A History of Architecture in All Countries, Volume 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present DayFergusson, James
History
A History of Architecture in All Countries, Volume 2, 3rd ed.: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Fergusson, James
Architecture -- History
The west front and the three western bays are of the 16th century; the
next seven are of an early style of pointed architecture, with
semi-Roman pilasters, which will be described in speaking of Burgundian
architecture, and which belong probably to the 11th or beginning of the
12th century. The apse is ascribed to the year 952, but there are no
drawings on which sufficient dependence can be placed to determine the
date.
Besides this, there is another church, St. André le Bas at Vienne,
belonging to the 11th century, whose tower is one of the most pleasing
instances of this kind of composition in the province, and though
evidently a lineal descendant of the Roman and Italian campaniles,
displays an amount of design seldom met with beyond the Alps.
CIRCULAR CHURCHES.
The round shape seems never to have been a favourite for sacred
buildings in Provence, and consequently was never worked into the apses
of the churches nor became an important adjunct to them. One of the few
examples found is a small baptistery attached to the cathedral at Aix,
either very ancient or built with ancient materials, and now painfully
modernised. At Riez there is a circular detached baptistery, usually,
like the churches at Vaison, called a pagan temple, but evidently of
Christian origin, though the pillars in the interior seem undoubtedly to
have been borrowed from some more ancient and classical edifice. But the
finest of its class is the church at Rieux, probably of the 11th
century. Internally the vault is supported by 4 piers and 3 pillars,
producing an irregularity far from pleasing, and without any apparent
motive.
[Illustration: 556. Plan of Church at Planes. (From Taylor and Nodier.)]
At Planes is another church the plan of which deserves to be quoted, if
not for its merit, at least for its singularity: it is a triangle with
an apse attached to each side, and supporting a circular part
terminating in a plain roof. As a constructive puzzle it is curious, but
it is doubtful how far any legitimate use could be made of such a
_caprice_.
There is, so far as I know, only one triapsal church, that of St. Croix
at Mont Majour near Arles. Built as a sepulchral chapel, it is a
singularly gloomy but appropriate erection; but it is too tall and too
bare to rank high as a building even for such a purpose.
TOWERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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