How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
Since the starting point in the development of Gothic was the vaulting,
and how to substitute a stone vault for a wooden roof was the germinal
idea of the Romanesque builder, it is no digression to turn to the
earlier school, the chrysalis of Gothic. The name "Romanesque" is an
affair of yesterday, employed by a French archæologist about 1825.
Various local designations had hitherto been used, such as Lombard, or
Norman, or Romano-Byzantine, but the term Romanesque for this
architecture is as suitable as the name Romance is for the popular
languages which, in that same period, were forming out of the corruption
of Latin. A definition given by M. Camille Enlart is excellent:
"Romanesque art was a product of Rome, animated by a new spirit, and
combined with a certain number of elements of barbarian or Oriental
origin."
Rome gave the basilica plan to western Europe, which for centuries
continued to build its churches as oblong halls with a small apse at one
end. The hall, or nave, consisted of a central vessel with side aisles
that were divided from it by piers. In the treatment of vaulting and the
method of stone laying Romanesque architecture also derived from Rome.
Byzantine influences certainly were important, but they affected the
decoration more than the plan or the structure; the use of the Byzantine
cupola was merely occasional. The Romanesque masters copied the ivories
and miniatures of the Eastern Greeks till, in time, they turned to
nature for their models, and then their work took on new life and
evolved into the glory which is Gothic sculpture.
While some have laid stress on the Oriental influences, rather than
those of Rome, in the formation of Romanesque art, others have
overemphasized the personality and fantasy introduced into French
architecture by the Barbarian invasions. No doubt the influx of new
blood added new elements, but since knowledge of the invaders' art is
fragmentary, there can be no scientific base for the theory. Composite,
certainly, were the causes for the new spirit which animated
architecture after the Carolingian day, but it is safe to say that the
influence of Rome predominated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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