OTHER WORKS. Few of the mediæval Arabic palaces have remained to our time. That they were adorned with a splendid prodigality appears from contemporary accounts. This splendor was internal rather than external; the palace, like all the larger and richer dwellings in the East, surrounded one or more courts, and presented externally an almost unbroken wall. The fountain in the chief court, the diwân (a great, vaulted reception-chamber opening upon the court and raised slightly above it), the dâr, or men’s court, rigidly separated from the hareem for the women, were and are universal elements in these great dwellings. The more common city-houses show as their most striking features successively corbelled-out stories and broad wooden eaves, with lattice-screens covering single windows, or almost a whole façade, composed of turned work (mashrabiyya), in designs of great beauty.

The fountains, gates, and minor works of the Arabs display the same beauty in decoration and color, the same general forms and details which characterize the larger works, but it is impossible here to particularize further with regard to them.

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FIG. 82.—MOORISH DETAIL, ALHAMBRA.

Showing stalactite and perforated work, Moorish cusped arch, Hispano-Moresque capitals, and decorative inscriptions.

MORESQUE. Elsewhere in Northern Africa the Arabs produced no such important works as in Egypt, nor is the architecture of the other Moslem states so well preserved or so well known. Constructive design would appear to have been there even more completely subordinated to decoration; tiling and plaster-relief took the place of more architectural elements and materials, while horseshoe and cusped arches were substituted for the simpler and more architectural pointed arch (Fig. 82). The courts of palaces and public buildings were surrounded by ranges of horseshoe arches on slender columns; these last being provided with capitals of a form rarely seen in Cairo. Towers were built of much more massive design than the Cairo minarets, usually with a square, almost solid shaft and a more open lantern at the top, sometimes in several diminishing stories.

HISPANO-MORESQUE. The most splendid phase of this branch of Arabic architecture is found not in Africa but in Spain, which was overrun in 710–713 by the Moors, who established there the independent Khalifate of Cordova. This was later split up into petty kingdoms, of which the most important were Granada, Seville, Toledo, and Valencia. This dismemberment of the Khalifate led in time to the loss of these cities, which were one by one recovered by the Christians during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the capture of Granada, in 1492, finally destroying the Moorish rule.

The dominion of the Moors in Spain was marked by a high civilization and an extraordinary activity in building. The style they introduced became the national style in the regions they occupied, and even after the expulsion of the Moors was used in buildings erected by Christians and by Jews. The “House of Pilate,” at Seville, is an example of this, and the general use of the Moorish style in Jewish synagogues, down to our own day, both in Spain and abroad, originated in the erection of synagogues for the Jews in Spain by Moorish artisans and in Moorish style, both during and after the period of Moslem supremacy.

Besides innumerable mosques, castles, bridges, aqueducts, gates, and fountains, the Moors erected several monuments of remarkable size and magnificence. Specially worthy of notice among them are the Great Mosque at Cordova, the Alcazars of Seville and Malaga, the Giralda at Seville, and the Alhambra at Granada.

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FIG. 83.—INTERIOR OF THE GREAT MOSQUE AT CORDOVA.

The Mosque at Cordova, begun in 786 by ‘Abd-er-Rahman, enlarged in 876, and again by El Mansour in 976, is a vast arcaded hall 375 feet × 420 feet in extent, but only 30 feet high (Fig. 83). The rich wooden ceiling rests upon seventeen rows of thirty to thirty-three columns each, and two intersecting rows of piers, all carrying horseshoe arches in two superposed ranges, a large portion of those about the sanctuary being cusped, the others plain, except for the alternation of color in the voussoirs. The mihrâb niche is particularly rich in its minutely carved incrustations and mosaics, and a dome ingeniously formed by intersecting ribs covers the sanctuary before it. This form of dome occurs frequently in Spain.

The Alcazars at Seville and Malaga, which have been restored in recent years, present to-day a fairly correct counterpart of the castle-palaces of the thirteenth century. They display the same general conceptions and decorative features as the Alhambra, which they antedate. The Giralda at Seville is, on the other hand, unique. It is a lofty rectangular tower, its exterior panelled and covered with a species of quarry-ornament in relief; it terminated originally in two or three diminishing stages or lanterns, which were replaced in the sixteenth century by the present Renaissance belfry.

