Eugène Viollet-le-Duc

“ It is not necessary to say, that the arches play a great part in the construction of the buildings of the Middle Ages, the architects had arrived, as of the XIII E century, to acquire a perfect knowledge of their force of resistance, and their effects on the piles and the walls, they put a particular care in the choice of the materials which were to compose them, in their apparatus, and the way of their joints. Roman architecture did nothing but open the way in the application of the archs to art to build ”

“ The loge holding at houses differs from the bretèche in this important point that it is opened with the bad weather, apart from the apartments, while the bretèche is closed by panes or shutters and adds at piece-rates an appendix projecting on the public highway. The French architecture of the Middle Ages hardly admitted the cabin but in the southernmost provinces, where it could have a certain utility. In our climates, one always preferred a part closed in these rooms open to all winds, if frequent in the Italian cities of the 13th and 14th centuries. ”

“ In France the feeling of the proportions, relationships of the vacuums with the full ones, borer in architecture since it is released from cruelty. As of the XIth century these important details of the decoration of masonry, such as the blind arcades, are contained in right terminals, hold their place well, do not appear to be as in England or Italy, on the frontage of the cathedral of Pisa for example, of platings of a sterile invention. ”

“ That the florets of crowning belong to the 13th or the 15th century, they are always well planted, proudly bent, in perfect reports/ratios of proportion with the parts of the architecture which they overcome. The Gothic architects could crown their buildings. Our attention must all the more go on these qualities, that today the majority of our modern monuments sin obviously by the contrary defect. ”

“ LOGE (literally: "cabin") Part or portion of gallery, dependent on a public or private building, high above external ground-level and opening largely on the outside, without windows or closings with residence. The loge resembles on the one hand the gantry, other with the bretèche; however it should be distinguished from these two members of architecture. The loge differs from the gantry in what it is high above the public highway, has a particular entry and that its length is limited, while the gantry is a covered gallery of which the length is unspecified. ”

“ While imitating or believing to imitate the forms of Roman antiquity, the architects of the rebirth deviated more of the principle of ancient construction than the architects of the XII E and XIII E centuries ”

“ À la Sainte-Chapelle du Palais à Paris, les gargouilles sont plus élancées, plus développées: ce ne sont plus seulement des bustes d'animaux, mais des animaux entiers attachés par leurs pattes aux larmiers supérieurs; leurs têtes se détournent pour jeter les eaux le plus loin possible des angles des contre-forts (4) . Quelques-unes de ces gargouilles sont évidemment sculptées par des artistes consommés. ”

“ The large covered stage that we give here as a cabin held place of small room of not-lost. We have in Paris a very-remarkable monument by the style of its architecture and which was treated with the manner of the Italian cabins, it is the monument which one made the fountain of the Innocent ones. ”

“ But about 1245, at the time when ogival architecture arrived at its apogee, the blind arcades, in the buildings built with luxury, take a greatter importance, grow rich by low-reliefs, ornaments, of openings, tend to form under the windows a splendid decoration, while always letting see naked walls in between-colonnements ”

“ If in their massive constructions, inébranlables, the Romans had included/understood the need for leaving with the archs a certain elasticity by extradossant them, and by forming them of concentric rows of archstones, when they needed to give them a great resistance, with stronger reason in the masonries of the Middle Ages, where all is balance, and movement consequently, was one not to lose sight of the fact the principle which must direct the architects in the construction of the arcs. ”

“ These beings stick skilfully to the drips, are welded with architecture and give to the silhouettes buildings a particular character, marking their projecting points, showing the heads of the buttresses, putting forward the vertical lines. One can judge skill of the architects and sculptors in the combination and the execution of these launchers by the difficulty which one tests to combine them and to make them carry out. ”

“ As much imagination is tempting sometimes, when it naturally arrives, that it is a joke of the spirit, as much it tires if it is sought. The ornaments which this article provides us (ornaments of singular importance, since they are used as termination with the dominant parts of the buildings) are not the result of a whim, but well of the attentive and fine study of the plants. ”

