FINE ARTS (GOTHIC)
671
FINE ARTS (BYZANTINE)
of windows are peculiarities of English Gothic. Moreover, some of the churches have timber-ceilings instead of stone-vaults. Another innovation is called stellar vaulting, when the ribs are so numerous and so arranged as to form a star.
It is said that the towers of Chartres, the nave of Amiens, the choir of Beauvais and the doors of Rheims would make a perfect building.
Gothic sculptures are at their best in France, where unity of style is essential. Not only are the sculptures plastic histories, but the manner of handling the figures corresponds with the adjacent lines, angles and curves of the building on which they are placed. Thus the realistic gives place to the harmonic. The lines on the male figures are often so elongated, in order to express dignity and to harmonize with the surrounding, as to lose in beauty when judged as a single work of art; but, as only a unit in the whole building and seen from a little distance, the perfection of taste displayed is obvious.
The typical motive in English and German decoration is the leaf-form. This grew from the trefoil or three-lobed grape-leaf (emblem of Christ) to naturalistic copies of oak, maple, lettuce, carrot-leaves and fruit. Leaves in flame-shapes to correspond with the flamboyant style in building were found on English structures, and nothing could be more charming than the foliage carved in the stone of Strassburg.
Gothic design prevails in all European wood-carving as well as in the productions of metal-workers. Grotesque sculpture, as expressed in the gargoyles (rain-spouts) of cathedrals and in freakish heads of men and beasts, as illustrated in the numbers that fairly ripple over the walls of Rheims, are to be taken seriously when their symbolic meaning is understood, for they are supposed to represent the various forms adopted by the Satanic horde when expelled from the sacred precinct by the heavenly host. See Cathedral Cities of France by H. M. Marshall; The Cathedrals of England by F. F. Bumpus; Gothic Architecture by Francis Bond; and Great Cathedrals by E. A. Brown.
BYZANTINE ART
Architecture, Sculpture and Painting. Byzantine architecture which is sometimes called eastern Romanesque, like the western Romanesque was a further development of the older Roman style. The geographical position of Byzantium, being the same as that of the modern city of Constantinople, made commercial communication with the east both natural and easy, and this was the means of bringing the art and culture of the orient to the notice of the western world and the reason that we find in Byzantine architecture the fusi©a
of the structural and decorative character* istics of both Rome and Asia Minor and the far east. From Rome the Byzantines borrowed the use of heavy buttressing, either on the inside or the outside of buildings, the use of monolithic columns and the incrustation of walls and piers with panels of marble and rich decoration of mosaic. From the east they obtained the idea of their vaulting and the style and treatment of their design.
The most characteristic feature of Byzantine building is the prevalent use of the dome and the construction of the dome on what are known as pendentives, which made it possible to surmount a building having a square ground plan, with a circular dome.
This may be more easily understood, if we can imagine a large hemisphere resting on four piers or vertical supports, then supposing that four vertical sections, in the same plane with the sides of the square made by the four piers, are cut in the hemisphere, leaving four semicircular arches, one spanning each pair of piers. Then we may imagine a horizontal section cut from the top of the hemisphere, leaving triangular sections of a sphere between the four arches and the horizontal section, which are the pendentives. Sometimes a hemispherical dome rested directly upon this horizontal opening but in later buildings a cylindric crown was built around it, in which windows were made, and on this crown was placed the final dome.
Byzantine buildings were almost exclusively ecclesiastical in character, and made use of a wide variety of ground-plan, such as the circular, octagonal, Greek cross and oblong.
The exterior of the buildings was severely plain, having only bands of a lighter or darker marble to mark the stories of the structure, but the interiors were very rich in colored decoration in painting and mosaic as well as in sculptured design. The painted decoration was used in the smaller buildings, while in the larger ones is found most gorgeous embellishment of mosaic in the richest of color and gold, in which were depicted biblical scenes, saints and symbolic figures. Set patterns, monograms, crosses and other symbolic geometric forms were also wrought with great beauty. As early as the 5th and 6th centuries the Byzantines had developed a beautiful and individual style of sculptured decoration, which was usually in very low relief and gave a lacelike and charming effect to surfaces. The acanthus and anthe-mion were the most common forms used in carved decoration, but they were treated in a new and individual way.
The greatest monument of Byzantine architecture and one of the masterpieces of building of the world is the Hagia Sophia,