The Alhambra is universally considered to be the masterpiece of Hispano-Moresque art, partly no doubt on account of its excellent preservation. It is most interesting as an example of the splendid citadel-palaces built by the Moorish conquerors, as well as for its gorgeous color-decoration of minute quarry-ornament stamped or moulded in the wet plaster wherever the walls are not wainscoted with tiles. It was begun in 1248 by Mohammed-ben-Al-Hamar, enlarged in 1279 by his successor, and again in 1306, when its mosque was built. Its plan (Fig. 84) shows two large courts and a smaller one next the mosque, with three great square chambers and many of minor importance. Light arcades surround the Court of the Lions with its fountain, and adorn the ends of the other chief court; and the stalactite pendentive, rare in Moorish work, appears in the “Hall of Ambassadors” and some other parts of the edifice. But its chief glory is its ornamentation, less durable, less architectural than that of the Cairene buildings, but making up for this in delicacy and richness. Minute vine-patterns and Arabic inscriptions are interwoven with waving intersecting lines, forming a net-like framework, to all of which deep red, blue, black, and gold give an indescribable richness of effect.

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FIG. 84.—PLAN OF THE ALHAMBRA.

A, Hall of Ambassadors; a, Mosque; b, Court of Mosque; c, Sala della Barca; d, d, Baths; e, Hall of the Two Sisters; f, f, f, Hall of the Tribunal; g, Hall of the Abencerrages.

Larger View

The Moors also overran Sicily in the eighth century, but while their architecture there profoundly influenced that of the Christians who recovered Sicily in 1090, and copied the style of the conquered Moslems, there is too little of the original Moorish architecture remaining to claim mention here.

SASSANIAN. The Sassanian empire, which during the four centuries from 226 to 641 A.D. had withstood Rome and extended its own sway almost to India, left on Persian soil a number of interesting monuments which powerfully influenced the Mohammedan style of that region. The Sassanian buildings appear to have been principally palaces, and were all vaulted. With their long barrel-vaulted halls, combined with square domical chambers, as in Firouz-Abad and Serbistan, they exhibit reminiscences of antique Assyrian tradition. The ancient Persian use of columns was almost entirely abandoned, but doors and windows were still treated with the banded frames and cavetto-cornices of Persepolis and Susa. The Sassanians employed with these exterior details others derived perhaps from Syrian and Byzantine sources. A sort of engaged buttress-column and blind arches repeated somewhat aimlessly over a whole façade were characteristic features; still more so the huge arches, elliptical or horse-shoe shaped, which formed the entrances to these palaces, as in the Tâk-Kesra at Ctesiphon. Ornamental details of a debased Roman type appear, mingled with more gracefully flowing leaf-patterns resembling early Christian Syrian carving. The last great monument of this style was the palace at Mashita in Moab, begun by the last Chosroes (627), but never finished, an imposing and richly ornamented structure about 500 × 170 feet, occupying the centre of a great court.

PERSIAN-MOSLEM ARCHITECTURE. These Sassanian palaces must have strongly influenced Persian architecture after the Arab conquest in 641. For although the architecture of the first six centuries after that date suffered almost absolute extinction at the hands of the Mongols under Genghis Khan, the traces of Sassanian influence are still perceptible in the monuments that rose in the following centuries. The dome and vault, the colossal portal-arches, and the use of brick and tile are evidences of this influence, bearing no resemblance to Byzantine or Arabic types. The Moslem monuments of Persia, so far as their dates can be ascertained, are all subsequent to 1200, unless tradition is correct in assigning to the time of Haroun Ar Rashid (786) certain curious tombs near Bagdad with singular pyramidal roofs. The ruined mosque at Tabriz (1300), and the beautiful domical Tomb at Sultaniyeh (1313) belong to the Mogul period. They show all the essential features of the later architecture of the Sufis (1499–1694), during whose dynastic period were built the still more splendid and more celebrated Meidan or square, the great mosque of Mesjid Shah, the Bazaar and the College or Medress of Hussein Shah, all at Ispahan, and many other important monuments at Ispahan, Bagdad, and Teheran. In these structures four elements especially claim attention; the pointed bulbous dome, the round minaret, the portal-arch rising above the adjacent portions of the building, and the use of enamelled terra-cotta tiles as an external decoration. To these may be added the ogee arch (ogee = double-reversed curve), as an occasional feature. The vaulting is most ingenious and beautiful, and its forms, whether executed in brick or in plaster, are sufficiently varied without resort to the perplexing complications of stalactite work. In Persian decoration the most striking qualities are the harmony of blended color, broken up into minute patterns and more subdued in tone than in the Hispano-Moresque, and the preference of flowing lines and floral ornament to the geometric puzzles of Arabic design. Persian architecture influenced both Turkish and Indo-Moslem art, which owe to it a large part of their decorative charm.

INDO-MOSLEM. The Mohammedan architecture of India is so distinct from all the native Indian styles and so related to the art of Persia, if not to that of the Arabs, that it properly belongs here rather than in the later chapter on Oriental styles. It was in the eleventh century that the states of India first began to fall before Mohammedan invaders, but not until the end of the fifteenth century that the great Mogul dynasty was established in Hindostan as the dominant power. During the intervening period local schools of Moslem architecture were developing in the Pathan country of Northern India (1193–1554), in Jaunpore and Gujerat (1396–1572), in Scinde, where Persian influence predominated; in Kalburgah and Bidar (1347–1426). These schools differed considerably in spirit and detail; but under the Moguls (1494–1706) there was less diversity, and to this dynasty we owe many of the most magnificent mosques and tombs of India, among which those of Bijapur retain a marked and distinct style of their own.

