Page:The Building News and Engineering Journal, Volume 22, 1872.djvu/77

 © Jax. 26, 1872. THE BUILDING NEWS. 61 THE BUILDING NEWS. — LONDON, FRIDAY, JANUARY 26, 1872. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS IN THE KENSINGTON LIBRARY.—I. WE published a few weeks since a brief descriptive list of some of the most interesting books in the Art Library which relate to French and German Gothic. It now remains for us to say something of those which illustrate the architecture of other countries, premising, as before, that under the term ‘ Gothic,” Romanesqne is also included. 3. English Gothic—The works in this division are so much more generally known than those in any of the others that it is need- less to describe them at great length. The literature of our national style is voluminous, and yet incomplete. There has been a general skimming of the surface, but very little of that deep cultivation which is essential to success. It is not easy to find a noticeable building that has been left alone, but it is more difficult still to find one that has been perfectly analysed and represented. Enough has been done to take off the freshness of the subject, to lessen its interest, and render it tame, flat, and unattractive. Little has been accomplished towards a thorough display of our architectural treasures. No scientific investigation, like that in M. Viollet le Duc’s Dictionary, has eyer been made of English art; no monograph, like Lassus’ Monograph of Chartres, exists of any English cathedral ; no national record, like the ‘‘ Archives de la Commission de Monuments Historiques,” preserves the form and the history of our most celebrated remains. ‘There are plenty of pretty views of village churches and baronial halls ; there are collections of detail for embryo architects to crib from; but complete, accurate, and trustworthy studies of design and construction are far from com- mon. Mr. Sharpe’s ‘‘ Architectural Parallels ” are an exception ; so are Bowman and Crow- ther’s ‘‘ Churches of the Middle Ages ;” so again is Hudson, Turner, and Parker's ‘Domestic Architecture.” The misfortune of the first-named work is that it was pub- lished too soon; the drawing is hard and wiry, the views are too mechanical and too shadowless to suggest anything like the actual effect, and the sculptured detail has a cast- iron rigidity about it that is altogether repul- sive. The book, in short, is one that is rather to be respected than loved. It contains a quantity of sound and careful work, displayed in a way as unattractive as could well be devised. The forms and proportions and measurements are right enough, no doubt, but the life is gone. To any one who knows the* buildings, the book is valuable ; but it is no substitute, not eyen a partial one, for an actual acquaintance with them. The fault, as we have said, belongs very much to the period. Twenty years ago Mr. Ruskin had not insisted on the absurdity of outline views, nor had the French artists, far as they are beyond us now, first shown us how to render eleyations and sections both charming and correct. Inspite of this weakness, however, Mr. Sharpe’s book still stands alone ; subsequent works have surpassed it in beauty of drawing, but none in this country have equalled it in extent, combined with thoroughness. The “Churches of the Middle Ages” is as good, or better, as far as it goes, but its range is much narrower. Seven or eight parish churches in tolerable preservation are much more quickly dealt with than a dozen abbeys, for the most part in ruins. Still, whether more or less easy of execution, the book is a valuable one, and we only wish that fifty more such examples which we could name had been as welland asthoroughly explained. Brandon's “Parish Churches ” is useful as a sort of me- morandum-book, but it has, of course, no claim to come into comparison with that last mentioned. It contains slight sketches and ground plans, neither of them very wells engraved, of a large number of village churches, and gives just enough idea of them to let one decide which are and which are not specially worth going to see. Brandon’s ‘“ Analysis of Gothic Architecture” is, we suppose, known to everybody; and small blame is due to its author if it has been one of the most misused productions which, in England at least, ever saw the light. It was practical and instructive up to a certain point, but the very means by which these qualities were attained made it a perfect treasure to those architects who, unlike Mr. Street, might truly boast that every detail of theirs is a literal copy from some old example. There are legends, whether true or false we cannot say, respecting orthodox members of the Denisonian clique, who kept the book in loose sheets, and issued a door, or a window, ora buttress to their builder as he required it. Be this as it may, there a is singular coincidence between the detailsin the ‘‘ Analysis” and those in ‘‘ regulation churches” all over the country. Wickes’s ‘‘ Towers and Spires” has an equally familiar name. Supplemented by geometrical drawings, it would form a valuable record of our national tastes in the department it relates to ; but though the views do not pre- sent many glaring inaccuracies, we doubt whether they would stand so severe a test. Johnson’s ‘‘Old English Architecture” has some sketchy but interesting illustrations ; while many works exist which deal with the ecclesiastical remains of particular counties. The papers of the different archeological societies also contain much valuable and in- teresting matter on local antiquities. Our cathedrals yet remain to be treated as they deserve. Some half century ago, it is true, more than one of them was illustrated on an imposing scale, but the wretched drawing of Gothic detail which then prevailed renders these productions worse than worthless. Murray’s ‘‘ dandbooks ” are valuable, but the views, though well executed, are small. Britton’s ‘‘ Cathedrals” belong, if not to the dark age, at least only to the first dawn of artistic drawing ; while 'Trinkle’s book on the same subject is equally faulty on this point, and far more desultory in its treatment. 