Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/507

 Bk. II. Ch. II. AQUITANIA. 475 340. Conques Plan of Church at (From Taylor and Nodier.) Scale 100 ft. to 1 in. choir, both at Toulouse and at Conques, we come upon a more extended and complicated arrangement than we have hitherto met with. It will be recol- lected that the Romanesque apse was a simi)le large niche, or semi-dome ; so we shall find it in the Lombard and German styles when they come to be described, and generally even in the neighboring Proven5al style, and always — when unaltered — in the domical style last described. In the present instance it will be seen that a semi-circular range of columns is substituted for the wall of tl»e apse, an aisle bent round them, and beyond the aisle there are always three, five, or even seven chapels opening into it, which give it a complexity very different from the simple apse of the Roman basilicas and the other styles we have been desci'ibing, and at the same time a perspective and a play of light and shade which are unrivalled in any similar in- vention of the Middle Ages. The apse^ properly speaking, is a solid semi-cylinder, sur- mounted by a semi-dome, but always solid below, though -generally broken by windows above. The chevet on the con- trary is an apse, always en- closed by an open screen of columns on the ground-floor, and opening into an aisle, which again always opens into three or more apsidal chapels. This arrangement IS so peculiarly French that it may properly be charac- terized by the above French word, a name once commonly applied to it, though latterly it has given way to the more classical, but certainly less suitable, term of apse. Its origin, too, is worth inquiring into an "" eems to be capable of easy explanation. 341. Plan of St. Martin at Tours Scale 100 ft. to 1 in.