remarks on Gothic art, [1] likens the Gothic edifice to an animal, with its charpente osseuse autour de lui. In the frankness with which its functional members are confessed, joined with the skill with which they are at the same time wrought into adornments, reside largely the grandeur and the impressiveness of the external aspect of a great Gothic cathedral.
The general proportions of the exterior are sometimes criticised. But it is often forgotten that hardly any of the great early churches were completed according to the original designs; and that not one of them has come down to us without having undergone considerable and often very damaging alterations. The churches which were the most nearly completed, and have suffered least from alterations, are generally remarkable for justness and harmony of proportions.
As illustration of the general external aspect two examples may be taken—one an early and the other a later structure. The first is the Abbey Church of St. Leu d'Esserent (Fig. 66), and the second is the Cathedral of Reims (Fig. 67). Both exhibit parts which belong to different periods of construction; but these parts are, for the most part, of admirable character, and they assist in forming exceedingly grand and harmonious wholes.
In the view of St. Leu we have the apse, the apsidal chapels, the eastern towers, and the choir, all of which date probably from about 1170. [2] We have also the nave—which must have been completed before the close of the twelfth century, or very early in the thirteenth—and one of the western towers, which is a remnant of an earlier edifice. With exception of the western tower, which is ill adjusted to the reconstructed nave, the total composition is conspicuously fine in its groupings and just in its proportions. It is, in fact, one of the best remaining examples of the simple
- ↑ "Discours sur l'État des Beaux-Arts" in the Hist. Littéraire de la France au Quatorziéme Siécle. Par Le Clerc et Renan. Paris, 1865.
- ↑ I judge of the date by the style of the design alone. It is, on the one hand, so closely similar in character to the style of the eastern portions of the neighbouring Churches of Senlis and Noyon as to warrant the belief that the construction was not much subsequent to them in date; while, on the other hand, the style of the capitals of the interior is such as to indicate that they must have been wrought subsequently to those of the choir of Paris, which was begun in 1163.
