Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/134

Rh Paris it has gables over its three vast portals; these gables are advanced so as to be even with the outer faces of the buttresses—an arrangement which adds greatly to the depth of the archivolts, and converts the lower portions of the buttresses into doorway jambs. Beneath the arcade of sculptured statues is an elegant open arcaded gallery; while the great open arcade of the top story of Paris gives place, here at Amiens, to two superposed lesser arcades connecting the towers above the cornice. It is sadly to be regretted that the great rose has lost its original tracery—the existing flamboyant tracery wholly disagreeing with the spirit of the rest of the design. In this façade wall-spaces are everywhere in effect suppressed, and the Gothic character is everywhere strongly emphasised. Indeed, this façade, like the interior which it encloses, marks the culmination of Gothic art in its entirely normal condition.

It is hard to speak critically of so marvellous a structure as the façade of the Cathedral of Reims. The period of its foundation (1260) was a time when the vitality and spontaneity of the Gothic movement were, in great measure, spent; and the signs of waning life are not wanting in this monument. It has qualities, however, which almost entitle it to a first place among Gothic façades. In the magnitude of its openings, the attenuation of their dividing shafts, and the general predominance of vertical members, it is more Gothic in expression than any other façade of the thirteenth century in France, and yet its defects are both serious and prominent. Among the most marked of these is the projection of the great portal jambs, with their archivolts, beyond the faces of the buttresses, and the continuation of the splays to the outer faces of the jambs, so that those of the adjoining portals almost meet in a sharp edge. The buttress is thus quite suppressed as a feature in the ground-story, where it is especially important that it should be pronounced. Another unhappy arrangement is that of the pointed arch encompassing the great rose, which gives the rose the effect of an awkwardly managed afterthought. The soaring aspect, which is very marked in this design, is secured not only by great height in proportion to width, and general prominence of upright lines, but also by the artifice of breaking the level courses by gables rising through them, and by the