Page:Charles Moore--Development and Character of Gothic Architecture.djvu/203

Rh and spires in Germany there is no need of prolonged remark. The west façade retains, for the most part, its Romanesque features until after the middle of the thirteenth century, and the changes that were afterward introduced did not, save in a few exceptional cases like that of the façade of Cologne, result in anything that can be properly called Gothic design. One of the best and grandest early pointed west ends is that of the Cathedral of Limburg on the Lahn. It consists of a central compartment corresponding to the nave, flanked by square towers which terminate the aisles. The central compartment is divided into three stories, exclusive of the gable, which correspond with the internal divisions. It is a perfectly logical as well as a picturesque façade, but, notwithstanding the pointed arches that are mixed with the round ones in its openings, it has no real Gothic character. In St. Elizabeth of Marburg the same general scheme assumes a more Gothic expression by the addition of strongly-marked buttresses, pointed openings with tracery, and tall stone spires.

In the Cathedral of Strasburg the west façade has in its horizontal divisions no correspondence whatever with the building of which it is the front. It is, for the most part, a false screen, though, in so far as concerns the ground-plan, the central compartment and the towers are the true terminations of the nave and aisles respectively. Of the three stories of the central-compartment the uppermost one rises from a level above the apex of the timber roof of the nave.

The west end of the Cathedral of Cologne is of fourteenth century design, and most of it is of even much later construction—the south tower, which was completed only as high as the bell story in 1437, having been, at that time, its most advanced portion. Though for the most part logical enough in general arrangement, the hard rectilinear character of its details is in striking contrast to the subtle beauty of the early French art, to which it owes every good quality that it possesses.

The east end in the German pointed style is usually apsidal, either a semicircle or a polygon, in imitation, more or less direct, of the French chevet, as at St. Elizabeth of Marburg and Cologne. A curious earlier form is that of