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FIG. 85.—TOMB OF MAHMUD, BIJAPUR. SECTION.

The Mohammedan monuments of India are characterized by a grandeur and amplitude of disposition, a symmetry and monumental dignity of design which distinguishes them widely from the picturesque but sometimes trivial buildings of the Arabs and Moors. Less dependent on color than the Moorish or Persian structures, they are usually built of marble, or of marble and sandstone, giving them an air of permanence and solidity wanting in other Moslem styles except the Turkish. The dome, the round minaret, the pointed arch, and the colossal portal-arch, are universal, as in Persia, and enamelled tiles are also used, but chiefly for interior decoration. Externally the more dignified if less resplendent decoration of surface carving is used, in patterns of minute and graceful scrolls, leaf forms, and Arabic inscriptions covering large surfaces. The Arabic stalactite pendentive star-panelling and geometrical interlace are rarely if ever seen. The dome on the square plan is almost universal, but neither the Byzantine nor the Arabic pendentive is used, striking and original combinations of vaulting surfaces, of corner squinches, of corbelling and ribs, being used in its place. Many of the Pathan domes and arches at Delhi, Ajmir, Ahmedabad, Shepree, etc., are built in horizontal or corbelled courses supported on slender columns, and exert no thrust at all, so that they are vaults only in form, like the dome of the Tholos of Atreus (Fig. 24). The most imposing and original of all Indian domes are those of the Jumma Musjid and of the Tomb of Mahmud, both at Bijapur, the latter 137 feet in span (Fig. 85). These two monuments, indeed, with the Mogul Taj Mahal at Agra, not only deserve the first rank among Indian monuments, but in constructive science combined with noble proportions and exquisite beauty are hardly, if at all, surpassed by the greatest triumphs of western art. The Indo-Moslem architects, moreover, especially those of the Mogul period, excelled in providing artistic settings for their monuments. Immense platforms, superb courts, imposing flights of steps, noble gateways, minarets to mark the angles of enclosures, and landscape gardening of a high order, enhance greatly the effect of the great mosques, tombs, and palaces of Agra, Delhi, Futtehpore Sikhri, Allahabad, Secundra, etc.

The most notable monuments of the Moguls are the Mosque of Akbar (1556–1605) at Futtehpore Sikhri, the tomb of that sultan at Secundra, and his palace at Allahabad; the Pearl Mosque at Agra and the Jumma Musjid at Delhi, one of the largest and noblest of Indian mosques, both built by Shah Jehan about 1650; his immense but now ruined palace in the same city; and finally the unrivalled mausoleum, the Taj Mahal at Agra, built during his lifetime as a festal hall, to serve as his tomb after death (Fig. 86). This last is the pearl of Indian architecture, though it is said to have been designed by a European architect, French or Italian. It is a white marble structure 185 feet square, centred in a court 313 feet square, forming a platform 18 feet high. The corners of this court are marked by elegant minarets, and the whole is dominated by the exquisite white marble dome, 58 feet in diameter, 80 feet high, internally rising over four domical corner chapels, and covered externally by a lofty marble bulb-dome on a high drum. The rich materials, beautiful execution, and exquisite inlaying of this mausoleum are worthy of its majestic design. On the whole, in the architecture of the Moguls in Bijapur, Agra, and Delhi, Mohammedan architecture reaches its highest expression in the totality and balance of its qualities of construction, composition, detail, ornament, and settings. The later monuments show the decline of the style, and though often rich and imposing, are lacking in refinement and originality.

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FIG. 86.—TAJ MAHAL, AGRA.

