GOTHIC
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GOTHIC
appeared sporadically in some of the larger churches
at the end of the twelfth century, such as Worms,
Mainz, and Bamberg, but the lateral arches are not
stilted, and so far as proportion, design, exterior
treatment and detail are concerned, these churches
are strictly of the Jihenish Romanesque type, as are
indeed, (uitwanlly, the internally more Gothic Magde-
burg and Limburg. St. Gereon, Cologne, and the
Liebfrauenkirche, Trier, the first completed in 1227,
the second begun in the same year, are churches of
novel plan, each apparently having resulted from an
effort to turn a French chevet into a church by repeat-
ing its design, so producing a plan approximating a
circle, and harking back in an indeterminate sort of
way to the polygonal, domed churches of Charle-
magne; in both cases French schemes and forms have
been used rather superficially and with little apprecia-
tion. Cologne remains, in spite of these examples, the
first church in Germany that is strictly Gothic in its
idea and its setting out, but even here its detail and
ornament are German rather than French. It had a
considerable influence on the superficial development
of style, and towards the end of the century such
works as St. Elizabeth, Marburg, and the cathedrals
of Strasburg and Freiburg show the spreading of a
style that had come too late to reach any very com-
plete fruition. Until the end of the Middle Ages,
when curious fantasies in design and decoration gave
to Cicrman Gothic a certain imquestioned individual-
ity, the contributions to the development of this phase
of art were not notable ; the most conspicuous is the
Hnllenhau scheme which consists in raising one or
more aisles on either side of the nave to an equal
height therewith, or rather in building a great hall
roofed with level vaulting supported on rows of
slender shafts dividing it into aisles. Liibeck has five
of these aisles, others no less than seven. The Hall-
enbau church, whatever its width, was usually covered
by one enormous roof, and the result, both internally
and externally, is as far as possible from the Gothic idea
of a logical assemblage of parts, each bearing a just
and lieautiful proportion to the others, all interrelated
and fonninj; a highly articulated organism, the exte-
rior of which announced explicitly every structural
form of plan and ordonance. The "open-work"
spire, such as that of Freiburg, is a German develop-
ment of a Flamboyant idea, which had much ssthetic-
ally to commend it, its lacelike surfaces being often
treated with great effectiveness.
Flemish Gothic is distinctly a sub-school of that of France rather than of Germany. The nave of Tour- nai, built in 1060 is still Rhenish Romanesque, though pointed arches and certain Burgundian qualities are creeping in ; its proportions, however, partake of the finer feeling of the I'Vanks, even though its general conception is Rhenish. During the first half of the thirteenth century such thoroughly strong and re- fined examples of true Gothic as St. Martin, Ypres, St. Bavon and St. Michael, Ghent, appear, widely divided in their quality from the halting efforts of Germany proper. The civic work of Flanders is per- haps its most distinctively national creation, and the Clotli Hall, Ypres, with the great group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century town halls — Bruges, Brussels, Louvain, ( Hidenarde, Alost, and Ghent — while exces- sive in their flamboyant tletail, yet retain the essential elements of fine composition and vigorous design.
In Italy the introduction of Gothic forms was as long delayed as in Germany, while, so far as native work is concerned, the fundamental principles of Gothic construction were never accepted at all. It was essentially a northern art, and in Italy neither the mental dispusition of the pciiplc nor the spiritN[Ll ami tempi mil conditions put a premium on ideas in them- selves racially foreign. Nevertheless, once introduced, they produced in many cases very l)eautiful results, particularly in decoration and design, and Italian
Gothic certainly contributes valuable elements to the
total of medieval art. During the eleventh century
one school after another had come into existence in
almost every part of Italy, all based more or less on
some local modification of the primitive basilican
idea, yet varying in different directions as the peculiar
influences of each section might direct. In Torcello,
Murano, and Venice these were naturally Byzantine,
more or less modified by the variations at Ravenna.
In Sicily, Byzantine influence was mingled with
strains from Mohammedan sources and with a strong
influence brought in by King Roger and his Norman
followers. Pisa and Florence worked on their own
lines with some slight Lombardic admixture, while
those portions of the peninsula imder Lombard con-
trol developed their vital and inspiring style from the
persisting( 'arlovingian tradition. Theabstract bciuty
of much iif tliis Italian jiroduct of the eleventh century
is very pronounced, St. Mark's at Venice, San Miiiiato
at Florence, Cefalu, Monreale, and the Capella Pala-
tina in Sicily; Troja, Toscanella, San Michele at
Pavia, San Zeno at Verona — all possess elements of
great art, but no one of the styles indicated by any of
these buildings was destined to a final working-out
under cultural conditions that made such a result
inevitable. Development during the twelfth century
was almost wholly local in its extent and decorative in
its scope, and it was not imtil the coming of the Cister-
cians, with their Gothic of Burgimdy, at the opening
of the thirteenth century, that the incipient or
reminiscent local modes were extinguished, and an
attempt made at a general unification of style.
Apparently the Gothic influence had come too late. The era when architecture was to be the favourite mode for the artistic voicing of a civilization was, at least in the South, nearly at an end; painting and sculpture were to take its place, and therefore the Gothic architecture of Italy was lio remain both raci- ally alien and in its nature episodical. In the former class are those churches the designs of which were apparently iinporl<'(l almost bodily from Burgundy by the ( "istrriian nioTiks, such as Fo.ssanova, Casmari, and San (!alt;aii(i, all wiirks of great beauty of form and [iroportinn, all v.aultcd in stone, the two former having fully di-% ell >iied rib vaults with stilti'd lateral arches in good (iolliic furni, though in nunc is the buttress sys-
