The Cathedrals of Northern FranceMansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
History
The Cathedrals of Northern France
Mansfield, M. F. (Milburg Francisco)
Cathedrals -- France; France -- Description and travel
From this early architectural foundation, to the most florid and
flamboyant of late Gothic, is pretty much the whole range of Mediaeval
architectural style. By no means has a grand or even fine structure
resulted. The old choir, suffering from the stress of time, was pulled
down and rebuilt as late as 1770. Thus, this usually excellently
appointed and constructed detail is here of no worthy rank whatever. The
nave and transepts were completed within the hundred years following
1452, and show the last flights of Gothic toward the heights from which
it afterward fell. Transformation and restoration have frequently been
undertaken, with the result that nowhere is to be seen perhaps greater
inconsistencies. The latest of these examples of a perverted industry is
seen in the nineteenth-century additions to the tower and the west
facade. The result is not, be it said, to the credit of its projectors.
THE END.
_Appendices_
I
_The Architectural Divisions of France_
It is quite possible to construct an ethnographic map of a country from
its architectural remains,--but there must always be diverse and varying
opinions as to the delimitation of one school, as compared with another
lying contiguous thereto.
One may wander from province to province, and continually find
reminders, of another manner of building, from that which is recognized
as the characteristic local species. This could hardly be otherwise. In
the past, as in the present, imitators were not few, and if the adoption
of new, or foreign, ideas was then less rapid, it was no less sure.
Still, in the main, there is a cohesiveness and limitation of
architectural style in France; which, as is but natural to suppose, is
in no way more clearly defined than by the churches which were built
during the middle ages, the earliest types retaining the influence of
massive forms, and the later again debasing itself to a heavy classical
order, neither a copy of anything of a pre-Gothic era, or a happy
development therefrom. Between the two, in a period of scarcely more
than three hundred years, there grew up and developed the ingenious and
graceful pointed style, in all its fearlessness and unconvention.
Political causes had, perhaps, somewhat to do with the confining of a
particular style well within the land of its birth, but on the other
hand, warfare carried with it invasion and conquest of new sections, and
its followers, in a measure, may be said to have carried with them
certain of their former arts, accomplishments, and desires; and so grew
up the composite and mixed types which are frequently met with.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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