TURKISH. The Ottoman Turks, who began their conquering career under Osman I. in Bithynia in 1299, had for a century been occupying the fairest portions of the Byzantine empire when, in 1453, they became masters of Constantinople. Hagia Sophia was at once occupied as their chief mosque, and such of the other churches as were spared, were divided between the victors and the vanquished. The conqueror, Mehmet II., at the same time set about the building of a new mosque, entrusting the design to a Byzantine, Christodoulos, whom he directed to reproduce, with some modifications, the design of the “Great Church”—Hagia Sophia. The type thus officially adopted has ever since remained the controlling model of Turkish mosque design, so far, at least, as general plan and constructive principles are concerned. Thus the conquering Turks, educated by a century of study and imitation of Byzantine models in Brusa, Nicomedia, Smyrna, Adrianople, and other cities earlier subjugated, did what the Byzantines had, during nine centuries, failed to do. The noble idea first expressed by Anthemius and Isidorus in the Church of Hagia Sophia had remained undeveloped, unimitated by later architects. It was the Turk who first seized upon its possibilities, and developed therefrom a style of architecture less sumptuous in color and decoration than the sister styles of Persia, Cairo, or India, but of great nobility and dignity, notwithstanding. The low-curved dome with its crown of buttressed windows, the plain spherical pendentives, the great apses at each end, covered by half-domes and penetrated by smaller niches, the four massive piers with their projecting buttress-masses extending across the broad lateral aisles, the narthex and the arcaded atrium in front—all these appear in the great Turkish mosques of Constantinople. In the Conqueror’s mosque, however, two apses with half-domes replace the lateral galleries and clearstory of Hagia Sophia, making a perfectly quadripartite plan, destitute of the emphasis and significance of a plan drawn on one main axis (Fig. 87). The same treatment occurs in the mosque of Ahmed I., the Ahmediyeh (1608; Fig. 88), and the Yeni Djami (“New Mosque”) at the port (1665). In the mosque of Osman III. (1755) the reverse change was effected; the mosque has no great apses, four clearstories filling the four arches under the dome, as also in several of the later and smaller mosques. The greatest and noblest of the Turkish mosques, the Suleimaniyeh, built in 1553 by Soliman the Magnificent, returned to the Byzantine combination of two half-domes with two clearstories (Fig. 89).

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FIG. 87.—MOSQUE OF MEHMET II., CONSTANTINOPLE. PLAN.
(The dimensions figured in metres.)

In none of these monuments is there the internal magnificence of marble and mosaic of the Byzantine churches. These are only in a measure replaced by Persian tile-wainscoting and stained-glass windows of the Arabic type. The division into stories and the treatment of scale are less well managed than in the Hagia Sophia; on the other hand, the proportion of height to width is generally admirable. The exterior treatment is unique and effective, far superior to the Byzantine practice. The massing of domes and half-domes and roofs is more artistically arranged; and while there is little of that minute carved detail found in Egypt and India, the composition of the lateral arcades, the simple but impressive domical peristyles of the courts, and the graceful forms of the pointed arches, with alternating voussoirs of white and black marble, are artistic in a high degree. The minarets are, however, inferior to those of Indian, Persian, and Arabic art, though graceful in their proportions.

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FIG. 88.—EXTERIOR AHMEDIYEH MOSQUE.

Nearly all the great mosques are accompanied by the domical tombs (turbeh) of their imperial founders. Some of these are of noble size and great beauty of proportion and decoration. The Tomb of Roxelana (Khourrem), the favorite wife of Soliman the Magnificent (1553), is the most beautiful of all, and perhaps the most perfect gem of Turkish architecture, with its elegant arcade surrounding the octagonal domical mausoleum-chamber. The monumental fountains of Constantinople also deserve mention. Of these, the one erected by Ahmet III. (1710), near Hagia Sophia, is the most beautiful. They usually consist of a rectangular marble reservoir with pagoda-like roof and broad eaves, the four faces of the fountain adorned each with a niche and basin, and covered with relief carving and gilded inscriptions.

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FIG. 89.—INTERIOR OF SULEIMANIYEH,
CONSTANTINOPLE.

PALACES. In this department the Turks have done little of importance. The buildings in the Seraglio gardens are low and insignificant. The Tchinli Kiosque, now the Imperial Museum, is however, a simple but graceful two-storied edifice, consisting of four vaulted chambers in the angles of a fine cruciform hall, with domes treated like those of Bijapur on a small scale; the tiling and the veranda in front are particularly elegant; the design suggests Persian handiwork. The later palaces, designed by Armenians, are picturesque white marble and stucco buildings on the water’s edge; they possess richly decorated halls, but the details are of a debased European rococo style, quite unworthy of an Oriental monarch.

CHAPTER XIII.

EARLY MEDIÆVAL ARCHITECTURE

IN ITALY AND FRANCE.

Books Recommended: Cattaneo, L’Architecture en Italie. Chapuy, Le moyen age monumental. Corroyer, Architecture romane. Cummings, A History of Architecture in Italy. Enlart, Manuel d’archéologie française. Hübsch, Monuments de l’architecture chrétienne. Knight, Churches of Northern Italy. Lenoir, Architecture monastique. Osten, Bauwerke in der Lombardei. Quicherat, Mélanges d’histoire et d’archéologie. Reber, History of Mediæval Architecture. Révoil, Architecture romane du midi de la France. Rohault de Fleury, Monuments de Pise. Sharpe, Churches of Charente. De Verneilh, L’Architecture byzantine en France. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française (especially in Vol. I., Architecture religieuse); Discourses on Architecture.

