Page:Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 1.djvu/114

 BLIND ARCADE. Word by which one indicates a series of arcades of a small dimension, which are rather intended to decorate the parts, smooth of the walls under the supports of the windows or the cornices, rather than to answer a need for construction. One meets in certain buildings of the Lower Empire of the blind lines of arcades which have of another goal only to decorate naked walls. This reason for decoration appears particularly allowed and to be preserved by the architects of the carolingian time, and it persists for the periods Romance and ogival, in all the provinces of France. It is wise to observe however that the use of the blind arcades is more or less well justified in the Romance buildings; some regions, such as Normandy for example, misused the blind arcade in certain monuments of the XIth century, too not knowing how to decorate the frontages with the large churches, the architects superimposed blind stages of blind arcades of the base to the ridge. It is particularly in the Norman buildings built in England, that this abuse is felt; the frontage of the church of Peterborough in is an example. Nothing is more monotonous than this superposition of equal blind arcades like heights and widths, of which one includes/understands neither the utility like system of construction, nor the goal like decoration. In France the feeling of the proportions, relationships of the vacuums with the full ones, borer in architecture since it is released from cruelty. As of the XIth century these important details of the decoration of masonry, such as the blind arcades, are contained in right terminals, hold their place well, do not appear to be as in England or Italy, on the frontage of the cathedral of Pisa for example, of platings of a sterile invention. We will divide the blind arcades: 1. "blind arcades on the ground floor", 2. "crowning blind arcades";' 3. "blind arcades for ornament".