possible to make the bars very much more slender, and yet to secure equal strength. One of these new clerestory windows is seen in the left bay in Fig. 46. To accomplish the change the pretty circular opening, seen in the unaltered bay to the right, had to be sacrificed; a string-course was inserted far below the springing of the vaults, down to which level the splays of the new openings were brought. The tracery is more simple than that of Reims, the sexfoil being omitted from the circle, and it is also more slender. The form of the window head is changed from that of the original window into a more acutely pointed arch, which is nearly concentric with the remodelled vault above it. [1] Both it and the vault disagree strikingly with the old longitudinal rib which remains undisturbed, affording an instance of the frankness with which traces of what previously existed are allowed to remain in mediæval work when occasion gives rise to changes or corrections. Such traces add much to the historic value of these monuments, and not unpleasantly correspond with what we frequently find in the works of old designers in the sister arts of painting and engraving, where corrections are made with little attempt at concealment, as in the case of the well-known horse's hoof in Dürer's engraving of the Knight and Death. [2]
In the case of these clerestory windows of Paris it may, I think, be questioned whether they were improvements to the building. There was a severe and simple beauty in the older design, with its unique rose in the upper triforium, that is not wholly compensated for by the tall new windows which do not fit very well into the old work. The windows, moreover, though their tracery, in its mode of construction and in its lightness, is an advance upon the tracery of Reims, are, in their relation to the building, not so distinctly Gothic; for the windows of Reims completely fill the spaces between the piers of the building, while those of Paris still leave a large wall space remaining.
Very soon after it had been recognised in the apse of Reims that the openings might safely be made equal to the
- ↑ Many more particulars concerning the changes that were made in this building at this time are given by Viollet-le-Duc, s.v. Construction, and elsewhere; but those noticed above are, for the most part, not referred to by him.
- ↑ Motives of economy doubtless had much to do with the preservation of old work when changes were made in these buildings.