EARLY MEDIÆVAL EUROPE. The fall of the Western Empire in 476 A.D. marked the beginning of a new era in architecture outside of the Byzantine Empire. The so-called Dark Ages which followed this event constituted the formative period of the new Western civilization, during which the Celtic and Germanic races were being Christianized and subjected to the authority and to the educative influences of the Church. Under these conditions a new architecture was developed, founded upon the traditions of the early Christian builders, modified in different regions by Roman or Byzantine influences. For Rome recovered early her antique prestige, and Roman monuments covering the soil of Southern Europe, were a constant object lesson to the builders of that time. To this new architecture of the West, which in the tenth and eleventh centuries first began to achieve worthy and monumental results, the generic name of Romanesque has been commonly given, in spite of the great diversity of its manifestations in different countries.

CHARACTER OF THE ARCHITECTURE. Romanesque architecture was pre-eminently ecclesiastical. Civilization and culture emanated from the Church, and her requirements and discipline gave form to the builder’s art. But the basilican style, which had so well served her purposes in the earlier centuries and on classic soil, was ill-suited to the new conditions. Corinthian columns, marble incrustations, and splendid mosaics were not to be had for the asking in the forests of Gaul or Germany, nor could the Lombards and Ostrogoths in Italy or their descendants reproduce them. The basilican style was complete in itself, possessing no seeds of further growth. The priests and monks of Italy and Western Europe sought to rear with unskilled labor churches of stone in which the general dispositions of the basilica should reappear in simpler, more massive dress, and, as far as possible, in a fireproof construction with vaults of stone. This problem underlies all the varied phases of Romanesque architecture; its final solution was not, however, reached until the Gothic period, to which the Romanesque forms the transition and stepping-stone.

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FIG. 90.—INTERIOR OF SAN AMBROGIO, MILAN.

MEDIÆVAL ITALY. Italy in the Dark Ages stood midway between the civilization of the Eastern Empire and the semi-barbarism of the West. Rome, Ravenna, and Venice early became centres of culture and maintained continuous commercial relations with the East. Architecture did not lack either the inspiration or the means for advancing on new lines. But its advance was by no means the same everywhere. The unifying influence of the church was counterbalanced by the provincialism and the local diversities of the various Italian states, resulting in a wide variety of styles. These, however, may be broadly grouped in four divisions: the Lombard, the Tuscan-Romanesque, the Italo-Byzantine, and the unchanged Basilican or Early Christian, which last, as was shown in Chapter X., continued to be practised in Rome throughout the Middle Ages.

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FIG. 91.—WEST FRONT AND CAMPANILE
OF CATHEDRAL, PIACENZA.

LOMBARD STYLE. Owing to the general rebuilding of ancient churches under the more settled social conditions of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, little remains to us of the architecture of the three preceding centuries in Italy, except the Roman basilicas and a few baptisteries and circular churches, already mentioned in Chapter X. The so-called Lombard monuments belong mainly to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They are found not only in Lombardy, but also in Venetia and the Æmilia. Milan, Pavia, Piacenza, Bologna, and Verona were important centres of development of this style. The churches were nearly all vaulted, but the plans were basilican, with such variations as resulted from efforts to meet the exigencies of vaulted construction. The nave was narrowed, and instead of rows of columns carrying a thin clearstory wall, a few massive piers of masonry, connected by broad pier-arches, supported the heavy ribs of the groined vaulting, as in S. Ambrogio, Milan (Fig. 90). To resist the thrust of the main vault, the clearstory was sometimes suppressed, the side aisle carried up in two stories forming galleries, and rows of chapels added at the sides, their partitions forming buttresses. The piers were often of clustered section, the better to receive the various arches and ribs they supported. The vaulting was in square divisions or vaulting-bays, each embracing two pier-arches which met upon an intermediate pier lighter than the others. Thus the whole aspect of the interior was revolutionized. The lightness, spaciousness, and decorative elegance of the basilicas were here exchanged for a sombre and massive dignity severe in its plainness. The Choir was sometimes raised a few feet above the nave, to allow of a crypt and confessio beneath, reached by broad flights of steps from the nave. Sta. Maria della Pieve at Arezzo (9th-11th century), S. Michele at Pavia (late 11th century), the Cathedral of Piacenza (1122), S. Ambrogio at Milan (12th century), and S. Zeno at Verona (1139) are notable monuments of this style.

