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 GOTHIC

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GOTHIC

appeared sporadically in some of the larger churches at the end of the twelfth century, such as Worms, Mainz, and Bamberg, but the lateral arches are not stilted, and so far as proportion, design, exterior treatment and detail are concerned, these churches are strictly of the Jihenish Romanesque type, as are indeed, (uitwanlly, the internally more Gothic Magde- burg and Limburg. St. Gereon, Cologne, and the Liebfrauenkirche, Trier, the first completed in 1227, the second begun in the same year, are churches of novel plan, each apparently having resulted from an effort to turn a French chevet into a church by repeat- ing its design, so producing a plan approximating a circle, and harking back in an indeterminate sort of way to the polygonal, domed churches of Charle- magne; in both cases French schemes and forms have been used rather superficially and with little apprecia- tion. Cologne remains, in spite of these examples, the first church in Germany that is strictly Gothic in its idea and its setting out, but even here its detail and ornament are German rather than French. It had a considerable influence on the superficial development of style, and towards the end of the century such works as St. Elizabeth, Marburg, and the cathedrals of Strasburg and Freiburg show the spreading of a style that had come too late to reach any very com- plete fruition. Until the end of the Middle Ages, when curious fantasies in design and decoration gave to Cicrman Gothic a certain imquestioned individual- ity, the contributions to the development of this phase of art were not notable ; the most conspicuous is the Hnllenhau scheme which consists in raising one or more aisles on either side of the nave to an equal height therewith, or rather in building a great hall roofed with level vaulting supported on rows of slender shafts dividing it into aisles. Liibeck has five of these aisles, others no less than seven. The Hall- enbau church, whatever its width, was usually covered by one enormous roof, and the result, both internally and externally, is as far as possible from the Gothic idea of a logical assemblage of parts, each bearing a just and lieautiful proportion to the others, all interrelated and fonninj; a highly articulated organism, the exte- rior of which announced explicitly every structural form of plan and ordonance. The "open-work" spire, such as that of Freiburg, is a German develop- ment of a Flamboyant idea, which had much ssthetic- ally to commend it, its lacelike surfaces being often treated with great effectiveness.

Flemish Gothic is distinctly a sub-school of that of France rather than of Germany. The nave of Tour- nai, built in 1060 is still Rhenish Romanesque, though pointed arches and certain Burgundian qualities are creeping in ; its proportions, however, partake of the finer feeling of the I'Vanks, even though its general conception is Rhenish. During the first half of the thirteenth century such thoroughly strong and re- fined examples of true Gothic as St. Martin, Ypres, St. Bavon and St. Michael, Ghent, appear, widely divided in their quality from the halting efforts of Germany proper. The civic work of Flanders is per- haps its most distinctively national creation, and the Clotli Hall, Ypres, with the great group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century town halls — Bruges, Brussels, Louvain, ( Hidenarde, Alost, and Ghent — while exces- sive in their flamboyant tletail, yet retain the essential elements of fine composition and vigorous design.

In Italy the introduction of Gothic forms was as long delayed as in Germany, while, so far as native work is concerned, the fundamental principles of Gothic construction were never accepted at all. It was essentially a northern art, and in Italy neither the mental dispusition of the pciiplc nor the spiritN[Ll ami tempi mil conditions put a premium on ideas in them- selves racially foreign. Nevertheless, once introduced, they produced in many cases very l)eautiful results, particularly in decoration and design, and Italian

Gothic certainly contributes valuable elements to the total of medieval art. During the eleventh century one school after another had come into existence in almost every part of Italy, all based more or less on some local modification of the primitive basilican idea, yet varying in different directions as the peculiar influences of each section might direct. In Torcello, Murano, and Venice these were naturally Byzantine, more or less modified by the variations at Ravenna. In Sicily, Byzantine influence was mingled with strains from Mohammedan sources and with a strong influence brought in by King Roger and his Norman followers. Pisa and Florence worked on their own lines with some slight Lombardic admixture, while those portions of the peninsula imder Lombard con- trol developed their vital and inspiring style from the

persisting( 'arlovingian tradition. Theabstract bciuty of much iif tliis Italian jiroduct of the eleventh century is very pronounced, St. Mark's at Venice, San Miiiiato at Florence, Cefalu, Monreale, and the Capella Pala- tina in Sicily; Troja, Toscanella, San Michele at Pavia, San Zeno at Verona — all possess elements of great art, but no one of the styles indicated by any of these buildings was destined to a final working-out under cultural conditions that made such a result inevitable. Development during the twelfth century was almost wholly local in its extent and decorative in its scope, and it was not imtil the coming of the Cister- cians, with their Gothic of Burgimdy, at the opening of the thirteenth century, that the incipient or reminiscent local modes were extinguished, and an attempt made at a general unification of style.

Apparently the Gothic influence had come too late. The era when architecture was to be the favourite mode for the artistic voicing of a civilization was, at least in the South, nearly at an end; painting and sculpture were to take its place, and therefore the Gothic architecture of Italy was lio remain both raci- ally alien and in its nature episodical. In the former class are those churches the designs of which were apparently iinporl<'(l almost bodily from Burgundy by the ( "istrriian nioTiks, such as Fo.ssanova, Casmari, and San (!alt;aii(i, all wiirks of great beauty of form and [iroportinn, all v.aultcd in stone, the two former having fully di-% ell >iied rib vaults with stilti'd lateral arches in good (iolliic furni, though in nunc is the buttress sys-