Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 01.djvu/879

ARCHITECTURE. niedan peoples in the great empire founded by the Arabs in the Seventh Century. Sj'ria, Pales- tine, Persia, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, Asia Jlinor, and other hinds, wrested mainly from the Byzantines, were tilled with monuments of a varied and rich style, Ijased largely on Byzantine and Persian models ada])ted to new purposes and ditl'erent ideals. The luosciues and mausoleums, minarets, khans, hospitals, and bazaars, palaces, oratories, and fountains form a varied group of buildings. The Jloorish School of Sjiain from the time of the mosque of Cordova to the Alhambra (q.v. for illustration) of tiranada; and the Egyptian School of Cairo, from the mosques of Hasan and Talun to that of Kait Bey, are the best known; but the Syrian and Palestinian School, centred at Damascus, and the Persian School, centred at Bagdad and Ispahan, were fully as important — the latter sending out ofi'- shoots as far as distant India and Asia Minor. Tlie development of the dome, the stilted horse- shoe and pointed arches, stalactite vaulting, geo- metrical decoration, particularly in brilliant faience and mosaic — these are characteristics of the Mohammedan schools. T'wy spread coin- eidently with the political conquests of Islam. The Golden Age began in the Tenth Century. Up to that time there had been two types of mosque, both of them with flat wooden ceilings: that founded on the type of the Christian church with a completely inclosed interior, as the mosque at Cordova (q.v.): and that based on the open court surrounded by colonnades like a cloister, the colonnade being deepest on the one side where the sanctuary was placed, as the mosques of Kairwan. Damascus, and Cairo. The famous Aksa Jlosque at .Jerusalem held an intermediate position, while the Dome of the Rock, also at Jerusalem, showed how Byzantine domical buildings were at first sometimes imitated. But in the Eleventh Century the final fixed types had been reached. The court-plan and pointed arch were supreme: the geometrical style of orna- ment was complete with its bewildering tracery, and the dome had triuniplied over the flat ceiling. When the Mongols and Tatars overran Islam they adopted the architecture they found, espe- cially the Persian forms. The latest addition to the artistic heritage was tlirough the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in the Fifteenth Cen- tury, which led to a return in even greater force of the primitive influence of Byzantium.

Romanesque. Meanwhile Europe had enjoyed the architectural revival of the Romanesque period. First Germany and Italy, then France, and finally England arid Spain had felt the new artistic currents. There were no national styles, far less was there any unity throughout Europe. Each province had special characteristics. In parts of Italy, such as Tuscany and Rome, the iirrangcnunt of the early Cliristian basilica was jireserved almost intact with the added enrich- ment of marble and mosaic incrustations and new architectural details. It was the same in most of Germany and northern France until the Twelfth Century. Some sections, as Venice and Sicily, were even strongly affected by Byzantine art. " But the most fertile novelty of the age was the development of the vault, which found ex- pression particularly in central and southern France and northern Italy. The dome (Peri- gord), the tunnel vault (Provence, Burgundy, Spain, etc.), and the groin or cross- vault (Lom- bardy) were all successfully u.sed to cover churches of the basilical type. The future of arcliitecture lay in this development. Gradually the ribbed groin-vault gained the supremacy and spread to Germany, Xiu-mandy, and other prov- inces of France, preparing the way for Gothic. The great crypts, the porches, towers, fagades of rich and varied types, a decoration of figured and ornamental sculjiture, made possible by the use of stone in place of brick, were among the promi- nent features. This phase of A'aulted Roman- esque was ricli, heavy, and impi'essive. It was particularly the style of the monastic orders. Gothic. Out of it there gradually grew, in the course of the Twelfth Centurj-, in the north of France, the Gothic architecture (q.v. for illustra- tion), the perfect embodiment of vaulted construc- tive architecture, formed of three main elements: a ribbed groin-vault, receiving all superincumbent weight; piers, receiving their vertical thrust; and flj'ing buttresses, receiving their diagonal thrust. This skeleton, when perfected, freed architecture from the tliraldom of heavy walls; hence the development of large windows with their tracery and stained glass, the slender piers, the lofty vaults. The new style was hailed everywhere and spread from the region of Paris gradually over Europe, being best understood in Spain and England, less so in Germany, and least of all in Italy. It coincided with the bloom of all the other arts, which remained the handmaids of architecture, contributing to the rich harmony of the style. For the first time since Roman days, a single style prevailed everywhere, break- ing through local schools and national peculiar- ities. Gothic was essentially of one type and allowed little fur individual idiosyncrasies. The typical catliedrals are those of Paris, Amiens (q.v. for illustration), Rheinis, and Strassburg, having great choirs with radiating chapels and aisles, a transept with facades, a nave with two or four aisles, a western facade in three sections with two flanking towers. Single towers -in the centre, as at Ulm; square screen facades, as at Peterboi'ough; plain square-ending apses, as often in England; all such features are varia- tions from the orthodox type. So are the many cases, especially in Italy, when wooden roofs in place of ribbed vaults are used with Gothic forms, but in violation of Gothic principles. The development of t4othic was progressive. The French churches of the Twelfth Century retained many Romanesque forms and heavyproportions— as at Sens, Senlis, Noyon, and Laon. Larger win- dows and tracery, slender proportions, and height of vaulting ciime with the Golden Age of the Thirteenth Century, with Notre Dame in Paris, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens, and Saint Denis. The attenuated geometric style reigned in France in the Fourteenth Century; then the flamboyant until the Sixteenth Century. In England the Early English corresponds to the Thirteenth, the Decorated to the F'ourtccnth, and the Perpendicu- lar to the two succeeding centuries. Other coun- tries had corresponding but less clearly marked divisions. The general tendency was increase of decorative richness and variety of form, a loss of scientific as well as artistic values, the invasion of prettiness in place of breadth and strength.

The Italian Renaissance. Italy had seen some large Gothic monuments: monastic churches, such as Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and the Frari in Venice; cathedrals.