LOMBARD EXTERIORS. The few architectural embellishments employed on the simple exteriors of the Lombard churches were usually effective and well composed. Slender columnettes or long pilasters, blind arcades, and open arcaded galleries under the eaves gave light and shade to these exteriors. The façades were mere frontispieces with a single broad gable, the three aisles of the church being merely suggested by flat or round pilasters dividing the front (Fig 91). Gabled porches, with columns resting on the backs of lions or monsters, adorned the doorways. The carving was often of a fierce and grotesque character. Detached bell-towers or campaniles adjoined many of these churches; square and simple in mass, but with well-distributed openings and well-proportioned belfries (Piacenza S. Zeno at Verona, etc.).18

THE TUSCAN ROMANESQUE. The churches of this style (sometimes called the Pisan) were less vigorous but more elegant and artistic in design than the Lombard. They were basilicas in plan, with timber ceilings and high clearstories on columnar arcades. In their decoration, both internal and external, they betray the influence of Byzantine traditions, especially in the use of white and colored marble in alternating bands or in panelled veneering. Still more striking is the external decorative application of wall-arcades, sometimes occupying the whole height of the wall and carried on flat pilasters, sometimes in superposed stages of small arches on slender columns standing free of the wall. In general the decorative element prevailed over the constructive in the design of these picturesquely beautiful churches, some of which are of noble size. The Duomo (cathedral) of Pisa, built 1063–1118, is the finest monument of the style (Figs. 92, 93). It is 312 feet long and 118 wide, with long transepts and an elliptical dome of later date over the crossing (the intersection of nave and transepts). Its richly arcaded front and banded flanks strikingly exemplify the illogical and unconstructive but highly decorative methods of the Tuscan Romanesque builders. The circular Baptistery (1153), with its lofty domical central hall surrounded by an aisle, an imposing development of the type established by Constantine (p. 111), and the famous Leaning Tower (1174), both designed with external arcading, combine with the Duomo to form the most remarkable group of ecclesiastical buildings in Italy, if not in Europe (Fig. 92).

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FIG. 92.—BAPTISTERY, CATHEDRAL, AND LEANING TOWER, PISA.

The same style appears in more flamboyant shape in some of the churches of Lucca. The cathedral S. Martino (1060; façade, 1204; nave altered in fourteenth century) is the finest and largest of these; S. Michele (façade, 1288) and S. Frediano (twelfth century) have the most elaborately decorated façades. The same principles of design appear in the cathedral and several other churches in Pistoia and Prato; but these belong, for the most part, to the Gothic period.

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FIG. 93.—INTERIOR OF PISA CATHEDRAL.

FLORENCE. The church of S. Miniato, in the suburbs of Florence, is a beautiful example of a modification of the Pisan style. It is in plan a basilica with two piers interrupting the colonnade on each side of the nave and supporting powerful transverse arches. The interior is embellished with bands and patterns in black and white, and the woodwork of the open-timber roof is elegantly decorated with fine patterns in red, green, blue, and gold—a treatment common in early mediæval churches, as at Messina, Orvieto, etc. The exterior is adorned with wall-arches of classic design and with panelled veneering in white and dark marble, instead of the horizontal bands of the Pisan churches. This system of external decoration, a blending of Pisan and Italo-Byzantine methods, became the established practice in Florence, lasting through the whole Gothic period. The Baptistery of Florence, originally the cathedral, an imposing polygonal domical edifice of the tenth century, presents externally one of the most admirable examples of this practice. Its marble veneering in black and white, with pilasters and arches of excellent design, is attributed by Vasari to Arnolfo di Cambio, but is by many considered to be much older, although restored by that architect in 1294.

Suggestions of the Pisan arcade system are found in widely scattered examples in the east and south of Italy, mingled with features of Lombard and Byzantine design. In Apulia, as at Bari, Caserta Vecchia (1100), Molfetta (1192), and in Sicily, the Byzantine influence is conspicuous in the use of domes and in many of the decorative details. Particularly is this the case at Palermo and Monreale, where the churches erected after the Norman conquest—some of them domical, some basilican—show a strange but picturesque and beautiful mixture of Romanesque, Byzantine, and Arabic forms. The Cathedral of Monreale and the churches of the Eremiti and La Martorana at Palermo are the most important.

The Italo-Byzantine style has already found mention in the latter part of Chapter XI. Venice and Ravenna were its chief centres; while the influence, both of the parent style and of its Italian offshoot was, as we have just shown, very widespread.

WESTERN ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. In Western Europe the unrest and lawlessness which attended the unsettled relations of society under the feudal system long retarded the establishment of that social order without which architectural progress is impossible. With the eleventh century there began, however, a great activity in building, principally among the monasteries, which represented all that there was of culture and stability amid the prevailing disorder. Undisturbed by war, the only abodes of peaceful labor, learning, and piety, they had become rich and powerful, both in men and land. Probably the more or less general apprehension of the supposed impending end of the world in the year 1000 contributed to this result by driving unquiet consciences to seek refuge in the monasteries, or to endow them richly.

