GOTHIC
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GOTHIC
tein well developed. A little later come Sant' Andrea,
Vercelli (1219-24), said to be the work of an English
architect, but manifestly French, with a full system of
flying buttresses, San Francesco at Assisi (1228-53),
attributed by Vasari to a German architect, but also
unmistakably French in its first inspiration, though
considerably modified by what may well be local
Franciscan influence, and San Francesco at Bologna,
of which much the same may be said.
The first really local development of Gothic seems to have been at the hands of the friars, Sta. Croce and Sta. Maria Novella at Florence, dating from the end of the century, varying so widely from any contem- porary form of Gothic that their peculiarities must be assigned either to the friars themselves or to the influx of Italian personality. One of the fundamental char- acteristics of Gothic is a sense of just proportion and a fine relationship of parts, combined with a passion for beauty of line, form, light and shade, colour, and their relationships, not invariably achieved, but always sought for with a consuming eagerness. These quali- ties are almost wholly lacking in the churches above named, as well as in the cathedral itself, which partakes
Ducal Pau\
of nearly all of their peculiarities. We know that in
England, when the Franciscans and Dominicans built
their own great, popular churches, while they worked
for the sanae large open spaces and economy of ma-
terial, they nevertheless regarded these considerations
of proportion and pure beauty, therefore the conclu-
sion seems inevitable that it is not to the nature of the
Mendicant Orders, but to some incapacity in the race,
as it then was, that we owe the radical shortcomings of
the work of Arnolfo and his fellows in Italy. The fact
remains, however, that the great churches of the
friars are the chief offenders. San Giovanni e Paolo
and the Frari at Venice, the cathedral of Arezzo, San
Petronio, Bologna, and the cathedral of Florence are,
with the friars' churches in the city last named, brill-
iant examples of the lamentable results that may be
obtained when the structural and a'sthetic laws of a
great style are ignored or misunderstood. Siena and
Orvieto cathedrals avoid the bald ugliness of this class
of work, but in their structure they have no kinship
with Gothic, while in respect to their fa9ades the only
quality they possess which is Gothic in any degree is a
certain sense of beauty in ornament, itself derived
from a recurrence to the forms of nature for inspira-
tion, combined with an intense refinement of line and
modelling and a blending of the arts of sculpture and
colour in a poetic and lovely composition. Perhaps
the nearest approach to true Gothic feeling and ac-
complishment is to be found in the unfinished front of
Genoa cathedral; being of the twelfth century, it is
sufficiently early to have received something of the
first great Gothic impulse, and is a masterpiece of deli-
cate relations and exquisite detail. The best Gothic
work in Italy is not ecclesiastical, but secular, and is
to be found in the palaces of Venice, Siena, Florence,
and Bologna. The Doge's Palace and the innumer-
able private structures of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries in the first-named city have all the
qualities of pure beauty of design and detail, as well as
the unerring sense of proportion and relationship, that
are characteristic of Gothic art, whUe the forms
through which these are expressed are wholly medie-
val, yet with a complete racial note that raises them
almost to the dignity of a national school of Gothic
design.
Spain, as a Christian State, was non-existent except as a small area of still unconquered territory near the Pyrenees, until the middle of the thirteenth century, when Ferdinand III. afterwards canonized, united the crowns of Castile and Leon, won back Seville and Cor- dova, and established the final victory of the Cross over the Crescent in the Iberian Peninsula. Until this time the Gothic spirit had hardly more than crossed the mountains and always as a direct importa- tion from Burgvmdy and Aquitaine; Salamanca cathe- dral, St. Vincent of Avila, the cathedrals of Lerida, Tudela, and Tarragona, the Abbey of Verula, and the church of Las Huelgas at Burgos, all built between 1120 and IISO, show a very undeveloped type of early Gothic construction, combined with a rich and imagi- native treatment of Southern Romanesque design in the exterior. Salamanca and St. Isidoro at Leon both possess domes or lanterns over the crossing, remark- able in point of structural ingenuity and beauty of de- sign both internally and externally. If the scheme was borrowed from the other side of the Pyrenees, it has been wholly transformed and glorified, and this brilliant innovation, containing such possibilities of de- velopment that were never carried further, may justly be attributed to native Spanish genius. No progres- sive growth occurred, however, during the next fifty years, and it was not until the definitive victories of St. Ferdinand made Spanish nationality possible, and the coming of the Cistercians gave the necessary spirit- ual impulse, that Gothic architecture in any true sense appeared in Spain, and then as another direct importa- tion from France rather than as a development of the latent racial qualities inherent in Salamanca. Bur- gos, Barcelona, Toledo, and Leon are closely French in their setting-out and ordonance, but in detail they vary widely from all French preceilents. There is a southern richness and romance both in the exterior and interior design and detail of Burgos, for example, as well as in the other Spanish work from the middle of the thirteenth century onward, that gives it a cer- tain personality quite distinct from that of any other school of Gothic. This sumptuousness of detail and colour, and composition of light and shade, enters into every detail; altars and reredoses, the latter often vast in size and of the richest materials; grilles of in- tricately wrought and chiselled metal; sculptured tombs; stalls of the most elaborate carving; great pic- tures, tapestries, and statutes innumerable, together with a Flemish type of stained glass in the most brill- iant colouring, were lavished on every church; and since Spain has escaped the pillage and destruction of religious revolutions, much of medieval completeness remains, though considerably overlaid with a thick coating of Renaissance, and therefore it is only in Spanish churches that one may obtain some idea of the general effect of a medieval church as it once was before it became subjected to the mishandling of revo- lutionists, iconoclasts, and restorers.
The end of Gothic architecture and of all Catholic art came with varying degrees of rapidity and at dif- ferent times as between the several schools of Europe. Generally speaking, its death-knell was sounded when the work of St. Gregory the Great, St. Gregory VII, and St. Innocent III was temporarily undone, and the
