George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted PapersStreet, George Edmund
History
George Edmund Street: Unpublished Notes and Reprinted Papers
Street, George Edmund
Architecture, Gothic; Church architecture -- Europe; Europe -- Description and travel; Street, George Edmund, 1824-1881
The principal entrance is by the south door of the nave. This has been
cruelly damaged, indeed nearly destroyed, but what remains is of great
interest, owing to its very close resemblance to the noble western
doorways of Rouen cathedral; the doorway is double, with eight shafts
in each jamb, the alternate shafts having figures in front of them,
as in the west doorways of Chartres; whilst the tympanum is similar
also, having a figure of our Lord, surrounded by the emblems of the
four Evangelists. Portions of archivolt enrichments and other sculpture
have been dug up in the neighbourhood of this doorway and carefully
preserved, and they appear to me, by their vigour and grandeur of
character, to be undoubtedly the work of the same artist, and possibly
portions of this once magnificent but now woefully mutilated entrance.
It is in the interior, however, of this church that the effect is
finest and the architecture most noble. The whole is very uniform
in character throughout, marked by great solidity of construction
and proportion, and by the boldness and distinctness of all its
architectural detail. The triforium throughout opens with two arches
enclosed within another, the spandrels being unpierced, and throughout
the church it is groined; nor must I forget to say, that at the present
day the spacious area it affords is turned to some account; for,
when I was there, on one side they were making the organ pipes, on
the other constructing the organ, and in another part the carpenters
were busy upon the organ case; and the Curé assured me that he not
only had the satisfaction of seeing everything executed in the best
possible way, but at the same time there was no inconvenience, and no
want of reverence, on the part of the workmen. The clerestory consists
throughout of lancet windows, the lower portions of which are filled in
with an arcade in the manner I have described in the choir of S. Remi,
at Rheims. The sculpture throughout this church, though almost entirely
confined to foliage, is very instructive, and at the same time a little
puzzling; for we see almost side by side work of the best Byzantine
character--almost rivalling the sculpture we see in Venice--and
distinctly thirteenth century French work, whilst the building itself
shows no corresponding diversity, and I can only suppose, either that
the sculpture was in hand much longer than the building of the church,
or that two sets of sculptors were at work, the one educated in a
Byzantine school, the other influenced by the more developed school of
the Île de France.
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