Architecture: Classic and Early ChristianSmith, T. Roger (Thomas Roger)
History
Architecture: Classic and Early Christian
Smith, T. Roger (Thomas Roger)
Architecture -- History; Church architecture
The churches are usually small, and have an apsidal east end. The
openings are rude, with round-headed arches and small single or
two-light windows, and the outer walls are generally marked by flat
pilasters of very slight projection. Towers are common, and the
openings in them are often divided into two or more lights by rude
columns. The plan of these churches was founded on the basilica type,
but they do not exhibit the same internal arrangement; and it is very
noteworthy that many of them show marks of having been vaulted, or at
least partly vaulted; and not covered, as the basilicas usually were,
by timber roofs. Even a country so remote as Great Britain possessed
in the 10th century many buildings of Primitive Romanesque character;
and in such Saxon churches as those of Worth, Brixworth, Dover, or
Bradford, and such towers as those of Earl's Barton (Fig. 166),
Trinity Church Colchester, Barnack, or Sompting, we have specimens of
the style remaining to the present day.
By degrees, as buildings of greater extent and more ornament were
erected, the local varieties to which reference has been made began to
develop themselves. In Lombardy and North Italy, for example, a
Lombard Romanesque style can be recognised distinctly; here a series
of churches were built, many of them vaulted, but not many of the
largest size. Most of them were on substantially the same plan as the
basilicas, though a considerable number of circular or polygonal
churches were also built. Sant' Ambrogio at Milan, and some of the
churches at Brescia, Pavia, and Lucca, may be cited as well-known
examples of early date, and a little later the cathedrals of Parma,
Modena, and Piacenza (Fig. 167), and San Zenone at Verona. These
churches are all distinguished by the free use of small ornamental
arches and narrow pilaster-strips externally, and the employment of
piers with half-shafts attached to them, rather than columns, in the
arcades; they have fine bell-towers; circular windows often occupy
the gables, and very frequently the walls have been built of, or
ornamented with, coloured materials. The sculpture--grotesque,
vigorous, and full of rich variety--which distinguishes many of these
buildings, and which is to be found specially enriching the doorways,
is of great interest, and began early to develop a character that is
quite distinctive.
[Illustration: FIG. 167.--CATHEDRAL AT PIACENZA.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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