Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/80

64 64 POIISTED STYLE IN GERMANY. Part IL a contempoary example, commenced in 1283, and finished in 1330. This fine spire is identical in style with the Cologne designs, and perhaps on the whole even better, certainly purer and simpler both in outline and detail, though it is not clear that the richer ornament of Cologne would not be more in accordance with this description of lace-Avork. The total height of the spire at Friburg is 385 ft. from the ground, and is divided into three parts. The lower portion is a square, plain and simple in its details, with bold prominent buttresses, and con- taining a very handsome porch. The second is an octagon of elegant design, with four triangular pinnacles or spirelets at the angles, which break most happily the change of outline, and out of this rises, some- what abruptly, the spire, 155 ft. in height. An English architect would have placed eight bolder pinnacles at its base; a French one Avould have used a gallery, or taken some means to prevent the cone from merely resting on the octagon. This junction between the two is poor and badly managed ; but after all, the question is, whether the open spire is not a mistake, which even the beauty of detail found here cannot altogether redeem. It is not sufiicient to say it is wrong, because a spire is and ought to be a roof, and this is not. It is true a spire was originally a roof, and still retains the place of one, and should consequently suggest the idea; but this is not abso- lutely indispensable ; and if the tower be insufficient to support the apparent weight of a solid spire, or for any such reason, the deviation would be excusable, but such is not the case here, nor at Cologne. Indeed, it seems that the whole is only another exemplification of the ruling idea of the German masons, an excessive love of tours de force, and an inordinate desire to do clever things in stone, which soon led them into all the vagaries of their after Gothic ; here it is comparatively inoffensive, though I still feel convinced that if one- half the openings of the tracery Avere filled up, or only a central trefoil or quatrefoil left open in each division, the effect would be far more pleasing and satisfactory. In the spires that flank the transepts, the open-work is wholly unobjectionable, owing to the smallness of the scale; but in the main and principal feature of the building the case is very different : dignity and majesty are there required ; and the flimsiness, as it might almost be called, of the open work, goes far to destroy this. The nave of this church is a fair specimen of the German Gothic of the age, being contemporary with the spire or perhaps of a little earlier date ; but the Avant of the triforium internally, and the conse- quent heavy mass of plain wall over the pier-arches, give it a poor and weak appearance. The choir, a work of the 15th century, runs into all the extravagance of the later German style, its only merits being its size and lightness.