The monastic builders, with little technical training, but with plenty of willing hands, sought out new architectural paths to meet their special needs. Remote from classic and Byzantine models, and mainly dependent on their own resources, they often failed to realize the intended results. But skill came with experience, and with advancing civilization and a surer mastery of construction came a finer taste and greater elegance of design. Meanwhile military architecture developed a new science of building, and covered Europe with imposing castles, admirably constructed and often artistic in design as far as military exigencies would permit.

CHARACTER OF THE STYLE. The Romanesque architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in Western Europe (sometimes called the Round-Arched Gothic) was thus predominantly though not exclusively monastic. This gave it a certain unity of character in spite of national and local variations. The problem which the wealthy orders set themselves was, like that of the Lombard church-builders in Italy, to adapt the basilica plan to the exigencies of vaulted construction. Massive walls, round arches stepped or recessed to lighten their appearance, heavy mouldings richly carved, clustered piers and jamb-shafts, capitals either of the cushion type or imitated from the Corinthian, and strong and effective carving—all these are features alike of French, German, English, and Spanish Romanesque architecture.

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FIG. 94.—PLAN OF ST. FRONT.

THE FRENCH ROMANESQUE. Though monasticism produced remarkable results in France, architecture there did not wholly depend upon the monasteries. Southern Gaul (Provence) was full of classic remains and classic traditions while at the same time it maintained close trade relations with Venice and the East.19 The church of St. Front at Perigueux, built in 1120, reproduced the plan of St. Mark’s with singular fidelity, but without its rich decoration, and with pointed instead of round arches (Figs. 94, 95). The domical cathedral of Cahors (1050–1100), an obvious imitation of S. Irene at Constantinople, and the later and more Gothic Cathedral of Angoulême display a notable advance in architectural skill outside of the monasteries. Among the abbeys, Fontevrault (1101–1119) closely resembles Angoulême, but surpasses it in the elegance of its choir and chapels. In these and a number of other domical churches of the same Franco-Byzantine type in Aquitania, the substitution of the Latin cross in the plan for the Greek cross used in St. Front, evinces the Gallic tendency to work out to their logical end new ideas or new applications of old ones. These striking variations on Byzantine themes might have developed into an independent local style but for the overwhelming tide of Gothic influence which later poured in from the North.

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FIG. 95.—INTERIOR OF ST. FRONT, PERIGUEUX.

Meanwhile, farther south (at Arles, Avignon, etc.), classic models strongly influenced the details, if not the plans, of an interesting series of churches remarkable especially for their porches rich with figure sculpture and for their elaborately carved details. The classic archivolt, the Corinthian capital, the Roman forms of enriched mouldings, are evident at a glance in the porches of Notre Dame des Doms at Avignon, of the church of St. Gilles, and of St. Trophime at Arles.

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FIG. 96.—PLAN OF NOTRE DAME DU PORT, CLERMONT.

DEVELOPMENT OF VAULTING. It was in Central France, and mainly along the Loire, that the systematic development of vaulted church architecture began. Naves covered with barrel-vaults appear in a number of large churches built during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with apsidal and transeptal chapels and aisles carried around the apse, as in St. Etienne, Nevers, Notre Dame du Port at Clermont-Ferrand (Fig. 96), and St. Paul at Issoire. The thrust of these ponderous vaults was clumsily resisted by half-barrel vaults over the side-aisles, transmitting the strain to massive side-walls (Fig. 97), or by high side-aisles with transverse barrel or groined vaults over each bay. In either case the clearstory was suppressed—a fact which mattered little in the sunny southern provinces. In the more cloudy North, in Normandy, Picardy, and the Royal Domain, the nave-vault was raised higher to admit of clearstory windows, and its section was in some cases made like a pointed arch, to diminish its thrust, as at Autun. But these eleventh-century vaults nearly all fell in, and had to be reconstructed on new principles. In this work the Clunisians seem to have led the way, as at Cluny (1089) and Vézelay (1100). In the latter church, one of the finest and most interesting French edifices of the twelfth century, a groined vault replaced the barrel-vault, though the oblong plan of the vaulting-bays, due to the nave being wider than the pier-arches, led to somewhat awkward twisted surfaces in the vaulting. But even here the vaults had insufficient lateral buttressing, and began to crack and settle; so that in the great ante-chapel, built thirty years later, the side-aisles were made in two stories, the better to resist the thrust, and the groined vaults themselves were constructed of pointed section. These seem to be the earliest pointed groined vaults in France. It was not till the second half of that century, however (1150–1200), that the flying buttress was combined with such vaults, so as to permit of high clearstories for the better lighting of the nave; and the problem of satisfactorily vaulting an oblong space with a groined vault was not solved until the following century.

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FIG. 97.—SECTION OF NOTRE DAME DU PORT, CLERMONT.