“ All kinds of flowers are employed in the coat of arms; however one hardly meets before the 15th century that the pinks, the poppy, the clover, the quad and cinquefoils and the flower of lily 4. By indicating the species and the number of the flowers or fruits in the shield, one must also indicate if they are accompanied by sheets, one says them then broken into leaf; if they hang with a branch, one them known as constant. The fruits which one generally meets in the old coat of arms are: apples, pine cones, grapes, nipples, the coquerelles ones. ”

“ There still exists in Vire (Apple-brandy) a small cabin of this kind, laid out under a house of the 15th century. Nothing is simpler than this construction (3) , which is composed of two piles and two stone columns, resting on a sideboard; of a paved surface and some steps posed with each end giving on the public highway. The frontage of the house, in roughcast brick wood side, rests on the two piles of angles and the two columns, so that this cabin only one end of gantry raised with sideboard under its columns is other thing. ”

“ It is especially in the monuments of the 16th century that we will seek these types, because it is during this century that the heraldry adopted figures whose quite distinct characters were reproduced without modifications sensitive until the moment when the artists, accustomed to a vulgar imitation of nature, did not include any more the fundamental laws of the decoration applied to the monuments, the pieces of furniture, with the weapons, with clothing. ”

“ The same cities and corporations took also coat of arms; the good cities, those which were more particularly associated with the efforts of the royal capacity to be freed from feudality, had the right to place as a chief the weapons of France; such were the weapons of Paris, of Amiens, of Narbonne, Turns, Holy, of Lyon, of Béziers, of Toulouse, of Uzès, of Castrate, etc. Some same cities carried: from France, particularly in Languedoc. The corporations generally took for weapons figures drawn from the trades which they exerted; it was the same for the middle-class men annoblis. ”

“ The quad and cinquefoils are bored by the medium of a round hole, which lets see the field of the shield. The pink it is called buttoned when its heart is not same enamel as the flower. Among the stars, those which are in the past employed are the sun, the stars and the crescent; the sun is always silver. When it is of color, it takes the name of sun shade. The position of the crescent is to be rising, i.e. its horns are turned towards the chief of the shield. When its horns look at the point of the shield, one it known as versed ”

“ The blind arcade, by its larger apparatus, the firmness of its jambs monoliths, gives solidity to this base by decorating it, it accompanies and crowns this bench which reigns all along the low side. Generally even at that time, the blind arcades are supported by posts isolated decorated from bases and carved capitals ”

“ The oldest Nobility of our States, which owes its first origin with the glory of the weapons, will undoubtedly see with pleasure that we look at the communication of its Privileges as the most flattering price which those can obtain which went on its traces during the war. Already annoblis by their actions, they have the merit of the Nobility, if they do not have yet the title of it ”

“ The animals represented on the coat of arms usually look at the line of the shield; if they look at the left, they are said circumvented.
The lions and the leopards are the animals most usually employed, they have over all the others the privilége to be heraldic, i.e., that their form and their posture are subjected to fixed rules. The lion is always illustrated of profile: it is crawling, i.e., high on its legs of behind, the dextral leg of front raised, and the sinistral leg of behind behind ”

“ One meets in certain buildings of the Lower Empire of the blind lines of arcades which have of another goal only to decorate naked walls. This reason for decoration appears particularly allowed and to be preserved by the architects of the carolingian time, and it persists for the periods Romance and ogival, in all the provinces of France. It is wise to observe however that the use of the blind arcades is more or less well justified in the Romance buildings ”

“ Moreover in the Romance buildings construction becomes almost always a reason for decoration, and when while building one needed relieving arches one sought to show them, that is to say by a projection, and even sometimes by a net decorated or profiled with the suction face. ”

“ The regular clergy and sshieldlar, like feudal lord, adopted weapons as of the 13th century; i.e. the abbeys, the chapters, évêchés had their weapons; what did not prevent the bishops from carrying their hereditary weapons. Those, to distinguish their escutcheons from those of the sshieldlar members of their family, surmounted them episcopal hat or mitre, whereas the nobility did not pose any sign above its weapons. We saw keystones, paintings of the 13th and 16th centuries, where the escutcheons of the bishops are surmounted hat or mitre 10. ”

“ The essential quality of the arch, it is elasticity. The wider it is, the broader the space which it must cross is, and the more necessary it is that it is flexible. The manufacturers of the Middle Ages followed this principle perfectly by multiplying the joints in their archs, by composing them of equal archstones, always extradossés carefully. ”