How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

By Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum of Arts

INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR VIEWS OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL

Showing the Nave Widening. The Piers Are Set on a Straight Line, and at Each End of the Nave Are Perpendicular up to the Clerestory. Meanwhile the Piers in Between Lean Outward with Increasing Inclination Toward the Center of the Nave. P. 280

into: Primary, or Thirteenth Century style; Secondary, or Fourteenth Century, often called Rayonnant from the wheel tracery of the rose windows; Tertiary, or Fifteenth Century, called Flamboyant from the flame-like shapes of the window spaces. On the other hand, in England, the divisions are: Thirteenth century or Early English; Fourteenth century or Decorated, because of the increased elaboration both of window tracery and rib vaultings; Fifteenth century or Perpendicular, owing to the predominance of vertical members in the tracery of the windows.

The chief fountain-source of the early Gothic development was the Ile de France, whence the new ideas were carried, largely by monastic activity and especially that of the Cistercian order, to England, Germany, Italy, and Spain. In each of these countries their application was coloured by local conditions and England in particular produced a series of buildings, characterised by originality of treatment and grandeur of design. Nevertheless, it is recognised that French Gothic is pre-eminent, not only for the logic and skill with which structural problems were solved but also for sublimity of design, especially in the interiors, and for the sense of proportion that distinguishes the best examples. English Gothic, however, is a noble second.

Before enumerating some of the famous examples of French Gothic, we may summarise the principles and devices more or less common to all Gothic.

Romanesque had substituted equilibrium in place of the inert stability of the Roman architecture. The thirteenth century architects added to equilibrium elasticity.

They achieved this by a development of the concentration of strains, which the Romans had invented or applied in the support of groin-vaulting on four piers, and the Romanesque architects had further developed by the system of rib-vaulting.

Pointed Arch.—The Gothic was structurally evolved out of the rib vaulting and the pointed arch. In the first place, while the Romanesque architects used the rib system solely as a convenience of building, the architects of the Ile de France, adopting it for the same purpose, became conscious of its further possibilities in the direction both of construction and of beauty. The rib, no longer a crude arch of masonry, was constructed of mouldings that made it a feature of beauty, enhanced by the increased height and the finer sweep of line that the skill and taste of the French architects achieved.

In this they were helped by the substitution of the pointed for the semi-circular arch. Not only are the curves of the pointed arch more beautiful, but they lent themselves also to a more daring method of building. By means of them the tops of the longitudinal and transverse arches could be lifted to the level of the diagonal ones, so that the filling in of the massives or spaces between the ribs, was simplified. Moreover, the strain of the pointed arch was more directly downward, which brought the main pressure down upon the piers. Advantage was taken of this by clustering small columns around the piers, so that each column carried its own rib, bringing the ribs and columns into a structural harmony and creating a continuous effect of soaring growth from the floor up to the summit of the vaulting. And this effect could be enhanced by the opportunity which the rib construction allowed of lifting the vaulting higher, and so affording space for ample clerestories.

Buttresses.—Meanwhile the lateral strain or thrust of the pointed arch, though less than the vertical, had to be sustained, and this was done by developing the buttress. These were of two kinds: abutting, as the name implies, either on the nave wall or on the outer walls of the aisles and chevêt. In both cases they were a development of the masonry piers with which the Romanesque architects reinforced the walls. When the buttresses were attached to the outer walls of the aisles and chevêt, they were connected with the nave wall by arches which sprang across the intervening space, and in consequence are known as flying buttresses.

Sometimes these buttresses were practically vertical, at other times they descended in offsets or steps, increasing in width toward the ground. Further to increase their resistance they were frequently surmounted by finials or pinnacles. The buttress, in fact, was not only a structural member of great importance, but one of the characteristic elements of beauty in the design.

Concentration of Counter-thrusts.—By the time these two principles—the concentration of thrusts and the counter-thrusts—had been thoroughly worked out, as they were in the thirteenth century, the Gothic architects had extended to the whole edifice what the later Romanesque architects had done for the vaulting. As the latter had been constructed on a framework of ribs, so now the essential structure of the whole edifice became a frame or skeleton, self-supporting, with its strains distributed throughout, as in the muscular system of the human body, and in the “steel cage” construction of modern buildings.

This enabled the Gothic architects to erect loftier and larger buildings and at the same time lighter in appearance, compared with which the Romanesque seem squat and heavy. The French showed a preference for lofty interiors; the English for length of vista, the proportionate loss of height being offset on the exterior by the extra height of the towers and spires.

Another result of the framework system of structure was that the intervening wall-spaces, relieved of strain, could be fully utilised for openings, especially for windows, so important in the duller climate of the north. The clerestory became an important feature of the Gothic cathedral; so also the triforium, or gallery round the nave, which, pierced in the thickness of the wall, separated the clerestory and arcade arches. Further, the windows in all the outer walls took on a new importance.

Windows.—The windows, in fact, became another of the distinguishing characteristics of Gothic architecture and the variety in their treatment marks the several centuries of its development. At first there was the plain lancet (spear-headed) window, the top of which was composed of two segments of a circle meeting at one point. The segments were inscribed about a triangle, which was either equilateral or isosceles. In the case of the equilateral triangle, whose base was equal to the sides, the distance of the point of the arch from the spring of the curves was equal to the width of the window. On the other hand, in the case of the isosceles triangle, if the base were longer than the sides, the point of the arch dropped lower, while, if the base were shorter, the arch was higher than its width—the true lancet.

Such plain openings, or lights, were used either singly or in pairs; and in time two were included within one lancet opening, the space above the heads of the lights being filled with a round or quatrefoil light. In this case the upper part or tracery had the appearance of having been cut out of one slab or plate of stone, and the pattern in consequence was called plate-tracery. Later, when the number of lights in a window was increased, the tracery above them was elaborated into various geometric designs, technically known as bar-tracery. Still later, when the architects had completely solved all the structural problems and the only advance could be made in further elaboration of details, the geometric forms were abandoned for more flowing designs, which are called in French Gothic Flamboyant; in English, Decorated.

It is to be noted that the change in the treatment of the windows was reflected in the carved ornamental details of other parts of the edifice; especially in the canopies over niches and the embellishment of gables, doors, choir-screens, wall-panelling, finials, and spires. These in the Flamboyant period (fifteenth century) reached a degree of lace-like elaborateness, that, while beautiful in itself,