
Up to the middle of the 16th century, magnificent works in the national style were still being executed. St Vulfran at Abbeville, St Maclou in Rouen, and the façade of the cathedral of Rouen, may be mentioned; some of the last works were the immense transepts of Beauvais cathedral and the façade of Tours.
We have necessarily spoken most of churches, but the palaces, castles and civic buildings form another great class hardly less interesting. The castles of Coucy and Château Gaillard may rival any cathedral. Among civic buildings may be mentioned the palais de justice at Rouen and the hôtel de ville at Compiègne, both late but beautiful and impressive types. The royal palace of Paris is now represented by the Sainte Chapelle, but accounts of its splendid hall and general arrangements have been preserved. At Poitiers is still extant the hall of the palace of the counts of Poitou; at Laon the episcopal palace is almost entire; there are considerable remains of the bishops’ palaces of Beauvais, Evreux, Rouen, Reims: and the pope’s palace at Avignon must also be mentioned in this connexion. The most perfect existing great houses of the middle ages are those of Jacques Coeur at Bourges and of the abbot of Cluny in Paris. A large number of fine houses on a small scale, dating from the 12th and 13th centuries, are still preserved at Beauvais, Auxerre, Chartres, Cordes, &c. The house of the musicians at Reims, c. 1280, is adorned by a series of seated life-sized figures playing instruments, in sculpture of a very high order. A good and concise account of the smaller houses in France is given in Hudson Turner’s Some Account of Domestic Architecture, and in C. Enlart’s Manuel d’archéologie, the best and most recent survey of the whole field of medieval antiquities in France. (W. R. L.)
Romanesque and Gothic Architecture in Spain
What strikes the architectural student most forcibly in Spain is the concurrent existence of two schools of art during the best part of the middle ages. The Moors invaded Spain in 711, and were not finally expelled from Granada until 1492. During the whole of this period they were engaged, with more or less success, in contests for superiority with the Christian natives. In those portions of the country which they held longest, and with the firmest hand, they enforced their own customs and taste in art almost to the exclusion of all other work. Where their rule was not permanent their artistic influence was still felt, and even beyond what were ever the boundaries of their dominion, there are still to be seen in Gothic buildings some traces of acquaintance with Arabic art not seen elsewhere in Europe, with the exception, perhaps, of the southern part of the Italian peninsula, and there differing much in its development. The mosque of Cordova in the 9th century, the Alcazar and Giralda at Seville in the 13th, the Court of Lions in the Alhambra in the 14th, several houses in Toledo in the 15th century, are examples of what the Moors were building during the period of the middle ages in which the best Gothic buildings were being erected. Some portions of Spain were never conquered by the Moors. These were the greater part of Aragon, Navarre, Asturias, Biscay and the northern portion of Galicia. Toledo was retaken by the Christians in 1085, Tarragona in 1089, Saragossa in 1118, Lerida in 1149, Valencia in 1238 and Seville in 1248. In the districts occupied by the Moors Gothic architecture had no natural growth, whilst even in those which were not held by them the arts of war were of necessity so much more thought of than those of peace, that the services of foreign architects were made use of to an extent unequalled in any other part of Europe.
