Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/275

 1868.] The Origin of the Pointed or Gothic Style. 231 cates another feature of sacred Gothic architecture — namely: the open arched side aisles — as it has two open semi- circular arcades, one above another, springing from a circular ground plan ; the arches of the first story one thrown, without sensible division, from three pairs of piers, on as many sides, and, intermediately, from pedestaled and capitaled pillars, in two groups of three each, and two others of two each, all the piers and pillars being about the same distance apart ; and the arches of that in the second tier being in eight pairs, the supports — alternate plain piers and capitaled pillars — rising di- rectly from the intermediate string moulding, without pedestals ; the whole surmounted by a third, surface tier, struck from simple pilaster piers, rising from a string course, the arches being also semi-circular and their curved lines melting imperceptibly into the vertical ones of the piers, the whole entirely without ornament. Here, it will be observed, were circumscribing walks, which only needed straightening to be- come Gothic aisles. A little later, the pointed arch is found in the Baptistery of St. John, at Pisa, erected, according to Vasari, in A. D. 1060; but Delia Yalle says, in A. D. 1152. This single edifice furnishes the types of the Norman-Gothic semi-cir- cular doorway and simple — that is, not interlaced — surface pillared arcade ; twin semi-circular arches upon pillars, stilted, canopied by cusped trefoil arches, fin- ished with acute, crocketed gablets hav- ing statue finials — the whole forming a second-story, open arcade, admitting two men abreast ; and, therefore, although on the outside, containing the conception of the cloister. Over this arcade is a course of deeply recessed semi-circular windows with drip-stones, very Norman-like in appearance, with immediately above each a moulded cir- cle, containing a quatre-foil within an encompassing lancet gablet, each ter- minated by a statue,* and ornamented with mouldings continuous with a hori- zontal string-course, interrupted only by themselves, which crosses angle- advanced buttresses, separating the win- dows corresponding to every three of the arcade pillars below, so that the two sets of gablets correspond as three of the upper to every four of the lower. Above the string-course the buttresses terminate in turrets with fretted or in- terlaced cusped gablets and finials. The body of the baptistery is separated from the semi-globular dome covering it, bj r a continuous moulding composed of Gre- cian pediment angles, whose apices are immediately behind those of the lancet gablets. In the dome itself, just above the eaves, are a number of trefoil aper- tures, or windows, each covered by a pillared, cusped and pinnacled canopy. Between the canopies are crocketed ribs, which unite at the summit of the dome. Every three canopies correspond to every four lancet gablets. In this one pile, then, whilst we do not obtain the pointed arch, we have the plain cusped archlet and almost every other main feature known in later erections, as Gothic of different modes, yet exhibited in such a way as to show their close relationship tc, and immediate deriva- tion from the debased Roman; just as, in another region, the Byzantine gradu- ally grew up from the same source. We come now to an important object in this inquiry, the Church of the Abbey of Clugny, in France, re-erected upon the same spot once or twice, but not rebuilt subsequent to A. D. 109:]; and not only in existence, but well preserved, down to the days of the French Revolu- tion, during which its materials were sold, for a trifling sum, to General San- taire, who had destroyed the west front in 1801, and most likely demolished the whole of the fine old building great Gothic structures, reappear with a multuudinously magnificent develop nent in the Cathedral of Milan.
 * These statues, not particularly noticeable in the other