ONE-AISLED CHURCHES. In the Franco-Byzantine churches already described (p. 164) this difficulty of the oblong vaulting-bay did not occur, owing to the absence of side-aisles and pier-arches. Following this conception of church-planning, a number of interesting parish churches and a few cathedrals were built in various parts of France in which side-recesses or chapels took the place of side-aisles. The partitions separating them served as abutments for the groined or barrel-vaults of the nave. The cathedrals of Autun (1150) and Langres (1160), and in the fourteenth century that of Alby, employed this arrangement, common in many earlier Provençal churches which have disappeared.

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FIG. 98.—A SIX-PART RIBBED VAULT, SHOWING TWO COMPARTMENTS WITH THE FILLINGS COMPLETE.

a, a, Transverse ribs (doubleaux); b, b, Wall-ribs (formerets); c, c, Groin-ribs (diagonaux).
(All the ribs are semicircles.)

SIX-PART VAULTING. In the Royal Domain great architectural activity does not appear to have begun until the beginning of the Gothic period in the middle of the twelfth century. But in Normandy, and especially at Caen and Mont St. Michel, there were produced, between 1046 and 1120, some remarkable churches, in which a high clearstory was secured in conjunction with a vaulted nave, by the use of “six-part” vaulting (Fig. 98). This was an awkward expedient, by which a square vaulting-bay was divided into six parts by the groins and by a middle transverse rib, necessitating two narrow skew vaults meeting at the centre. This unsatisfactory device was retained for over a century, and was common in early Gothic churches both in France and Great Britain. It made it possible to resist the thrust by high side-aisles, and yet to open windows above these under the cross-vaults. The abbey churches of St. Etienne (the Abbaye aux Hommes) and Ste. Trinité (Abbaye aux Dames), at Caen, built in the time of William the Conqueror, were among the most magnificent churches of their time, both in size and in the excellence and ingenuity of their construction. The great abbey church of Mont St. Michel (much altered in later times) should also be mentioned here. At the same time these and other Norman churches showed a great advance in their internal composition. A well-developed triforium or subordinate gallery was introduced between the pier-arches and clearstory, and all the structural membering of the edifice was better proportioned and more logically expressed than in most contemporary work.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. The details of French Romanesque architecture varied considerably in the several provinces, according as classic, Byzantine, or local influences prevailed. Except in a few of the Aquitanian churches, the round arch was universal. The walls were heavy and built of rubble between facings of stones of moderate size dressed with the axe. Windows and doors were widely splayed to diminish the obstruction of the massive walls, and were treated with jamb-shafts and recessed arches. These were usually formed with large cylindrical mouldings, richly carved with leaf ornaments, zigzags, billets, and grotesques. Figure-sculpture was more generally used in the South than in the North. The interior piers were sometimes cylindrical, but more often clustered, and where square bays of four-part or six-part vaulting were employed, the piers were alternately lighter and heavier. Each shaft had its independent capital either of the block type or of a form resembling somewhat that of the Corinthian order. During the eleventh century it became customary to carry up to the main vaulting one or more shafts of the compound pier to support the vaulting ribs. Thus the division of the nave into bays was accentuated, while at the same time the horizontal three-fold division of the height by a well-defined triforium between the pier-arches and clearstory began to be likewise emphasized.

VAULTING. The vaulting was also divided into bays by transverse ribs, and where it was groined the groins themselves began in the twelfth century to be marked by groin-ribs. These were constructed independently of the vaulting, and the four or six compartments of each vaulting-bay were then built in, the ribs serving, in part at least, to support the centrings for this purpose. This far-reaching principle, already applied by the Romans in their concrete vaults (see p. 84), appears as a re-discovery, or rather an independent invention, of the builders of Normandy at the close of the eleventh century. The flying buttress was a later invention; in the round-arched buildings of the eleventh and twelfth centuries the buttressing was mainly internal, and was incomplete and timid in its arrangement.

EXTERIORS. The exteriors were on this account plain and flat. The windows were small, the mouldings simple, and towers were rarely combined with the body of the church until after the beginning of the twelfth century. Then they appeared as mere belfries of moderate height, with pyramidal roofs and effectively arranged openings, the germs of the noble Gothic spires of later times. Externally the western porches and portals were the most important features of the design, producing an imposing effect by their massive arches, clustered piers, richly carved mouldings, and deep shadows.

CLOISTERS, ETC. Mention should be made of the other monastic buildings which were grouped around the abbey churches of this period. These comprised refectories, chapter-halls, cloistered courts surrounded by the conventual cells, and a large number of accessory structures for kitchens, infirmaries, stores, etc. The whole formed an elaborate and complex aggregation of connected buildings, often of great size and beauty, especially the refectories and cloisters. Most of these conventual buildings have disappeared, many of them having been demolished during the Gothic period to make way for more elegant structures in the new style. There remain, however, a number of fine cloistered courts in their original form, especially in Southern France. Among the most remarkable of these are those of Moissac, Elne, and Montmajour.