4. Italian Gothic—Mr. Street’s ‘“ Brick and Marble Architecture ” is too well known to need description. It is of course a book of sketches and suggestions, not of plans and geometrical drawings. For the latter, as re- gards North Italy, we do not know anysingle book to recommend. Darteni’s ‘* Etude de VArchitecture Lombardo-Byzantino,” relates to the earliest periods of the round-arched style, and though the number of examples it treats of is so small, they are very well and thoroughly illustrated. Hubsch’s ‘“ Early Christian Churches,” while its range is by no means confined to Italy, yet deals with a great number of the oldest ecclesiastical buildings there, and illustrates them carefully and intelligibly. It is altogether a very in- teresting work, though itis chiefly concerned, not with details, but with general types of planning and arrangement. Medieval work in South Italy is well illustrated by Schulz, in animmense folio volume of plates, explained by several of text interspersed by woodcuts. There is a vast difference between the build- ings in the North and South of the Peninsula, and though the former, as they deserve to be, are more visited and better known, the latter, from their very singularity and quaint- ness, may suggest ideas which would never be inspired by examples of a regular type. Itis not always the most perfect things which are the most instructive. Their faultless beauty only soothes the mind to repose, while the angularities and discords of a half-formed style set it thinking how to mend them. Here, in the churches illustrated by Schulz, we see two styles contending for the mastery ; sometimes, it is true, allied, and working to- gether in harmony and peace, but more often fronting eachother, separate and antagonistic, They are the products of Europe and of Asia, of Christianity and Mahometanism. ‘The former, Romanesque or Gothic, shows itself the stronger: it subdues the main forms and shapes to its own will, and fashions the con- structive details ; but every here and there, in woodwork, in sculpture, and cast metal work, which last, by the way, abounds, its Saracenic rival creeps out and moulds this or that feature in a way unheard of elsewhere. Not unfrequently, this mixed detail is very beautiful, while the purely Romanesque carving of the district is almost always so. Much of it bears a strongly-marked Greek character, combining, in a way that can hardly be imagined from a _ description, ancient refinement with Medieval vigour. Further on, in Sicily, there is of course plenty of purely Saracenic architecture. Some of it, coarsely drawn and coloured, will be found in Gally Knight’s work on the island. Out- line plansand sections of the Palatine Chapel at Palermo, and of some other examples, may be found in the ‘‘ Antichita della Sicilia,” by the Duke of Serradifaleo, Knight’s -‘ Archi- tecture of Italy” is better executed than the companion volume just referred to. It con- tains effective, if not very accurate, views of the principal churches and cathedrals, but few plans, and no sections. One volume of Chapuy’s ‘Moyen Age Monumentale” is also devoted to the same series of buildings, some of the plates being apparently copied from Knight. A small but neatly-executed work, confined to a single town, is Fleury’s ‘« Ndifices de Pisa ;” its elevations are in outline, and there is litttle construction shewn; but it contains a few plans, not readily, if at all, to be met with elsewhere. Of secular Medizval buildings in Italy a number may be seen in Verdier and Cattois’ ‘« Architecture Civile et Domestique.” This, however, gives no Venetian ones, which may be conveniently studied from photographs, using Mr, Ruskin’s works as a commentary and explanation of them. 5. Spanish Gothic. — With still better reason than in the last paragraph, we must put Mr. Street’s name first in this one. Be- fore his ‘‘ Account of Gothic Architecture in Spain ” appeared, Villa Amil’s ‘‘ L’Espagne Artistique et Monumentale ” was perhaps the best known book on the subject. It is a striking and showy production, in three folio volumes, much upon a level with Gally Knight for accuracy, and better suited, therefore, to the tastes of the amateur than of the archi- tect. It has no plans or scale drawings of any kind, and though many of the buildings it relates to are worth studying, even by this imperfect light, it has lost most of the im- portance it had previous to the appearance of Mr. Street’s more trustworthy illustrations. The Kensington library has a fine series of Spanish photographs, both Moorish and Gothic, and these supply a want which we could not but feel on first perusing Mr. Street’s volume. This was, to ascertain what the outsides of these vast wide-span _ and wide-bay churches were like. About their interiors and their plans he gave us ample information, but we were generally at a loss to discover what was made of them on the exterior. These photographs supply an answer, and, on the whole, an unsatisfactory one. ‘They help to prove, what we suspected before, that the interiors are too often the only tolerable parts of the design. Whether from the innate difficulties of the plan, from subsequent patching up in a debased Classic style, or from the attempt to do what Mr. Fergusson blames the Middle Age builders for not having always done—namely, to use the stone groining fora roof as well as a ceiling, the general outlines of the great Spanish churches seem as arule to be un- pleasing. We mentioned, at the beginning of the present article, the beautiful work published by the late Imperial Government of France. A similar, but still more magnifi- cent one, the ‘* Monumentos Arquitectonicos