Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/421

Rh Bk. VIII. Ch. Vlir. Tllli POINTED ARCH 405 Their general ai-rangement consists of small but elegant pillars of Corinthian design, in pairs, supporting pointed arches of great beauty of form. In many respects this is a more beautiful mode of producing a cloistered arcade than the series of unglazed windows universally adopted in the North. The Southern method pre-supposes a wooden or at most a tunnel-vaulted roof, as at Aries, whereas all our best examples have intersecting vaults of great beauty, which, indeed, is the excuse for the windowed arrangement assumed by them. An intermediate course, like that adopted at Zurich (Woodcut No. 500), would perhaps best reconcile the difficulty ; but this was only used during the period of transition from one style to the other. The effect, however, of the cloister at Monreale, with the fountain in one of its divisions, and a certain air of Eastern elegance and richness pervad- ing the whole, is not surpassed by any of the examples on the Continent of its own size, though its dimensions do not allow it to compete with some of the larger examples of France, and especially of Spain. As the employment of the pointed arch so early in Sicily has been much quoted in the controversy regarding the invention of that feature, it may be convenient to recapitulate here what has already been said on that subject — this being the last occasion on which it will be requisite to refer to it in the course of this work. We have already seen that the pointed arch was used in the South of France — at Vaison, for instance — at least as early as the 10th cen- tury, but only as a vaulting expedient. During the 11th it was cur- rently used in the South, and as far north as Burgundy ; and in the 12th it was boldly adopted in the North as a vaulting, constructive, and decorative featui'e, giving rise to the invention of a totally new style of architectural art. It is by no means imjwssible that the pointed arch was used by the Greek or Pelasgic colonists about Marseilles at a far earlier date, but this can only have been in arches or domes constructed hori- zontally. These may have suggested its use in radiating vaults, but can hardly be said to have influenced its adoption. Had it not been for the constructive advantages of pointed arches, the Roman circular form would certainly have retained its sway. It is possible, however, that the northern Franks would never have adopted it so completely as they did had they not become familiar with it either in Sicily or the East. When once they had so taken it up, they made it their own by employing it only as a modification of the round-arched forms previously introduced and perfected. In Sicily the case is different ; the pointed arch there never was either a vaulting or constructive expedient — it was simply a mode of eking out, by its own taller form and by stilting, the limited height of the Roman pillars, Avhicli they found and used so freely. It is the same description of arch as that used in the construction of the mosque